Wotitzky, Edward

 

In 1889, Edward Wotitzky, son of pioneer Jacob Wotitzky, came to Punta Gorda from New York City.  Jacob had coaxed his young son to Florida with promising descriptions of warm climate, beautiful scenery, and potential. 

When he came to Punta Gorda, there were only three stores and 15 residences. Soon after arriving, he joined his father in the dry goods business.  While father cared for the store, son Edward sailed a schooner up and down Florida’s coastline, as far as Miami, and through the islands along the west coast delivering and acquiring goods.

In addition to running his many businesses, which included, the store, the town’s main all-year hotel, the Dade, and many residential rental properties, Edward was very civically engaged.  He served as a City Councilman, County Supervisor of Registration (Elections), Justice of the Peace and in several other capacities.  He was also a prominent Mason.

In 1908, he married Celia Hart, pictured with him above, daughter of another pioneer grocer, Gus Hart.   They had two sons, Leo, who became a teacher and then state legislator, and Frank, who became a local attorney and founded the Wotitzky Law Firm.  

Born in 1892 to Nicholas and France Weeks of Bogue Sound, North Carolina, Matt Weeks was part of the contingent from the coast of North Carolina that started coming to the west coast of Florida in the winters in the late 1800s and early 1900s for commercial fishing. 

Week's early love of the sea led him to work on oil freighters, but when he met Mamie Riggs at Charlotte Harbor his seafaring days ended.  He started the Weeks Machine Shop and Boat Works on the Long Dock, later moved to Maud Street, married Mamie and moved to a house on Harvey Street. 

He became a county commissioner and served for 23 years during the 1930s and 40s.  He served with Vasco Peeples at a time when the commission was instrumental in getting new roads and bridges built.  According to an interview with Leo Wotitsky "The county was trying to build some roads and streets, and Matt would go out and supervise construction and do all sorts of things."

Matt and Mamie raised 5 children in Punta Gorda: William, Ralph, Jane, Martha and Wayne. 

 

 

 

 

Arriving in the Charlotte Harbor area 15 years before the start of the Civil War, the Whidden family were truly pioneers. It wasn’t easy to make a living in Florida in the 1850s, so James Whidden began to acquire cattle.  When the Civil War started, James Whidden, along with other local cattlemen, ran the Union blockade of Charlotte Harbor to supply cattle to the Confederacy and then to Cuba when the Civil War ended.   As written in Angie Larkin’s book “In Old Punta Gorda” “The cattle industry was an integral part of Florida’s early growth. In the Punta Gorda area, shipments of beeves were at their high between 1901 and 1908.  Cattle were driven out Marion Avenue to a loading dock west of town and herded onto boats sailing to Cuba.  Roundup time was one of excitement and noise in town.”  Cattle continued to be a major source of income in the Charlotte Harbor area until Cuba imposed an import tax of $2.50 per head on the cattle, reducing the shipments.  The arrival of the railroad in 1886 had opened a new market for the cattlemen to market their beef domestically and continue to prosper.

 

James Whidden’s son, Robert Whidden, had 1,000 head of cattle of his own on 7,000 acres of land. To earn a steady living, he also worked as the ranch foreman for W. Luther Koon, one of the area’s largest cattlemen.  Robert had two children, James Edward and Florence. James was born in 1904 in a frame house in Charlotte Harbor just northeast of where Rolls Landing is now. Even as youngsters, children worked to help the family. Life was not easy.  It was a 9-hour trip from their home in Charlotte Harbor to Punta Gorda via horseback through Fort Ogden where the river was shallow enough to forge.  Rounding up and driving the cattle to market was a time-consuming process. There were no fences in Florida as everything was open range.   Camping out in the open with a saddle for a pillow, the food was pretty plain, and the days were long. Roundups generally started in July when the spring born calves would be marked, branded and dipped.  Steers would be driven to the market. As the cattle industry decreased in the area, several of the Whidden family earned a living fishing during the days that mullet fishing was a primary source of income in Charlotte Harbor.

 

In addition to cattle and fishing, the Whidden family had citrus groves to supplement their income and later generations became developers, developing Whidden’s Industrial Park on Harborview Road. Several generations of Whiddens are buried at the Charlotte Harbor Cemetery so they are still right at home where they rode the range. The 6th generation of Whiddens still reside here in Charlotte County.