Another weekend is looming—anticipate BBQ, friends, hair and nail session and maybe some Greek festival while I’m at it.

 

STILL CAN’T LEAVE THE HIGHLANDS:

 

 

 

Today we’re doing a town that even I haven’t heard of before:  TRILBY, FLORIDA (a course)

 

 

 

Located on US 98 close to where it  joins 301 is this town which was “formerly an active railroad crossroads.”  (BACKROADS OF FLORIDA/Waitley).

 

 

An earlier name for the town was Macon. The newer name Trilby was in use by 1895, although the Macon post office was not renamed Trilby until 1901. Trilby was named after the heroine in George du Maurier‘s novel of the same name.  (First published in 1894, the story of the diva Trilby O’Ferrall and her mentor, Svengali, has entered the mythology of that period alongside Dracula and Sherlock Holmes. Immensely popular for years, the novel led to a hit play, a series of popular films, Trilby products from hats to ice-cream…http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/788085.)Trilby Railroad magnate Henry Plant changed the name of the town because it duplicated the name of Macon, GA. He has been quoted as saying he wished to name it “after the heroine of a story which has lately deeply moved me.” Trilby was incorporated as a town in 1901 and again in 1913. Because of the loss of its railroad industry, it has declined into a residential community for Dade City, and also for the Tampa Bay region

 

 

 

 

1895 an African Methodist Episcopal Church was established to serve the spiritual and likely early educational needs of the African Americans of Trilby….located a small lot situated along the railroad tracks at the north end of town. .. It was next to this church that the African American people of Trilby established their own cemetery as burials were not allowed in the local white cemetery.

The Country Cemetery or Trilby African American Cemetery, as it is known, dates back to Pasco County’s sawmill days and before. During these times it was typical for the African Americans and whites to live on separate sides of the community and this segregation applied to Trilby, which is evident through the two separate cemeteries.  These two sides were usually separated by the railroad tracks that ran through the community.  http://www.trilbyfl.com/Trilby/colcem2.htm

 

 

 

 

1897. The Trilby Methodist Church is organized, according to a historical marker, which reads: “Trilby Methodist Church – organized by the Rev. T. H. Sistrunk in 1897 and built by the 12 charter members a year later, this original frame church and steeple of pioneer design has long been a center of community activities. Moved from near the railroad coal chute to the present site about 1920, it was remodeled in 1978. The pulpit, handmade by John Spinks, is still in use.”   http://www.fivay.org/trilby.html    Described in Florida Backroads as “one of the cutest tabernacles you’ll find anywhere.”

 

http://www.fivay.org/markers/trilby_cemetery.jpg

 

SOME COLLECTIBLES (SEE MY STORE ABOVE—JUST CLICK ON store)  from the days Railroads were big in Florida

 

Vintage Railroad Photo – Florida East Coast $13.45

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May of 1925, at about 1:00 in the afternoon, a fire started upstairs in Brad ham’s Dry Goods Store, and the whole town, on the west side of the tracks, went up in smoke. Bucket brigades were formed, but the stores were already gutted. The Dade City Fire Department raced to Trilby in a Model T fire truck to put our the fire. When they arrived, they found all the water hose had unreeled and had been left alongside the road. The fire was finally extinguished around 5:00 in the evening.    H. Mills tried to start another store in the Masonic Temple and the post office was moved into the bank building, but it was useless. Trilby would never again be the same.

Trilby, now only a community, had no use for such a large depot and so it was torn down considerably and remodeled.  By the fall of 1927 the job was completed and …is now exhibited at the Pioneer Florida Museum. In about 1927, the Trilby State Bank closed because of bankruptcy and never opened again. It burned a few years later.

The Trilby Depot was discontinued in January of 1976. .. it  (was)…moved to the Florida State Fairgrounds as part of their “cracker village.” Thanks to the Pasco County Commission it was finally conveyed to the Pioneer Florida Museum Association.   http://www.trilbyfl.com/history/boomtown.htm

 

 

“…what thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.”
― Marianne Wiggins