LIVING HISTORY
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LIBRARY OF cONGRESS
Mccarty earned enough from selling pineapples to vacation for three weeks
at a luxury hotel at the entrance of the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo
in 1901.
TREASURE COAST ARRIVAL
He settled south of Fort Pierce in Ankona, near where his
father-in-law, Elias Matter, had moved with his second wife,
Mary. Coincidentally, according to an 1885 census, Lizzie’s
family lived with Brevard County Commissioner C.E. Chaffee
and his wife, Cora, who would later marry McCarty’s
killer. The McCartys built a small home of their own in the
scrub land along the Indian River. While Lizzie taught school,
Charles cleared their property and lined the sandy flats and
hillocks with perfect rows of pineapple plants. He planted
11,000 pineapple slips per acre, carefully measured at 22 inches
apart. After his early successes, he published a booklet in
1894 telling other newcomers how they could follow his example.
He planted limes and oranges, too. Pineapples made
him rich, but he was especially fond of his citrus groves.
“My young groves are certainly things of beauty,” McCarty
said in 1900. “They fully demonstrate what can be accomplished
in a few short years in citrus tree growing by careful
and intelligent culture…There is no section of the state
where trees bear heavier crops of fruit, or of better quality.”
Time and again, his fruit won first-place prizes at the State
Fair in Jacksonville. The size of his horticultural empire
quickly grew, and so did his wealth and reputation. He didn’t
limit his holdings to the Fort Pierce-Ankona region. He also
owned property in Viking (now known as Indrio) where he
had a packing house and a cottage. McCarty used his scientific
know-how to produce the highest yields possible from the
sandy Florida soil. His expertise became so widely respected
that the British government consulted him regarding its
“semi-tropical industries” in the Bahamas. He published an
almanac for it in Nassau.
In September 1901, he could afford three weeks of vacationing
with Lizzie at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo,
N.Y., a World’s Fair that amazed the nation with displays
of what the future held in store, including Thomas Edison’s
X-ray machine. From the balcony of his fine hotel near the
entrance, you could see stunning electric lights outlining an
array of exotic buildings, the most magnificent display the
world had seen. The exposition looked like Disney World
at night. But the magic was overshadowed by a dark event.
McCarty was at the exposition the day President McKinley
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