‘‘LIVING HISTORY
Some years ago, when Mr. Cleveland first came to the East
Coast to fish, he came to Stuart and wished to be recognized
as a common citizen, who came to fish and not be interviewed,
to be on exhibition, to be used as advertisement,
and the people of Stuart have respected his wishes.”
a spread of land to clear. Ernest and Otto Stypmann followed
on their heels, as did other mostly German and English immigrants.
12
Soon vast swaths of thickets and woods disappeared
under budding pineapple fields.
After the railroad came in 1894, a hamlet took shape
around a ramshackle line of buildings near the tracks. That’s
where Stuart’s residents congregated for social reassurance.
A few of them were present when Grover Cleveland emerged
from his private railway car. The ex-president was surprised
to see their village, and the locals must have been flabbergasted
to see him, too.
CHANCE DISCOVERY
History has its happy accidents. Cleveland found Stuart by
mistake. It was the sort of thing that can happen in the dark.
Who was responsible? We do not know. During the night
someone mistakenly decoupled the ex-president’s railway
car and left it stranded in Stuart as the locomotive pulling
his train chugged onward to Cleveland’s intended destination.
He was probably on his way to Palm Beach, where
some friends vacationed. Until he woke in the morning he
didn’t notice that his private car had stopped clacking down
the tracks. The rotund ex-president with the famously hefty
moustache lumbered off on gouty feet in search of a telegraph
office. It wasn’t far away.
Cleveland had left the nation’s highest office only three
years before. He could not have been happy about being
carelessly abandoned at some hole-in-the-wall stop. But the
folks lingering around the post office made him feel at home
so quickly that he decided not to wire an SOS to the railroad
office. The two-time president, who presided over a span of
the Gilded Age, felt suddenly charmed by Stuart’s rusticity
and its river. Perhaps the German immigrants reminded him
of old chums in the beer halls of Buffalo, where he spent so
much time in his younger days. Or maybe he was persuaded
by the long-bearded postmaster, Broster Kitching, whose
kind and gentle English manners made him a favorite
around the village.
Incredibly, the political superstar chose to stay and try the
fishing in tiny Stuart — and he returned for at least six more
winters. To realize just how amazing that must have seemed
to the villagers, you need to know that rich and famous
people of that day spent their winters luxuriating in Henry
Flagler’s palatial hotels in Palm Beach and Miami. They had
electricity down there, and indoor plumbing and ballrooms,
and an army of servants to pamper them — and every convenience
and delicacy known to the era was made available. >>
— St. Lucie County Tribune, Nov. 9, 1906
ASHLEY FAMILY COLLECTION PHOTOS
This is the Stuart post office, where Cleveland went looking for a telegraph
operator when his private railway car was accidently stranded at the depot.
Postmaster Broster Kitching is standing in front of the door.
Broster Kitching, Stuart’s friendly postmaster, talked Cleveland out of telegraphing
the railroad to rescue him from tiny Stuart. Kitching arranged a
fishing trip instead, and Cleveland decided to stay.