Brown Collection--216 photographs of the Brown family taken in and around Eastpoint and St. George Island between 1898 and 1912

Collection Number: M83-9
Creator: Brown Family.
Title: Photographic Collection, 1898-1912.
Quantity: 226 photographs
The 216 prints on this Web site represent a selection from the Brown Collection. The entire collection can be viewed at the State Archives of Florida in Tallahassee.

Description: This series consists of photographic negatives taken by the Brown family of Eastpoint, Florida, circa 1898 to 1912. The photographs depict members of the Brown family and other early settlers of Eastpoint; scenery and buildings of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, and St. George Island; ships and boats in the Apalachee and Apalachicola Bays; local schools; and farm workers.

Historical Note: The Brown family, headed by David H. Brown originally of Virginia, was a founding family of Eastpoint, Florida, a small town on the western edge of the Apalachee Bay. David Brown, his wife Elizabeth Wood Brown, and their three-month-old son, Herbert, migrated to Nebraska from Virginia in 1884. In 1896, they moved back east to Muscogee County, Georgia, with several families organized as the Christian Commonwealth, a group dedicated to forming a community where the work and rewards would be shared by all. Two years later, Brown and five other families left Georgia and traveled down the Chattahoochee River to Apalachicola, Florida. They settled across the Apalachicola Bay on the strip of land called Eastpoint.

The settlers established a group called the Co-Workers' Fraternity which was concerned with spiritual, philosophical, and religious study, as well as a separate but related industrial colony focusing on economic production. Although individuals owned their land, the profits were shared among colony members. They engaged in farming, the seafood industry, and the lumber business. Rebecca Wood Brown served as Eastpoint postmistress from 1898 to 1938, with the post office located in the Brown home. Her children, Herbert and Elizabeth, took over the postmaster duties in 1938. Descendents of David and Rebecca Wood Brown remain in Eastpoint.