Carson in Florida

The Carson Family

From Washington County, Virginia
To Rockcastle County, Kentucky
To Jellico, Tennessee
To Davie, Broward County, Florida

Stephen Green Carson
Born: April 29, 1870 in Blue Lick, Rockcastle County, Kentucky
Died: December 05, 1953 in Davie, Broward Co. Florida

Ancestors of Stephen Green Carson:

Great Great Grand Parents: David Carson, born about 1741 and Elizabeth Dysart, born about 1745 in Washington Co., VA

Great Grand Parents: Joseph Carson, born July 02, 1778 in Abingdon, Washington Co., VA and Mary A. Evans, born 16 Nov 1776 in either Washington Co., Virginia or Maryland

Grand Parents: (Preacher) David Carson, born February 04, 1798 in Washington Co, VA and Catherine Lawrence, born June 1801 in Washington Co, VA

Parents: Joseph Carson, born November 12, 1822 in Crab Orchard, Rockcastle Co., KY and Mahala Jane Owens, born July 15, 1826 in Rockcastle Co., KY

The 1926 Hurricane in Davie, Florida

One year after the Stephen Green Carson and Thomas Newman Holman families moved to Davie, Florida, the 1926 hurricane destroyed most of the area.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
1926 Miami: The blow that broke the boom
By Stuart McIver
September 19, 1993

IT HAD NOT been a good year for South Florida. A wild real-estate boom had collapsed. Millionaires at the end of 1925 had become poor folks by the middle of 1926. Solid citizens skipped monthly payments and tax bills - and lost their homes. Businesses failed.

The sun still shone, but its rays bounced off the bleaching skeletons of unfinished buildings. Where had the good times of the Roaring '20s gone?

Oh, well, thought battered Floridians, things couldn't get worse.

And then they did, on Sept. 18, 1926.

From out of the Caribbean a storm, described by the U.S. Weather Bureau in Miami as "probably the most destructive hurricane ever to strike the United States," hit Fort Lauderdale, Dania, Hollywood, Hallandale and, most viciously of all, Miami.

In the storm's eerie darkness, winds as high as 150 miles per hour, resulting in the deaths of between 325 and 650 people. More than 800 others were never accounted for. Property damage was the worst in U.S. history, at that time.

Striking some 25 years before hurricanes were named, the 1926 storm became known in South Florida simply as The Hurricane or The Big Blow, a ghoulish honor it held until Andrew struck on Aug. 24, 1992.

Born near the Cape Verde Islands off Africa on Sept. 6, 1926, the storm moved across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean. It was reported off St. Kitts on Sept. 14. Two days later it had moved into the Bahamas, and by Sept. 17 it had taken aim at South Florida.

However, there was no sense of alarm. Most of the 200,000 people living in the storm's projected path were new to Florida, lured here by the easy money of the land boom. Having never seen a hurricane, they had little knowledge of a storm's destructive force. It would cost many of them their lives.

AT 10 A.M. ON FRIDAY, SEPT. 17, the Weather Bureau in Washington issued an advisory about "a very severe storm" that would pass through Nassau early Friday evening in a direction that would push it onto the Florida coast. Newspapers ran the advisory, but readers failed to take it seriously.

Just before 6 p.m., Miami weatherman Richard Gray received orders from the Weather Bureau in Washington to issue hurricane warnings. But in 1926 there were few avenues for warning people. Only a handful of people owned radios to hear the warnings broadcast on South Florida's only radio station.

That evening the wind began to blow harder, the barometer kept falling, and the waters started rising. Gale-force winds lashed the shore.

At 2 a.m. the hurricane, 60 miles wide, struck the shore with tremendous force. In pitch darkness, Floridians cowered before the roar of the winds and the crash of collapsing buildings.