The History of New Point Comfort

By Don Bayley

Time has overlooked New Point Comfort in west Charlotte County where several historic homes may have escaped the onslaught of shopping centers and highways.
Much of the ancient settlement was razed to make way for ‘progress.’ Yet, Mrs. Richard Geary stood on her dock and pointed out places where Uncles Ferdinand and Otto Gottfried raised pineapples, where Col. James M. Lewis hunted quail, and where John Bass collected samples of marine life for scientific study (from Our Fascinating Past by Lindsay Williams and U. S. Cleveland).
“New Point Comfort is squeezed between Englewood on the north, and Grove City on the south. The three settlements were visions of John Cross who bought or optioned all the mainland shore of Lemon Bay that was not being homesteaded by a few hardy pioneers. His first venture was Grove City On The Gulf between Oyster and Buck Creeks in 1886. This opened up isolated Lemon Bay to farmers, fishermen, invalids, and adventuresome sportsmen from cold northern states.”

The newly placed historical marker on Lemon Bay Road just South of Merchants Crossing.

Hamilton Disston & John Cross
Hamilton Disston (1844-1896) was a wealthy saw manufacturer from Philadelphia. In 1881 he bought four million acres of “swamp and overflowed land” from the State of Florida Internal Improvement Fund for 25-cents per acre. His plan was to drain the Everglades for a vast sugar plantation.
His vast land purchase included “Mangrove Bay” (now known as Lemon Bay) and most of the lands around Charlotte Harbor. The land, later known as New Point Comfort, was granted to Disston’s Florida Land and Improvement Company in 1883.
In order to finance his Everglades venture, Disston sold his (Lemon Bay) property. His agent was John Cross, a former coffee plantation operator from Bombay, India. He bought and optioned large tracts on Mangrove (Lemon) Bay from Disston in 1886.
Cross platted a town and named it Grove City On-The-Gulf. It was the first town on the bay, although William Goff, Charlie Dishong, Capt. James Leach, Steve Chadwick, Charles Johnson and a few other settlers were homesteading there.
William Goff bought the first two town lots at Grove City for $3 each – a bargain Cross offered in order to “get the ball rolling.” The advertised price was $20 an acre for “waterfronts,” and $8 per acre for “back lots.” The purchase terms were “10 percent cash, $5 per month until paid, no interest.” Such concessions were necessary inasmuch as Lemon Bay was nearly inaccessible except by boat.
Despite the remoteness of Grove City, Cross had a good plan for attracting winter-weary prospects from up north.
He believed lemon trees grown in Florida would be a viable crop and provide financial support for new settlers. Back in 1886 scurvy was a very serious problem, and lemons were the prescribed treatment. But they were pricey and had to be imported from Spain.
Cross’s game plan was to sell residential acreage, on which to build homes, but the buyer had to agree to also buy another 10 acres of grove land on which to grow lemons. Everyone was to make money, Cross on his real estate sales and the buyers on the lemons they would produce. It is said that to attract settlers to the area Cross renamed “Mangrove Bay” to “Lemon Bay.”
(Unfortunately, in the winter of 1894-95 the temperature went below freezing and killed all the lemon trees, but that’s another story.)

Photo of Col. James M. Lewis (L) and Ward M. Parker. They stoutly maintained that hunting in Englewood was the finest in the country.

Col. James McArthur Lewis
I am always curious where our Englewood area place names come from, especially such a pleasant sounding name as “New Point Comfort.” My research came up with information about an early arrival to the area: Col. James McArthur Lewis.
Lewis had been a medical officer for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war he invested in a western cattle ranch (now Lewis, Kansas) and citrus groves in Florida. According to Jimmy Hoar, a long-time resident of New Point Comfort, Col. Lewis heard about the fabulous hunting and fishing at Lemon Bay. He sent a son and a ranch hand named Tom White to investigate.
Old deeds show that on Jan. 12, 1891, James M. Lewis, Jr. bought 23 acres in Township 42, Range 20, from the Grove City Land Company for $226.
Col. Lewis was very pleased with his purchase. It was on the east side of Deer Creek (today known as Gottfried Creek). This beautiful point of land between Deer Creek and Rocky (Ainger) Creek reminded Lewis of his native home, Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Thus he named the area “New Point Comfort.”

