PBSCV1599
Gen. James Patton Anderson Camp 1599
Celebrating 34 Years 1992 - 2026
Boynton Beach Hotel
Boynton Beach
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One of the communities that grew once the FEC Railroad moved south from West Palm Beach was Boynton Beach. Major Nathan Boynton, Civil War veteran, arrived in 1895 with other settlers and purchased several hundred acres. He constructed a winter residence on the beach overlooking the ocean. Boynton’s house turned into the Boynton Beach Hotel with five cottages. The residents of what would become Boynton Beach grew vegetables and fruit to ship to northern markets via the FEC Railroad.
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Nathan S. Boynton
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Nathan S. Boynton is the founding father of his namesake, Boynton Beach. Born in 1837, Boynton was a Michigan-born politician, inventor, business
man, and Civil War Major. Following his
Nathan Boynton
service, Boynton returned to his native Port Huron, MI to serve in numerous municipal occupations, Following health concerns exacerbated by warmer weather, Boynton sought a new place to live, traveling to South Florida with Congressman William S. Linton, of Delray Beach notoriety. After arriving in what is today known as Boynton Beach, Nathan built a two-story hotel, known as The Boynton. Though Boynton would die in 1911 in his Michigan hometown, 9 years before the city was officially incorporated, the town built west of the hotel would be named for his namesake property.
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​Major Nathan S. and Anna Boynton (center, seated) and family. Boynton Beach Historical Society.
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https://www.boyntonbeach.com/history-of-boynton-beach/boynton-beach-hotel/
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Boynton Beach Hotel
If you follow Ocean Avenue towards the ocean, you’ll eventually come to the end of the road at AIA. Turn left, and you’ll find the entrance to Boynton’s Beach. However, if you were to follow Ocean Avenue straight across A1A, you’ll see… well, you’ll see nothing (actually, you’ll be staring at a tall concrete wall surrounding a private residence).
Around the turn of the century, you would have strolled right onto the emerald grounds of the Boynton Beach Hotel. A stately, massive wooden structure and the reason for winter-plagued Northerners to traverse hundreds of miles through sub-tropical wilderness to visit Major Nathan S. Boynton‘s sunny beach.
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Construction of the Boynton Beach Hotel began in 1896, two years after Boynton purchased 500 acres of land (at $25 a pop) and a mile stretch of ocean frontage. Most of the workers came from Boynton’s home state of Michigan and purchased lots west of the Florida East Coast Canal (now known as the Intracoastal Waterway). At the time, the area now known as Boynton Beach had less than fifty permanent residents, and the sudden influx of workers helped put the fledgling community on the map. More importantly, most of those that came to build the hotel stayed behind and cleared the palmetto brush to farm tomatoes, pineapples, peppers, beans and cabbage.
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When completed in 1897, the Boynton Beach Hotel consisted of a main building, an annex and five cottages that in total housed a hundred guests. By 1896, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad reached Biscayne Bay (Miami) and facilitated travel from the north. Traveling east to the oceanfront hotel was another matter. Until 1911, you had to cross the Florida East Coast Canal in a hand-pulled barge called a lighter (luckily, the canal was much narrower than the Intracoastal is today) and then walk the distance to the hotel. Unfortunately, there was no road, only a footpath. So, Nathan Boynton built one out of shell rock (all the way to the train station) and Ocean Avenue was created.
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Boynton also developed an adjacent thirty-acre citrus and vegetable grove to feed his hungry visitors. Hotel guests dined on area kingfish and dolphin (if they desired, hotel workers would row them out to fish for their own dinner) and local venison, turkey, quail and duck supplied by Seminole Indians.
The Boynton Beach Hotel prospered, and for twenty-eight years many of the same guests returned during the popular winter season. It supplied employment for most of Boynton’s non-farming locals and was the winter residence for Major Boynton’s family. The books and magazines left behind were donated to the Woman’s Club and helped stock the first Boynton library.
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By the time Nathan Boynton died in 1911 the Boynton Beach Hotel’s clientele was firmly established and most of it was torn down in 1925 to build a more luxurious edition. It never happened. The devastating 1926 hurricane and subsequent Florida real estate bust saw to that. Today, all that remains of Boynton Beach’s most important landmark are two of its cottages.
But you’d have to scale that concrete wall to see them.
