William Edward Patterson was born on February 28, 1913 in Reddick, Florida and was the eldest son of 10 children born to Moses Edward Patterson and Evelena Hart Patterson. He received a bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee Institute and a master’s from Columbia University in New York. William’s graduate work was at Indiana State Teacher’s College in the area of guidance and audio-visual with further advance […]
The Rinaldi and Sabetto families of Kissimmee When the S.S. Berlin sailed on December 6, 1912, from Naples, Italy, passengers Giovonni (John) Battista Rinaldi, age 48, and his wife, Giocondina Perugini, listed their final destination as Lake Mary, Florida. By 1930, they had moved to Kissimmee, Florida, and had six children, ages 16 to 1 month. John engaged in truck farming with the help of […]
Jess (as she was known) was the eldest of five children born to Augustus “Gus” Wilder and Freddie Leigh Jenning and was descended from Revolutionary War soldier William Wilder. She was born in Brooksville, Florida on April 20, 1914 but the family soon moved to Clearwater. After high school in Clearwater, she received her A.B. in Economics at Florida State College for Women and taught commercial […]
Lawrence was born in Kenansville, Florida, on November 8, 1891, to former Georgia slave Tom Silas and his wife Elizabeth, the sixth of thirteen children. Because it was a rural area, Tom built a school and hired a teacher so his children could receive an education. Upon Tom’s death in 1905, Lawrence, aged fourteen, took over his father’s estate of 160 acres. Having learned the cattle business […]