The Tarpon Hotel. Built in 1893 and burned to the ground in 1904.

The Chicago Connection
In 1893 John Cross still had more land to sell so he rented a booth at the Chicago World’s Fair to advertise Grove City. The Fair, also known as the Columbian Exposition, celebrated Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America 400 years earlier. John’s little booth at the fair was instrumental in the development of our Lemon Bay area.
His exhibit attracted several winter-weary folks. There were 3 brothers, Herbert, Howard and Ira Nichols, who lived in a suburb of Chicago. They liked what they saw and bought land just north of Grove City where they founded Englewood, Florida in 1896. They named it after their home town, Englewood, Illinois. But this is the story of New Point Comfort so let me tell you about Ferdinand Gottfried who also saw Cross’ exhibit.

The Gottfrieds
Ferdinand Gottfried, convalescing after a two-month’s bout with pneumonia that nearly cost him his life, reminisced about the early days in Englewood at the home of his niece, Mrs. Richard Geary (from the Englewood Herald, Dec. 2, 1955).
“In 1893 I attended the Columbian Exposition in Chicago where I saw an inviting exhibit of South Florida. A Milwaukee friend, a Mr. Rice, owned a lot in Grove City near Englewood, Fla., where he hoped to take his ailing wife. He asked me if I would go down and build him a house, and in late 1893 I arrived in Grove City.
“There was only a store and Post Office there – no roads or railroad, and I wrote Mr. Rice that this was no place to bring a sick wife. During that fall and winter, the Grove City Land Co. built a hotel and one or two residences. I helped build the hotel.”
The comfortable 20-room hotel, situated where Park Pointe Mobile Villa is now located, was opened by Chicago lawyer G. B. Treloar. It burned to the ground in 1904 (photo by Charles Koch of an original painting).
Ferdinand continued, “Two railroad surveys were made and everyone expected the railroad to come to this section. On the strength of this I purchased 30 acres of land extending from Lemon Bay to the present Placida Road, the north boundary of which is now highway 775. I returned to Milwaukee and two years later came back to Florida accompanied by my younger brother, Otto, whose health we hoped would be benefited here. (Editor’s note: that part of SR 775 was later changed to SR 776, so in today’s nomenclature the north boundary was SR 776).
“We decided to raise pineapples, which were in good demand, and planted two acres. But the market slackened and they no longer were profitable. Then we tried cabbages and potatoes. The cabbages were a great treat for the fishermen as fresh vegetables were scarce. They used to come every two or three days for big bags of cabbages.
“During this time we stayed in the palmetto covered shack of one “Doc’’ Wilcox, which stood where Bernie’s Sundries now is. (Today an auto repair shop is at the location, the corner of New Point Comfort Road and S.R. 776.) Other than Wilcox, the only people nearby were Col. James Lewis who lived next door on what is now the John Bass place, and Thomas White, who had worked for the Lewises in Kansas.”
“Englewood consisted of a store combined with a post office, and a large inn, both owned by developer Nichols; and an unused real estate office frequented by loafers with bottles. In 1898, after the death of my father, my mother and remaining family, two brothers and two sisters joined Otto and me in Florida.”
The Gottfried’s 2-story house was on the creek that today bears their name. It was later used as a community center for the New Point Comfort development. (Since there were no roads through the area in the early days it was desirable to have a house on the water: the various creeks, the bay and the Gulf served as the roadways.)
The Gottfried’s next cash crop was celery and their flourishing field thrived well into the 1920s. It was located where Merchants Crossing is now. Otto, a bachelor for life, was a Charlotte County commissioner. Ferdinand returned to Milwaukee to raise a family but later returned to live with his wife Florence on New Point Comfort. Other Gottfried siblings were Archie, Frank, Anna and Julia.
Julia married Col. Lewis’ ranch hand Tom White. Their daughter was Florence White Geary.
From her interview by authors Lindsay Williams and U. S. Cleveland we get another version of the Gottfried story and New Point Comfort’s early history.
“Uncle Ferd, a pattern maker in Milwaukee, visited the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893,” she says. “There he visited a booth John Cross had set up extolling the delights of Lemon Bay. When he returned home and mentioned Florida, a friend named Rice disclosed that he had bought a Grove City lot sight-unseen as a winter retreat for his ailing wife.
“Mr. Rice asked Uncle Ferd to go down to Grove City and build him a house. When Uncle Ferd got there, he found an inn (Hotel Tarpon) under construction but only a couple of houses and a store. All else was untamed wilderness. My uncle wrote Rice that Lemon Bay was no place for a sick wife; but two railroad surveys were being made and prospects for growth looked good. He stayed there that winter to help finish the hotel and build a house for D. ‘Mack’ Lewis.
“Mack Lewis apparently dabbled in real estate for John Cross. Mack said if Uncle Ferd would build him a house he would give Uncle Ferd first choice of land. He chose 30 acres between Oyster Creek and Placida Road (S.R. 775) with McCall Road the northern border–part of the area now the site of Merchants Crossing shopping center.
“Uncle Ferd came back to New Point Comfort in the Fall of 1894 with his younger brother, Otto, who was in frail health. They hoped the climate would help uncle Otto. He got better, but never wholly well.
“They first raised pineapples which were selling well, but when the market slacked off they switched to cabbages and potatoes. Cabbages were in steady demand by the commercial fishermen who craved fresh vegetables. They would stop at the Gottfried dock to buy bags of cabbages to take along on their extended fishing trips.”
“My mother, Julia, became seriously ill in 1934. We came to New Point Comfort in hope she would recover. Sadly, she died and was buried in (Lemon Bay Cemetery). When Dad died we buried him there too. I was especially fond of Great Aunt Anna Gottfried. She was born and grew up in Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, and spoke with an accent. She was so kind. She understood and read English well, but said her tongue got twisted when she spoke it.
“Uncle Ferd moved back in 1949 after Uncle Otto died and spent the last nine years of his life here. He would tell me about the old times and the early settlers. Uncle Ferd died in 1958 at age 92. He, too, is buried in the local cemetery – among friends who helped turn a wilderness into a garden.”

