Bahamian native Joshua Boyer, already a seasoned sailor, left Nassau for Key West before he was 20 and spent the 1870s earning a living from the sea along Florida's sparsely settled west coast. On a fishing trip in 1877, he stopped at the small sponging settlement of Anclote on the Anclote River, anchored his sloop at nearby Spring Bayou, and met early homesteader Alexander M. Ormond and his daughter Mary. Joshua and Mary fell in love, married, and built a tiny cottage and a livery stable next to Alexander's small home. As the settlement of Tarpon Springs grew, the Boyers converted their stable into a hotel that housed agents examining Hamilton Disston's newly acquired Florida lands, along with guests including former Arizona territorial governor Anson Safford and developers with Disston's Lake Butler Villa Company. Boyer and Safford later served on Tarpon Springs' first city council. The Boyers lived well there, supplying their table with wild game and crops grown near the cottage, entertaining land speculators, and hosting fishing parties on Joshua's sloop, the Tantalus. By the 1880s Joshua had become a land speculator while also fishing, farming, sailing to nearby harbors to sell goods, and operating a regular mail coach service between Tarpon Springs and Tampa, a one-way carriage trip that took at least two days under the best conditions. In 1898 Joshua, Mary, and Alexander moved to Florida's east coast, returning occasionally to visit family and friends. By the early 1920s the cottage had been moved to Orange Avenue near Tarpon Springs' business district, where George Protos, a young Greek American boy who lived across the street, later purchased it. Over the years rooms were added and later removed, but the cottage never had electricity.