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  • On this day in Florida history - August
    • Aug. 15, 1887 - Eatonville becomes one of first all-black towns in U.S.
    • Aug. 13, 2004 - Hurricane Charley kicks off unusually active 'cane year
    • Aug. 12, 1981 - Developed in Boca Raton, first PC released by IBM
    • Aug. 11, 1987 - Santeria church vows to sacrifice animals despite Hialeah ban
    • Aug. 10, 1981 - Tragic discovery confirms death of missing Adam Walsh, 6
    • Aug. 9, 1956 - Reporters look down noses covering Elvis in Daytona Beach
    • Aug. 8, 1896 - Cross Creek, Yearling author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born
    • Aug. 6, 1868 - Great Seal of the State of Florida adopted by Legislature
    • Aug. 5, 1763 - Britain takes over Pensacola, expands slavery over two-decade Fla. rule
    • Aug. 4, 1842: U.S. gives free Florida land to settlers willing to fight Seminoles
    • Aug. 1, 1939 - Florida Highway Patrol formed; to begin with 60 troopers
  • On this day in Florida history - July
    • July 31, 1962 - Actor, tax evader Wesley Snipes born in Orlando
    • July 30, 1956: Delta Burke, star of tabloids and television, born in Orlando
    • July 28, 1896: With railroad into town, city of Miami incorporated
    • July 27, 1816: U.S. forces obliterate 300+ free blacks, Indians at 'Fort Negro'
    • July 26, 1876 - Daytona incorporated, named after founder Matthias Day
    • July 25, 1884 - St. Petersburg Times debuts as West Hillsborough Times
    • July 25, 1957 - Country star, actress Pam Tillis born in Plant City
    • July 23, 1836 - Cape Florida Lighthouse attacked by Seminoles
    • July 22, 1964 - First 536 home lots sold in new city of Coral Springs
    • July 21, 1821 - St. Johns and Escambia become first two Florida counties
    • July 20, 1969 - U.S. astronauts walk on the moon
    • July 19, 1952 - Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins is born; stardom and tragedy await
    • July 18, 1940 - Winners of St. Pete mayor's safety slogan contest announced
    • July 17, 1821 - Spain officially transfers Florida to United States
    • July 16, 1943 - Former 'Canes, Dolphins, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson born
    • July 15, 1997 - Killer gigolo guns down Gianni Versace at South Beach mansion
    • July 14, 1921 - Florida's most famous 'cracker cowboy' dies at 58
    • July 13, 1927: Officials dump $250k in liquor into Gulf Stream
    • July 10, 1972 - First of two major party conventions opens in Miami Beach
    • July 9, 1957 - Pass-a-Grille and three other towns form St. Pete Beach
    • July 8, 2011 - Last space shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral
    • July 7, 1983 - 'Operation Everglades' drug bust rocks Everglades City
    • July 6, 2003 - 'Hillbillies' star Buddy Ebsen, raised in Orlando, dies at 95
    • July 5, 1928 - Elks begin arriving for 1st Florida national convention
    • July 4: Florida celebrates America's Independence Day
    • July 3, 1971 - Doors singer, Melbourne native Jim Morrison dies
    • July 2, 1961: Key West icon Ernest Hemingway dies; cats live on
    • July 1, 1951: St. Pete woman's burning death baffles investigators
  • On this day in Florida history - June
    • June 1, 1937 - Amelia Earhart leaves Miami to begin final voyage
    • June 2, 2008 - Bo Diddley, 79, dies at his home in Archer
    • June 3, 1961 - Arrest made in case that leads to 'right to an attorney'
    • June 4, 1939 - Jewish refugee ship turned away from Florida coast
    • June 5, 2013 - Zephyrhills woman, 84, claims $590 million Powerball jackpot
    • June 6, 1990 - Broward Judge rules 2 Live Crew album 'obscene'
    • June 7, 1928 - Two elections workers shot in Tampa ballot box heist
    • June 8, 1888 - First train rolls into terminus "St. Petersburg"
    • June 9, 1903 - Flagler's Breakers Hotel burns down in Palm Beach
    • June 10, 1991 - South Florida learns it will get new major league baseball team
    • June 11, 1953 - Sabal Palmetto palm becomes Florida's state tree
    • June 12, 1913: With first bridge, Miami Beach is open for business
    • June 13, 1974 - Askew appoints first female Cabinet member
    • June 14, 1966 - FSL's Miami and St. Pete set record for longest baseball game
    • June 15, 1822: City of Jacksonville founded, named after Andrew Jackson
    • June 16, 1955 - Judge Chillingworth and wife go missing
    • June 17. 1942 - German U-boat saboteurs land at Ponte Vedra Beach
    • June 18, 1983 - Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space
    • June 19, 1972 - Hurricane Agnes makes landfall in Panhandle
    • June 20, 2003 - Non-profit Wikipedia established in St. Petersburg
    • June 21, 1926 - Miami barbers don't want to be called 'chirotonsors'
    • June 22, 1990 - Florida bans thong bikinis in state parks
    • June 23, 1938 - Marine Studios, 'world's first oceanarium,' opens
    • June 24, 1987 - S. Fla's most famous resident, Jackie Gleason, dies at 71
