South Florida Pioneers Quarterly
A fabulous resource for anyone with ancestors who were Florida Pioneers is the South Florida Pioneers Quarterly.
The July/October issue from 1985 of the South Florida Pioneers Quarterly with my 4th great-grandparents on the cover!
Old issues can usually be found at libraries in the genealogy section. However, I have never been able to find a robust set at any one library in particular that is close by to me.
Recently, I was looking at fl-genweb.org and clicking through some of the counties that I was interested in particular, and when looking at the page for Levy County, Florida, I found a link within the Levy County page containing almost all of the old South Florida Pioneer Quarterlies! All are digitized and available to be downloaded! Enjoy!
Here are just a few of the gems that I have used to further my research:
Family Bible Record of Levi Pearce. South Florida Pioneers Quarterly, Issue #3, January 1975, page 17.
Finding the family Bible record of Levi Pearce, who was the second husband of my 3rd great-grandmother on my maternal side, was what first clued me in that Rev. Pearce was not my 3rd-great grandfather as we had always been told. My 2nd great-grandmother, Louisa Belle Pearce, was the youngest child of Rev. Pearce’s second wife and bore his surname, but was not listed as one of his children. Oh, and he had died about 4 years before her birth!
Transcription of a letter written by Stephen Hollinsworth. South Florida Pioneers Quarterly, Issue #9, July 1976, page 9.
This is the transcription of a truly delightful letter written by one of my 4th great-grandfathers on my maternal side, Stephen Hollingsworth. How cute is he with all the mis-spellings and the passion with which he writes?!? I am on the hunt for a copy of the original. It would mean so much to me to see his actual handwriting.
Source material used to write a character sketch for Seth Howard. South Florida Pioneers Quarterly, Issue #15/16, January-April 1978, page 5.
These are the source materials that were used to craft a narrative of the life of one of my paternal 4th great-grandfathers, James Seth Howard. I set about verifying all of the information contained within the character sketch for Seth Howard. That put me on the search for each of the source materials listed at the end of his write-up in the South Florida Pioneers Quarterly. I was able to view a copy of the “Minutes of Old Providence Baptist Church, 1976” by requesting a copy through Inter-Library Loan and it turns out that Seth Howard was not the only one of my ancestors mentioned in those minutes! I was able to find a previously unknown date of death for the woman who I am currently theorizing is my 5th great-grandmother! (Don’t worry — if and when I ever verify that she is indeed my 5th great-grandmother, I will be sure to tell you all about my journey to identify her!)
I would encourage you to download all these issues and keep copies of them in your own files. There is no guarantee that this website will stay up indefinitely and these old issues are expensive to buy off of eBay and hard to find in our local libraries, even if you do live in Florida. Plus the pdf versions are great because OCR allows you to search within them for specific names or words.
