Over the past few decades, the mid-twentieth century paintings by a group known as the Highwaymen have become some of the most popular artwork produced in Florida.
The new exhibit “Paintings of Nostalgic Florida: The Original Highwaymen Artists” is on display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science April 6—28.
The opening reception on Friday April 6 at 6:00pm features wine, heavy hors d’oeuvres, and the opportunity to meet living Highwaymen artists. A presentation will be given by Gary Monroe, author of the book “The Highwaymen: Florida’s African American Landscape Artists.” Tickets are $25 per person ($20 for FHS Members) and are available at myfloridahistory.org.
The Highwaymen artists are a group of largely self-taught African American painters known for their colorful Florida landscapes. The first Highwaymen artist, Alfred Hair, was inspired by white landscape artist A.E. “Bean” Backus, who had a meticulous, detail oriented painting style. Hair also painted scenes of the natural Florida, but developed a rapid style of painting that allowed him to create beautiful works very quickly.
Hair shared his painting techniques with Harold Newton, who in turn, taught other African American artists.
Backus was able to sell his paintings in galleries, but in the racially segregated Florida of the 1950s and ‘60s, the Highwaymen had to develop creative marketing strategies.
“I was the salesman for the whole group,” says Al Black. “I would load all the paintings up in the car and take off in the mornings, and if they give me 50 paintings I would sell 50 paintings.”
Starting from Fort Pierce, Black would drive south to Key West and north to Alabama, making many stops in between. He would sell the Highwaymen art to banks, offices, and along the side of the road.
The Highwaymen artists produced many works of art for Black to sell, because the more they produced, the more they earned. Sometimes the paintings would still be wet when he loaded them into his car. Repairing damaged work was how Black eventually became a Highwaymen artist himself.
“I would be out on the road and I learned to paint by fixing all of the different artist’s paintings when I messed one up,” says Black.
The Highwaymen artists are known for their idyllic depictions of the natural Florida prior to development and urban sprawl. Their paintings capture marshlands, river scenes, beaches, sunrises and sunsets, Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees, brightly colored Poinciana trees, and Florida’s indigenous wildlife.
Black says that the Highwaymen paintings preserve Florida history. “The way Florida used to look, it don’t look that way anymore. We all captured it on canvas.”
Mary Ann Carroll has the distinction of being the only female Highwaymen artist. “I never really thought about it as me being a woman and they being men,” Carroll says. “I just thought of us as artists making a living for ourselves.”
The Highwaymen artists never thought of themselves as an organized group, Carroll says. While each of the Highwaymen had the same goals and desires, they worked independently. “It’s like a bunch of people in an orange grove picking fruit,” says Carroll. “But everybody’s picking his own fruit. We were associated by our gift.”
The name “Highwaymen” was given to the painters by art dealer Jim Fitch in 1995, in an article he wrote for the magazine “Antiques and Art around Florida.” After Fitch coined the Highwaymen name, books about the artists soon followed. In 2001, Gary Monroe wrote “The Highwaymen: Florida’s African American Landscape Painters.”
In 2004, a group of 26 Highwaymen artists were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.
Original Highwaymen artist Roy McLendon was surprised to see so many artists being recognized. “A lot of the people I didn’t even know,” McLendon says. He believes that the popularity of Highwaymen paintings led to imitation. “Pictures that would sell for $35 was selling for $3,500 and $4,500 for the same painting. Now everyone wanted to be a Highwaymen.”
The exhibition “Paintings of Nostalgic Florida: The Original Highwaymen Artists” will feature work by Isaac Knight, Robert L. Lewis, and Roy McLendon. Each Saturday in April, one of the artists will be giving a demonstration, included with regular museum admission.
Nearly a year ago, hurricane Irma swept through Brevard County.
The day after the storm, September 11, 2017, Rockledge photographer and archaeology enthusiast Randy Lathrop, also known as Randy Shots, discovered that the hurricane had dislodged an historic canoe and washed it ashore from the Indian River in Cocoa.
The 15 foot, 700 pound canoe captured the public’s imagination.
The story made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, was published in Smithsonian magazine, and went viral on social media. The fact that the canoe was challenging for archaeologists to date and analyze just added to its mystique.
A year later, after extensive testing, archaeologists are still not exactly sure how old the canoe is.
“I was lucky enough to get a sample of that canoe and I was really excited because I grew up in Florida,” says Carla Hadden from the University of Georgia Center for Applied Isotope Studies. Hadden conducted carbon dating tests on the canoe sample, trying to determine its age.
