Community Sunday Favorites: Settling Spanish Point Part 2

OSPREY -- When we left off last week, John and Eliza Webb, their children Anna, Will, Lizzie, Jack and Jenny, and Eliza’s sister and father, Samuel and Emily Graves, all moved to Florida after Eliza was diagnosed with chronic asthma.

They set up their modest farm, cultivating a vegetable garden for their family but relying on sugar cane as an income crop.

It wasn’t long after they got settled that John made a shocking discovery.

(Read Settling Spanish Point Part 1 here.)

John was an educated man; he attended Hamilton College in Utica, N.Y., earning a degree in chemistry. Back in his home state, he owned and operated a pharmacy. It was because of his education that John recognized the Native American mound on his newly claimed property for what it was, evidence that aborigines had once lived at the site.

What he didn’t realize is that this particular midden served a special purpose. One day while digging an irrigation ditch, John uncovered a human skull. Knowing the skull was an important part of history, he shipped it to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to have it analyzed.

Soon scientists were all over the Webb/Graves homestead, studying the middens and the Florida fauna. While the scientists were doing their research, John and Eliza found themselves playing hosts to the group of professionals. After attending to their guests for several weeks, they decided to open their home to all types of visitors, thus establishing Webb’s Winter Resort.

The winter resort was the first of its kind in Sarasota County and following its launch, the Webbs enjoyed 30 years of success in the hospitality business.

Of course, more people meant more mouths to feed. The small family garden wasn’t enough to feed a house full of patrons so the Webbs had to expand their cash crop from sugar to citrus. Being a forward thinker, John had planted one of Sarasota’s first citrus groves in 1868; a few years later the fruit was ripe and ready to pick.

So successful was the citrus grove that soon the Webbs had to build a packinghouse so that their plentiful cargo could be shipped (remember, there were no roads back then and the only train stopped in Cedar Key). The Webb packinghouse soon became a shipping station, where fruit and vegetables were off loaded and delivered to other area families.

In 1876, a road to Spanish Point was completed. While most visitors of the winter resort still arrived via ship, the Webbs wanted a road to their homestead so they could receive mail and keep in contact with their clientele. At the time, the government required a land-based thoroughfare before a destination could be considered for a post office.

The family applied for a post office in 1881 and in three years the Osprey Post Office opened for business. Jack built a big enough structure that the post office could also serve as a meeting place for the now 60 families that resided in the area. John, the patriarch of the Webb family, became the first postmaster.

Anna met and married a former soldier named Robert Griffith. They homesteaded what is now Snead Island, and raised three children, Florence, Walter and Roseanna, there.

In 1888, Florence, who had spent most of her young adult life attending school in New York City, fell ill with the yellow fever during a visit home. She is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery at Spanish Point.

Ginnie fell in love with Frank Guptill, a sailor from Maine who the Webb family had commissioned to build a boat for them. After constructing a 10-ton schooner Vision, Frank married Ginnie, then 17, and established a boat business on Sarasota Bay.

The couple’s happiness took a turn for the worse while Frank was away delivering produce. Ginnie, who was pregnant with their first child, fell down the stairs losing the baby and her own life in the mishap.

Devastated, Frank mourned his wife and child for years before finally finding happiness with Ginnie’s older sister, Lizzie. The two married in 1881 and spent the next 31 years together. Frank and Lizzie also welcomed guests into their home, which became part of the Webb Winter Resort. Their house, known as the Guptill House, still stands today on the Spanish Point park property.

In 1884 Eliza died of smoke inhalation from a wildfire in the woods. The men of the family tried to put it out but it upset her asthma so bad, she died a few days later. She was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery next to her daughter Ginnie.

John grieved the loss of his wife, but needed a partner to help run the resort. In 1887 he traveled back to New York, where he married Eliza’s sister Emily.

Jack Webb was only nine when his family moved to Spanish Point. He became a great sailor and hunter early on. He would often take guests of his parents’ hotel up the Myakka River to go on hunting trips.

In 1885, he married a local girl named Emma Andrews and built what is now known as White Cottage.

Emma was the daughter of Dr. Leonard Andrews, one of the Sarasota Democratic Vigilantes. After becoming mixed up in a murder plot to kill Sarasota postmaster Charles Abbe, Andrews escaped from the jail and ran to California.

In 1890, Emma and Jack sold White Cottage to his father so the winter resort could be expanded and headed west to meet up with Dr. Andrews in California.

Will Webb, who was 18 when his family moved to Florida, also became a hunting and fishing guide for guests at the resort. In 1877, he married his cousin Marguerite. They had two children, Charles and May Belle (later changed to Mabel). The couple helped plat the land now known as Osprey. They are both buried in the Pioneer Cemetery at Spanish Point.

The family ran their Winter Resort for 40 years, until a hard freeze in 1894 killed much of the citrus groves. It was then that John, too old to start over again, began selling off portions of the property. With the help of his son Will, John and Emily both operated the resort until their death in 1908.

Mrs. Palmer Potter purchased the property in 1910. She was a widow and heir to the Palmer Hotel fortune her husband had helped establish. Known as the ”Queen of Chicago“ due to her social connections, she purchased 100,000 acres of land in Sarasota County for retail and agriculture investments.

Spanish Point became her winter estate; she named it ”Osprey Point.“

Potter continued to have guests at her estate and added gardens that can still be enjoyed today. The 30-acre-archaeological, historical and environmental site is a must-see for any resident!

This article is based on a homestead journal published by the Gulf Coast Heritage Association. The organization took the information from actual journal entries created by the Webb family.