    • June 25, 1981 - Dolphins QB Bob Griese retires after 14 seasons
    • June 26, 1964 - Governor orders extra police to riot-torn St. Augustine
    • June 27, 1964 - State tells Daytona: Stop price-gouging your tourists
    • June 28, 1911 - Big Cypress Indian Reservation created by President Taft
    • June 29, 1931 - Monticello hits 109 degrees -- hottest-ever for Florida
    • June 30, 1975 - Cher marries Daytona Beach's favorite son Gregg Allman
  • On this day in Florida history - May
    • May 1, 1562 - Jean Ribault arrives at St. Johns River, claims Florida for France
    • May 2, 1936 - Panama City Beach incorporated in Bay County
    • May 3, 1901 - Jacksonville burns to the ground
    • May 4, 1990 - Execution goes awry as flames, smoke shoot from head
    • May 5, 1961 - Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
    • May 6, 1965 - Rolling Stones play Clearwater, write 'Satisfaction' riff
    • May 7, 1940 - Voting machine shortages create long wait at polls
    • May 8, 1923 - Killings of work camp prisoners detailed in hearing
    • May 9, 1981 - Sinkhole swallows house, five Porsches in Winter Park
    • May 10, 1781 - Spanish Gen. Bernardo de Gálvez captures Pensacola
    • May 11, 1996 - ValuJet Flight 592 crashes into Everglades
    • May 12, 1997 - Tornado hits Miami, poses for photos, videos
    • May 13, 1955 - Jax fans chase Elvis after show, tear off his clothes
    • May 14, 1973 - Skylab launches new era of space study...and toys
    • May 15, 1947 - Florida State College for Women goes co-ed, renamed FSU
    • May 16, 1929 - Lake City mob lynches grocer after wife shoots chief
    • May 17, 1980 - Not guilty verdict triggers three days of rioting in Miami
    • May 18, 1955 - Educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune dies
    • May 19, 2004 - Drugstore chain owner Jack Eckerd dies at 91
    • May 20, 1913: Henry Morrison Flagler dies in his home at Palm Beach
    • May 21, 1956 - Police close beach after catching black, white teens talking
    • May 22, 1931 - Canned rattlesnake goes on sale from Arcadia
    • May 23, 1898 - School for Deaf & Blind issues first diplomas
    • May 24, 1931 - Writer develops Planet of the Apes storyline for Miami
    • May 25, 1961 - JFK challenges nation to land on moon within decade
    • May 26, 1845 - Florida holds first statewide election
    • May 27, 1965 - Mysterious land deal near Orlando revealed
    • May 28, 1935 - Now controversial "Old Folks At Home" becomes state song
    • May 29, 1967 - Woman jailed after 25 kids found in station wagon
    • May 30, 1989: Claude Pepper dies after 60 years of public service
    • May 31, 1539 - DeSoto comes to Florida, changes continent forever
  • On this day in Florida history - April
    • April 1, 1926 - Air Mail service begins in four Florida cities
    • April 2, 1513 - Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida
    • April 3, 2006 - Gators basketball team win first-ever national title
    • April 4, 1933 - NASCAR 2nd generation leader Bill France Jr. is born
    • April 5, 1925 - 'Great Miami Tornado' kills 5, destroys 250 homes
    • April 6, 1959 - Seminole Tribe votes to support building "Alligator Alley"
    • April 7, 1890 - Author, Everglades crusader Marjorie Stoneman Douglas born
    • April 8, 1923 - News of "lost" Tamiami trail blazers heats up
    • April 9, 1921 - Whites kicked out of West Palm Beach "colored" town
    • April 10, 1766 - John Bartram ends journey through Carolinas, Ga., Florida
    • April 11, 1986 - FBI shootout in Dade prompts cops' need for more powerful guns
    • April 12, 1981 - Space Shuttle launched for first time
    • April 13, 1951 - Marion County sheriff killed by forged check suspect
    • April 14, 1528 - Bumbling conqueror Pánfilo de Narváez lands near Tampa
    • April 15, 1896 - Henry Flagler's railroad arrives in Miami for first time
    • April 16, 1915 and 1917 - Aviation takes two steps forward
    • April 17, 1961 - U.S. launches failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba
    • April 18, 1957 - Florida to U.S.: Integration ruling unconstitutional
    • April 19, 1930 - First Publix store incorporated in Winter Haven
    • April 20, 1967 - Orange Juice becomes official state beverage
    • April 21, 1924 - NY's infamous 'Bobbed Haired Bandit' caught in Jax
    • April 22, 2000 - Elian Gonzalez seized in raid, returned to Cuba
    • April 23, 1982 - Keys secede from Union, create Conch Republic
    • April 24, 1965 - Orlando honors hometown astronaut with John Young Day
    • April 25, 1966 - Gov. Haydon Burns says his plane trailed by UFO
    • April 26, 1920 - Crop shippers seizing ice, creating shortage
    • April 27, 1969 - 1,000 students help during FSU admin building fire
    • April 28, 1985 - World's tallest sand sculpture built at Treasure Island
    • April 29, 1980 - U.S. braces for magnitude of Mariel Boatlift
    • April 30, 1915 - Broward County created, named after former governor
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Picture
Picture