“When we got the results, I knew it was going to be a kind of interesting to explain because rather than being able to say, ‘oh this dates to exactly this year A.D.,’ we ended up with three discreet possible ranges, so it kind of added to the mystery of how old this canoe was rather than giving a definitive answer.”
Since 1949, radiocarbon dating has been a primary tool for archaeologists to determine the age of objects. In the case of the Irma Canoe, the results were less than conclusive. Analysis shows that there is a 50% chance that the canoe was made between 1640 and 1680. There’s a 32% chance it’s from between 1760 and 1818, and an 8.6% chance it was created after 1930.
Along with carbon dating, dendrochronology helps archaeologists determine when artifacts like dugout canoes were created.
The ancient Greeks observed that rings form inside of tree trunks, and in the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci noticed that those tree rings form annually. By the early twentieth century, dendrochronology evolved as a science.
Cross-dating is the first principle of dendrochronology.
“There’s going to be the pattern of variability on ring width,” says Laura Smith from the University of Tennessee, Laboratory of Tree Ring Science.
“So if we have an item, an archaeological piece, say a canoe, that is undated, we call that a floating chronology. We can measure up the rings and we can know that pattern, but we don’t know where it is in the context of time. To help understand that, we use what’s called a master chronology. These have been developed all over the world. There’s what’s called the international tree ring databank.”
The master chronologies associate each annual tree ring with a calendar year. Scientists use statistical methods to match the floating chronology from a specimen like the Irma Canoe with the master chronology in a particular region.
Unfortunately, dendrochronology couldn’t help archaeologists figure out if the Irma Canoe was created in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, or 1900s.
“One of the issues with the Irma Canoe is that it’s Red Cedar which is quite unusual,” Smith says. “I guess this is the only canoe in the state of Florida that they recorded of this species. And there aren’t Red Cedar chronologies in Florida. So, that’s kind of an issue we’ve come up against.”
Hundreds of canoes have been discovered in Florida, some created as long as 7,000 years ago. Even if we don’t know exactly how old the Irma Canoe is, it is still an intriguing discovery.
“It’s exciting when the public gets excited about canoe research, and it’s really fun, because we don’t have to sell it,” says Julie Duggins, who recovered the Irma Canoe for the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research. “It’s just by nature pretty thrilling to Floridians to learn about something like boats, boat making, this tradition that goes back thousands of years. We’ve got the highest concentration of dugout canoes in the world here.”
If you happen to stumble upon what appears to be an ancient canoe, or any archaeological artifact, Duggins encourages you to call the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, like Randy Lathrop did when he found the Irma Canoe.
Dr. Ben Brotemarkle is executive director of the Florida Historical Society. He’s also host of “Florida Frontiers: The Weekly Radio Magazine of the Florida Historical Society” and the public television series “Florida Frontiers.” More information is at www.myfloridahistory.org.
There are two temporary exhibits focusing on local history and culture currently on display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science, 2201 Michigan Avenue, Cocoa.
“Cocoa: A Hometown History” is on display through May 5, and “A Time to Shine: Mismatched Items from the Permanent Collection” can be seen through March 31.
“We really want to explore the unique sides and aspects of the different towns within Brevard County, and it made sense to start with Cocoa, home of the Brevard Museum,” says museum manager Madeline Calise. “It led us to looking at the buildings that have stood since the beginning of settlement in the area, the people who made a big impact on the community, the large events, the different industries, the reasons people came to this area and how they made their livelihoods.”
The Cocoa exhibit includes historic photographs of building still standing, such as Travis Hardware Store, the oldest existing business in the city. The current building was constructed in 1907, but the business has been operating since the 1880s, making much of the growth of the area possible. Travis Hardware has supplied construction materials for early settlement, the land boom of the 1920s, and the growth associated with the Space Age.
The exhibit “Cocoa: A Hometown History” also focuses on other local businesses and institutions.
“There are some really neat speakers from the Vanguard Drive-In Theater,” says Calise. “There’s also a beautiful blanket donated from the Community Women’s Club that shows different buildings from Cocoa Village that you can still see, including the Cocoa Village Playhouse or the Aladdin Theater, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and the Community Women’s Center.”
Also on display is a “mosquito beater” made from palm fronds. A video showing as part of the Cocoa exhibit includes interviews with members of the Mosquito Beaters group, which holds their annual gathering every March. The group, founded by George “Speedy” Harrell, was originally organized for people who had lived in central Brevard County prior to 1950.
