Port Santos

In 1882, John A. Cole and his family, black Americans, established Santos after returning to the United States from Brazil, where they had gone following the American Civil War; they named the community after a village in Brazil and brought with them two Brazilian slaves, Benedict and Sirea, who adopted the family name. The residents farmed, harvested timber, and built a community with businesses that included two general stores, a moss gin, a barber shop, a fish market, post office services, and a rock crushing facility that supported lime rock mining, while Santos also served as a shipping hub and, by 1889, a flag station on the Florida Transit and Peninsula Railroad. Community life centered on the Felder Well, the Roper Farm School, and churches including the Holiness Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, later the Little Chapel United Methodist Church. Baseball strongly united the area, and in the 1890s a Negro Baseball League team played here before enthusiastic crowds from both inside and outside Santos. Santos was effectively eliminated as an unincorporated town when the government acquired its land for construction of the Cross Florida Ship and Barge Canal, displacing homes, businesses, churches, and places such as Calvary Baptist Church and Bob Wassan's moss gin, though many families moved only a short distance away and some descendants still live in the area. The canal was never completed, and in 1998 the land intended for it became the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway.

Florida · United States