Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
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World War II Campaigns
Dieppe Raid to V-E Day
Air Offensive, Europe
Algeria-French Morocco with Arrowhead
Tunisia • Sicily with Arrowhead
Naples-Foggia • Anzio • Rome-Arno
Normandy • Northern France
Southern France • Northern Apennines
Rhineland • Central Europe
Po Valley • Air Combat, EAME Theater
Dedicated to those who served
Dedicated 3 September 1996
(War, World II • Patriots & Patriotism • Air & Space) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
American Beach was established in January 1935 when the Afro-American Life Insurance Company purchased 33 acres of land with a 1000-foot shoreline. This Masonry Vernacular home was built that year for the president of the company, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, by local African American shipbuilder William S. Rivers. Lewis was Florida's first African American millionaire and his home was the first built on the beach. The resort community attracted thousands of African American vacationers until 1964. The passage of the Civil Rights Acts desegregated beaches everywhere, and the tourist population sought closer or more popular beaches. Later that year, Hurricane Dora devastated the area destroying homes and businesses. Many residents chose not or could not afford to rebuild. In the 1970s one of Lewis' great granddaughters, MaVynee Betsch, lived in this house and, with other property owners, fought to protect the community's heritage from beachfront development. However, rising property taxes and declining health has reduced the population of American Beach's permanent residents. The American Beach Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, with the Lewis house as a contributing structure.
Pierre Chartier de Baulne, French Louisiana attorney general in 1719, held the earliest land grant at the former village of the Colapissa on Chapitoulas (Metairie) Road. His family first colonists to live nearby.
This original sanctuary of the St. Joseph Missionary Baptist Church is one of the few remaining institutional buildings directly associated with the old community of Hansontown. Originally a farming cooperative established for black Union soldiers, Hansontown was founded in 1866 by Dr. Daniel Dustin Hanson, a surgeon with the 34th Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry. Following Dr. Hanson's untimely death in 1868, the communal farm declined. African Americans, however continued to move to Hansontown, which developed into a large, dense neighborhood. The congregation for the St. Joseph Missionary Baptist Church assembled in 1930 under the leadership of Reverend Harrison Edwards. After meeting in several locations, the congregation purchased this plot of land in 1940 for the construction of the sanctuary, which was completed in 1950. Nearly all of the buildings in Hansontown were torn down for urban renewal projects in the early 1970s, but the church remained. Under Reverend H.T. Rhim, the congregation moved to a new location in 1985. This building still owned by St. Joseph Missionary Baptist Church, continued to be used for mission outreach.
In May 1887, the original wood frame building of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Fernandina was given to the black congregation and called Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. The structure was moved to face east on Ninth Street. The rectors of St. Peter's continued to serve the segregated congregations on Sunday mornings. Father Neil Gray, who served both parishes in the 1950s, called the walk between the two churches his "via dolorosa," or "way of suffering." In the 1950s, Good Shepherd included 59 confirmed adult members and 24 children. In 1964, the Good Shepherd building was destroyed by Hurricane Dora and a new building replaced it two years later. When Hamilton West, the Episcopal Bishop of Florida, declined to consecrate the new church, the black and white congregations were integrated. The new building, although never used as a church, became a youth center and stands on the northwest corner of the campus. The original church bell, which was cast from metal recovered from a pre-Civil War Florida railroad engine, was moved to Camp Weed in Live Oak, the camp of the Diocese of Florida.
