Bee Ridge Community

Bee Ridge Community. . , From 1877 to 1891, Isaac Alderman Redd was pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church chartered by ten area families. The growing Bee Ridge community included Redd's oldest daughter Laura FeDonia, who with her first husband S.C. Rawls first settled in an area now known as Albritton Groves. In 1896, Donte and her second husband William H. Tatum built a home that stands on Proctor Road near today's Lakeview School. The first school in Bee Ridge met in Henry Hawkins's barn on Hawkins Road. In 1890, the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company, developers of the town of Sarasota, deeded an acre of land on McIntosh Road for a school briefly shared by the Bee Ridge Missionary Baptist Church. , Mrs. Potter Palmer's firm, the Sarasota-Venice Company, platted the town of Bee Ridge. An official post office was granted in 1912, Mrs. Palmer's Bee Ridge Hotel opened in 1914, and by 1917 the town boasted a dairy at Proctor and Sawyer roads. a Seaboard Air Line rail station and an apartment house, barber shop and store on Harris Street. Lumber from the booming town was supplied by Mrs. Palmer's sawmill, which was located on Gypsy Street and later housed a commercial cannery. In 1915 and 1917, the Bee Ridge Baptist Church and the Bee Ridge Presbyterian Church were added to the community., The Bee Ridge community, bounded roughly by Clark and Bee Ridge roads and Cow Pen Slough and Phillippi Creek, was a high inland area of sandy ridges separated by marshes. It was renowned for many bee swarms. Isaac Alderman Redd first settled the area following Florida's Seminole Wars and his discharge from the Army. Redd traded cattleman's skills with other pioneers such as William H. Whitaker. After his Confederate service, Redd lived with his family at several sites before settling 41 acres on Bliss Road in 1877.