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(Photographer W.A. Fishbaugh; Image Source: State Archives of Florida)
Did you know that the High Pines neighborhood near South Miami was settled by one of Miami’s oldest families?
In 1895, Dade County pioneers Adam and Rose Wagner Richards received a federal land patent to a 160-acre homestead for the land generally bounded by today’s Sunset Drive (SW 72nd Street) to the north, Davis Road (SW 80th Street) to the south, SW 52nd Avenue to the west, and SW 47th Avenue to the east.
They raised 10 children on their homestead where they worked as farmers, raising crops for shipment to northern markets. They were part of the tight-knit community of Larkins, the precursor to the City of South Miami. They donated approximately 10 acres of their homestead for the Larkins Public School, which still stands today as Sunset Elementary. They donated another four acres for a public cemetery, today owned by the City of Coral Gables as the Pinewood Cemetery on Erwin Road.
Rose Wagner Richards had a very unique background. She arrived in Dade County in 1858, when she was only 6 years old. She was one of the earliest non-Native American children to grow up in the Miami area. She wrote a column in the Miami News in the early 1900s titled “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Miami.” She recalled that her family had close relationships with the Seminoles living at Musa Isle on the Miami River, and she had vivid memories of living near Fort Dallas during the Civil War.
Her parents settled and later homesteaded a 40-acre parcel of land on Wagner Creek, near today’s Jackson Memorial Hospital. Her father and husband operated a coontie starch mill, one of the few income-producing industries in Miami’s early days. Her family was close with the Brickell, Peacock, and Munroe families, and Rose Richard’s brother Joseph Wagner worked as a groundskeeper at the Munroe home, today’s Barnacle Historic State Park in Coconut Grove.
An interesting aspect of Adam and Rose Richards’ pioneer life was Rose’s racial identity.
Rose’s grandparents were immigrants that were born in Germany and the island of Hispaniola, today’s Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Rose had one Black grandmother; her other three grandparents were white.
Because of the U.S. laws at that time, Rose and her siblings were classified as “Black” or “Mulatto” in most official government documents throughout the 1800s. In the 1880s, however, Rose’s white husband Adam Richards was the Dade County census taker, and in this year, he changed her census race category to “white.” Most subsequent government documents identifying Rose used the race category of “white” until her death in 1933.
The government’s racial categorization of Rose and her brother Joseph Wagner varied over the years, and it had real-world impacts on where their families could live, work, and where their children could attend school. In the 1890s, their children were turned away from the Coconut Grove school because of their racial background, and they were privately tutored at home instead.
In spite of the challenges that Adam and Rose Richards faced in those early years of Miami, they left a powerful legacy in their donation of the land for today’s Sunset Elementary school and Pinewood Cemetery.
Adam and Rose Richards’ daughter, Maude Richards Seibold Black, stayed near her childhood homestead in High Pines, marrying Charles F. Seibold and moving to his homestead just adjacent to today’s Fairchild Tropical Gardens. Their home, constructed in 1899, is designated as a historic site by Miami-Dade County and it still stands today at 10400 Old Cutler Rd.
Megan McLaughlin is the director of preservation projects at Plusurbia. She is an AICP-certified planner and has over 15 years of experience in the fields of historic preservation, urban design, and urban planning. She is an experienced researcher and writer on the topics of historical urban development, architecture, and communities. Her passion is bringing attention to Florida’s unique history, and crafting planning and zoning strategies to protect the character of existing neighborhoods.
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