Florida Governors Mansion at Pilot Town Along the St. Johns River
Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward House | Duval County, FL | c. 1878
Built in 1878, this home sits at the literal and figurative crossroads of some incredible Florida history. In 1877, the land where the home stands was purchased by a dentist from New York named Dr. Jonathan Gilbert, but before that, the land had been occupied for thousands of years by Native Americans. In fact, the 2.9-acre parcel where this home stands is almost entirely covered with a Timucuan Indian shell midden and artifacts that date as far back as 3,500 years.
Sitting at the mouth of the St. Johns River where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, this area was important to indigenous tribes and later, to bar pilots who navigated sea-faring ships past a treacherously shifting sandbar nearby. A small village began here known as Pilot Town where most of these bar pilots lived.
he Gilbert family constructed this Folk Victorian style home of 2,723 square feet. Its lacy porches and filigreed balustrades must’ve made it quite the site in its day and even more so considering that widows walk on the 3rd floor that likely provides lovely views of the river and ocean. Not much is known about the Gilbert Family but in 1897, this home was purchased by Napoleon Bonaparte Broward- for whom the house is now known and named.
‘Florida’s Fighting Democrat’
Broward was an eccentric character, well-known in his home state of Florida, being both loved and hated. Born in rural Duval County in 1857, his family was wealthy but their farm was burned during the Civil War by Union troops who occupied town. The Browards had a difficult time getting back on their feet afterwards and within a few years, both of his parents would pass away, leaving him orphaned by the age of 12.
He and his brother would continue to work the family farm with their grandfather before moving to Jacksonville to work at an uncles timber camp. He would move through various odd jobs in different places as a farm hand, log rafter, ships cook, steamboat deckhand, and cod fisherman before returning to Jacksonville in 1878.
He took a job working tugboats on the St. Johns River and in 1883, he married his captain’s daughter, Georgiana Carolina Kemp, ‘Carrie’. She would pass away in childbirth, followed shortly after by their infant son. But Napoleon would remarry in 1887 to Annie Douglass, the daughter of a Northern ship captain with whom he later had 9 children. He became well-known as a skilled bar captain.
Just one year after his new marriage began, Napoleon would enter the public arena, being elected Duval Sheriff in 1888, 1890, and 1896. In 1897, he purchased this home as a summer residence for his family. In 1898, the outbreak of the Spanish American War brought with it a new venture for Broward: gun-runner. In the years leading up, he had grown sympathetic to the Cuban cause and eventually ran 8 successful trips to Cuba on his boat, The Three Friends, supplying guns to Cuban insurgents fighting Spain for independence.
Several times he was nearly caught and destroyed by Spanish gunboats. Aware of Broward’s identity, the Spanish ambassador to the U.S. demanded that the American be stopped and his ship impounded. U.S. authorities tried to catch him, but Broward eluded them by loading The Three Friends under cover of darkness in secluded locations, hiding her behind larger ships as she left the St. Johns River, and picking up Cubans and munitions from other ships at various points near the mouth of the river. His actions were not only in opposition to Spain’s interests but also a violation of U.S. neutrality laws and earned him celebrity status amongst Floridians.
The crew on The Three Friends c. 1896. Photo courtesy of The Florida Memory Project.
Florida Governor Broward
A loud and burly character at over 6 feet and 200 pounds, Broward was striking and well-known as an adventurer. He would spend the rest of his life as a public servant who became known as ‘Florida’s Fighting Democrat.’ Through service as a Sheriff, State Legislator he was both admired and despised in Florida.
Governor Broward and “The Fabulous Muck”
But it wasn’t until his service began as the 19th Governor of the State of Florida that he earned his best-known actions as an advocate for draining the Florida Everglades. His plan to recover land for agricultural cultivation helped spur development in South Florida. He referred to the Florida Everglades as “the fabulous muck” that he considered a useless swamp. Unfortunately, people hadn’t yet come to understand the importance of its ecology or its relationship to the water table.
Early in his term, he was often attacked for his drainage program and the land tax he instituted to pay for it. One newspaper noted that “The treasury will be drained before the Everglades.” Broward gained national prominence through this massive program, eventually involving the federal government and gaining federal funds for the drainage project, supported by President Teddy Roosevelt.
Governor Broward: Segregationist
Broward was also a noted segregationist who proposed the development of a separate nation/territory for blacks. In a document he wrote during his term and may have delivered as a speech, he called on Congress “to purchase territory, either domestic or foreign, and provide means to purchase the property of the negroes at a reasonable price and to transport them to the territory purchased by the United States.”
Whites would not be allowed to live in the new nation, and blacks would not be allowed to return to live in the United States. This is the “colonization” project of the nineteenth century, which led to the founding of Liberia and Sierra Leone with the American Colonization Society.
In one speech, Governor Broward said: “The white people have no time to make excuses for the shortcomings of the negro…The negro has less inclination to work for one and be directed by one he considers exacting, to the extent that he must do a good day’s work or pay for the bill of goods sold to him.”
He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1910 but died before he could take office and in 1915, Broward County, Florida was named in his honor. His sudden death left Annie Broward with all the children to raise and a lot of campaign debt from her husband’s successful race for the United States Senate.
The Broward House Today
Luckily, the Broward House has not been greatly altered over the years from its original design. In 1972, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It remained in the Broward Family until 1996 when Napoleon’s great-grandson sold the house to attorney Karl Zillgitt who spent 7 years rehabilitating the structure.
In the early 2000s, Zillgitt conveyed the building and property to The Trust for Public Land who cooperatively manages the site with the city of Jacksonville, the state of Florida, and the National Park Service as an addition to the Timucuan Trail State and National Parks.
