On Sunday, October 29, hundreds of people gathered at the Cocoa-Rockledge Garden Club to wish George “Speedy” Harrell a happy 90th birthday. The venue was full all afternoon as family and friends came and went to the “open house” style event that featured refreshments, a slide show of images featuring Harrell, and, of course, birthday cake.
Harrell was seated in a rocking chair at the center of the room, greeting a steady stream of well-wishers.
While his actual birthday is September 28, Harrell decided to postpone his birthday celebration so that relatives from Texas could join the festivities.
“Speedy” Harrell was born on River Road in Rockledge, and has lived in Central Brevard County his entire life. He remembers a time before DDT was developed as an insecticide. He says that if you put your hand on a window screen on the shady side of a house, it took only a few seconds for the mosquitos to form a solid black mirror of your hand as they attempted to bite you through the wire mesh. Everyone had window screens, because there was no air conditioning.
Harrell graduated from Rockledge High School in 1945, with thirty-two classmates. He remembers using a “mosquito beater” to keep the blood suckers off of his mother as she put laundry on the line to dry, and to protect his brother as he milked a cow. Florida pioneers like the Harrell family would lash together palm fronds to create “mosquito beaters” to brush away swarms of the biting insects.
In 1986, when George “Speedy” Harrell decided to organize an annual gathering for people who lived in Brevard County prior to 1950, he chose to name the group Mosquito Beaters. Harrell says, “I thought it would be great if we had one day that we get together, not a funeral or a wedding.”
Every year, about 1,000 people attend the Mosquito Beaters Annual Gathering. The event is so popular that local high school class reunion activities are planned to coincide with it. There are no formal presentations or academic discussions. The gathering is just a large group of friends and family coming together to remember old times and talk about the way it used to be in East Central Florida.
Harrell was only 14 years old when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He was too young to serve in the military immediately after Pearl Harbor, instead earning the nickname “Speedy” playing football as a high school freshman. He remembers everybody making sacrifices during wartime.
“The rationing of everything was set up to conserve what we had,” says Harrell. “Gasoline was rationed weekly based on need. I was a growing boy with big feet, and would have to go to the Rationing Board and explain that I needed a new pair of shoes to get it. Tires for your automobile, you had to go before the Rationing Board and show that you needed a new tire.”
Harrell turned 18 before the war ended, and was sent to serve the U.S. Army in Germany. That was the only time he lived outside of Brevard County.
In the 1950s, the population of Brevard County exploded.
While the Mosquito Beaters was originally formed for people who had lived in Brevard County prior to 1950, that requirement has relaxed in recent years. Harrell explains, “If we stayed with ‘before 1950’ they’d all be dead and I’d be there talking to myself.” He says that now anyone is welcome to attend the gathering, “if they don’t tell us how they done it back home.”
In addition to founding the Mosquito Beaters, Harrell started the Space Coast Post Card Collectors Club, and the Florida State Knife Collectors Club. He has co-authored four books on Central Brevard County and the St. Johns River.
The Mosquito Beaters have an office in the Library of Florida History on Brevard Avenue in Cocoa, where their collection of photographs and documents is held. The building was originally a 1939 WPA-era post office, where Harrell worked as a postman before his retirement in 1982 as a Post Office Superintendent in Brevard County. Now, he can be found there almost every day, working as a volunteer.
Brevard County is home to an impressive list of important archaeological excavations including a unique prehistoric pond cemetery, numerous Indian mounds, paleontological sites, colonial era shipwrecks, and pioneer homesteads.
Since 1953, members of the Indian River Anthropological Society have been participating in the discovery, excavation, and recording of archaeological sites in Brevard County.
“Operating primarily in Brevard County, we have, over the years, also provided services in Volusia, Seminole, Orange, Osceola, and Indian River Counties,” says Bob Gross of the Indian River Anthropological Society. “IRAS provides, at no cost to the Brevard County government and its municipalities, many tasks required by statute under the provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, and as directed by local statute and Brevard’s Comprehensive Plan to the Brevard County Historical Commission.”
The Indian River Anthropological Society has been a chapter of the statewide Florida Anthropological Society since 1956.
At the FAS Annual Meeting on Saturday, May 6, in Jacksonville, IRAS was presented with the Arthur R. Lee FAS Chapter Award for outstanding outreach, education, and site stewardship.
“Members of the IRAS were gratified to learn that their years of devotion to the study of Florida’s, and particularly Brevard County’s anthropological and archaeological resources through investigation, documentation, preservation, and education has been recognized at the highest levels,” Gross says.
Thirty-five years ago, one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the world was made in Brevard County. During construction of the Windover Farms subdivision in Titusville, an ancient pond cemetery was discovered. The site contained 168 intact human burials, carefully positioned and wrapped in the oldest woven cloth found in North America.
The human remains uncovered at the Windover site were between 7,000 and 8,000 years old, making them 3,200 years older than King Tutankhamen and 2,000 years older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
The anaerobic environment and ph balance of the pond allowed for remarkable preservation of the remains. Ninety-one of the skulls contained intact brain matter.
Members of the Indian River Anthropological Society participated as volunteers at the Windover Dig. Vera Zimmerman of IRAS wrote identification numbers on bone fragments, and conducted tours of the site for the public.
“I was just extremely lucky to be living here when that find was made, because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a dig like that,” Zimmerman says. “We had people coming in from all over the world. They had a conference here. It was just outstanding. It told them things that they didn’t know about the Archaic Period. They still believed before that people were living a pretty nomadic lifestyle, following game. The Windover Dig showed they were living a fairly settled village life.”
The origins of IRAS go back to 1951, when sixteen Spanish silver coins were found on Playalinda Beach. Local archaeologist E.Y. “Dick” Guernsey was consulted, and a group of interested residents were inspired to form an archaeology club. The members were mostly newcomers to the area, brought here by the recently constructed Patrick Air Force Base and the long range missile proving ground at Cape Canaveral.
As construction rapidly increased in Brevard County to accommodate the population explosion accompanying the burgeoning space program, a growing number of Indian mounds and other historic sites were being uncovered.
By 1953, the Indian River Anthropological Society was meeting monthly under the direction of Dr. Guernsey. He led the group to become a chapter of the Florida Anthropological Society, as described on the front page of the Melbourne Times on April 10, 1956:
“A chapter of the Florida Anthropological Society has been organized in Brevard County, and persons interested in digging up bones and other objects of the long dead past may soon be invited to join…They are planning to map part of the east Coast and locate ancient Indian mounds which will be explored in a scientific manner.”
The award-winning Indian River Anthropological Society continues its work today.
