Community Sunday Favorites: Madam Joe, A True Pioneer, Part 2

The portrait of Madam Joe was made on her 80th birthday.

TERRA CEIA -- Madam Joe was Palmetto’s first entrepreneur, a cattle rancher, a shopkeeper and a blockade-runner during the Civil War. Her home was destroyed by a hurricane and she would eventually become the first person in the continental U.S. to grow coffee. This week features the second half of her amazing life journey.

Death plagued Madam Joe’s small family of four once again. For during the summer of 1846, her brother-in-law voyaged to New Orleans to get supplies for their home, but fell victim to the city’s yellow fever outbreak and never returned. 

That year, the Hurricane of 1846 destroyed their log cabin on Terra Ceia, the same home Madam Joe and her husband and her deceased brother in law had constructed by hand. Only the hen house survived the storm and the family moved in with the fowls – as it was the only structure left standing. 

Trouble with their claimed homestead presented itself  in 1848 when a government official visited the property. An inaccuracy in their land permits had to be rectified federally so the family decided to relocate to Fort Brook (Tampa) until the problem was corrected. Joe went early so he could build another log cabin for his family to reside in. However, when Mr. Joe tried shipping the logs and shingles down the river, another storm destroyed the raft he had assembled and scattered his materials for miles along the bank. Meanwhile, Madam Joe and her two small girls were forced to take refuge in the home of a friend on Terra Ceia during the same storm. 

Misfortunes continued when the family relocated to Fort Brook. Before Joe could complete the house, he injured his foot and was bedridden for nine months. Madam Joe knew she needed to continue to support her family and their finances were dwindling, so she opened a homemade beer and cake shop, which was popular among local soldiers. Joe opened another store at the same time near Fort Chiconicla. Soon the family was financially comfortable once again. 

A home in Palmetto was seized by the government and auctioned off when the owner couldn’t pay his loan. Madam Joe purchased it, and the family returned to the area in 1851. Because of their success in Fort Brook, the family opened another store and motel in Palmetto and continued to cultivate their farm in Terra Ceia, which they stocked with cows, horses and hogs. They sold their meat and produce at the Palmetto shop.  Madam Joe purchased a slave named Henry; he essentially ran the island farm while the family lived in town. 

In 1855, panic set area villages into a state of commotion when the Third Seminole War broke out. Families congregated in forts for protection against the hostile natives. During this time, Madam Joe stood guard with her musket or rifle wherever her services were needed. According to reports, ”she never showed a white tail feather.“

Under the direction of Capt. John T. Lesley, of Tampa, three companies were organized, armed and equipped with rations to fight the hostile Seminoles. Lesley hand-selected 31 men to track the natives into the Everglades. Joe was among them; he was employed as boatmen to trail wanted refugees through the swamps of the Everglades – where no horseman could go. A female Seminole guide named Polly aided them in their pursuit. Word spread to Madam Joe that the Indians had massacred the entire outfit, but Joe returned – bringing with him a silver cup and spoon that belonged to Seminole leader Billy Bowlegs. (The cup was eventually sold to Colonel Jewett, U.S.A.).

Lesley’s outfit shipped 139 captured Seminoles, including the infamous Seminole leader Billy Bowlegs (who surrendered), to Egmont Key. From there, the Seminoles were forced to embark on a solemn sail to New Orleans and join other native Americans on the Trail of Tears – the harsh forced march for their relocation in Oklahoma Indian territory. 

Tensions had scarcely settled when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Joe enlisted in the Confederate Army and Madam Joe was again left behind to defend their homestead. Madam Joe combined her entrepreneurial mindset with her green thumb and began growing tobacco, according to a manuscript of The First Permanent Settlers of Terra Ceia by Rose E. Abel, She commenced to raise tobacco and after a time she grew so much tobacco and of such good quality that the a local bank became known as "Tobacco Bluff". 

During the Civil War some Union Soldiers came to the island and spent the night at Madam Joe's. When they left, they offered to pay her but she refused their money. After they were gone she went to the trundle bed where her daughter Eliza lay sleeping and found a five-dollar bill tied around the neck of her daughter. 

Madam Joe was rumored to have been a blockade-runner during the Civil War. The industrious matriarch purchased a coastal sloop and hired Samuel Bishop, whom Bishop Harbor is thought to be named after, to captain the vessel. During the war, Madame Joe's sloop was used for blockade running, ferrying mail from Fort Brooke in Tampa to Bradenton. As legend has it, on one particular trip, with Union officers in hot pursuit, Bishop ran the sloop aground but managed to make it ashore and deliver the mail, according to an article in Bay Soundings. 

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin, secretary of state for the Confederacy, made his way to the Gamble plantation -- then a sanctuary for wanted men. Benjamin occupied a room overlooking the Manatee River, from which he kept a watchful eye for Union gunboats searching the shores for fugitives. After a close encounter with a search party, Benjamin hid in a meat cart and was smuggled to Sarasota and departed for Cuba on a yawl, the Blonde. According to 100 Years in Palmetto, by Ruth E. Abel, Union soldiers arrested Madam Joe because they believed she was Benjamin disguised as a woman – they soon found that was not the case.

Following the war, Madam Joe sold her place in Palmetto with the intention of returning to her homeland in Europe, but her physician informed her that she would never survive the change in climate. She and Joe moved back to Terra Ceia where Joe died on Oct. 29, 1871. Madame Joe sold part of her property and moved in with her daughter who lived across the river in Fogartyville. 

Madam Joe kept a four-acre garden with different varieties of trees, plants, vegetables, vines shrubs and flowers. In 1876, she decided she’d try to grow coffee; a neighbor had brought her seeds back from Mexico. On Feb. 20, 1880 she sent to the Commissioner of Agriculture in Washington D.C. the first pound of coffee ever grown in the U.S; She received ten dollars for it. The next year it was four pounds and her coffee production grew from there. In four years two of the trees were full of berries of different sizes, some ripe and others half grown, and others still in the bud.  In a letter to the Commissioner she wrote, ”Dear Sir, I felt greatly honored to find that you appreciated my experiment in growing coffee, and mine should be the only coffee in the United States."

Despite her medium size, her sun tanned skin and her exposure to the pioneer life, Madam Joe lived a long live, and was well preserved by the fair Florida weather. Although she was ”as strong as a man“ and as good a shot, she was passionate and fond of music and waltzing and many say despite her masculine reputation, she remained ”as graceful as a miss of sixteen.“ She will always be remembered as one of the area’s true pioneers. 

Follow the Link to Read Part I