New tourists, settlers and speculators came into the area following the War, including such notables as John Muir and Ulysses S. Grant, To Northerners Archer was a "sleepy little town" located on high rolling land and surrounded by forests of oak, pine and hickory. Farms and plantations dotted the land leading into Archer, which the tourist rumbled past on the train. During the 1860's and 1870's Archer was becoming an important agricultural center for the southern part of Alachua County. Farmers in town grew a variety of products that were shipped to market by train.
Sugar cane and sea-island cotton were big cash crops with 600 barrels and 600 bags shipped annually. Other crops included plum tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, grapes, melons, oats and corn; by the 1880's Archer's produce averaged around 15,000 crates a year. Not only produce but contraband was also shipped on the Florida Railroad; in 1868 men, guns and supplies passed through Archer on their way to support a revolution occurring in Cuba at the time.
The town's growth continued through the 1870's. By 1874 Archer's business section boasted four general stores, a drug store, three saloons, a fourth-class post-office, a blacksmith and the depot . A traveler on his or her way through Archer from Gainesville would see the Lone Oak Hotel, a saloon, two or three general stores and a scattering of houses on the right side of the tracks; on the left was the blacksmith shop, the drug store/post- office, a cotton gin and the log-built Methodist church. Population in 1874 was about fifty in town although many more people lived just outside the city limits.
The Union School was built in 1875 near where the present day Baptist church stands and just south of B. M. Bishop,s house. School was moved from C.W. Bauknight's buggy shed at this time and begun in the new building. On Sundays, Presbyterian services were held in the school.
In 1876 Archer played a role in ending Reconstruction, when
the tiny precinct voted Republican and sent Florida's electoral
votes to Rutherford B. Hayes. Democrats declared that Archer's
returns were invalid because of illegal procedures. They charged
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that blank ballots had been signed by voters which were then filled in with the Republican candidate's name by two precinct officials in a back room of the polling place and then substituted for the ballots in the box. This led to 219 extra Republican votes than what could be accounted for in Archer's returns. Federal troops were called in to interview voters; they found hundreds of blacks who claimed to have voted Republican. An investigating committee decided that there was inconclusive proof anyone tampered with the balloting and the votes were tabulated. This led to a popular saying of the time that "six won't beat seven", in reference to the number of Democrats to Republicans on the committee.
New settlers in the 1870's were attracted to Archer and the surrounding area by pamphlets that were distributed throughout the North by land speculators who extolled the salubrious climate and fertile soil, one pamphlet describing Palmer, a small village just east of Archer on the Florida Railroad, even gave a cost estimate on various kinds of housing; for instance, a log cabin big enough to accommodate a moderate-sized family cost fifty dollars to build, while a frame house the same size cost four hundred dollars to put up. A number of Northern farmers responded to the advertisements, including Quakers from Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska.
The Quakers sent a superintendent and an assistant before them to purchase acreage in and about Archer. one of the first Quakers to move into the area was W. B. Lipsey who co-owned and managed a nursery about a half mile southeast of the depot. He built his house on the crest of a low hill overlooking the nursery; standing 2 1/2 stories high and constructed in the French Second Empire style, it was considered to be the largest and most modernly furnished house in Archer at that time. This house was eventually purchased by the Leynes family, George Robert Leynes Sr., and his wife Velma Crevasse Leynes in 1908, after the Lipsey's had moved from Archer.
Dr. J. C. Neal was another Quaker who moved to Archer. Unlike
the others, Neal moved primarily for health reasons. Suffering
from consumption, he claimed that his year or two in Archer had
restored him to a rugged, robust condition. Following the example
of other Quakers, Dr. Neal planted oranges; his home in the middle
of Archer was surrounded by a grove of 400 orange trees,
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Another early Quaker settler in Archer was Thomas Pearson. The Pearsons came from IndiaLna and were encouraged to move to Archer by W. B. Lipsey, who had written them and told them that the climate was pleasant, land was cheap and the soil rich, They arrived in town in January 1882. Thomas Pearson's first task was to build a log home for his family. From there he started up a nursery with his son near Lipsey's. Pearson's youngest son, T. Gilbert, became a noted ornithologist who later founded the National Audubon Society. Much of his early interest in birds came from the time he grew up in Archer.
Other Quakers who moved into the area were Drs. DePass and Rice, the Quaintance family, the Browns and Thompsons and Brother Osborne. Brother Osborne was noted to be rather long-winded; after talking several hours at one person's house it was his customary farewell to say, "Sometime I will come back and talk to thee some more." The Quakers planted extensive orange groves in and about Archer and planted liveoaks as windbreaks around the groves. They introduced new methods of clearing land, such as cutting under a tree and hauling the entire thing--trunk, stump and roots-out at one time.