(circa 1920)
Fort Lauderdale News
Sun, Jun 8, 1980
Page 253
By James H Nichols
The Old Boynton Beach Hotel
Shortly after Major Nathan Boynton arrived in South Florida, he began building a hotel for his own residence and for his northern friends. The hotel was located on the ocean ridge at the end of Ocean Avenue in what is known as the Municipality of Ocean Ridge. Boynton Hotel stood for 29 years and was one of the focal points of community throughout Boynton’s earliest years.
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The hotel consisted of the main building and annex and four cottages. All of the buildings could house well over one hundred people. One of the most famous regular residents was Edgar Guest, the poet. Cabanas were set up on the beach where guests could change into their swimsuits. According to Mrs. Edna Knauf, a guest at the hotel from 1921 until 1925, people regularly swam in the Atlantic twice daily. This was the chief form of recreation for the guests. Those who didn’t swim, read or sewed.
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There was a lovely wooden-floored dining room where homestyle meals were served. Mrs. Bertha Chadwell has said that in the fall and winter, Seminole Indians brought to the hotel and sold venison, wild quail and turkey for daily dinners. In the summer, the Indians brought back berries and blackberry pie was also a regular item on the menu.
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Red Yoell, a familiar character around Boynton until his passing just a few years ago, kept a garden down by the canal and raised vegetables for the hotel. He delivered them on his bicycle. Fish caught in the Atlantic was frequently eaten, chiefly because of its availability.
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Parties were often given and celebrants danced to music from a phonograph, piano or string instruments. One year in the 1920s, Mrs. Chadwell and Miss Knauth came to the annual Halloween party dressed as frogs. Mrs. Chadwell said Edna came to my house and we made costumes. “She and I kept it a secret and we dressed as frogs -- they never did figure us out.” “The prize went to the two frogs “she Mrs. Knauf) could lead and they thought she was the man. We went hopping all around and we had bruised elbows.”
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Anna Meredith, then 27 years old, went to work for the hotel in 1923 as head of housekeeping. She made all the curtains, 57 pair, for the hotel on a Singer sewing machine. There were no commercial fishing boats in those days and local men from the hotel would take hotel guests out in the ocean in small boats to fish. Every Sunday evening after dinner, Mrs. White played the piano and the residents sang hymns. Edgar Guest, the poet, also gave readings on Sunday.
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Other leisure hours were spent driving to Palm Beach to shop. In the evenings, residents would walk down Ocean Avenue into Boynton. George Boynton, Major Boynton’s son-in-law also stayed at the hotel. George Boynton’s wife gave Mrs. Meredith a sewing basket that had been owned by Major Boynton’s wife. Mrs. Meredith still owns the basket which is well over 100 years old.
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Much to the dismay of guests and local residents in the spring of 1925, the hotel was sold and immediately torn down. The acreage that the hotel occupied had become too valuable in those boom years to be occupied solely by a hotel. Parcels of land were sold for very high prices and several Ocean Ridge houses occupy the old hotel site. The remainder, the hotel and its grounds, had been sold to George Harvey, the builder of the Harvey Building in downtown West Palm Beach for a price in excess of half a million dollars. Part of the result was that Harvey went broke.
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The Palm Beach Post
Sun, Feb 8, 1925
Page 1
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BOYNTO BEAC HOTEL SOLD TO BOSTON GROUP
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The Boynton Beach Hotel property extending from the ocean to the canal has been sold, according to reports received yesterday, to a syndicate of Boston businessmen headed by George W. Harvey of Palm Beach. This is the second large purchase made by Mr. Harvey in the last few days. He recently having acquired 200 acres on the Dixie highway at Yamoto. He has said that the consideration involved in the two transactions was close to $1 million.
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The development of the Boynton property will be started immediately, according to Mr. Harvey, who heads the George W Harvey Realty Company. but the Yamoto development will not begin until next fall. the Boynton Beach Hotel will continue under the new owner for at least 2 years. Mr. Harvey, until last year a resident of Boston, now lives on Brazilian Avenue, Palm Beach. Last October, he purchased the former orange grove on Parker Avenue which he intends to develop at a later date.
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The Palm Beach Post
Mon, Jul 12, 1976
Page 17
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BOYNTON THE FOUNDER AND MAN OF MYSTERY
Two politicians from Michigan gave their names to settlements that sprang up south of Lake Worth in the wake of Flagler’s railroad. one name quickly was changed, the other endures to this day. ​The railroad wasn’t even in yet when U.S. Rep. William Seelye Linton of Saginaw heard about the opportunities on this new frontier and persuaded a friend, David Swinton to come south with him early in 1895.
