Joel Hendrix Moves from the Palmetto State of Alabama
to the City of Palmetto, Florida
This article was authored by Joel Bruce McRee (b. 1928 - d. 2012) and revised/edited by David Bruce McRee (b 1960).
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| Photo of Joel Hendrix obtained from the Manatee Historical Library. |
Joel Hendrix, the fifth son of David and Margaret Meetze Hendrix, was born June 19, 1811 in Lexington district South Carolina. As a young man, Joel was a merchant in Columbia, South Carolina. In 1835 Joel moved to Mobile, Alabama where he was a merchant for about 20 years.
On October 18, 1840 he married Martha A. Taylor (b Feb 9, 1820). Before the Civil War he sold his business interests and moved to
Desoto, Mississippi -- an unincorporated community in Clarke County about 4.5 miles south of Quitman, the county seat, via Hwy 145 -- where he planted and developed a 300 acre peach and fruit farm which was later destroyed during the Civil War.
In 1871 he moved to Manatee County, Florida, locating near the Village of Palmetto, becoming the third settler and first merchant there. He was a pioneering farmer, and “until the infirmities of age had impaired his physical powers he was the acknowledged leader of the Society of Spiritualists at Palmetto…” (
source: obituary).
Before Joel Hendrix arrived in Palmetto, his sister Sarah Campbell was already established on property facing the Manatee River which she had purchased from Madame Joe Atzeroth at the close of the Civil War in 1866. Because Sarah’s husband had passed away and she had an invalid daughter needing attention in Mississippi, her land was for sale. It was purchased from her by S.S. Lamb on February 3, 1868. When Joel Hendrix arrived to Palmetto in 1871, He and his wife, Martha Ann Taylor, paid S.S. Lamb $100 for six acres of the eastern portion of his property on the river where Hendrix built a home and general store. (Joe Warner, Palmetto Revisited).
The Hendrix-McRee relation was established in Mississippi with the marriage of Thomas Bruce McRee to neighbor Joel Hendrix’s daughter, Mary Thackley Hendrix. In 1872, Thomas Bruce and wife Mary had a son, Joel Neville McRee, who was to become my (Joel Bruce McRee’s) grandfather. The Hendrix and McRee family lived and worked close to each other in the small close-knit Palmetto community.
Joel Hendrix was sworn in on September 15, 1873 as Palmetto’s first Postmaster. He set up the post office in a corner of his store according to the book by Ruth E. Abel,
100 Years in Palmetto.
Ms. M.C. Nettles was the second postmistress in Palmetto. This same building is presently restored and preserved at the Palmetto Historical Park and Museum.
On April 1, 1874, at the age of 63, Joel Hendrix purchased twenty acres of farmland from Caroline S. Reid for the grand sum of $300. On that land near Palmetto he planted an orange grove and started the first fruit and vegetables growing here for northern markets. Currently, the land is occupied by the Colonial Mobile Manor mobile home park. Following is the legal description from the handwritten bill of sale:
“The north half of the northwest quarter of the southeast quarter of section (13) Thirteen, in Township (34) Thirty four, and Range (17) Seventeen East in said county containing Twenty (20) acres more or less…”
Samkuel G. Upham describes the Hendrix farm and grove:
“Immediately in the rear of Palmetto is a prairie of several miles in extent. North-east of the town, about one mile distant in the hammock, Mr. Hendricks, of Palmetto, has a promising six-years-old orange grove, grown from seeds planted with his own hands. Mr. Hendricks cultivates veg-etables between the rows of his orange trees, and last year he realized several hundred dollars by shipping his early tomatoes, cucumbers and snap-beans to New York and other Northern markets. To Mr. Hendricks belongs the credit of starting the early vegetable boom in the Manatee region.”
Samuel G. Upham tells of the golden orange coming into its own here in Manatee County in a pamphlet he published named Sunland, printed in 1881. In addition, Upham states that diversified agriculture was making astonishing strides towards bringing prosperity to the area. Mr. Upham left the north to make his home in Manatee. He was well-educated as well as an extensive traveler to Europe, Asia, Africa, South & Central America and California. In the Sunland he
gives full credit to Joel Hendrix of Palmetto as the father of green vegetable shipping from this area.
Hendrix’s large acreage, devoted to truck farming, brought handsome rewards and encouraged others to enter this lush line of business. Mr. Hendrix, it is said, received his novel idea from a seed catalogue which advertised certain tomatoes grown on the Bermuda Islands, which supplied the winter market in New York. Mr. Hendrix’s hammock lands produced tomatoes that could not be excelled anywhere and his desire to let the New Yorkers know about his tomatoes became almost an obsession with him.
