Tag Archives: Port Sewall

Caesar Dean

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The name of the much admired Bahamian, Caesar Dean, came up as I researched George W. Perkins.

Years go by and gradually things begin to fit together. I discovered that pioneer, Ike Craig, was the caretaker of the Perkins estate. One of the precious few photographs of an identified black man is one of Caesar Dean near a pineapple cart with Ike Craig. It has been published many times.

Caesar Dean stands at far right. This photograph was probably taken at Ike Craig’s “Old Dominion Pinery.” It was located where Leisure Village is today. The “Ike Craig’s Pond” where Stuart News editor, Ernie Lyons, was allowed to fish as a boy can still be seen on the south side of Monterey Road .

When Chessy Rica was curator at the Elliott Museum, she put together an exhibit on pineapple culture. After all, our region was the “Pineapple Capital of the World.” Chessy used the photograph of Caesar Dean and Ike Craig and went a step further, designing a storyboard with dated newspaper articles about Caesar Dean. She follow up with a blog and published an article ”Who was Caesar Dean?” in Martin County’s Hometown News.

Very few obituaries of black people were published in Florida newspapers but Caesar Dean was so outstanding, his was published in the Stuart News. Ernest F. Lyons, Editor of the Stuart News who comprehensive historical editions, knew the importance of Caesar Dean and probably wrote this obituary.
Caesar Dean’s chiseled features makes it possible to recognize him standing at left on this rare postcard.

I came across a detailed article about Caesar Dean saving the Perkinses on their yacht “Emily Swan” published in the Stuart Times on March 12, 1915. It augments Chessy Ricca’s research.

George W. Perkins was aboard his motor yacht, “Emily Swan” with his daughter, Dorothy, and her friends.  The young man who was piloting the yacht said they should be able to go outside the St. Lucie Inlet even though seas were rough.

Going outside was ill advised. A wave broke the cabin’s windows and flooded the boat which began to broach. As the boat was beginning to capsize, Caesar Dean who was the boat as a deckhand, sprang to action and gripped the wheel. With his great strength and knowledge of the sea, he brought the yacht safely around and back into calm waters.

This photograph of George Perkins’ daughter, who was saved by Caesar Dean, appeared in the Boston Globe on September 18, 1916.

It is amazing what can be found on http://newspapers,com. Although this trivia may not be of great interest, I want to take this opportunity to record it. The yacht Caesar Dean saved was named the “Emily Swan.” The father of the George W. Perkins connected to Stuart and his wife, Sarah, named their only daughter, “Emily Swan” after a much admired friend. Two years after Sarah died in childbirth, George Sr. married Emily Swan. That made two Emily Swam Perkins, one the stepmother of the other.

This photograph of Emily Swan, the sister of George W. Perkins, Jr., who owned the estate on Frazier Creek, can be found on the Internet.

Emily Swan Perkins was a composer of hymn tunes and founder of what is now The Hymn Society of the United States. She was born in Chicago in 1866 and died in Riverdale, N. Y. in 1941. https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/e/emily-swan-perkins

You can find videos of Emily Swan Perkins Pienary Addresses on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-kIJXNmcgU. Who would believe such things can be found when researching the name of a boat?

When the 1933 Hurricane destroyed Caesar Dean’s home in Stuart, members of the still grateful Perkins family paid to have ta new house built. An article telling of this was on Chessy Ricca’s storyboard. It was an article published in the Stuart Daily News on September 7, 1933. Ceasar Dean’s house was located at 545 Pinewood Street. Pinewood Street, later to be 7th Street, is today’s Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard.

George Perkins would not have been able to participate in the Port Sewall Regatta held on March 11, 1917, if the Emily Swan had capsized in the St. Lucie Inlet.( Note number 10.)
Although this postcard was taken after the Shepards purchased the former Perkins Estate it shows the boathouse that once housed the Emily Swan. The Shepards’ boat the Gadabout is at right.
This is a scene is from Robinson Crusoe filmed locally in 1916 by Henry Savage in which Caesar Dean played “Friday.”

Abundant Connections

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Today, I was working in my yard. It is something that I love to do. Our property on Sewall’s Point, very close to the bridges to Hutchinson Island, happens to have once been divided by the county line between first, Dade and Brevard, then Palm Beach and St. Lucie County.

I placed the little statue at the corner of our property where the section lines crosses.

For years I have had a sign on a palm tree at the corner of our property declaring this.

The little concrete statue once belonged to Michelle Coutant.

Eleven years ago, I stopped at a yard sale on Indian Street near Old St. Lucie Boulevard. Norie Neff, the daughter of Dorothy and Clyde Coutant was selling the property that had been her family’s for many years.

I can see this statue from my window over the kitchen sink.

It was Norie’s grandmother, Aura Fike Jones, who secured the statue “Abundance” that now stands in Haney Circle.

This image was in a Stuart Woman’s Club scrapbook that belongs to Norie Neff. Perhaps it was a photo Aura Fike Jones’s son , Larry, who knew about the statue sent to her suggesting it would “add a bit of glamor to Stuart.”
The statue “Abundance” did not find its way to Haney Circle where it was originally to be placed in 1950 until Stuart was revitalized in 1991.

A small concrete statue, similar to Abundance, was in the yard sale. It had belonged to Norie’s late sister, Michelle. I bought the statue because of my many connections to the Coutant family in my “world of regional history,” as well of its symbolic connection to the beautiful statue that stands in downtown Stuart.  I placed the statue near the former county line and it has remained there.

Abundant connections bring me much pleasure.