Yesterday morning (6/19) on South L Street...a Centennial Moment

I thought you would enjoy seeing the video of what went on yesterday morning as it relates to the search for the grave sites of Samuel and Fannie James. The Jameses were freed slaves that laid claim to much of the area that became the city of Lake Worth and operated the Jewel post office prior to the city's incarnation. They sold their holdings to the Palm Beach Farms (Bryant and Greenwood) in 1911 in anticipation of creation of the city. You can click the link above for a brief sketch of the city's early history.

The grave sites for our founding family was always thought to be 315 South L Street. There are memories of some gate surrounding this a portion of the front yard area that is highlighted in the video. The former, long-time owner of the property was uncooperative in assisting with any investigation regarding the possibility of the grave site's existence. But the new owners are very interested! They were just before us at last Wednesday's HRPB meeting for changes related to their ambitious restoration of the structure, originally built around 1925 and added on to in the late 1940s. So this is the other item that I wanted to bring to your attention from that meeting. There is one more coming soon which I hope to have up sometime tomorrow.

The video shows a crew using specialized equipment that is generally used to find utilities underground. The city has used them in the past and they contributed this work and the use of equipment for free for this exercise. Here is a picture of their truck, the name of the company and their phone number if you want to call to thank them for helping us out.

If you turn up the volume on the video, you can get an idea of what was being found and what was not being found. In essence, their equipment detected that there had been a disturbance in the area where the graves were thought to have been. This disturbance did not extend all the way to the house, so it is thought that it was not utility related. It also extended into the street about where the bike land exists today. And there were two distinct areas that were disturbed. There was no evidence of actual burial remains. It is my guess that the graves were relocated when the house was built in the mid-1920s, but that is just a guess.

The fact that there is some evidence that something was there and the long held notion that this was the location of the James' resting place might be enough to make the property eligible for placement on the National Register of Historic Places as an individual structure within an already established historic district. This is more honorific than anything, but it would put in on par with the Gulfstream Hotel, the former City Hall (Annex) and the Osborne School as an important building in the city's history.

Here are some other pictures of the crowd that assembled at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. It drew the attention of many neighbors!