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Archive for the 'history' Category

Curlew church is one of Pinellas County’s oldest

Curlew Methodist Church in Palm Harbor

I’m from New England, a place where communities often stretch back several hundred years. It’s not like that here in North Pinellas County.

The area where I live, made up of Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs and even much of Clearwater, was little more than orange groves just 20 or 30 years ago. There are many wonderful assets in this region, but the local history is a bit thin.

But that’s not true of everything. A case in point is Curlew United Methodist Church, located in a little corner of Palm Harbor just north of Curlew Road.

Most churches in this area are not very old, but Curlew United Methodist Church was founded 140 years ago, in 1869. John Sutton, a local resident, decided that this part of North Pinellas County, a near-frontier area back then, needed a place of worship. He called together 22 of his friends and neighbors, and he then provided six acres of land for the church and an adjoining cemetery.

Sutton wasn’t done at that point; he also provided logs from the property, which were rafted down to a saw mill in Clearwater, cut into boards, and then rafted back up the coast.

The church members agreed to help build the church, which Sutton named Curlew after the pink birds that flocked nearby. Actually, Sutton thought the birds were curlew birds, but he was incorrect; they actually were pink spoonbills. No matter; the name “Curlew” stuck, and that’s the name of the church today.

About 12 years later, the church was destroyed by fire. The members held their services under a big oak tree on the property for a couple of years, then built a new building. However, that building wasn’t very well put together, and members tore it down in 1902 and built a new one.

That building was remodeled in 1942, and it still stands on the site and serves the members of the congregation, but not as the main church building; that structure was erected in 1969.

The cemetary that Sutton founded surrounds the church on two sides, and its gravestones provide a fascinating record of life and death in North Pinellas County from the late 1800s until the present day.

Today, the Curlew United Methodist Church still counts descendants of John Sutton among its worshippers. It is the oldest church in Pinellas County to still occupy its original site.

Tags: church, Curlew, history, north pinellas, Palm Harbpr

Orange season once again in Pinellas County

 
It wasn’t too many years ago that North Pinellas County was nothing but orange groves. If you lived in St. Petersburg or some other nearby community, a nice weekend jaunt might be a drive up US19, which back then was little more than a two-lane road, and perhaps stop at a roadside citrus stand for a bag of oranges or grapefruits.

Almost all of those orange groves have given way to housing developments, car dealerships and other businesses. But one roadside stand, Citrus Country Groves, has managed to survive to the present day.

Located on US19 in an unincorporated part of Pinellas County at the corner of Belleair Road between Largo and Clearwater, Citrus Country Groves has soldiered on, offering small cups of free orange juice, bags of citrus fruit and all kinds of touristy gizmos to send back or take back to the friends and neighbors up north. There is even an active orange grove of several acres out back, lcated on what now is pretty expensive real estate.

This year, the owners of Citrus Country Groves took the signs off the building, and people were worried that Citrus Country Groves might have finally decided to sell out. But the owners say the signs were removed only to make it easier to paint the building.

The seasonal business is set to open on schedule, on Oct. 23.

Citrus Country Groves is a Pinellas County landmark. Stop by for a glass of orange juice, and take some home with you while you’re at it.

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Tags: florida oranges, pinellas