Radcliffe Cadman Bros. Packing House

After Lieutenant Colonel William Cadman bought an orange grove in Narcoossee in 1888, the grove appears to have served as an investment in his sons’ futures, with the sons and paid seasonal laborers doing much of the work. The citrus trees were eight years old and already bearing fruit when the sons established the Radclyffe Cadman Bros. company, and a few years later, during renovations to the house, a packing house was built, possibly from materials salvaged from another structure on the property. Federal census reports identify Reginald Cadman, the second eldest son, as the primary fruit grower, and he ran the citrus operation until retiring in the 1940s, while his older brother William worked only in the early years before leaving around 1900 to study engineering in Philadelphia, and the youngest son, Godfrey, later left in the early 1920s to pursue a ministry degree. Severe freezes in 1894 and 1895 devastated Florida citrus growers and badly damaged the Cadman grove, killing many trees, though the family cut off the dead tops so the trees could re-sprout, and it took another seven years before they bore fruit again. During the winter and spring harvest, workers clipped oranges by hand, climbed ladders for the highest fruit, filled large field crates or baskets holding one hundred pounds, cleaned the citrus in the field, and then brought it to the packing house, where it rolled down a chute to be sorted by size into bins before packing for shipment. The company wrapped each piece of fruit with beeswax-coated paper liners before crating it, and in 1921, the year Cadman Bros. became Cadman Groves, Inc., it shipped 2000 boxes of citrus by rail on the Atlantic Coast Line.

Florida · United States