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In West Palm Beach, then the terminus of the railroad, they learned that there was land for sale to the south. They obtained a boat and headed that way, first on Lake Worth, and then on the newly dug Florida East Coast Canal. predecessor of today’s Intracoastal Waterway. ​Linton liked what he saw and, with some financial aid from Swinton, arranged to purchase much of what today constitutes the central section of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach. He hurried back to Michigan to sign up settlers. ​This was a task virtually for ordained for success, as William Seelye Linton was the sort of person who could talk people into seeing things his way. Cecil W. and Margoaan Farrar, in their book on “Incomparable Delray Beach -- Its Early Life and Lore,” characterize him as an inveterate adventurer and promoter par excellence.”
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Linton, born in St. Clair Michigan, on February 4 1856, was prominent in business and public affairs. At an early age, while still in his teens, he managed his father’s sawmill and lumberyard in Farwell, then went on to other farms in that part of the state He still was in his early 20s when he served two terms on the Bay County Board of Supervisors. ​In 1878, he married Ida M. Lowry and settled down in the Saginaw area. He went into the family lumber and salt business, while continuing to be a public figure. He served on the East Saginaw Common Council from 1883 to 1887, and in the Michigan House of Representatives the next two years.
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Lantern sponsored the legislation that set up savings and loan associations in Michigan, then promptly became president of People’s Building and Loan Association of Saginaw Count, tthe state’s largest. ​In 1890, he ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket. Two years later, he was elected both to the U.S. House and to the mayoralty of consolidated Saginaw. He had sponsored the consolidation legislation.
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By the fall of 1895, Linton had rounded up eight settlers – E. Burslein, W. W. Blackmer, Frank W. Chapman, Fason Baker, Peter Leurs,, Otto Schroder, Kemp Burton, and Adolph Hofman. The Miami extension of Flagler’s railroad was underway, but not yet ready, thus the last leg of the trip once again was by water.
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The only building in the area was the Orange Grove House of Refuge for shipwrecked sailors, on the beach at a point now about 1,000 ft north of Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach. Keeper Stephen N. Andrews-- one of the men from whom Linton was buying his land -- took in the settlers until they could throw up shelters in the five-acre tracts they had bought from Linton. ​The town Linton platted extended in today’s terms from North Fourth Street south to South Fourth Street and from the ocean west to West Eighth Avenue.
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By the end of the year the palmetto growth had been cleared from the fertile canal banks and crops planted. Some of the pioneers then sent for their families. Henry Sterling set up the first store.
On October 18, 1895, Linton Post Office was authorized. The following spring the railroad was in operation, providing a means of shipping produce to market.
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Linton named te north-south division street for his friend Swinton, who apparently never again visited the area after 1895. The fresh-water lake west of town was given Mrs. Linton’s first name.
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It never has been clear the precise relationship between Linton and Nathan Smith Boynton, though they probably knew each other as Boynton had been the most prominent figure in the various Mccabee fraternal-beneficial orders in Michigan, and Linton had been active in them. In addition, both had been in politics and both were from the same general area.
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At any rate, Boynton in 1897 bought the northern portion of Linton’s holdings. Boynton, however, was not interested in Florida land promotion and most of the land by 1898 had gone back to Fred S. Dewey, from whom Linton had been buying it. The land Boynton kept was the oceanfront tract homesteaded in 1879 by another Michigan man whose name is variously spelled Huber or Hubbell. The homesteader tired of life in the wilderness after only a year, and Andrews took over his claim. Boynton built the Boynton Beach Hotel on that land at the point that Ocean Avenue would reach the beach if it went that far. For a man who was prominent in two states and for whom a city is named, Nathan Boynton remains somewhat of a mystery. He was relatively aloof and considered by some to be unfriendly, although those few who knew him found him to be personable. ​He was born June 23. 1837, in Port Huron, Michigan, the city where he spent most of his life. He went through primary school in Port Huron and then to Waukegan, Illinois for high School. H returned to Port Huron in 1856 and entered the mercantile business, but was ruined by the panic of the following year.
He then did quite a bit of traveling, winding up in Cincinnati, where in 1858, he married German born Annie Fieldei.
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When the Civil War broke out, he returned to Port Huron and enlisted as a private. He was a first lieutenant before leaving the state and by war’s end was a major. He was in campaigns all along the Western Front and was in one of the first units to enter Atlanta.
