Florida Gothic

An 1850s Fort Myers cemetery was disinterred in 1888, but some bodies remained

Years ago, I lived in a cottage in the heart of downtown Fort Myers. I didn’t know then that there had been an 1850s-era cemetery near or at where I lived, and I didn’t know that no one was exactly sure where the boundaries of the cemetery were.

(Photo by Stephanie Davis. The cottage wasn’t pink when I rented there and was under different ownership.)

I was sleep-deprived and coming down with pneumonia the night I saw an ethereal, seven-foot-tall, black-cloaked figure standing at my kitchen sink. None of my business, I thought, and walked on past. I did mention it the next day to my friend Melanie, who said if you had to have a ghost, you’d want it to do chores.

In my personal life, this is the anecdote I call “that time I lived on a burial ground,” although I don’t know that for sure. But once I found out about the cemetery, I wanted to know more about this part of Fort Myers’ past.

The Old Military Cemetery

“During the past week the contractor has been busy taking up the bodies of those buried in the old Fort Myers military cemetery. Most of the bodies were laid to rest early in the ’50s. Two officers were found, one of them Capt. W.H. Fowler Co. G. 1st Artillery – the other name unknown, but is supposed to be on the records at Washington or Fort Barrancas. One body, supposed to be an Indian squaw, from the quantity of beads found in the grave, and four children were found…

“Fifty-two bodies were taken out, and by the thorough search made there is no possibility of any remaining.” The Fort Myers Press, March 22, 1888

The schooner Alex Cook took the bodies to be reburied at Fort Barrancas, at Pensacola, and Francis Hendry developed a street through the old burial grounds, called Fowler after the officer. That was practically all the newspaper had to say about the cemetery at the time. 

In 1931, the local chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution placed seven historical markers in the city, including one for the military cemetery. It was removed at some point and reinstalled by the city in 2011. It’s not clear that it went back to the same spot. 

Building on Top of History

In conjunction with a widening of Fowler Street in 1993, archeologists conducted excavations of the site and surrounding area and concluded that while it was impossible to know how many bodies had been interred in the military cemetery or a private cemetery nearby, they were positive that some bodies had been left there.

Their report, here, came as no surprise to those who had homes and businesses in the area, some of whom had been happening upon bones and other burial artifacts for decades. In a 1941 letter to Mrs. Florida Heitman, Seminole Indian advocate Stanley Hanson wrote that he had seen “Indian remains and beads” dug up at the sites of both the private and the military cemeteries at First Street and Second and Fowler. 

The city was not on great economic footing for much of the 1990s, and it’s not clear that there was any will or budget for determining once and for all where the boundaries of the cemetery or the fort itself had been. In the boom times of the last few years, archeologists and historians who want to pause projects are often labeled “anti-development,” according to reporting by friend and News-Press writer Amy Bennett Williams.

Amy has written for years about archeologists’ and historians’ pleas that an archeological survey be done of the acres of riverfront land that once was a military fort. In a 2022 story, Amy covered the construction of high-rise apartments on land that may have included burial sites. The developers told the city they were satisfied with their own investigation into the matter, and the city took them at their word.

Back to the Beginning

I think about that day in 1888 when the whole town came out to watch the government take the bodies from the old cemetery. They were loaded onto the Alex Cook from the same pier where the Gray Cloud had sailed away at the end of the Third Seminole War 30 years earlier.

Thirty years had been a lifetime for Fort Myers– there were churches, schools, grocers, hardware stores, entertainment halls. Families had built paradise on what had been a place where soldiers had been felled, some by friendly fire, but most by what was called “the miasma” or fevers of unknown origin.

In the year before Hendry decided to build his street, yellow fever had come as close to Fort Myers as Key West, and the port at Punta Rassa allowed no visitors from there. Dr. Hanson had presided at a town meeting to tell everyone Fort Myers had never had yellow fever, in spite of a creek in town that was called Yellow Fever Creek.

Meanwhile in the cemetery at the heart of town were the bodies of men who may have died from illness. At the time, it was believed microbes of contagion lived on in the soil after interment. Was that part of the reason for taking some of the bodies away? And why not take them all?

We will almost certainly never know the answer to either of those questions, any more than I will ever know if I saw a 19th century spirit in my kitchen or had a fever dream. But in honor of those who were buried in a lonely part of Florida before the Civil War, and for those who built a thriving city in that spot in the years after, I’ll always wonder.

Coming Up

I’m taking a couple of weeks off to work on a fiction project and to take some real R&R. The newsletter will be back Nov. 17. In the meantime, if you are so inclined, what’s the thing you love best about Fort Myers? Answer in the comments or feel free to email me.