Lostmans Heritage

Download or read book Lostmans Heritage written by Karen Yvonne Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lostmans Heritage tells the true story behind the Hamilton family that Peter Matthiessen first introduced to the world in his novel, "Killing Mr. Watson." The book follows the author's journey as she searches for her ancestors from the slave country of Savannah to the wilds of the Florida Everglades. Hamilton follows her ancestor, Richard Hamilton and his sons to the ending of an era when the National Park Service evicted the residents, the pioneers, of the Everglades. Along the way she uncovers secrets and stories, polygamy, bootlegging, fist fights, murders, gangsters, killers, and tales of tomahawks and missing schoolteachers.Noted Florida historian, Charlton Tebeau, once said, "The Hamiltons, to the disappointment of the romanticists, were neither pirates nor smugglers nor fugitives, but simple fishermen." While Tebeau was fascinated by the Hamiltons, and often referred to them as one of the 'lost tribes' of the islands, my research proves that he was wrong about them. They were fugitives, and they were smugglers. The Everglades was not a place for the average man at that time. You did what you had to do to feed your family.The men and women who settled in the Florida Everglades before the Civil War thrived in an environment that was dangerous and wild and ever changing. While others came and went, the pioneers faced every challenge nature and man threw at them and carried on. They may have migrated from island to island now and again, but the Everglades were their home. And they did what they had to do to survive.