Sunday, March 6, 2005

Women lay the foundation

By LYNN BULMAHN | News-Journal Staff Writer

NEW SMYRNA BEACH — Our forefathers may have dominated many accounts of history, but women also have made a huge contribution to the continuing saga of our area.

At right, Jim McGee, with the New Smyrna Museum of History in New Smyrna Beach, straightens a memorial statue to Hannah Detwiler Bonnet, first female mayor and city commissioner in New Smyrna Beach. The statue was designed and built by Gwen Straub. Mary McLeod Bethune, second from left, poses on Bethune Beach with J.N. Crooms, left, Evangeline Moore and George Engram. Crooms and Engram invested in the project to buy land and establish one of the few historically black beaches in the country. A woman ahead of her time, Dr. Esther Hill Hawks, left, taught both freed slaves and whites in what may have been Florida´s first interracial school, before returning to New England to practice medicine. She was more than merely the wife and helpmate of her husband, Dr. John Milton Hawks, a Civil War physician who founded Edgewater. Mary McLeod Bethune, front seat, is shown with Eleanor Roosevelt in back seat.(Photos: Journal file)

That was true even in earlier times, when women had prescribed and rather limited roles in society.

Women´s History Month this month is designed to commemorate women who, despite all odds, overcame prejudice and barriers to help build and better our communities and the people within them.

Locally, the stories of Gracia Turnbull, Esther Hill Hawks Mary McLeod Bethune and Hannah Detwiler Bonnet bring forth four very different, but fascinating, personalities from the pages of the past.

GRACIA TURNBULL (1736-1798)

Gracia Maria Rubini Turnbull appears in her portrait as regal as a queen.

But she mostly remains in the shadows of history.

Her husband, Dr. Andrew Turnbull, in 1768 founded the settlement we call the Turnbull Colony in Southeast Volusia.

Gracia was born in Smyrna in what was then called Asia Minor. New Smyrna Beach was named after her birthplace to honor her.

Turnbull´s colony extended from north of the present New Smyrna Beach, south to the riverfront to Edgewater, said Jim Humphrey, a fifth-generation New Smyrna resident interested in the colony.

City Commissioner Larry Sweett, a local historian, said Gracia was a high-class woman for her time.

“Her father was a wealthy merchant,” he said. “According to what I have read, she was educated in England.”

Not much is known about Gracia, including where she and Turnbull, 16 years her senior, may have met. He was a British counsel for a time in Asia Minor.

“He may have met her there, or in England when she was at school,” Sweett said.

Theirs was a productive marriage, blessed with a dozen children. Three were born in New Smyrna Beach.

“I don´t know much about what she did, per se,” Sweett said. “She was pretty busy having children. She was probably like most women of her day -- a good supporter of her husband.”

Humphrey agreed Mrs. Turnbull may have remained in her husband´s shadow. But, he said, she would have had to be a very sturdy woman to survive the perilous ocean voyage and living conditions in 18th century Florida.

Many of the settlers died, and the settlement floundered. It only lasted nine years and was plagued by hardships -- Indian attacks, droughts, storms, mosquitoes and malaria. Supply ships sank and bad luck abounded, Humphrey said.

While the colonists toiled, Gracia Turnbull was out of sight, according to local historian JoAnne Sikes, who was made an honorary member of the Turnbull clan.

“She stayed in St. Augustine for most of that time,” Sikes said. “There really isn´t a lot written on her.”

After the colony failed, and its residents left for St. Augustine, the Turnbulls moved to South Carolina and lived out their lives there. Mrs. Turnbull is buried in the old St. Philip´s Church yard in Charleston.

ESTHER HAWKS (1833-1906)

Against all odds, a determined pioneer woman, as outspoken as she was attractive, fought to become a doctor. And her efforts to promote education, racial equality, social work and health care changed the community in which she lived.

According to Sikes, Dr. Esther Hawks was more than merely the wife and helpmate of her husband, Dr. John Milton Hawks, a Civil War physician who founded Edgewater and brought black colonists to the area.

Esther Hill Hawks lived from 1833 until 1906, championing the same causes as her husband -- equal rights for women and blacks, children´s rights, preventive health care and education. She later moved to Lynn, Mass., and was a physician and leading citizen there, always fighting for the less privileged.

“She remained a teacher all of her life, even though she became a doctor,” Sikes said.

Dr. Leonard Lempel, a history professor at Daytona Beach Community College, has called Esther Hawks a modern, independent type of woman, even by today´s standards.

Her letters and diaries provide historians with much information about her life and times.

She became a doctor in an era when women doctors were almost non-existent, after first studying her husband´s medical texts.

When the Civil War broke out, she was judged too beautiful to work in hospitals treating wounded soldiers. Not able to be hired as either a doctor or a nurse, she worked as a volunteer instead.

After the Civil War, she followed her husband to Florida and set up a school for former slaves and whites, too. Lempel believes it was Florida´s first interracial school. But it drew opposition and the school building was burned down

Determined not to close the school, Esther Hawks taught outdoors, standing near a bonfire in the winter to keep warm. But in 1870, she gave up and returned to New England, leaving her husband behind in Hawks Park, a town he founded.

Still, their unconventional, long-distance marriage survived. Mrs. Hawks visited Florida in the winter, and her husband stayed a few summer months in the North.

Sikes, who has written a book on the couple, said it was considered unseemly in the 19th century for women to speak out on issues. Yet, Esther Hawks did speak out, and was so admired, she was drafted her into city service in Lynn, Mass.

