
G.W. Storter’s Store on the Allen River with the Storter home in rear (currently the Everglades City Rod & Gun Club). PHOTO BY ALVIN LEDERER
Craig Woodward
The first full time minister in Southwest Florida was George W. Gatewood. Before Reverend Gatewood, at age 24, came to scout out the area in 1886, there had been traveling Protestant preachers who held periodic revivals as well as Roman Catholic priests, from Key West, who came to the Chokoloskee area to attend to the spiritual needs of the Santini family and other Catholics; but none of them actually resided here. In the late 1800s, Key West was the principal city of the area and a number of the Conchs were Methodists. “Conchs” being the name given to transplanted white Bahamians who had moved to the Keys, many of them were descendents of British royalists who had escaped to the Bahamas after the Revolutionary War. Rev. Gatewood was a Methodist minister and was based out of what is currently Everglades City. He traveled the Ten Thousand Islands area (Marco Island, Fakahatchee Island, Halfway Creek, and Chokoloskee) for four years as a “circuit preacher.” In 1892, at age 30 he married his wife, Minnie Clark of Leesburg Florida, who was 16 at the time. The couple would document their adventures in the Everglades– Minnie by keeping a diary and George, years later, by writing two books about his days in Southwest Florida, one published in 1939, and the other in 1944.
George Gatewood built a church along the then Allen River (now the Barron River) in the town of Everglade (the name later changed to add the current “s”) and organized, as Rev. Gatewood would call it: “a little group of Methodists,” who became the core of a larger congregation which included Seminole Indians.

Transportation at the time was solely by sailboat as there were no roads in Southwest Florida. Many of his reminiscences had to do with bad weather, boating accidents and delays in travel. He reported that his 1893 trip to the Florida Methodist Conference in Palatka, Florida, took eight days of travel time. Rev. Gatewood accepted part of his pay in produce, including bananas and sugar cane syrup, and took those items with him to sell to finance the trip. On December 5th he started out from Everglades City toward Marco with another man and, when their borrowed sailboat capsized near Fakahatchee Island (due to a strong northern headwind and a “head tide”), a barrel of syrup poured out and “sweeten the bay for a considerable distance.” They waded out into the water and pulled the boat ashore. On December 18th he again started out for the Conference, this time accompanied by his wife with Captain R.B. Storter at the helm, but they immediately got stuck in Chokoloskee Bay at low tide. Later, when the tide came up, they were able to get to Coon Key and anchor for the night. The next day they got to Marco and ate dinner with George Gatewood’s friend, Capt. Bill Collier,

Methodist Circuit Preacher George W. Gatewood. PHOTO BY CHARLOTTE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Gatewood, during his 62 years here, was a keen observer of this area and especially the fishing industry. He reported that Captain Fred Quednau (later the mayor of Punta Gorda and the sheriff of Charlotte County), had once been in a boat off of Cape Romano seeing “50 acres of redfish where the water was about 25 feet deep and they were stirring up the sand from that depth. So many (redfish) were there that the fish at the surface were being lifted up by those below, creating the appearance of a coral oyster rock rising slightly above the water-level. The red cast of color was from the red color of the fish and their rippling of water helped give the appearance of being above the general surface level.” In 1892 Rev. Gatewood reported seeing a 56 foot long whale, “nearly dead,” that had drifted in to a pass west of Chokoloskee Island. The whale, tied to a mangrove tree, was being harvested by the Santini family of Chokoloskee who reportedly got 30 barrels of oil from the whale. When George and his wife Minnie rowed their boat around it they estimated the jawbone to be ten feet in length and the teeth to be “the size of a Jersey’s cow horn.”
In 1900 George Gatewood was appointed the “federal census enumerator”

Sunday school – Town of Everglade – 1906.
Being a Methodist Circuit Preacher was also a risky profession at the time. Captain Bill Collier tipped Gatewood off that: “a certain old man around here who, with a shotgun, was hunting you a while ago saying he was going to kill you because of something you said last Sunday in the pulpit.” The old man was a Civil War veteran who had heard Rev. Gatewood had made “certain unfavorable remarks about old soldiers.” Gatewood avoided the old man until he and his wife Minnie and her sister, “Bird” were going from Chokoloskee to Marco and got stuck on a little island for three days during a huge storm. They ran out of fresh water and had no choice but to go to the old soldier’s home to get water. Minnie objected as she did not want to carry her husband’s body “as a corpse home,” but in the end the old soldier and his wife were very cordial and the threats apparently forgotten.
One incident

Minnie Gatewood with her dog. PHOTO BY CHARLOTTE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Both of George W. Gatewood’s books are long out of print and his wife Minnie’s original diary is now located at Florida Gulf Coast University. They provide a rare look into everyday life at the turn of the century. George Gatewood died in 1947 at age 87 and his wife predeceased him in 1944, however their home still exists in Punta Gorda.
I want to thank Marya Repko of Everglades City for providing me copies of part of one of George Gatewood’s books for this article.
George W. Garwood was my Great Great Grandfather.
George was my grandfather.
Neither my self or family had seen this article before.
Nicely done.
Neil, thank you for your comment. I enjoy doing original historical research especially about people as interesting as your grandparents were.
Hi, Craig, I too enjoy reading about the history of SW Florida. Chokoloskee, Everglades city, Good land, Marco, etc.
I Have many books and a few pictures. You have a very good knowledge of the history and I enjoy reading your articles. I sold my house on Marco a while ago, and will retire eventually to one of the above towns I mentioned above.
Can you steer me to any place that I could purchase old pictures or prints? The Ace hardware on San Marco has some great ones hanging in the back. All the years I’ve been going there, I never knew Stan’s was a gas station way back when .
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Keith