Then he hit upon his novel plan. He estimated the number of days required to ship from his Palmetto wharf via Cedar Key to New York and, plucking from his vines a number of large unripe tomatoes; he wrapped each in a newspaper and put them on a shelf. When the number of days had expired, an examination revealed beautifully ripened tomatoes ready for use. Mr. Hendrix made his first shipment. Soon he added snap beans and cucumbers to his shipments.
Mr. Hendrix is listed as one of the extensive orange growers of the county: quoting from Sunland, he had “a promising six year-old grove, grown from seeds planted with his own hands.” According to Sunland, Hendrix grew vegetables between the rows of his orange trees.
More information about the planting of Joel’s grove is contained in a newspaper article written a decade after Hendrix's death:
“This twenty acre grove was started from the seed in 1874. The seed from one thousand oranges were obtained from the famous tree grown on Terra Ceia Island and owned by the late Madam Joe—the seed of that tree from Cuba.
Mr. Hendrix was 64 years of age when he planted the seed, and [he] said he would live to see them fruit. His friends laughed at him and said it was a waste of time and money for one so old to start a seedling grove. They bore in eight years, and Mr. Hendrix died in 1892 (see note 1 below), living to see and enjoy the fruits of his labor, and best of all rests under the shade of his own trees.” End article quote.
Much of the above information can also be found in the transcript of a talk given in 1981 to the Manatee County Historical Society by Historian Mrs. Murray Harrison
http://www.manateecountyhistoricalsociety.com/1981-harrison-early-days-north-of-the-manatee/
In 1885, Hendrix moved to his orange grove. It is there he died on July 1, 1891 at 81 years of age. When Hendrix died, my (J.B. McRee's) grandfather Joel Neville McRee was 20 years old. Joel Hendrix was Joel Neville McRee’s grandfather. So my grandfather, J.N. McRee, knew Joel Hendrix for 20 years.
Note 1: Joel’s Last Will and Testament was signed and dated February 17, 1890. His estate probate documents were signed by Manatee County Judge John J. Wimbish on July 6, 1891. In some publications, Joel Hendrix’s date of death is incorrectly reported as having occurred in 1892, which contradicts the official written probate records. He died on July 1, 1891 in Palmetto. The
copy of his obituary in the Manatee River Journal is hand-dated "9 July 1891" and refers to his death as occurring "last Wednesday" which would have been July 1, 1891.
Note 2:
Joel Hendrix had seven children. Four of them died before Hendrix moved to Palmetto in 1871, so they could not have been buried in the Hendrix Family Cemetery in Palmetto. Those four are:
- Francis Henry, born in 1841 and killed in the Battle of Chickamauga near Chattanooga in September 1864.
- Margaret Elizabeth, born 1846 – died 1850.
- Hillard Davis (Willard David?), born 1855, died 10-1-1868.
- Gilbert Taylor, born 1858, died 11-19-1863.
One of his other children pre-deceased Joel Hendrix after Joel Hendrix moved to Florida:
Millard Filmore (aka William Filmore), born in 1852, died 11-21-1884, leaving a daughter Mildred (Minnie) Thurston Hendrix (born 11-6-1876) as an heir to Joel Hendrix’s estate when Joel died in 1891 (according to probate documents).
Millard married Mary E. Bronson. Minnie married Joseph E. McDugald in 1893 at the age of 17 and was living in New Providence, AL in 1900 and had a daughter Wilhelmina Hilma (born June 6, 1914, died November 17, 1986 in Warren Michigan.)
Two of Hendrix’s children were still living, in Palmetto, at Hendrix’s death in 1891. They were:
- Joel Wigfall Hendrix, born 8-11-1861, died 10-30-1906.
- Mary Thackley Hendrix, born 4-9-1849. Mary Thackley married Thomas Bruce McRee in Clark County Mississippi in 1870 before moving to Palmetto. Mary died January 1, 1908. Both Mary and Thomas McRee are, according to family records, buried in the Hendrix Family Cemetery in Palmetto, Florida. There is a contradiction between this information and a statement that appears in Hendrix's obituary. The obituary indicates that when Joel Hendrix died, he had a daughter living in Texas. So far I've found no evidence to support this. It is clear that Mary Thackley Hendrix McRee was the only one of Joel's daughters still living at the time of his death in 1891. She was married to Thomas Bruce McRee and I have no record that they ever moved to Texas for any period of time. Mary died in 1908, and her husband Thomas Bruce McRee died in 1915. Both are said to be buried in the Hendrix Family Cemetery in Palmetto, Florida.
