WHY DO THEY CALL IT CORAL GABLES? PART ONE

Written by Wellborn Phillips

A game that historians play is to select dates as “The Most Important” from an era, decade or century.  For Dade County, the years 1895-98 are prime candidates for such a designation.

In those four unbelievable years, Dade County shed its obscure frontier status to evolve into a still-small, still somewhat crude, but dynamic community—and on its way to becoming a Famous World Center  in less than an unbelievable—and “mere” one hundred years.  -

These four unbelievable years saw for Miami the arrival of a railroad, the building of a magnificent hotel, the paving of miles of streets, the incorporation of the City of Miami and the arrival of many new talented people who would play key roles in the City’s future.  And Miami also got its first bank, newspaper, church and civic organization, it first telephone company and department store and its first doctor—and a hospital promised and being planned

While all of these things were happening in Miami, another significant event was happening in 1898 just “down the road” in Coconut Grove—an event that went unnoticed at the time. A young Congregational minister named Solomon Merrick and his 12 year-old son, George, had checked into the Peacock Inn..

For some time, Solomon had lived with wife Anthea and family in Duxbury, Massachusetts, north of Plymouth  where he had a small church.  There one of the children died of pneumonia.  And the family decided to move elsewhere to escape the severe winters of New England.

Solomon began leafing through church directors.  In one of them he found the name and address of an unknown fellow-churchman—“James Bolton, Coconut Grove, Florida. ” He wrote to Bolton.  Bolton replied, “there is a 160-acre- homestead, known as “The Gregory Homestead,” four miles west of Coconut Grove that is for sale.  There is a small house on the property.  And the property   can be bought for $1,100.”

Solomon sent Bolton the money to buy the property sight unseen.  Then Solomon and George packed their bags.  And they headed south as the family’s scouting party.

At Jupiter, the trip was interrupted for several weeks.  Miami had a typhoid epidemic and was quarantined. Sometime later, they went on to Coconut Grove and got a meal at the Peacock Inn and then, a room at Bay View House, also owned by the Peacocks.

At the Peacock Inn, we can be sure they met the innkeepers Charles and Isabella Peacock—and we can only guess that they met the rest of the Peacock family.

Eighteen years later, one of the Peacock’s grand-daughters, Eunice,  become Mrs. George Merrick—but for the moment—in 1898—12-year-old George couldn’t have cared less:  he was immediately delighted with the warm, clear water of Biscayne Bay (he was used to swimming in frigid Cape Cod Bay) and anxious to see an alligator—in fact, he was thrilled with all of the attributes of his new home and he was impatient to get on with anything—and everything-- that needed to be done.

Finally, Solomon was able to contact Mr. Bolton.  And the first thing Mr. Bolton did was to give them a deed, then he showed them the property he had convinced Solomon to buy sight unseen.  The Rev. Mr. Merrick was disappointed—it wasn’t at all like he had hoped.  But George was thoughtful.  Somehow he thought his father might have trouble getting back the money;  at the same time, this might just be a great place to live.     

It is fortunate for Dade County (and especially for the Merricks and the future Coral Gables) that George already possessed the character that were to make him famous years later:  enthusiasm, persistence, imagination, daring –frankly, the Rev. Mr. Merrick was discouraged.  The conditions that he found were so primitive—and not at all what he had expected.  The new “home”  was but a cabin, the “homestead”, nothing but a tangle of weeds—and it was so far away from anything—from  civilization!

They argued back and forth for several days.  But George won:  they would stay.  And Solomon became the leader of a small—but growing group that would eventually found the Congregationalist church in Coconut Grove—the fore-runner of the Plymouth Congregationalist Church.

In the mean time, father and son began working on the homestead—and on the little shack.  Anthea arrived with the other four children—Ethel, Medie, Helen and Charles—and shortly after that,  their last child, Richard, was born.

With the farm, Solomon and George were successful from the start  The area that is the Grenade Golf Course was soon producing bountiful crops of beans, lettuce, celery, eggplant and tomatoes.  Other areas were planted in grapefruit and orange trees.  For some time, this produce was carted laboriously to  Coconut Grove and Miami.

Finally, a packing house was built (at what is now the corner of Castile and South Greenway Drive) from which the produce was shipped to   increasingly more destinations in the Northeast United States.

For a long time, Anthea had been busy designing a spacious rock addition to the “little frame cabin” and work was begun in 1903.  In the mean time, history has a way of leaving blanks for future generations.  Did Soloman  get rooms at the Bay View House when Anthea and children  arrived and keep paying for them until the “spacious rock addition” was completed  sometime after1903?  Or where else did they live?  History doesn’t tell us, but history does tell us how the house, the business—and the City got its name.

For a name, the Merricks reminisced back to their life in Duxbury and visits they had made to Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod.  They had been especially impressed by President Grover Cleveland summer home there and by its descriptive name, “Grey Gables.”  The Merricks modified that name to “Coral Gables” and adopted it as the name for their own home—the word “coral”, describing the red tiles o ntheir roof.  The business or homestead was also renamed the ‘Coral Gables Plantation.  And years later, no one was surprised when the town was named “Coral Gables.”

The address of the Solomon Merrick home is 907m Coral Way.