This Expedition has interested me for many years. It fascinates me that Ingraham, a prominent railroad president in Florida, and Chase, a leader in the state's growing citrus industry, would make the decision to personally trek across the Everglades to investigate firsthand the opportunities that drainage might produce in South Florida. They made this decision in February 1892 and less than a month later they departed Fort Myers heading into the Everglades. Unfortunately, I move at a much slower pace. I first had the idea for this project in 2009 when I was working on an NHPRC-grant funded project to digitize UF collections pertaining to the Everglades (America's Swamp). At the time, I thought it sufficient to simply digitize all of the Expedition texts and photos in our collections, with the intention that I or someone else could later give this subject the attention it deserves. But I couldn't let go of this idea and after thinking about it for the last six years, I finally began this project in the summer of 2015. I've received terrific advice, feedback and encouragement from several people, including my wife, Laura Nemmers. This is an ongoing digital history project that will continue to evolve as my research progresses. Listed below are some of the organizations, resources and tools used in developing this project. - John Nemmers, October 2015.
The Versioning Machine 4.0 : Copyright, University of Maryland Libraries. Free software used under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The Versioning Machine is a framework and an interface for displaying multiple versions of text encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. The development team includes Susan Schreibman, Creator and Founding Editor; Tanya Clement, Associate Editor; Sean Daugherty, Interface Specialist; Ann Hanlon; Robert Whalen; and many others.
It is important to note that the 1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition: Three Digital Texts project does not use the Versioning Machine exactly as its developers intended, which is the comparison of diplomatic versions of texts. The three texts encoded and displayed in this project are not diplomatic versions of a single text but rather three distinct texts by three authors. The Versioning Machine enables the side-by-side display of the three texts with relatively simple modifications, and the developers' documentation made this extremely easy to accomplish.
University of Florida Digital Collections : Digital reproductions of the typescripts encoded in this project are freely available online via the UF Digital Collections as part of America's Swamp: The Historical Everglades Project. The UF Digital Collections also includes myriad resources documenting Florida history in the late 19th Century, including historical newspapers, diaries, photographs and other documents.
National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) : The typescripts encoded in this project were digitized in 2009-2011 with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) as part of America's Swamp: The Historical Everglades Project.
Florida Memory Photographic Collection : Featuring over 185,000 digitized photographs from the State Library and Archives of Florida, the Florida Photographic Collection is one of the most comprehensive online resources for photographs of Florida. The Photographic Collection is available online as part of Florida Memory, a digital outreach program providing free online access to select archival resources from collections housed in the State Library and Archives of Florida. Many of the images used to represent the people, places and subjects included in the Expedition texts are from Florida Memory.
Tequesta : The scholarly journal Tequesta has been published annually since 1941 and is one of the best resources for topics of South Florida history. Two of the texts included in this project, that of Wallace R. Moses and Alonzo Church, were edited and published with introductions by Watt P. Marchman in the journal. Tequesta is available from HistoryMiami and online via the Florida International University Digital Collections.
fancyBox : Copyright, fancyApps. This tool provides zooming functionality for this project website. Acquired under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license for non-profit use.
Title Image : American Museum of Natural History Digital Special Collections, Julian Dimock Collection, Image Number 49308: "Boat landing, The Everglades, Florida, 1910."
Map Image : Adapted from the map of Florida, 1891, by Matthews-Northrup Co., Buffalo, New York, published in The Library Atlas of Modern Geography... by D. Appleton and Co. (1892), David Rumsey Map Collection.
Published by John R. Nemmers. George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 2015. Licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.