Memories of May Frances Heath- A Series

May Heath Goes To Florida

Today it's very common for Michiganders to go to Florida or Arizona for the winter. We even have a name for them, "Snowbirds". One hundred years ago, this experience was a rare one.

The Nov. 3, 1905 Commercial Record reported: "Mrs. John Francis and Mrs. D. A. Heath and children, also Ernest Crowe expect to leave Monday for Eustis Florida, to spend the winter. A large party has been organized by Capt. Coates to make this trip the most of whom will go from Benton Harbor but all in the same special car."

Capt. Coates, a long-time Great Lakes ship captain, was May's brother-in-law, having married Doc's sister Florence. They were not the first locals to winter in Florida. Both the A. B. Taylors and the Miller Robinsons had done so.

May wrote a long letter back to her Saugatuck friends which appeared in the Commercial Record, Mar. 2, 1906. She commented on the ideal weather, the cordial locals who had welcomed "people from nearly every state in the Union", and "the many excursions, picnics, fish-frys, home parties and etc.".

A "great freeze" had hit the area in 1895, and May writes about the "grand old places, large 15 and 30 room houses, which were simply deserted, the owners taking what they could and fleeing for the North, for the freeze fell heavily upon this part of Florida. In one night the thermometer fell fifty degrees and thousands of orange groves were ruined--"

"But Florida is beginning to boom" she writes, and tells of the old places being bought "for a song" by Northerners. One example was a place that had just sold for $800, with 300 acres of land, some timbered, and a large hotel built as a sanitarium at a cost of $90,000.

May was to spend many winters in Florida, keeping an active club life of art and bridge. Each year, she entertained a host of fellow Saugatuck citizens, many of whom were also now among the "Snow-birds". May's final stay in 1961 was in Palm Beach, and among her visitors was Ethel (Sutton) Kimball (daughter of Warner P. Sutton) who had been one of the eight girls who served at her wedding reception, 66 years before.

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This series on Saugatuck Historian May Francis Heath (MFH) will continue until the 50th anniversary of her death in September, 2011. The MFH Study Group continues to seek information, documents, photographs of May, her paintings, and personal recollections of Mrs. Heath. If you have any to share contact: Chris Yoder at 857-4327 or Marsha Kontio at 616-566-1239.

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