early 1900s, the town was surprisingly
cosmopolitan despite its size. The Hotel
Punta Gorda drew many diversified and
sophisticated patrons--some of whom, like
Mr. Perry McAdow, Albert W. Gilchrist, the
Colt family and Colonel Pepper decided to
make their home here. There was a busy
social life and “Miss Esther”, a charming
lady in every way, was kind enough to share
some of these memories with me.
Miss Esther’s father, the Reverend B.F.
Oswald, retired from the Methodist ministry
and came here from Ohio with his son in
1913. They settled in the rural community
of Salona, near Punta Gorda and Esther and
her mother followed in 1914 after Esther’s
high school graduation at the age of 16.
The pretty young girl soon became a popular
member of the younger set of Punta Gorda,
joining various clubs that were sprouting up
in the growing town and going to dances in
the Hotel Punta Gorda. “Cars were
practically nonexistent, only a select few
such as Mr. McAdow owned one. The day his
driver had a wreck Mr. McAdow stored the car
in his garage and never used it again!”
Two old Buicks served as taxis in town but
most families still used their horse and
buggy or bicycles. Miss Esther remembers
entire families setting off down the road on
their bikes and quite a bit of walking was
done, not as a physical fitness project, but
from sheer necessity. As a young girl, she
often walked to town from her home in Salona.
Adrian Jordan had arrived in town a few
years before the Oswalds and purchased the
Punta Gorda Herald in 1901. Mr. Jordan had
two sons, Vernon and Julian who were
studying dentistry. To help defray their
college expenses, the two young men opened
the first picture show here. They rented a
building on Marion Avenue, put in some
kitchen chairs and a piano and they were in
business. The boys showed early silent
movies and, between reels, a friend, Grace
Dewey sang. They did fairly well and sold
the “business” to Harry Goldstein and Emmett
Perkins. With that money, they both went
off to school and eventually became
practicing dentists. A third son, Adrian
C., would follow his father in the newspaper
business.
Vernon was instantly attracted to the pretty
new arrival from Ohio. The two had met at a
bridge party held at the home of J.N. Sykes
on Taylor Street. She was 16 and he was
28. A fervent courtship followed, but
Esther had enough sense to realize she was
too young and made him wait five years
before they were married.
Meanwhile, one of Esther’s friends, Sara
Boyle, teacher in a little country school in
Iowa, wanted to go on to higher education.
Examinations for teachers’ certificates were
being held in Arcadia that year (1914) and
she asked Esther to go with her. “My father
thought I might as well take the exam too,
since I was just out of school and it was
all fresh in my mind.”
The two young women stayed at the Arcadia
House for a week of exams which both girls
passed. While they were there, the county
superintendent of schools came to the hotel
and interviewed Esther. He must have been
impressed because a short time later a
letter arrived asking Esther to teach the
first four grades in the Charlotte Harbor
School--this at the age of 16!
“The Lord was with me. The woman who had
the other grades was a graduate of a New
York Normal School. She was an intelligent
lady but poor in mathematics. We roomed
together and I would work out her arithmetic
problems for the next day. She was an
excellent teacher and, in return, helped me
in countless ways”.
Esther boarded with the Gidden family in
Charlotte Harbor, old settlers with a lovely
home on the waterfront. “Mrs. Gidden was a
grand cook and we ate with handsome sterling
silver every meal, even breakfast!” The
young teacher spent the school week with
this family since the only way to reach
Punta Gorda and Salona was by boat. Esther
went over on the early mail boat Monday
morning and a special boat came for her on
Friday because she always had a date on
Friday night, usually with Vernon Jordan.
These dates often involved a picture show.
One of Esther’s favorites was “The Perils of
Pauline”.
The early Charlotte Harbor schoolhouse was
an old two-story building made of rough
lumber. There were only two rooms with a
partition down the middle. Hogs ran through
the sandy yard and clustered under the
schoolhouse in the hot lazy days. A fence
with a stile surrounded the building to keep
out roaming cattle. Esther’s salary was $50
a month and, when she was promoted to
principal at the age of 17, she got a raise
of $15 a month.
After five years of courtship Esther finally
said, “I do” to her persistent beau, Dr.
Vernon Jordan and settled into life as a
young matron in town. There were plenty of
clubs and activities to fill her days.
