![]() ![]() ![]() By the 1870s, however, many of Tampa’s residents fled from fear of the Yellow Fever and economic downturn following the Panic of 1872. During the Reconstruction years, he also served as Sheriff, tax collector, and on the country school board. Charles Slager, a devoted member of the Republican Party, came to Tampa after the Civil War and was elected postmaster in 1871. Max and Fishel White first came to Tampa in 1858, opening a gentlemen’s furnishing store on Washington and Marion Streets. Jewish merchants began to trickle into Tampa in the late 1850s. Her citrus grove continued to operate for nearly a century under the name “Miley Grove.” In 1860, Hillsborough County only had 2,981 residents, and, like Miley’s family, its population largely relied on agricultural pursuits and industries like cattle grazing, because the soil was too poor for raising traditional cash crops. According to historical accounts, Emmaline had a moral standing against slavery, and she refused to marry her husband until he sold his slaves. Emmaline Ouentz Miley, who arrived in the region in 1844, married a non-Jewish man and had twelve children in nearby Thonotosassa. When Florida became the 27th state in 1845, one Jewish woman was operating perhaps the first citrus grove in Hillsborough County. Jews in Tampa and the surrounding region date back to the early statehood of Florida. In the mid-1800s, an early Jewish peddler briefly living in Tampa noted that the town was full of “outlaws, gamblers, roughs, robbers, cutthroats, and lewd women all congregate to cheat the poor, ignorant volunteers and soldiers out of their money.” Further, although the Seminole Wars attracted some economic base and businesses, the conflicts also discouraged many would-be settlers from moving to the area. With its distance from larger markets in the South, poor roads, and no rail line, travel and trade to the city was especially difficult in the mid-19 th century. military erected Fort Brooke in what eventually became the southern end of downtown Tampa, but the settlement remained a small, isolated town for another half century. ![]()
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