Louis Dargan (L.D.) Ervin, born in Darlington, South Carolina, in 1873, attended the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth of Savannah, the oldest institution of higher education for African Americans in Georgia, then settled in Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked as a skilled mason and licensed contractor. In 1901, he became one of the first full-time agents for the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, remained with the company for 63 years, and retired as its vice-president. In 1935, company president Abraham Lincoln Lewis helped establish American Beach as a vacation community for African American because of racial segregation, and in 1938 Ervin built this two-story beach cottage there as the second home constructed on American Beach and as a vacation home for himself and his family. Ervin’s Rest remains in family ownership, is the only ocean-front home on American Beach that still maintains its original structure, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, and L.D. Ervin’s legacy in the American Beach community was also preserved with a street named in his honor.