There were afternoon bridge clubs for which
the ladies dressed up “like Mrs. Astor’s
plus horse.” Esther fondly remembers one of
her favorite outfits. “It was a black dress
with blue-edged panels offsetting a pale
blue crepe de chine underskirt. With it, I
wore a black lace hat trimmed with sequins
and long white gloves. Believe it or not, I
wasn’t overdressed!”
Chapter Seventeen
An eminent resident of the town was
“Colonel” John Charles Pepper who had
practiced law for forty years in Illinois
and retired to our town in 1896. An
impressive home was built for the Pepper
family on the corner of Retta Esplanade and
Cross Street.
Rupert Carpenter Guthrie, whose childhood
encompassed both sides of the river,
Charlotte Harbor and Punta Gorda , remembers
the home well. We always called it the
‘wrong-side-out house’. It was of English
architecture with the joists and stringers
exposed on the outside. Esther recalls the
interior of the house as it was when the
Colonel lived there with three of his four
daughters, one of whom was the legendary
teacher, Miss Norma Pepper.
“It was a lovely home and when the family
moved down here, they brought a live-in maid
with them. The livingroom was large and
filled with red velvet Victorian furniture;
the library was crammed with books from
floor to ceiling; a Franklin stove heated
the room. This is where the Fortnightly
Club met on Tuesdays and read Shakespeare.”
This literary group met in the homes of the
members and “did more actual cultural work
than any club I’ve been in since. The
members were intellectually hungry, you
might say, educated women who took turns
writing informative papers on various
subjects.”
There was also the Music and Expression
Club, just for young folk who met at the
home of Mrs. J. F. Corbett. The location
for this gathering was at the corner of
Olympia Avenue and Sullivan Street in a home
originally built by Mr. Hart, maternal
grandfather of Frank and Leo Wotitzky.
“Once a week we went there; they were great
on expression here, because Miss Norma
Pepper read beautifully. Henry Farrington’s
sister Helen was a pupil of hers and went on
to teach it at the college level.”
Still another club was called The Married
Ladies’ Social Club. It met in the homes of
members and was strictly “a dress-up and
go-to eat” club; the Fortnightly Club more
or less looked down their noses at them.
Last but not least was the Punta Gorda Civic
Association which met in the City Hall, a
small cement block building on the site of
the present one. This was a group of ladies
interested in the welfare of the community
as a whole. One of their first projects was
a campaign to get the cows off the streets.
Their flowers and shrubbery were being
trampled into the ground. Senator Cooper’s
wife was most ardent in this endeavor since
she had one of the most beautiful gardens in
town, filled with lilies and other exotic
blooms.
Mrs. J. H. Hancock was another supporter of
this cause, as was Esther’s mother-in-law,
Mrs. Jordan, who had erected a tall fence
around their property to keep the cattle
out. Cows were not the sole nuisance. Joe
Addison’s pony ran loose through the
streets, as did Kathrine Stewart’s pet fawn.
In 1925 these three clubs, the Fortnightly
Club, the Music and Expression Club and the
Married Ladies’ Social Club merged to form
the Punta Gorda Women’s Club.
Other organizations in town were the Eastern
Star, Woodmen of the World, the Myakka Order
of Red Men and the Masons. The latter was
by far the largest of the fraternal
organizations, having a spacious Masonic
Hall on Sullivan Street. It was a two-story
building compete with a library presided
over by a Mrs. Gould. Miss Esther reports
“We usually had our dances in the big hotel,
but when it was closed for the summer we
used the Masonic Hall.
“In spite of the heat ladies really dressed
up in Punta Gorda in those days, even for
the afternoon parties. My mother-in-law,
with an Irish sense of humor used to say,
‘Pride knows neither heat or cold’. Most of
us bought our clothes at Seward’s an
exclusive ladies’ dress shop; Mrs. Seward
was an aunt of the Wotitzky boys.”
Esther and Dr. Jordan were married for 24
years and during some of those years she
taught in Punta Gorda. Among her pupils
were Leo Wotitzky and Doc McQueen. When Dr.
Jordan died, Miss Esther remained in Punta
Gorda close to all her old and cherished
friends. One of these, Sam (Mac)
McCullough, she later married. Miss Esther
saw many changes in the town. She
remembered fondly “the strange paradox of
the Fortnightly Club reciting Shakespeare
while cows were staked out downtown.” 
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to be
continued in the April Edition of Punta Gorda
Life..... |
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