It all started after my father's death when my mother began to suffer from dementia. It suddenly struck me that there were so many questions I hadn't asked my parents about their lives.
Yes, I knew when and where they were born and where they married, and we had often looked through the family photo album. I knew my father had fought during the war and had come home to start a bakery with his brother, but there were so many gaps that I now scrambled to collect as much information as I could from elderly relatives before they, too, passed on.
By 2010, I had traced my family back to the fifteenth century and had gone as far as I could. There was, however, one missing piece, and it was quite a big piece. I could not find my great-great-grandfather, Enoch Thomas Price.
As a young girl, my mother could remember hushed conversations about her nan's husband, Enoch, leaving the family to go to Florida to open a factory.
After years of extensive research, I still couldn't track down Enoch Price, whose wife, Eliza, had, in living memory, helped raise my mother. I had searched all the usual sources: birth, deaths and marriages, census records, newspapers, trade directories, police and court records, ship manifests, emigration and military records. I had even hired a private detective in Florida.
If there was an available record, I had searched it, both here and in America. Many records are listed from Enoch's birth in Bristol in 1844 until his disappearance in 1881. In this year, he is listed in the London Gazette as a bankrupt living with his wife, Eliza, and three daughters at Harold Street, Bethnal Green, London. He then vanishes from the face of the Earth. Records for his wife and daughters continued in Bristol until their deaths.
In June 2011, my cousin Gillian, a skilled family history researcher, called to say she had found him through a fluke encounter. Susan Sperry from California, who had recently retired, decided to explore the box of documents given to her thirty years before by her mother, which she had never opened. In the box, she found references to her great-grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotel owner and powerful American politician from Jacksonville, Florida, who had died in 1919.
It soon transpired that Susan's great-grandfather, Harry Mason, was, in fact, Enoch Thomas Price. From this single thread, the extraordinary story of Harry Mason began to unravel, leading me to visit the States to meet my American cousins. Susan Sperry and Kimberly Mason, direct descendants, persuaded me to write Burning Secret, not as a biography but as a thriller, merging fact with fiction, to tell the story of the extraordinary adventurer, rogue and chancer that he was.
Burning Secret took another eleven years to research and write, and sadly, both Susan and Kimberly passed away before the novel was complete.
The more I researched, the more I realised how much I needed to explore. Enoch is recorded as being destined for two years in the debtors' prison, from which few emerged unscathed. Abandoning his wife and three young daughters, he made for Florida. Here, in Jacksonville, he carved out his future and, by hook or by crook, amassed a fortune and became a powerful politician. While all this time, his wife, Eliza, and daughters languished in poverty in the slums of Bristol, England.
Researching Harry Mason took a lot of work. Some basic information came from the public records in Jacksonville and Tallahassee, where the librarians and archivists were exceptionally helpful.
Harry was elected in June 1897 to the Jacksonville City Council and in 1903, was elected to the Florida State House of Representatives, where his only surviving photograph is archived.
Annual trade directories trace Harry as a bartender at The European House, a bar in the Dutch style run by Nicky Arend at 80– 82 West Bay. Several academic records in Florida universities mention his involvement in the 1888 deadly outbreak of Yellow Fever and again in 1901 when the city was razed to the ground by the Great Fire of Jacksonville.
There are public records and court transcripts, some held in the United States Library of Congress, which cite Harry as the promoter who, against fierce public opposition, brought the 1894 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship fight between Gentleman Jim Corbett and the English challenger Charlie Mitchell to Jacksonville. This fight turned his fortunes from bartender to millionaire.
His most outstanding achievement was building the Hotel Mason on the junction of Bay and Julia Street, which opened on 31 December 1913. The largest and most opulent hotel in Florida (demolished in 1978).
Harry died on 5 November 1919 at his home, the almost palatial Villa Alexandria, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Jacksonville, Florida. Enoch was a man who, in his 75 years, lived several lifetimes.
R J Lloyd
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About the Author
Thank you for hosting RJ Lloyd today, Tony!
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