If there’s one thing you can say about the UC’s old cemeteries, it’s that they’re democratic. Soldiers, socialites, saints and sinners, the well-to-do and the ne’er do well: They mingle quietly, like guests at an alcohol-free wedding reception. Even the mobsters are mannerly.
It wasn’t always that way, of course. Pioneer Tampa was a lawless frontier town with a streak of bad. The sort of place, according to an 1880s Jacksonville, Fla. newspaper clipping, where “it is a good deal safer to kill a man than to steal a pig.”
Not to speak ill of the dead, locals probably sighed with relief when some early Tampanians – and their victims – started pushing up daisies. As we approach All Hallows Eve, when the dead supposedly rise to visit the living, I feel it prudent to introduce you to the people of the city’s unhallowed past.
Oaklawn Cemetery (c. 1850)
Morgan & Harrison Streets
Thomas Pugh Kennedy (1812-1858)
Tom Kennedy, an enterprising Irishman, moved to Tampa from Philadelphia in 1840. His original establishment was at Whiting and Fortune Streets on the edge of Ft. Brooke (the c.1824 Army fort near the mouth of Tampa Bay). There, Kennedy traded with the soldiers, settlers and Seminole Indians who visited Tampa.
Kennedy’s luck started out bad and got worse. First, in an effort to deter Indians from visiting Tampa, he was told to move his store to Pine Island (135 miles away). Trade there was poor and a fire destroyed his store. The Irishman eventually, although temporarily, amended his fortune by teaming with Tampanian, John Darling, in a risky blockade-running venture during the Mexican War.
Kennedy used his profits to invest into another store catering to Indian clientele; this time at Payne’s Creek on Peace River. The store saw brisk trading in calico, combs, mirrors, hatchets and tobacco … as well as vast quantities of rifles, powder and shot. But when the Third Seminole War began, the store was destroyed and Kennedy’s career as an Indian trader was over for good.
Kennedy’s name may sound familiar, because he made national news in March 2008 when his great-granddaughter attempted to collect on a promissory note made out to him during the Civil War. In need of ammunition and other supplies, the City of Tampa gave Kennedy a note for the amount of $299.58. To this date, the city has yet to fulfill its obligation.
Judge James T. Magbee (1820-1885)
J.T. Magbee, recognized as Tampa’s first lawyer, eventually climbed his was up to the position of Circuit Court Judge. And in 1870, that’s the job he held when he captured another first for his resume – the receiving end of the first-ever impeachment proceedings held by Florida’s House of Representatives. (Among many reasons for impeachment, one was that Magbee jailed and fined a citizen $100 for publishing an article that was critical of him.) The judge ended up resigning his position.
But impeachment aside, Magbee’s worst offense (according to the locals) was that he was a scalawag (a name for Southern Democrats who – upon sensing which way the wind was blowing in the Civil War – changed their party affiliation to Republican).
Magbee was also well known for his love of liquor. During one of his benders, he passed out on the dirt street corner of downtown’s Franklin and Washington Streets. Finally fed up with Magbee’s recurrent condition, the locals sprinkled cornmeal and molasses on his recumbent form. By morning, the hogs that openly wandered the settlement had eaten off the man’s clothing; leaving him naked as he lay in the road.
Charlie Wall (1888-1955)
Charlie Wall was Tampa’s very own all-American, home-grown, goodfella. Born in 1888 to one of the city’s most prominent families, Wall turned to the dark side at an early age.
In his teens, Wall was a habitué of the gambling halls, drug dens and bawdy houses of Ft. Brooke City (the shanty town around the site of the era’s Army post). By the 1920s, Wall was Tampa’s kingpin of illegal gambling – the first of the bolita lords. While in his late 60s, his controversial life came to an end like many mobsters; by a cold-blooded murder (still unsolved).
Adam, a Slave (circa. ??)
Beneath the plain replacement stone at this gravesite belies a grisly tale. Accused of killing a white man in 1859, “Adam,” a slave, had a four-day trial – three days more jurisprudence than any white man accused of murder and tried during the time. Sentenced to hang, Adam’s execution was stayed by a writ of error from the State Supreme Court. Tampa’s citizens, infuriated at the obstruction of local justice, lynched him anyway.
Mr. Hubbard, a Cuban Pirate (d. 1850)
Some fellow in the United Kingdom claims Oaklawn is home to the world’s only identified pirate grave. Silly fellow … Oaklawn doesn’t have one pirate grave; it has several.
Mr. Hubbard (whose name was known, clearly, to the many customers who bought his contraband Cuban rum for their Christmas punch), died in the woods in 1850. His body was brought to Oaklawn and coffined at public expense; a stupefying $7. You can bet he had some thirsty mourners.
Yellow Fever Mass Grave (1887-1888)
The villain in this gravesite is the disease that brought hundreds of Tampa residents to death’s door and beyond: yellow fever. The year marked on this gravesite was the worst, wiping out a third of Tampa’s population.
Seasonal yellow fever epidemics ravaged the area between 1824 and 1905. During the worst of it, the city nearly emptied as citizens fled the horror. A large number of those who braved to stay eventuall succumbed to the illness and died. The corpses were then shoveled into Oaklawn’s mass grave, covered with quick lime and consigned to memory.
Woodlawn Cemetery (c. 1888)
3412 N. Ola Ave.
Perry G. Wall (1879-1942)
Can you be a villain and a VIP at the same time? In early Tampa – as in the rest of the Old South – you sure could. One newspaper observed that it was “an impossibility to hang a man of good family in the South for killing another man.”
Perry Wall was indisputably a man of good family. As a member of the Board of Trade and a co-owner of one of the largest mercantile operations in Florida, Wall joined nine other Tampa bluebloods in the Citizens’ Committee of 1910. This gang of ten used strong arm tactics to end labor disputes and strikes in the cigar trade (in which the committee had heavy financial interests).
On Sept. 20, 1910, during a protracted strike by cigar workers, the Committee is believed to have engineered the lynching of two young Sicilians from a tree near Grand Central Boulevard. No proof ever surfaced, but Perry … we’ve got our eye on you!
Italian Club Cemetery (c. 1896)
22nd Avenue & 26th Street
Santo Trafficante, Joseph “Jo-Jo” Cacciatore, Joe Antinori, Alfonso Diecidue, Frank “Daddy Frank” Diecidue, Augustine “Primo” Lazzara, Salvatore “Silent Sam” Lorenzo, Angelo “The Hammer” LoScalzo and more.
Just because you got whacked, or maybe did some whacking yourself, doesn’t mean you don’t rate a nice funeral and a classy grave marker. A number of well-known mobsters grace the grounds of the Italian Club Cemetery. Buried along with the bodies of these Cigar City mafia members are the secrets of their underground world. Only they know who whacked whom and why; and the answers to many of the city’s unsolved murders of their time.
About The Author
Maureen J. Patrick is a Tampa native and holds an advanced degree in cultural history. She is president of the Tampa Historical Society, editor of The Sunland Tribune (a journal of local history) and owner of Historic Guides, a ghost walk tour company.