“She was elected to the city council twice and she didn´t even run,” Sikes said.

The woman doctor never forgot Hawks Park. Her will left $1,000 -- an amount equivalent to more than $19,000 in today´s money -- to establish a library there. The city´s name was changed to Edgewater in the 1920s.

MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE (1875-1955)

She was the Oprah Winfrey of her generation.

But instead of using a broadcast program to spread the message of goodness and hope, Mary McLeod Bethune´s platform was her school, Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach.

The college she founded was the instrument that helped the daughter of a freed slave elevate the status of blacks.

“There are some people, that when you die, you´re famous,” said Mary Harrell of the Black Heritage Museum. “But Dr. Bethune was not like that. In her lifetime she became famous.”

Bethune´s lifetime, from 1875 until 1955, ended the year Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, a defiant action that began the modern civil rights movement.

A black woman who had studied to become a missionary, Bethune decided to forgo work in Africa and concentrate instead on Central Florida. There, she founded the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in October 1904. It had six students -- five girls and her son -- and few resources.

She began the school with $1.50 and a lot of practical creativity. The school used crates for desks; straw ticking from the dump for beds; charred sticks for pencils and crushed elderberries to make ink.

In 1923, the school merged with the all-boys Cookman Institute in Jacksonville and became Bethune-Cookman Collegiate Institute. It grew to become one of the most influential black colleges in the nation.

But the college was not her only legacy.

A woman ahead of her time, Bethune influenced presidents and common people alike. She served on countless boards and agencies.

She advised presidents Coolidge and Hoover, serving on the National Child Welfare Commission. From 1936 until 1944, she was director of Negro affairs for President Franklin Roosevelt. The latter position garnered her national fame.

“She was the founder of the National Council of Negro Women,” Harrell said.

Closer to home, Harrell said, Bethune was also instrumental in the development of Bethune Beach, one of only two places where blacks could enjoy the seashore. The rest were off-limits during segregation.

“Some people say she didn´t have anything to do with (Bethune Beach), it just used her name,” Harrell said. “But I´ve always thought she owned it.”

When white people attended programs on B-CC´s campus, they were seated in the audience next to blacks, an unheard-of practice during segregation.

“Loving your neighbor means being interracial, inter-religious and international,” Bethune said in an Ebony Magazine article called her “Last Will and Testimony.” It was penned about a year before her death.

The article provides an insight to a remarkable woman who refused to be handicapped by her race.

“My color has never destroyed my self-respect nor has it ever caused me to conduct myself in such a manner as to merit the disrespect of any person,” she said.

HANNAH BONNET (1892-1977)

Hannah Detwiler Bonnet was flamboyant.

Wearing her trademark huge hat -- different styles at different times -- and one she likely had either crocheted or fashioned herself, she was a larger-than-life character in New Smyrna Beach politics and business.

The first woman to hold the office of mayor in New Smyrna Beach, and owner of her own real estate business, Bonnet (pronounced Bo-nay) was successful in what was then a man´s world.

Grayce Barck was a close friend of Bonnet´s daughter Jeanne, and said the elder Bonnet woman was her mentor for years.

“You can´t mention New Smyrna without also mentioning Hannah Bonnet,” Barck said.

“She was a great benefactor to this town in many ways -- not only in finances, but in wisdom.”

Among her many contributions, Bonnet donated the land for Detwiler Park and for The Little Theatre of New Smyrna Beach.

Although she was born in Ohio, Bonnet´s roots were in New Smyrna Beach, Sweett said.

“Her father had been a carpetbagger in the late 1800s,” he said of John Y. Detwiler. “He came down here with money and bought land.”

Bonnet grew up in New Smyrna Beach and went to college at Stetson University in DeLand. There, she began wearing hats. Early in her life, she was active in the movement to win women the right to vote.

Barck said Bonnet had her own style. Everything she owned was black or white. She lived in an old home on the river, raised canaries and doted on her dachshund dogs and Siamese cats.

Bonnet found herself widowed at age 42 during the Great Depression. With a daughter to support, she opened a real estate office on Flagler Avenue in 1936, and ran it until her death.

Local legend has it she told friends she was ‘tired of getting pushed around,’ so she entered politics in the 1950s.

“At the time she was first named mayor, the city commissioners selected the mayor among themselves,” Sweett said.

Bonnet was given the top job and relished the role of mayor, Barck remembers.

Later, the city charter was changed and Bonnet was elected mayor by the voters. There was also a mayoral election that she lost and she ran unsuccessfully for County Council.

Those who knew her remember Bonnet as a determined and tough woman.

“She was a woman and that was not accepted in a lot of instances. Women were not supposed to be real estate agents,” Sikes.

But underneath that toughness was a smile.

“Hannah had a great sense of humor,” Barck said.

According to one story, when a doctor told Bonnet her heart was on the right side, instead of the left, she laughed and said many people thought she had no heart at all.

Sikes remembers an instance where Bonnet was hospitalized on Election Day. Bonnet insisted she be taken to the polling place on a stretcher so she could vote.

“She was very protective of this town and she fought for everything she thought was right, everything that made sense.”

Special Project: THE FLORIDA QUEST Laptop Lauren and the Trackers are the main characters in the Florida Quest, a 4-week, multi-media project involving thousands of students in Volusia and Flagler counties. In this quest they discover Homefront and Heritage!