The Parkers
Another family to settle early at New Point Comfort were the Parkers. A road in the subsequent development is named after them: Parker Drive.
Ward M Parker met his future bride, Dorothy Merryman in New Point Comfort. They built their home on Parker Drive.

New Point Comfort Name Officially Recorded (1919)
The Florida land boom began shortly after World War I. In 1919 Col. Lewis bought all the land between Deer Creek and Rocky (Ainger) Creek including the waterfront at the south end of the point from the Grove City Land Company. He named the entire area “New Point Comfort” and platted it into lots for winter residents. This was the first time the name was officially recorded. A bunch of folks from Cleveland, Ohio, were the first to buy lots. Some of their names were: Hohman, Burgess, Armington, Rieley, Wright, Herkner and Mills. Interestingly, many of the lots were placed in the wife’s name.

Stanley Lampp’s Plat for New Point Comfort. Dated 1/2/1925.

A. Stanley Lampp
On September 21, 1924 A. (Alston) Stanley Lampp bought numerous lots from a “D. McLewis” (most likely the Colonel’s son). Three mortgages of $2000 each were recorded. On November 6, 1924 he bought lots from Otto Gottfried. Stanley developed and promoted “New Point Comfort” as a new subdivision. (He developed several other subdivisions in Englewood including Englewood Park and Rocky Creek.)
Stanley was known to be extremely philanthropic. Some of his gifts to the town in the 1920s included donating property for building a new school on West Dearborn Street as well as land for the Lemon Bay Woman’s Club and Englewood’s first church building (known today as the Green Street Church).
Lampp was active in the Englewood Boy Scouts with his nephew Jim Christman. Jim says, “There was nothing my Uncle Stanley couldn’t do.”
After Stanley died in 1960, his wife Ruth inherited the remaining Lampp parcels in New Point Comfort. When Ruth died in 1998, the lots passed to her family. Ruth’s sister Grace’s son was the aforementioned Jim Christman and he inherited the last remaining Lampp lot.
Jim donated this lot for placement of a New Point Comfort historical marker in honor of this special area and to honor his Uncle Stanley.

