Growth of a City
BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
National and local events impacted Tallahassee’s growth in the city’s early decades. The business community had thrived in the 1830s. In the coming years, a national economic depression, the Second Seminole War (1835–42), a yellow fever epidemic, and the 1843 fire contributed to hamper Tallahassee’s development. The setbacks were temporary. Though population growth had slowed, Tallahassee was doing well in the years leading up to the Civil War (1861–65). The telegraph reached Tallahassee in 1859. In 1860, more than forty merchants selling a variety of goods were doing business in town, along with doctors, lawyers, other professionals, and two newspapers. A railroad helped connect the capital to the rest of the world. Tallahassee remained a center for politics and plantations. What the capital still lacked was rooms for rent. By the middle of the 1800s, only two hotels operated in town. The hotels, plus the few boarding houses, were not sufficient to meet demand.
By 1860, 997 white people, 889 enslaved Black laborers, and 46 free people of color lived in Tallahassee. In the year before the start of the Civil War, about half of Tallahassee’s households included enslaved Black people. The Hagner family also enslaved Black people, possibly up to three at a time. One of the enslaved was named Burnett, known because Hagner mentioned Burnett in a letter he wrote to his father in 1846.
THE 1860S AND BEYOND
On May 10, 1865, at the end of the Civil War, Union Brigadier General Edward Moody McCook arrived in Tallahassee to take possession of the city on behalf of the United States. He set up his headquarters at the Hagner House. In the 1870s, it was used as a boarding house and rental property. From late 1872 to early 1873, another of Catherine Hagner’s brothers, Major Robert Gamble, acting as her agent, ran ads in The Weekly Floridian newspaper offering “The building known as the ‘Hagner House’” for rent. He was still advertising it for rent in 1881. Two years later, Catherine Hagner sold the house to Dr. George Betton. Once again it became a home, but this time with a doctor’s office included.
The Weekly Floridian, April 19, 1870
Harriet Baltzell likely managed the boarding house. She passed away in 1872, leaving Robert Gamble to place the ads offering the house for rent that began the same year.
Florida Digital Newspaper Library, University of Florida
Corner of McCarty and Monroe Streets, ca. 1870s
McCarty Street became Park Avenue around 1905.
Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Though the Civil War had impacted Tallahassee’s development, by the early 1880s, the capital city was experiencing a building boom. Old buildings were being remodeled or torn down, and new ones arose in their place. By 1890, gas lamps lit much of Tallahassee. Homes generally had individual wells or cisterns, with ‘privy’ in the back until 1904, when Tallahassee’s first sewage system began operation. Telephone service reached Tallahassee in 1896.
A NEW CENTURY
Hogs, goats, and other animals had roamed Tallahassee’s dirt streets for much of the 1800s. City ordinances banned owners from allowing their animals to wander the town freely, but the public generally ignored them. As more such ordinances appeared in the first decade of the 1900s and cars became more common, free-roaming animals became fewer. Tallahassee was growing in the early 1900s. By 1910, the city’s population exceeded 5,000 people. New buildings and parks were constructed and other parks underwent improvement, a new Governor’s Mansion was completed in 1908, streets received streets signs, and houses acquired numbers. Limited electricity reached the city around 1903. In the 1910s, the main streets were finally paved. Seventy years after its founding, Tallahassee’s downtown looked vastly different than it had in the capital’s early days. So did the surroundings of the future Knott House.
Monroe Street, ca. 1915–25
Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
