Huang History Center, Plant City History & Photo Archives
Writers in Residence Program
With the promise of free land over several years, and especially after the War ended in 1865, people hungered for land for their farms, plantations, groves, or pastures for cattle and pushed farther south in Florida.
James Taylor Evers always wanted to be involved in the building of a community. He was enthralled with the many stories of the coming railroad and believed that the railroad would be the nucleus of a new and prosperous community.
James Taylor Evers chose not to join his father, the Reverend Thomas Evers, and uncle, John Ross Evers, in their move to Alafia, in Hillsborough County, in the late 1860s, and remained on his successful farm in Wellborn, Suwannee County, Florida. There, he had earlier met Martha Frances Rucker Spier, whose family had a plantation in Georgia. She had married John Robert Spier in 1852; they had five children. John R. Spier served with the Confederate Army and was killed in 1862. Evers and Martha Frances Spier were married in Suwannee County in 1866. He was about 21, she was 34.
He sold the farm and moved to Alafia about 1870. In Alafia, James T. Evers built his homestead and his business. He was in real estate, operated a general store, and became postmaster in 1871. Following a lead as to where the railroad would run, in 1878, he moved to an area north of where Plant City eventually sprang up and created the community of Shiloh. He bought acres of land, donated two acres for the Shiloh cemetery, and, with Wilbur Fisk Burts, established the Evers and Burts Sawmill. He opened a general mercantile business, a grist mill, a cedar mill, and a cotton gin.
Being the only business with supplies of this kind, his business flourished. For transportation to Tampa and back, he acquired horse and mule teams and covered wagons. Evers then opened another store with William Collins as manager and his son Jessie Evers and stepson Robert B. Speir working alongside.
Hearing that the rail route had moved slightly farther south, Evers moved his businesses and family to the new site cropping up alongside the soon-to-be railroad. Evers’ businesses were the first in the growing community. James Taylor Evers was a very respected man with wit and wisdom. Many in the new community suggested it be named Eversville, in honor of his leadership. Mr. Evers, thoughtful of the role the railroad played in establishing the long-awaited community, and what it meant to him, rejected that notion in favor of naming it after the man who brought the railroad and a new prosperity to the community – Plant City. By December 1883, the railroad and the post office had already named the town Plant City.
James Taylor Evers died young at the age of 39 on May 30, 1884, and was buried in the Shiloh Cemetery. His son Jessie was buried in Shiloh only four years later. He did not live to welcome the newly chartered town of Plant City. In 1885, his stepson, Robert Beasley Spier, became the first Town Clerk in Plant City and remained active in the town and the City of Plant City for years.
James and Martha Evers’ daughters include Rowena, a prominent woman in Plant City, who married Samuel Edward Mays, one of Plant City’s first merchants, banker, farmer, fruit and citrus grower, mayor/commissioner, and town leader. Daughter Miriam married William Edward Lee, a major citrus grower and former mayor of Plant City, Jennie married Wilbur Fisk Burts’ son Charles Oliver Burts and managed the Tropicana Hotel; and Minnie married Luther Roll Waver, a prominent man with the South Florida Railroad. She later wrote a social history of Plant City and of her father, James Taylor Evers.
(Although we attempted to provide accurate information, unfortunately, various documents carry differing dates and name spellings just to keep us pondering.)