Stanley Lampp’s Plat for New Point Comfort. Dated 1/2/1925.

Bass Labs
The Bass Laboratory was founded in Englewood at New Point Comfort in 1933 by John F. Bass, Jr., to “furnish research facilities to investigators in biological fields, where the fauna, flora and climate play an important role in the problem under observation.”
John Foster Bass, Jr., lived and worked at New Point Comfort for only seven years, 1933 to 1939, but in that short time left a legacy of scientific achievement in marine biology.

The Shipwreck House
One of the early purchasers at New Point Comfort was John M. Bunn from New Jersey. Shortly before he came down to build a house in 1926, a severe hurricane hit the Englewood area. According to the late Bill Davis, Sr., a boy at the time, a Cuban fishing smack was caught off Manasota Key by the storm. The captain put down two anchors to try to hold his ship into the wind and ride out the hurricane. The anchors held, but huge waves swamped the vessel and sank it.
Davis said that for weeks afterward he and some buddies would swim out to the wreck and dive off the mast protruding above water. “One day we were swimming around the wreck, and John Bunn came out in a boat and sawed off the mast,” Davis recalled. “He took the boom, anchors, hatch covers and other flotsam and towed the wood parts around to Gottfried Creek.”
Bunn built a small house at New Point Comfort using the mast for corner posts and hatch covers for the roof. Hardware on the mast was still in place. He also salvaged a big water tank from a house demolished by the hurricane. This he sawed in half vertically and attached it to the ship-house for a bedroom. The ship’s boom holds up the ceiling.
The ship’s anchors have been cleaned of barnacles and the largest one donated to the Lemon Bay Historical Society. The smaller anchor is a fireplace decoration at Shipwreck House.
Bunn occupied his Shipwreck House only three years before selling it to Ida A. Willets, a retired singer from the Metropolitan Opera Company at New York City. Miss Willets was a bit eccentric. After a lifetime in opera, she was most active at night. Often she could be heard singing operatic arias at late hours.
Though Miss Willets was not a recluse, her circle of friends was small. Those invited into her home were awed by a “shrine” on the fireplace mantle consisting of candles, incense burners, and strange idols of oriental appearance. She sold the house in 1933 to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Buchanon and returned to New York. The new owners found closets filled with boxes of opera scores.
Diana Doane, AKA author Diana Harris bought the Shipwreck House in 1965 from Mr. and Mrs. Clyde P. and Leah B. Lasbury. They sold on condition Diana would not destroy any of the old structure. Mrs. Lasbury was an accomplished artist and left behind many paintings, which the Harrises enjoyed.
Also decorating the home are photos of old Englewood buildings by Sam. He was a professional photographer who got caught up in the history when he married Diana. The Harris’ added a spacious family room to the house and replaced the small “shrine” mantle with a larger one. The new mantle was salvaged from the old bridge linking the mainland with Englewood Beach on Manasota Key.
“It seemed appropriate to use some of the historic bridge timbers to expand our historic home,” says Mrs. Harris. “The house was built with flotsam, and we wanted to continue the tradition.”

New Point Comfort Today
Today New Point Comfort is a quiet, residential neighborhood. After the old section of Englewood around Dearborn Street, New Point Comfort contains the largest number of historical buildings still standing in Englewood.
The very first homes built in New Point Comfort are gone, but close to 50% of the houses you do see in this section are at least 60 years old, a few older. Some were originally built on the edge of the bay as vacation cottages by wealthy snow birds who came to hunt and fish. Some have been beautifully renovated.