1895 Population of several Florida Towns
As the years pass and Florida’s population grows by the
thousands
each year, we tend to forget how few people were in Florida just a
hundred years ago or less.
When I came across
these population figures for some of the towns in our own area of
Jefferson County and the some of surrounding towns I was amazed. I
looked at other towns in Florida and found it very interesting of where
people were in 1895 in Florida. Some towns that were very populated
then, barely exist now and others that didn’t exist then are heavily
populated now. One of the big surprises was Key West. As the largest
and richest town in Florida in 1895, it had 18,080 people with 200
cigar factories. In 2000 there was 25,478 people living there, most
retired.
Monticello was then (at 1216 people) and still is, the
largest town in Jefferson County. It has about doubled in population to
2,541 people in 2008. This represents only 17.5% of the population of
14,451 people in Jefferson County in 2008.
The
following is the 1895 populations of some towns in Jefferson County,
the nearby counties and some of the larger towns in Florida.
Keep
in mind that the population of North Florida was mostly rural farmers
and these figures represent only the “Townies”. However the
size
of the towns represented the density of the rural populations of the
time. Enjoy ….
By Verne O'Neal
| Town | Number |
| Aucilla | 216 |
| Greenville | 300 |
| Hayward's Land | 256 |
| Iamonia | 301 |
| Lloyd | 351 |
| Waukeenah | 402 |
| Salem | 101 |
| Madison | 781 |
| Monticello | 1,216 |
| Perry | 107 |
| Pinhook | 43 |
| Spring Warrior | 23 |
| St Marks | 76 |
| Stephenville | 76 |
| Tallahassee | 2,934 |
| Quincy | 681 |
| River Junction | 402 |
| Chattahoochee | 383 |
| Apalachicola | 2,727 |
| Alamo | 203 |
| Bloxham | 5 |
| Bristol | 304 |
| Carrabelle | 482 |
| Marianna | 926 |
| Mt. Pleasan | 32 |
| Scotland | 52 |
| Smith Creek | 32 |
| Sneads | 101 |
| Jacksonville | 17,201 |
| St. Augustine | 4,742 |
| Palatka | 3,039 |