Historical Marker celebrates Dansville community
May 22, 2021
The Dansville Neighborhood Development Corporation and Pinellas County Historic Preservation Board dedicated a Florida Historical Marker in Dansville on Saturday. It’s the latest effort to maintain the historically Black neighborhood’s identity and celebrate its history.
The dedication featured a reciting of Dansville’s history by David Baldwin, grandson of one of the community’s forefathers, Dan Henry, as well as comments by Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners Chair Dave Eggers and Vice-Chair Charlie Justice, who is also chairman of the Historic Preservation Board. Wanda McCawthan, president of Friends of Ridgecrest, Inc., also spoke at the event.
Dansville, located in the greater Ridgecrest Area in unincorporated Largo, is an example of early 20th century migration of African Americans who left behind the legacy of oppression and enslavement in the Cotton Belt states to seek new opportunities and prosperity. Brothers Dan and Lloyd Henry played a major role in establishing this community. Lloyd was a pioneer in the ownership and development of property by African Americans in the Dansville-Baskin area.
The historic marker reads as follows:
“DANSVILLE – This vicinity is historically known as Dansville, so named for one of its forefathers, Dan Henry. The 12th of 15 children, he moved here from Dawson, Georgia, with his brother Lloyd’s family in the early 1920s. At the time, citrus groves covered the sandy ridges of the county and the brothers found employment loading citrus at freight stations on the Seaboard Airline Railroad. Lloyd was the first to purchase property of his own building a house and starting a grove in nearby Baskin in 1928. Dan followed suit purchasing two 40-acre tracts at this location by 1946. Although not suitable for citrus farming, he built a house for his family and soon invited other African-American families to settle on the property. Smaller lots were created from the master tract by “stepping off” an area large enough to accommodate the new home. Eventually, the tight-knit, self-sufficient community consisted of about 80 houses, Mt. Olive Baptist Church, and a store. Much changed on October 3, 1992, when a tornado swept through the area destroying 26 homes and damaging many others. As part of recovery, Pinellas County assisted residents in rebuilding and documented the community’s history through an award-winning oral history project.