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After the Wa,r he became active in St. Clair County (Pport Huron) Republican politics-- he originally had been a Democrat but switched due to his opposition to slavery -- and soon became a leader of one of the two factions striving for supremacy. He was a village clerk in 1866, village president in 1867, and in 1868, was elected to the Michigan House.
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Also in 1868, he bought a weekly newspaper in order to further his political positions. The following year his opponents began their own paper and in 1871. his opponents bought out Boynton.
Annie Fidelei - Born, Bremen, Germany
1860s - Courtesy m vintagevibes .com
This essentially was his farewell to Republican politics. Following the panic of 1873, he became affiliated with the Greenback Party, a precursor of the progressive movement that advocated a freer money policy. ​Actually, he more than anything else withdrew from politics, though he was mayor of Port Huron in 1874-5 and again in 1894. After 1881, much of his energy was consumed in heading the various groups known generally as Maccabees. During two decades of Internecine fighting, Boynton generally was allied with those urging conservative politics and management of the group’s funds.
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By the time he bought his Florida land, he was a man who had fought a lot of battles and lost quite a few of them and possibly was becoming inembittered. ​Linton was having his problems, also. By 1897, it appears that his promotion was in financial trouble. Perhaps he sold to Boynton in order to raise capital. ​If that is so, the help was only temporary. Frost, crop failure and the general difficulties of frontier life were taking their toll. New farmers stopped arriving and old ones began going back up north.
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In 1898 Linton was far behind in his payments on the land. The creditors then moved to collect from the settlers many of whom were under the impression that Linton had clear title when he sold them the land. Sterling later said he wound up paying for his property twice. ​This turn of events sent more settlers north and made the name of Linton, who had returned to Michigan after setting up the community, unpleasant to those who remained. On November 19, 1898, the post office was renamed for Delray, a then-suburb of Detroit that was Blackmer’s hometown.
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By now the worst was over. The renamed community embarked on a period of slow, steady growth that made it into a town, The first hotel called simply, The Inn, was built in 1900, the first schoolhouse came in 1901, the first church (Methodist) in 1902, the first physician (Dr. J .R. Cason Jr.) In 1905, the first telephones in 1908. ​By 1910, there were 250 residents, and those residents decided it was time to incorporate. Tthe charter for the Town of Delray was approved on September 4, 1911, and John Shaw Sundy was elected mayor with 53 of the 56 votes cast.
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To the North, Boynton was experiencing a parallel development. Dewey had filed his plat on September 29, 1898,and was selling farmland, giving a “town” house lot with each farm sold. Many of the workers on Boynton Hotel decided to buy and become farmers. ​Boynton did a bit of farming himself, putting in a citrus grove west of the hotel.
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The community’s first school was built in 1900, and the first church, again Methodist, was established in 1905. The settlers here, however, were not as anxious to incorporate as were those in Delray it was not until 1920 that the town of Boynton was chartered, with G. E. Coon as first mayor. ​The area farming could be described as truck farming, without trucks. it never was a subsistence agriculture, the farmers grew cash crops and bought supplies. ​A variety of vegetables were grown at first, but after the turn of the century, pineapples steadily became more popular as it thrived in soil too sandy for other crops. Pineapple remained a dominant crop until forced out by competition from low cost Cuban pineapples shipped over Flagler’s railroad.
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Once the communities were underway, the founders nearly were forgotten. Linton never returned and Boynton was in town only during the winter, staying at his hotel, and generally keeping to himself. Most of his friends in Boynton were friends from Michigan who wintered with him. Nathan S. Boynton died May 27, 1911, shortly after his seasonal return to Port Huron.
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If the fiasco of his Florida development hurt William Linton, it doesn’t show. He was defeated for re-election to Congress in 1896, but in 1898, was appointed postmaster of Saginaw by President William McKinley. Hhe served in that job until 1914 during that time, traveling to Europe, Asia and Africa to study overseas postal systems. ​In 1914, he sought unsuccessfully for the RepublIcan nomination for Governor of Michigan. ​As president of the Saginaw Board of Trade, he presided over projects that “have transformed dilapidated property, jungle and tangle, bog and mire, in five scenic parks, places of recreation and enjoyment for all,”in the words of the book “History of Saginaw County.” ​In 1919 he was appointed to the State Tax Commission and was its secretary when stricken by a heart attack late in 1927. He died November 22 in Lansing, long famous in Michigan and virtually forgotten in what by then was the city of Delray Beach (the Town of Delray had merged in 1927 with the town of Delray Beach, which had been formed in 1923 along the ocean)
Iin the city he had founded he was merely a boulevard.