Lostmans Heritage

Lostmans Heritage follows the author's journey as she searches for her ancestors from the slave country of Savannah to the wilds of the Florida Everglades. The Everglades is shrouded in mysteries, a tangle of mangroves, waterways, and sawgrass that meanders every which way and is as mutable as the wind. Nothing is ever where you left it. This is where one came to get lost, to hide among the wild things and the Seminoles. Her story begins with her ancestor, Richard Hamilton, an extraordinary and dangerous man, a man who, against all odds, untangled himself from the bonds of slavery and began a family and a life in the Florida Everglades. Author Peter Matthiessen found the Hamilton clan so fascinating that he included a fictional account of their lives in his novel, Killing Mr. Watson. Hamilton follows Richard and his sons to the ending of an era when the National Park Service evicted the residents, the pioneers, of the Everglades. Along the way she uncovers secrets and stories, polygamy, bootlegging, fist fights, murders, gangsters, killers, and tales of tomahawks and missing schoolteachers. Noted Florida historian, Charlton Tebeau, once said, "The Hamiltons, to the disappointment of the romanticists, were neither pirates nor smugglers nor fugitives, but simple fishermen." While Tebeau was fascinated by the Hamilton's, and often referred to them as one of the 'lost tribes' of the islands, the author's research proves that he was wrong about them. They were fugitives, and they were smugglers. The Everglades was not a place for the average man at that time. You did what you had to do to feed your family.

As law enforcement officer and game manager for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, Lt. Tom Shirley was the law in one of the last true frontiers in the nation--the Florida Everglades. In Everglades Patrol, Shirley shares the stories from his beat--an ecosystem larger than the state of Rhode Island. His vivid narrative includes dangerous tales of hunting down rogue gladesmen and gators and airboat chases through the wetlands in search of illegal hunters and moonshiners. During his thirty-year career (1955-1985), Shirley saw the Glades go from frontier wilderness to "ruination" at the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers. He watched as dikes cut off the water flow and controlled floods submerged islands that had supported man and animals for 3,000 years, killing much of the wildlife he was sworn to protect.

Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen. By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.

Lostmans Heritage, silver medal winner in the Annual 2021 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Awards, tells the true story behind the Hamilton family that Peter Matthiessen first introduced to the world in his novel, "Killing Mr. Watson." The book follows the author's journey as she searches for her ancestors from the slave country of Savannah to the wilds of the Florida Everglades. Hamilton follows her ancestor, Richard Hamilton and his sons to the ending of an era when the National Park Service evicted the residents, the pioneers, of the Everglades. Along the way she uncovers secrets and stories, polygamy, bootlegging, fist fights, murders, gangsters, killers, and tales of tomahawks and missing schoolteachers.Noted Florida historian, Charlton Tebeau, once said, "The Hamiltons, to the disappointment of the romanticists, were neither pirates nor smugglers nor fugitives, but simple fishermen." While Tebeau was fascinated by the Hamiltons, and often referred to them as one of the 'lost tribes' of the islands, my research proves that he was wrong about them. They were fugitives, and they were smugglers. The Everglades was not a place for the average man at that time. You did what you had to do to feed your family.The men and women who settled in the Florida Everglades before the Civil War thrived in an environment that was dangerous and wild and ever changing. While others came and went, the pioneers faced every challenge nature and man threw at them and carried on. They may have migrated from island to island now and again, but the Everglades were their home. And they did what they had to do to survive.