Mrs. Virginia Taylor Trabue was the wife of the
town's founder, Col. Isaac Trabue. The
daughter of James and Charlotte Scarborough Taylor, she was born in Savannah on
December 19 in 1832. During the Civil
War, she lived on the Isle of Mann, off the coast of England, with her
mother. She returned to New York City in
1865 where she met and married Isaac.
They settled in Kentucky where Isaac practiced law.
In 1885, the Trabues came to the land that Isaac had
purchased south of the Peace River, and Virginia became one of Punta Gorda's
first pioneer women. Working with her
husband to help establish the town that became Punta Gorda, she lived on land
with no streets or stores that was covered with palmettos and swamps with
alligators, snakes, panthers, and bears.
They lived initially in a dilapidated wooden shack right on the water's
edge originally constructed by the Laniers.
Virginia, an Episcopalian, was very instrumental in the
early establishment of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. She convinced the bishop to start the St.
James mission in Punta Gorda in 1892 that became the Church of Good
Shepherd.
Less than 5-feet tall and an avid chess player. Her and Isaac dedicated a block in Punta
Gorda for the growing of pineapples to support an annual chess tournament. After Isaac died in 1907, Virginia continued
to reside in Punta Gorda. Ever the
civic-minded, she dedicated Cross Park - the current location of the Event
Center - which had been deeded to her in 1911 to the city. She is also said to have deeded the city the
land for the original City Hall building.
There is a record of her living in Punta Gorda as late as
1920, when on her 88th birthday many of the townspeople came to her home on
Cross Street at the time to wish her well.
She had many friends in the town, as evidenced by the cards she sent
here when traveling. The wife of R.K.
Seward, owner and founder of the Herald, was a close friend.
Virginia Trabue died in 1924. Her grave is in Indian Springs Cemetery.
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