Surviving Sarasota

By Clarissa Thomasson

Subjects: Women, Fiction, History

Description: "Building a cabin in 1842 on a yellow bluff overlooking a bay he named "Sara Soto," William Whitaker was the first American in the Florida territory to claim land in present-day Sarasota County, FL. In 1851, he proposed to Mary Jane Wyatt, famous in nearby Manatee Village for allowing Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs to camp behind her house. Mary Jane was happy to move to the lonely cabin where she could fish, hunt, and herd cattle at will. Their marriage was the first recorded in Sarasota County, Florida. In 1852, their daughter, Nancy Catherine, was the first child born in Sarasota County. If the Whitakers desired solitude, however, that was far from the norm in years to come -- with Bowlegs and his men as frequent visitors, renegade Seminoles cattle rustling and burning homes during the Third Seminole War, an escaped slave seeking asylum, Union soldiers stealing and plundering at their home, and a final request to help one of the most famous Confederates to escape."--Back cover.