PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Get ready for a royal British scandal, a mail-order house plan and a money-making ladder business.
All this and more can be found at the Palm Harbor Museum.
According to Lynn Geist, president of the Palm Harbor Historical Society, Thomas and Ida Hartley built what has become known as the Hartley House in 1914, using a concrete building machine ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
The home, which now houses the museum, is located at the corner of Curlew and Belcher roads. The museum gives a glimpse into the early days of northern Pinellas County and what went into settling the region.
A piano is among the original furnishings in the home, along with the writing desk and wash tub.
Hartley was a pastor and a justice of the peace.
“But for his income, he owned a ladder factory,” Geist said.
Pinellas County was filled with groves of citrus and guava, in addition to cattle ranches.
“The Hartley ladder (is) wide at the bottom and it narrows toward the top to reach into the very highest areas of the trees,” Geist said.
A few decades before all this, Palm Harbor was called Sutherland, named after the 3rd Duke of Sutherland.
Geist said the duke came from England in the 1880s to develop land, fish on his yacht and live with a woman to whom he was not married. Scandal followed them, even after they legally married.
“He liked it here,” Geist said. “He built a house (and) he built a church. But he also helped the community a lot.”
The museum also goes back even further to the indigenous people before Europeans made contact with the area.
“It’s important to remember what happened to them after the settlers came,” Geist said. “Because some of the impact of those settlers wiped out all those people.”
For Geist, preserving and passing on this history in this all-volunteer organization is a privilege.
“I like history,” she said. “I have always loved history. To share it is just great.”
Virginia Johnson
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