After purchasing 30 acres from Dr. Franklin Branch in 1859, Captain John and Mary (Kemp) Curry built 22 homes on this site, where their extended family of 29 moved from Key West on the self-built ship Ariel. Simon Bartholf, Richard Roberts, and Bahamian carpenters had arrived earlier and constructed the two houses on the site. After Captain John's death, the two homes passed to his son Samuel George Curry and his wife Amanda (Andress), and later to their daughter Mary Amelia. Their youngest daughter, Theodosia Lloyd, built the house across the street in 1925 and gave it to her son Phillip and his wife Theresa (Martin), who lived there until the 1980's. The Curry homestead, including the Manatee Mineral Springs, also stands on ground with a deeper history: Pre-Columbian mounds once stood here; during Florida's time as a Spanish territory until 1821, Blacks seeking freedom from enslavemnt went south into Florida; and border skirmishes and slave raids drove men, women, and children to safer places south of the Manatee River at Angola, a documented stop on Florida's Underground Railroad that was destroyed in a large slave raid in 1821, when hundreds were captured and some escaped to the Bahamas or Florida's interior. In 1864, Union sailors came ashore and destroyed the Curry saw mill and grist mill, and in August 1864, under Capt. John Bartholf, 40-60 soldiers of the 2nd Colored Infantry camped on this site.