Most museums do not have enough display area to show all of the items in their permanent collections, and the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science is no exception.
The temporary exhibit “A Time to Shine: Mismatched Items from the Permanent Collection” includes everything from a fancy silver serving set, to a box for tourists to take home a live baby alligator, to Seminole Indian dolls.
“It’s in our larger exhibit hall, so you’ll get to see a large amount of items that are usually in storage and only get to be seen by staff and volunteers,” says Calise. “Going through our regular inventory we keep finding items that we think are really unique or interesting, or detailed, or particularly well made. We’d like to show them off, but we really haven’t had a specific exhibit to do that. This is going to be our favorite fun items in different collections that we’ve found within our permanent collection.”
The new temporary exhibit includes unique eyeglasses, handbags, and historic pharmaceutical bottles. There is also pre-automobile transportation on display.
“It’s a two seater buggy that would normally be drawn by one horse. We found it upstairs and thought that we had to include it,” says Calise.
The two temporary exhibits highlighting local history and culture join a wide variety of exhibits on permanent display at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science.
“The Ice Age exhibit covers the Megafauna and the Paleo-Hunters of that era from Florida, and specifically Brevard County,” says Calise. “We have a Cape Canaveral Lighthouse exhibit, and artifacts from the Taylor family. There’s a Florida history section that covers everything from Spanish exploration to the different industries within the area, including cattle, citrus, turpentine, and trains. There’s also the Hubble Space Telescope exhibit.”
The centerpiece of the museum is “The People of Windover” exhibit, looking at the discovery in Titusville of a pond cemetery between 7,000 and 8,000 years old. Hands-on activities augment displays of actual artifacts used by Archaic Age people in what would become Brevard County.
“We also have a butterfly garden, and 22 acres of Florida nature trails,” says Calise.
The museum is open Thursday through Saturday, 10am to 5pm.
Kevin McCarthy has written several popular books focusing on African American history and culture in Florida.
From 1969 to 2005, McCarthy taught at the University of Florida. He has written or edited 35 books, 30 of them about Florida. His books include “The Book Lover’s Guide to Florida,” “Florida Lighthouses,” “Thirty Florida Shipwrecks,” and “Twenty Florida Pirates.”
Despite his diverse interests, the author keeps returning to the topic of black history in the Sunshine State.
“I bought a pup tent in 1976, camped my way around the state of Florida, just to learn as much as I could about this remarkable state I was going to call my home for the rest of my life,” says McCarthy. “I began to go to African American churches, I went to hundreds of cemeteries, sites around, went to the archives in Tallahassee, just for my own information about what the African American history was like in this state. I was surprised to find that we have a lot of personages in our history of African American decent that really ought to be better known.”
McCarthy’s book “African Americans in Florida,” co-authored with Maxine Jones, profiles dozens of interesting people including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, poet James Weldon Johnson, and civil rights activist Harry T. Moore.
“I think in the top five would be Zora Neale Hurston,” says McCarthy, citing her activities as a folklorist and anthropologist, in addition to her better known work as a novelist. “She used to go out to turpentine camps and to logger camps, interview people, and she began to accumulate lots of information about the folklife among African Americans.”
African American history in Florida goes all the way back to the first Spanish contact. People of African descent were on board all of the Spanish ships that came here, making black people among the first non-indigenous people to set foot in Florida.
“One of the first expeditions that came to Florida had an African named Estevanico,” says McCarthy. An expedition of 300 men under Pánfilo de Nárvaez was reduced to 80 as they unsuccessfully attempted to establish a settlement in Florida. Estevanico was one of only four who survived a voyage on makeshift rafts in an attempt to get to Mexico. “He was not only a strong person to survive the terrible ordeals they had, but he made a significant contribution to helping the Spanish discover what it was like in the southeast.”
Educators have found it useful that the book “African Americans in Florida” has a companion Teachers Manual.
“I met with school officials to make this book as applicable as possible to middle and high school students, and help teachers use it,” says McCarthy. “My daughter is a fourth grade teacher in Orlando, and she doesn’t have a whole lot of time to prepare brand new material every single day.”
Another one of Kevin McCarthy’s most popular books is “African American Sites in Florida.”
Fort Mose, established in 1738, is known as the first legally sanctioned black community in what is now the United States. Eatonville, established in 1887, is the oldest incorporated African American municipality entirely governed by African Americans. McCarthy identifies many other important historical sites.
