A wooden frame building was constructed in 1897 but was destroyed by Hurricane Donna in 1960.
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George Brown was superintendent for the DeSoto Phosphate Mining Company in the 1890's. It was located in Liverpool, near Arcadia. Brown started his own company building and maintaining barges for phosphate transport.
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George Brown was an African American carpenter and businessman who came to the area in 1890 to work for a phosphate mining company. He built a spacious, two-storey house for his family that was to be the town's largest in 1915.
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A small, fenced-in area on Rowland Street was known as "the colored cemetery." It exists on county-owned land.
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The cemetery was renamed from the Cleveland Cemetery for one of the first black fighter pilots of World War II, Lt. Carl A. Bailey. In 1957, Bailey died in an auto accident. Originally platted by the Punta Gorda Colored Investment Company, it is only one of two black cemeteries identified in county records.
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Baker's Academy was Charlotte County's first school for African Americans. In the 1960's, the original site was located in the East Punta Gorda Historical District and served as the gathering place and recreation center for the black community. Today, the facility houses afterschool programs, computer and game rooms; also classrooms for elementary, middle and high school students. There are basketball and tennis courts on the property and a football field. Free snacks are served to 200 students who visit the center daily.
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Oral histories and written references document that there were other burial sites for blacks in Charlotte County. For instance, the land owned by railroad and naval store companies provided the final resting place for some black workers. The deceased are now believed to be buried in company cemeteries that lie along railroad beds or near turpentine camps.
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The Mediterranean Revival style building opened in the late 1920's and was the southernmost station in the United States.
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The site, believed to be 100 years old, was originally known as the El Jobean "convict" cemetery. It was deeded to Charlotte County by Atlantic Gulf Communities (formerly known as General Development Corporation). Oral history accounts by townspeople reveal that the cemetery was first a burial ground for Cuban-Indian fishermen when Florida was Spanish-owned before 1819.
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Dan Smith founded St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in the late 1880s.
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