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DUVAL COUNTY HISTORY

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HISTORY

DUVAL COUNTY

Some Interesting Tidbits to Check Out:
The Kingsley Plantation, Slavery in Spanish Florida - located on Fort George Island
History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity. 1513-1924, by Davis, T. Frederick
Jacksonville's Native Son, James Weldon Johnson, by Burgi, Robbi K.

Duval County Florida, Showing Its Statistics, Resources, Lands, Products, Climate and Population, by The County Comissioners, 1885 (added 3/2023)
Ponce de Leon and Florida War Record, by George M. Brown, Ord. Sergt. U.S.A., 1902 (added 3/2023)
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, by William Watson Davis, PhD., 1913 (added 3/2023)
The Seminoles of Florida, by Minnie Moore-Wilson, 1896 (added 3/2023)
School History of Florida, by Edwin L. Green, Ph.D., 1898 (added 3/2023)
Letters from Florida. by Mrs. H. W. Beecher, 1879 (added 3/2023)
Chronicles of Florida, by Athanase, 1896 (added 3/2023)

Duval county has an area of 786 square miles. It had a population in 1890 of 26,800 and in 1900 of 89,733 and in 1910 of 75,163. With the sub-division of Hillsborough county since the last Government Census, Duval county has the largest population of any in the state.

The larger part of Duval county is pine woods and marsh, and along the ocean border of the county are vast flat areas of swamp grass and low lands. The agricultural resources of Duval county although important have been hut little developed. Less than ten percent of its arable lands are under cultivation and at the present time but little effort has been made to develop these resources, although the city of Jacksonville, the county seat, offers
the largest and best local consuming market and the best shipping facilities in the state.

Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida and is growing with remarkable rapidity. It has been described in a special article elsewhere in this hook at sufficient length.

The fishing industry which centers along the St. Johns river and particularly at its mouth, was formerly largely remunerative. The value of this industry has been seriously decreased by the reckless use of its water resources and by the utter disregard of state laws to protect them. The industry still has large local value however.

The manufactures of Duval county, outside of Jacksonville, are largely in lumbering and turpentining. As this is an important distributing point for a large section of the state, a number of important manufactures are represented here. This is the third most important center for the manufacture of commercial fertilizers in the United States. Fertilizer materials are found here in larger abundance and in greater variety than at any other point in the world, and its importance in this direction is appreciated more fully by the manufacturers of Germany and of France than it is at home.

Duval county is a leader in the construction of good roads in Florida and it has expended since 1900, more than two and a half million dollars for
these necessities.

Source: Chapin, George M., FLORIDA 1513-1913, Past, Present and Future, Four Hundred Years of Wars and Peace and Industrial Development, 1914, Vol. 1, p. 628