“Fort Jefferson, down in the Florida Keys, the largest masonry structure ever built in this country, was built by slave labor,” says McCarthy.
“In Daytona Beach, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional baseball. If you visit Daytona Beach today, you will see a statue of Jackie Robinson outside of Jackie Robinson ballpark, where spring training games are still played. Robinson is holding the hands of two youngsters, one black, one white, clearly speaking to them. Behind the statue there is a wavy wall made of stone.” McCarthy says the shape of the wall symbolizes the ripple effects that one person can have on history.
In his book “Black Florida,” McCarthy continues his study of African American history and culture looking at the Rosewood Massacre, and civil rights demonstrations in Tampa and Tallahassee. He takes readers to Pensacola, the home of Daniel “Chappie” James, America’s first black four star general, promoted in 1975.
“Almost every major city in Florida has some significance in African American history,” says McCarthy.
Touring an historic cemetery can be like visiting a museum.
As you walk among the headstones, markers, and memorials, you can gain insight into the lives of individual pioneers, people who gave their lives in service to their country, and the lives of children cut tragically short.
Guided, themed cemetery tours will be part of the seventh annual Pioneer Day to be held Saturday, February 10th from 10 am to 4 pm at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the historic Sams House, both on North Tropical Trail, Merritt Island.
The Sams, LaRoche, Porcher, and other families came from the Charleston, South Carolina area after the Civil War to settle on north Merritt Island. Two historic Sams family homes are preserved in the Pine Island Conservation Area.
The congregation of St. Luke’s started meeting in 1879, and by 1888 built a Wooden Gothic style church that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Tom McFarland is a member of both St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Pine Island Preservation Society, and an organizer of Saturday’s Pioneer Day event on north Merritt Island.
“The early church services were held in John Sams’ house in north Merritt Island, and he was one of the founders of the church,” says McFarland. “He hosted Bishop Young on his first visit to Brevard County, and Bishop Young was the one who approved having a church built on north Merritt Island for the Episcopalians in the area. Most of the pioneers were from South Carolina and they were mostly Episcopalians, and were eager to have an established church here.”
One of Saturday’s themed tours of the historic cemetery at St. Luke’s is from “An Archaeologist’s Perspective.” Consulting early church records and doing new research, Molly Thomas documented the cemetery.
“The first step is researching the history of the property,” says Thomas. “Important details I look for include ownership, expansions, and other changes to the property line. The second step is measuring the parameter of the property and taking pictures. This may seem mundane, but property lines can change, neighbors can build without permits, etc. and often, such changes go unnoticed at sites that receive few visitors. Encroachment can become an issue when there are human remains at stake, and ensuring that the records match reality can avoid such issues.”
The third step Thomas follows is to do what she calls a “head count.” This includes identifying both marked and unmarked burials. Since St. Luke’s had excellent records, she was able to cross reference their plot map and burial ledger with what was actually observable in their cemetery.
“Compared to most cemeteries I have worked on, St. Luke’s had great records and takes impeccable care of their property,” says Thomas. “But after a century, there are bound to be some errors.”
One man’s grave was indicated on the cemetery map as having “no stone.”
“I discovered his stone underneath about three inches of pine needles,” says Thomas. “It had been there the whole time. I was the first one to see it in over a decade, and it felt good to give him his identity back.”
Thomas submitted a detailed report to the state’s Master Site File, including an updated map of the property.
Other themed cemetery tours during the Pioneer Day event will feature costumed guides portraying people who are buried there. They include journalist and controversial archaeologist Vernon Lamb, pioneer and pilot Laurence Porcher Allen, early photographer Julia Porcher, and innovative citrus grower E.B. Porcher. Members of the Sams family will portray their ancestors who are buried in the cemetery.
Tuskegee Airman, Colonel Edwin Cowen, is also buried at St. Luke’s.
“He has no marker, and that’s something we want to change,” says McFarland. “We really want to honor his presence in our cemetery and his historic contribution to civil rights and to the United States Air Force.”
Other Pioneer Day activities include live music, living history demonstrations, educational exhibits, a crafts fair, and children’s games. There will be farmer’s market vendors, food trucks, homemade soup, and a fish fry dinner. Talks throughout the day include presentations on Florida’s ancient canoes, Cape Canaveral history, and the legacy of African American Dennis Sawyer.
