A Special Moment In Time – Ida And Isidor Cohen: The Founders

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By Seth H. Bramson

Who was this Isidor Cohen fellow, and why does he deserve to be memorialized in a history column in an important and as widely read blog such as this?

As it happens, and as was noted in our last column, Isidor Cohen was Miami’s first permanent Jewish settler, he having arrived on the shores of Biscayne Bay on February 6th, 1896 after being stalled in Jupiter for several weeks during one of Miami’s not infrequent yellow fever epidemics.

With the lifting of the quarantine, he gathered his belongings and goods, which he planned to use to start his new business in the growing community on the shores of Biscayne Bay, and boarded a boat for Lemon City, now known as Little Haiti, but at that time the only usable steamship dock in that area of southeast Florida. Arriving at Lemon City in a rainstorm he was able to move his possessions and get them onto a buckboard (a horse drawn flat-bottomed freight vehicle with low sides) in order to move them to “the center of town,” which, at the time, was no more than a clearing with mostly shacks and tents for workers clearing the land and building the Royal Palm Hotel on the north bank of the Miami River.

Cohen needed to either purchase a lot and have a store built, or, at the least, rent space where he could begin his business of selling dry goods. There is, among Miami’s legitimate historians, some discussion of whether the Sewell Brothers (Everest and John) were or Isidor Cohen was the first retail merchant or had Miami’s first store, but, and in any case, the fact is that the land on which the stores and building were to be built had to be purchased from one of the mothers of Miami, Julia Tuttle.

Learning that Mrs. Tuttle owned the majority of property on the north side of the river in the then a-clearing village, he approached her to attempt to arrange for the purchase of a lot, and it is from that point that we begin to learn that Isidor Cohen’s sense of humor was one of the many things that endeared him to both the gentile and Jewish communities in what, in July of 1896, would become the City of Miami.

In 1923, Cohen wrote and self-published in bound and hard cover format “Historical Sketches and Sidelights of Miami, Florida,” a book that is today considered not only a fine Miami history-related collector’s item but a de- rigeur piece that is a “must-have” for any serious Miami memorabilia collector or local historian. “Historical Sketches….” is one of the first-published of Miami’s histories.

It was in his book that Cohen related his encounter with the formidable Mrs. Tuttle as he describes the interview that he had with her for the purpose of purchasing or renting property from her on the north side of the river. The results, Cohen wrote, were disappointing.

In going to see her and explaining his plight of needing a place to start and operate his business, she appeared sympathetic but told him, in no uncertain terms, that he would have to wait until the land was cleared and the streets were laid out. He explained to Mrs. Tuttle that he was, due to his “destitute condition” unable to wait, whereupon she suggested that he take a job with her clearing land for $1.00 per day.

Showing his wonderful sense of humor, Cohen wrote the following in his book: “Turning to Mrs. Tuttle I tried to impress ‘this naïve lady’ that ‘the last labor of that character my race had performed was in the land of Egypt’ and I went on to inform her that ‘it would be a violation of my religious convictions to return to that condition of servitude!’”

It should be noted at this point that, contrary to the nonsense bandied about by the same hucksters and front-running phonies (as the late, great Neil Rogers would have said) or that plagiarizers such as Posner just throw in to their books, who want their listeners or readers to believe that “Julia Tuttle sent Mr. Flagler some orange blossoms after the great and terrible freezes of December of 1894 and January and February, 1895 and that was why he extended his railroad to Biscayne Bay” (pure, total and absolute, as Shelley Berman, playing the judge in “Boston Legal” was wont to say, “Poopycock!”) or that, on walking or boat tours the same flim-flammers will point at a building and say “that was Al Capone’s hideaway” (complete and utter nonsense; Mr. Brown did not have any “hideaways;” he had a house on Palm Island, Miami Beach), Mrs. Tuttle was NOT an anti-semite. (As the only person in the state of Florida who gives the talk on the history of discrimination in South Florida, and with the largest collection of “restricted clientele” memorabilia in public or private hands in the country, I know a little bit more about the truth and facts regarding anti-semitism in Greater Miami’s history than the spouters of such completely false MISinformation do, asking that you keep in mind that those are generally the same toadies who spout off the “Oh, Jews weren’t allowed to buy property north of Fifth Street on Miami Beach until after 1920” hooey, that being complete, total and utter fol-de-rol, and, yes, we have, in The Bramson Archive, the documentation to prove that that statement is (and so many more spouted off by said hucksters are) completely and totally false.)

Following various machinations in arranging to bring his goods into Miami, finding a suitable location upon which to open a store and confirming his housing arrangements, Cohen set out to acquaint himself with the vagaries of the area, its geographic nuances and the fads and foibles of the locals, tasks which history has proven that he was imminently successful at.

On April 22, 1896, Cohen was among the relatively small number of people who watched the first Florida East Coast Railway passenger train arrive. (The very first train, a work and supply unit, had arrived one week earlier). Cohen relates that he was privileged to meet not only Henry Morrison Flagler but also Mr. Flagler’s now famous in Florida history lieutenants, James E. Ingraham (Flagler’s land commissioner), Joseph R. Parrott (his railroad vice president) as well as R. T. Goff, at that time the FEC’s superintendent. As was his wont, Cohen commented on the four men, referring to them as “an odd lot.”

Next issue: The Cohen story continues and we learn how Ida Schneidman became his bride.

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