Pensacola Magazine -- an Important Resource

Baseball, Feb. 1991

The Pensacola Magazine originally began publishing around 1983 with a different title than today. It is not available online, nor is there an index to its contents, but a nearly complete run is available in the University Archives and West Florida History Center. It is an incredibly rich resource given that most issues carry a cover and biographical articles on leading Pensacola/West Florida people.

Judy Bense, Archaeologist, January 1992

Pensacola Magazine is available for use in the University Archives and West Florida History Center collections, basement, John C. Pace Library, University of West Florida.  



Congratulations to the Pensacola Daughters of the American Revolution Chapter on their 90th Birthday!

The Pensacola Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution celebrated its 90th birthday on Saturday, June 16, 2012, and the Archives and West Florida History Center was there!    The Pensacola Chapter was organized June 15, 1922.

In keeping with our commitment to organizations that donate their records to the Archives, we brought several of the older scrapbooks from the years of the 80th and 85th (1992, 1997) to give members a glimpse of their history.  We'll have to start making plans on how to celebrate 100!

1861 Homestead Act Sesquicentennial

      On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act.  Its purpose was to open up the West by providing access to settlers to millions of acres of unowned Federal land.   The law provided that an applicant could obtain free of charge farmland or a “homestead” usually about 160 acres.  There were three things to do:  file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title.   The Act, and various amendments over the years, enabled some 270 million acres of land to be settled by 1.6 million homesteaders.   The act was discontinued in 1976 except for Alaska where it continued until 1986.   Most of us recognize that homesteading opened up vast areas of Oklahoma, Nebraska, and many of the Western states.   Few of us seem to know that it was very important for the growth of Florida and West Florida, especially after passage in 1866 of the Southern Homestead Act which permitted ex-Confederates, former slaves, and other residents of the five public land states of the former Confederacy (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi) to homestead.

     Not a great deal of research has been done on the effects in Florida, but most of the land patents and transactions have been scanned and placed online at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov where you can limit your search to a state, a county, and select only those lands granted through the 1862 homestead act.   Although I have found an account that one of the first Florida grants in the 1880s was to John Newton for land along Santa Rosa Sound where he settled with his daughters Mary and Esther, the online patent indicates it was issued pursuant to the 1855 land act. 

     Below is an example of what an 1862 homestead grant looks like (taken from the holdings of the West Florida History Center and University Archives at the John C. Pace Library, University of West Florida).

Are Archives Relevant?

When people talk about archives and historical research, they always seem to use words like old, musty, dusty, decay, brittle, and similar terms.  I think some users expect me to be wearing a cowl and skulking about the catacombs...excuse me, basement stacks...with my candle-lit lantern!   

But this past week has shown again the relevance of archives and what we do.   The newspaper highlighted the issue of urban farming and the question of raising chickens in city limits...an issue that is really an offshoot of the old "victory gardens" issue and home-grown food reminiscent of the Great Depression and doing more with less.
First thing that morning we had a researcher looking at the Pensacola City Ordinances -- the 1950, 1959, and 1968 editions -- for what the old laws said about chickens.   Before zoning and the coming of suburbia, the laws and regulations were less stringent, and we need to know what they were and what they said to help us draft 21st century legislation.

Similarly the Sunday newspaper announced in an Op-Ed feature of the restoring the name of Rosamond Johnson to the signage and dedication of Johnson Beach.   This archivist spent several days looking through newspapers after the Gulf Islands acquired Johnson Beach from the County Commission as a researcher wanted to find when the original sign went up.  I didn't find it, but that's what happens in the archives....sometimes you find it, sometimes you don't, and sometimes you find something else that inspires and enthuses your spirit. 

Are archives relevant .....heck yes!

Musings on Funeral Home Records

Some years back, the Fisher-Pou funeral home donated its records, 1926-1979, to the West Florida Genealogical Society and the Pensacola Public Library.  In turn, these organizations donated them to the University Archives and West Florida History Center at the University of West Florida.   I was able to find funding to have them microfilmed and donate a set of that film to the West Florida Genealogical Library.   We still have the original records and another copy of the microfilm.

The funeral home arranged its records chronologically and numbered each funeral or death that they handled and put these in a binder.   When the binder became unwieldly (560-840 pages!), they started a new binder.   So in all there were 36 binders.   Within the binders, they had a typed page for each year of the names of the funerals/deaths they handled.

Roy Wilkinson led the effort to begin to index these based on the fact that Book #36 (last book) had its last burial as #9493.  That seemed reasonable and the indexing project was going great until I discovered that the numbering system ran 1926-1963 (#1 - 10,103) at which point they started numbering again, so 1963-1979 (#1-9493).    There weren't 9,493 names to index, there were instead 19,596 names!!

I don't think the index was ever fully finished.  But today we can find the funeral record using the index sheets from each volume, the Social Security Death Index, the various cemetery headstone index, and other means.  The collection is very valuable for genealogists.

There is a sheet for each death/funeral.   On this form, the front contains information about the deceased, family, cemetery, cause of death, etc.   On the back is pasted a clipping of the obituary and notations of who and when the account was paid.   I discovered that there were Volumes 37-39 which were for those whose funerals were
not paid.   These were "collection" volumes.

I've been slightly embarassed when I've provided genealogists with a copy of their relative's funeral/death and it came from the 'unpaid' volume -- and I've told them that.   The reaction invariably is laughter!
One lady said it made a great story to tell the family..."and John never paid the account!"

One fascinating overlooked fact about the funeral home records is that even if they did not actually do the funeral, they did make a notation if a deceased was sent to another city or state, so there is a paper trail occasionally for that "missing" ancestor.

We're always glad to look up funerals in the Fisher-Pou Funeral Home Records (Collection M2000-08).

We're Proud to Help!

The Pensacola News Journal reports this morning that after 67 years, a fallen Pensacola Police officer, Edward O'Brien Pursell, will be honored by being added to the Pensacola Police Department's memorial for fallen officers.  The article reports that Cindy Cherry began doing research on her grandfather in the archives at the University of West Florida.   Finding a 1944 article from the Pensacola News Journal about his heart attack after arresting a person who attacked him, Cindy found more information in a police docket showing that he died in the line of duty.   Congratulations Cindy!

James MacPherson in Pensacola

When Governor George Johnston arrived in Pensacola, West Florida, in 1764, accompanying him was James MacPherson, whose published Ossian ballads and books, would dominate American libraries and homes and influence countless Americans and Englishmen including Thomas Jefferson.   An excellent account is Valentina Bold's "Rude Bard of the North" published in the Journal of American Folklore, v. 114, no. 454 (Autumn 2001), pp. 464-477.   Personality-wise, he was not popular and David Hume wrote that when he left Pensacola in 1765, Hume hoped the trip would go through the lands of the Chickasaws and Creeks so that the Indians could "tame and civilize him." (!)