True stories
about
The Real McCoy

Bill McCoy refused to dilute his rum with water and iodine like other bootleggers, inspiring the world famous name
Picture
Bill McCoy, of Holly Hill and other Florida cities, and the brand of rum he made famous
By Denny Bowden
Volusia History - Retracing

Florida's Past
Fifty-two years ago my friend Bob asked me and another young teen to camp out for a single night on an empty spit of land that juts into the Halifax River in our hometown of Holly Hill, just north of 11th Street (now LPGA Blvd.). We three guys squeezed into a small tent without knowing that 61 years earlier only 100 yards or so from where we had pitched our tent, was the home of one of Holly Hill’s most famous men – one of America’s most successful rumrunners during the Prohibition.

McCoy was so successful that the U.S. changed maritime law, making territorial waters extend to 12 miles from shore

   Bill McCoy of Holly Hill built his reputation by providing only the best quality of booze, and as local historian Bob McKenna has pointed out, McCoy refused to dilute it as other rum runners did with water and mixed-in iodine to fool buyers to think that because it tasted bad it must be “good.” Instead, both McCoy’s undiluted whiskey and McCoy himself came to be known as “The Real McCoy.”

   Yet Bill McCoy was a teetotaler which I learned from local historian Beth Mindlin in 2007 at her Halifax Historical Museum lecture which informed us that McCoy stood 6 feet 2 inches tall and had “a voice like a foghorn” when he moved to the sleepy hamlet of Holly Hill in 1900 and set up a ship-building business with his brother Ben in a deep basin boat slip along the Halifax River, building first the Yankee Doodle and then the Columbia in 1902 and in 1903 the Uncle Sam, an excursion boat. Sometime later they built luxury craft for Cornelius Vanderbilt III and also Andrew Carnegie.

   The Halifax Historical Museum in Daytona Beach has a permanent display about Bill McCoy, his rum running, and his ships, and Frederic Van de Water’s The Real McCoy (Flat Hammock Press) is the definitive biography.

   In addition to their excursion business on the Tomoka River, the McCoy brothers transported freight and passengers between Daytona, St. Augustine, and Palm Beach until roads and buses proved too competitive for them, and according to Sally J. Ling, in the 1920s the brothers turned to smuggling booze, using their newly purchased white oak 90-foot fishing schooner, the Henry L. Marshall.  Beth Mindlin said that during his “career” McCoy transported 175,000 cases of scotch and rum.

   McCoy bought the Arethusa, which local historian Bob McKenna called “the pride of the Gloucester fleet” in his lecture on McCoy at the Halifax Historical Museum in 2007.  Sally Ling wrote that McCoy registered the ship with a British registry because the American Coast Guard couldn’t board a foreign ship if it was outside the three-mile limit of U.S. territorial waters.  

   He renamed it Tomoka, but to hide its identity he registered the same boat with the French as the Marie Celeste.  Authorities trying to overtake McCoy could only get close enough to photograph his boat, but according to McKenna, at least once McCoy slipped away from the Coast Guard into backwaters after they had spotted his boat as the Tomoka, and he quickly removed the Tomoka nameplate and screwed on the name Marie Celeste.

