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The cowman who was king PDF Print E-mail
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Thursday, 13 November 2008 03:16
They called him the “King of the Crackers,” a nickname that native-Floridian Jacob Summerlin loved.
Astute businessman, Seminole War veteran, Civil War blockade runner, Summerlin was born to the cowman’s saddle. He learned to crack a cattle-driving whip by age 7.
He turned meat on the hoof into so much money he couldn’t hide it all. By the time he turned 40, Summerlin was one of Florida’s richest men — and one of its more intriguing personalities. He amassed great wealth while often living as a simple landsman. Newspapermen called him eccentric.
“I am nothing under the sun but a native-born, sun-baked old Florida cracker,’’ he once told a New York journalist.
Though never elevated by Hollywood to the mythic level of the American West, Florida was every bit the rough-and-ready cattle country. Its cowmen used whips that produced cracks as loud as gunshots. The men took pride in being “crackers,” and Summerlin led them all.
He was born Feb. 20, 1820, in Alachua County, the first child born in Florida after the second Spanish occupation ended.
He played a part in many of the events that shaped the young territory, and, after 1845, the infant state.
Seeing it as duty, he served in the second Seminole War (1835-42). During the Civil War, Summerlin supplied beef to the Confederate Army, which never paid him a penny for the provisions, he said. He also played a role in that war’s famous Cow Cavalry, which guarded the cattle driven north through Florida to help feed the men in butternut and gray.
During the war, he sold cattle to Cuba. He shipped the livestock on a shallow-draft side-wheeler that scooted through the labyrinthine Ten Thousand Islands, frustrating heavier Union gunboats that wallowed between Key West and the Tortugas. In Cuba, he traded the cattle for gold dubloons, treasure that helped him build an empire.
Summerlin started in the cattle business as a young man by bartering 20 slaves for a small herd. He drove his scrawny beasts along fading Spanish trails from north to central Florida, where they scrabbled beside wild pigs and deer. By the time the Civil War began, he had built a herd of 20,000.
It was a time before banks. Summerlin kept gold and silver in his cabin in trunks, meal sacks, tin cans, socks, cigar boxes and in the rafters. When there were no more hiding places, he just tossed the money in a corner.
Sometimes he spent it, buying sprawling tracts from Fort Meade to Fort Myers. He bought a wharf at Punta Rassa and 1,000 acres nearby for pens.
In his later years, he became a philanthropist, donating land for a high school in Bartow and for a county seat and two churches. He also donated land for an Orlando park, named Lake Eola after a lady his sons knew. Summerlin became president of Orlando’s first City Council. He died on Nov. 4, 1893, virtually a legend in his time.
This story is provided by the Florida Humanities Council (www.flahum.org), a nonprofit organization that sponsors public programs exploring Florida’s history and cultural heritage.
 

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