LIVING HISTORY
The man who put Martin County on the map isn’t a
local founder but an easily persuaded former governor
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JOHNNY WE
HARDLY KNEW YE
BY WM. F. CRARY I I
What’s in a name?
FLORIDA MEMORY PROJECT
Practically everything when it comes to Martin County. By any other name,
the county would not be. Idea and hour had to meet in a fleeting moment of opportunity,
and there had to be a self-promoting salesman governor, too. He was
John Wellborn Martin, and he was an entertaining orator who had risen from
three terms as Jacksonville’s mayor to win the highest office in the state.
Opportunity to form a new county on the state’s southeast coast arose because people were
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John W. Martin, who served as Florida’s 24th governor from 1925-1929, became a more vocal proponent of the
Stuart-area becoming its own county after lobbyists suggested that the new county be named after Martin.