Just Discovered! Notes From The Book A Land Remembered Found!

“Then comes along the idea for that novel, A Land Remembered which covers 110 years of Florida pioneer life from 1858 to 1968. Well you can’t go out and live among people who were on this earth 150 or more years ago in order to get to know them well enough to write about them unless you’ve got a time machine, which I so happened not to have.

So I had to go about that research in a different way.

The research alone for that novel took a period of more than two years. I read about 60 books about Florida, took pounds and pounds of notes. And from all those things I read, I found a lot of things about Florida that were of real interest to me – things I knew I wanted to put into that novel, like the Battle of Olustee and the Civil War, the birth of the cattle industry, the birth of the citrus industry, the coming of the railroads, the Great Freeze in 1895 that almost destroyed this entire state, that land boom in Miami in the 1920s, that 1926 hurricane that almost blew Miami right off the map, that 1928 hurricane that swept over Lake Okeechobee and drowned more than 2,000 people in less than two hours.”

But I wasn’t really interested in historical facts, dates, times, places, that sort of thing. You can find that in the history books. What I really wanted to know was how did these things affect people – how did they survive, why did those pioneers come to Florida in the first place when it was such a wilderness, what were they looking for, what were their hopes, what were their dreams, how did they really live back in those pioneer days? And that’s the sort of thing you cannot find in a history book.

So most of that novel is told through memories, some of my own, but mostly the memories of other people. Most of the memories in that novel come from old-time Florida Cracker families.”

That excerpt is from my award-winning film, Patrick Smith’s Florida: A Sense of Place.

For years, guests at my shows have asked if I know anything about those interviews and notes he made as he wrote A Land Remembered. Sadly, I had to say no.

Just last week that changed.

I was cleaning up some things in his office and I found an entire notebook full of his handwritten notes!

Some, I assume, are from interviews with people, but he rarely gives a clue as to who he is interviewing. Some are referencing books he was reading about Florida but again, he doesn’t say what books. This is going to be challenging.

I want to share with you these notes as I discover them. Some of them may even answer a question or two you had about how he came up with the history, events, and descriptions in the book.

Here is one that definitely caught my attention: “Whipped Indians for butchering cattle. Whites posed as Indians to steal cattle. Called wandering Indians ISHMAELITES.”

Now that’s something new I didn’t know!

Another interesting note says that Key West was called Bone Key by the Spanish because of the mounds of human bones.

Click here for more good books on the history of the Florida Keys.

One sad note says “Army surveying mission at Okeechobee area. Men grew restless – found the garden of Chief Billy Bowlegs – shot the pumpkins off the vines – pulled up his beans – cut down his banana trees. No apology or compensation was offered. Next morning the Indians attacked the company.”

As you can see, it’s a bit hard to read his handwriting. Some parts are almost impossible to read.

And there is so much more! In the next few months, as I go through these notes, I’ll share with you what I discovered so stay tuned. 

What questions do you have about A Land Remembered? Comment below and I’ll see if I can find the answers in Dad’s notes!