The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale: a Pioneer Family of New River.The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale (lô`dərdāl), residential, commercial, and resort city (1990 pop. 149,377), seat of Broward co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic coast; settled around a fort built (c.1837) in the Seminole War, inc. 1911. : A Pioneer Family of New River. By Harry A. Kersey kersey coarse, narrow cloth used for leg bandages in horses. Jr. Foreword by Raymond Arsenault Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. He is best known for his work on the 1961 Freedom Rides, a critical event in the civil rights movement. and Gary R. Mormino. The Florida History and Culture Series. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2003. Pp. xviii, 197. $24.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-8130-2666-0.) South Florida's first contact with explorers, fortune-seekers, soldiers, and intrepid naturalists reaches back five centuries, and yet the region's frontier days lie just beyond living memory. Harry A. Kersey Jr.'s The Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale is a reminder that South Florida's history is simultaneously very old and very new. Through the experiences of one pioneering couple, Frank and Ivy Stranahan, Kersey recounts Fort Lauderdale's rapid development from Indian trading post trading post See post. to booming resort. The Stranahans" lives intersected with every aspect of local development, from small business, banking, and real estate to politics, civic affairs, and humanitarian reform. Kersey reconstructs their story to tell a larger regional tale populated by personalities as diverse as Seminole schoolchildren schoolchildren school npl → écoliers mpl; (at secondary school) → collégiens mpl; lycéens mpl schoolchildren school and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler. Flowing through this story is the New River, a symbol of hope and despair, the site of Frank's flourishing mercantile business in the 1890s and of his tragic 1929 suicide in the wake of financial reversals. Kersey's account is chronological and thematic. His chapters trace the geography and early exploration of the New' River region, the Stranahan family roots in Ohio, Frank's entrepreneurial and political careers, and Ivy's public service and social activism on behalf of Indian reform and woman suffrage woman suffrage, the right of women to vote. Throughout the latter part of the 19th cent. the issue of women's voting rights was an important phase of feminism. . Sifting through the remains of these two public--and at times intensely private--lives, Kersey deftly synthesizes family letters, court records, material from government and railroad archives, photographs, oral histories and interviews, and the colorful local press that is indispensable to recapturing the eccentricities of small-town America a century ago. The Stranahans never had children, and the absence of memories and letters from direct descendents leaves obvious gaps. At times the evidence becomes fragmentary. Kersey speculates when necessary to provide a seamless narrative, but his caution and self-restraint are a credit to his scholarship. Kersey situates the Stranahans' story within the larger context of state, national, and international events (such as the Spanish-American War Spanish-American War, 1898, brief conflict between Spain and the United States arising out of Spanish policies in Cuba. It was, to a large degree, brought about by the efforts of U.S. expansionists. and World War I), yet he never loses his central focus on South Florida's rich local history. He gives due consideration to economics, politics, religion, and race and maintains his sense of proportion. While using the theme of diversity for narrative unity, he never preaches or reduces complex patterns of winners and losers to a morality tale of heroes and villains. Kersey's history is balanced, modest, and well crafted, a story unique to its time and place but at the same time as familiar as one's own family history. Kersey navigates through memory, legend, and recorded history to produce a vivid portrait of South Florida's dynamic economic and cultural development, a process that continues to this day with even greater intensity. Palm Beach Atlantic University Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBA) is a comprehensive evangelical Christian university with a core emphasis on character formation by integrating a Christian worldview with the liberal arts and selected professional studies. RICHARD M. GAMBLE |
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