   McKenna noted that McCoy would keep the Tomoka safely three miles offshore – outside of U.S. territorial waters – where he could have high-speed “contact boats” powered by used WWI airplane engines rendezvous with him to take his shipment ashore in boats that could outrun the Coast Guard.  McCoy was so successful that the U.S. changed maritime law, making territorial waters extend to 12 miles from shore, but McKenna says that McCoy even used a seaplane to offload his smuggled rum.


McCoy developed a safer transport system with the bottles of rum stacked, not in cases, but as a pyramid of six bottles sewn into burlap, called “hams”

   McCoy made a trip per month and McKenna said that each trip cleared $100,000, but a Time Magazine web page cites Edward Behr’s book Prohibition as saying that McCoy “made $300,000 in profit for each trip,” and according to Wikipedia, rum-running became such a problem that 20 U.S. destroyers were transferred for use by the Coast Guard.  At one time, McKenna said, McCoy had five schooners and two other boats, and Mindlin said that McCoy developed a safer transport system with the bottles of rum stacked, not in cases, but as a pyramid of six bottles sewn into burlap, called “hams” because of their appearance.
   To continue his rum-running, McCoy moved to Nassau where, Mindlin says, proceeds from the numerous smugglers buying the islands’ booze allowed Nassau to pay off debt owed to England.

   McCoy had a Newfoundland dog named Old Faithful that he left one evening to guard money in the ship’s cabin when he went ashore, and the next morning, Mindlin says, McCoy found his dog outside the hotel door. It had jumped ship, swum ashore, and found his master. The dog also demonstrated its intelligence after it saved a boy who had fallen from a dock, but the dog apparently enjoyed the praise as hero so much that it began seizing other opportunities to push boys into water to save them, too, so it could win new praise.

   Local connections with the McCoy brothers of Holly Hill include their purchase of The Sweetheart, a boat belonging to Commodore Charles Grover Burgoyne, Daytona philanthropist and benefactor.  The McCoys used the boat as passenger service to Okeechobee, according to Beth Mindlin.

   Another story uncovered by Mindlin is that Ben McCoy built a house for his wife in Daytona Beach on Earl Street, but he later divorced her to protect her from being killed in connection with his illegal rum running, and he wiped out all record of their marriage.  Mindlin also found that Bill McCoy married Betty Maude Clark, a woman 22 years younger, but after several years Betty returned to her parents.

   Mindlin also learned that McCoy built the chimney for the home of Ianthe Bond Hebel, the author of a seminal book for local historians– Centennial History of Volusia County, and McKenna said that in later years, McCoy made shadow box models of schooners and sent them to museums, and he commissioned the painting of the Coast Guard cutter firing on the Tomoka.  Some ship paintings in Halifax Historical Museum are also the work of McCoy.

   I was a year old when McCoy, 71, died on December 30, 1948, of a heart attack and complications of ptomaine poisoning aboard his Blue Lagoon in Stuart, Florida, as Sally Ling has written.  Bob McKenna adds that McCoy’s ashes were scattered by a St. Lucie buoy near Stuart, but several members of Bill McCoy’s family remain not far from Holly Hill.

   Bill’s bootlegger brother, Ben, who lived to be 86, is buried in Pinewood Cemetery, appropriately across the street from Daytona Beach’s Boot Hill Saloon, and both of their parents are buried there as well.  Their sister, Violet, though, died in Iowa in 2005.

   Beth Mindlin helped to summarize The Real McCoy’s influence on this area by recounting that McCoy’s mother died here, and after the house at the southwest corner of today’s LPGA Boulevard and Riverside Drive was sold, some of the proceeds were used for the belfry and stained glass windows of Daytona Community Church.  Later, a local woman who knew Bill McCoy’s reputation said that every time the church bells would ring, she would say, “There goes a pint and a quart.”


Denny Bowden, Ph.D., writes about Volusia County history on the blog,
Volusia History - Retracing Florida's Past.
His work is reposted here by permission.
Read more of his Denny's blogs at 
http://volusiahistory.wordpress.com/
Previous posts
Daytona's Deadliest Air Crash: Aug. 10, 1937
Zora Neale Hurston's unsung years on Florida's east coast
Florida's Worst Freezes
Washtub Baths and Pot-bellied Stoves in 1930s Florida
Annie Oakley was nearly crushed to death near Daytona Beach
Before the Seminoles, Timucuans dominated northern Florida
The ghost settlement of Freemanville
Daytona Beach ends Stan Musial's pitching career
and aims him to the Hall of Fame
How Daytona Beach teens' lives changed during World War II