They built the first--and for a long time the only Quaker Meeting Hall in Florida. They were the first to engage in biracial marriage and in treating blacks as social equals. Other Northerners also joined the Quakers in settling in Archer. One of these was J. D. Skinner, a Union veteran, who set up a successful carriage manufactory and blacksmith forge that was patronized from all over the state. J. D. George was another newcomer who owned a saloon and a general store.
By 1884 the businesses in town included nine general stores,
a sawmill, several cotton gins and grist-mills, a shoemaker, a
livery stable, a carriage manufactory and forge, the Lone Oak
Hotel, three saloons and a train depot. There were also three
doctors, a fourth-class post-office, a telegraph office, the Union
School, one black and three white churches (one of the white
churches was Bethlehem Presbyterian which was constructed in that
year). On Saturdays, P.G. Bauknight operated a butcher shop out
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of his general store; one steer would be driven in from the open range west of town and slaughtered. Bauknight sold the meat for twenty-five cents a pound.
Several major changes occurred in Archer in the 1880's. The business district grew steadily eastward along the tracks. New settlers drove up land prices; older residents who had sold part of their holdings to the newcomers decided to build new, fancier homes on the south side of town, Soon, two-story Victorian homes, built in Queen Anne, French Second Empire and Eastlake styles took the place of log homes and board-and-batten houses, Streets were lined with oaks and each yard was set off with ornamental iron or wooden picket fences. Like the new houses, stores were constructed as barnlike two-story edifices with peaked roofs and broad verandas. Boardwalks ran in front of most of the new stores. The north side of the railroad tracks became seedy and run-down; it further deteriorated when the best general store still left on that side burned down and the Lone Oak Hotel closed for want of a manager. Several churches were in operation in Archer during the 1880's.
In 1884 both Bethlehem Presbyterian and the Quaker Meeting
Hall were built. The first Presbyterian minister was William
McCormick, who began preaching in the area in 1866, Since
Bethlehem Presbyterian has been in continuous use since 1884, it
is considered to be the oldest church in Alachua County and perhaps
in the Suwannee Presbytery as well. (An interesting architectural
note is that the church was constructed using wooden pins.) Blacks
had one church and two schools in Archer. Their church was located
on a rise of ground near Laurel Hill Cemetery and held services
regularly on Sunday mornings and evenings. Evening services lasted
at times until 9:00 or 10:30, or even later. The church had annual
meetings that would last for several days. Men and women who
attended the services became so emotional they would go into a sort
of a frenzy or 'holy dance' from which they would fall exhausted
around midnight and lay in a 'trance" for several hours before
recovering.
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Schools for both blacks and whites were poor. None of the teachers in the Archer area held first-class teaching certificates. The school term lasted about four and one-half months, and very few teachers remained for an entire term. Some of the teachers worked on a circuit, teaching in one community for a while before moving on to another town when the school term was over. Curriculum was dull; T. Gilbert Pearson wrote that "every year we started in with our studies about where we had begun the year before and went over the same subjects, using the same textbooks". One teacher who only stayed for two weeks so impressed young Pearson with the desire to learn that his father suggested that he talk to J.T. Fleming, a civic-minded, generous owner of a general store to see if he had any biographies of great men he wouldn't mind lending. When Pearson asked Fleming awkwardly about the books in the presence of several men who were idling in the store, he was subjected to teasing from the men rather than getting what he wanted.
There were a full range of social activities available to the citizens of Archer. There were church-related events which included baptisms, weddings, funerals and socials. Local homes held parties almost every night of the week; these parties were attended by close to forty people at a time ranging in age from sixteen to sixty, and usually ended around midnight. Party activities included charades and dancing; in homes where dancing wasn't allowed for religious reasons, a variation of the Virginia Reel called "Pretty Little Pink" was performed. Square dances were held on the second floor of McDonnells store.
The Archer Literary Society built a two-story hall in which they
could stage dramatic readings. Three or four times a year in winter
the Archer Dramatic Club, a select group, put on plays on the second
floor of one of the businesses in town. In addition a card club met
weekly in town at one of the members I houses . Some social events were
seasonal in nature. Winter amusements included taffy pulls and cane
grinding, Yuletide parties were held at either the Skinner or
Hancock homes and were eagerly looked forward to. In May, the
Union School Sunday picnic was held in Darden"s Hammock. In summer
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