John and Anna Donaldson: St. Petersburg’s Earliest African American Pioneers

The 1842 Armed Occupation Act gave Americans the first real incentive to settle our area. The Act provided 160 acres of land to any "head of family or single man over eighteen" who bore arms, cultivated at least five acres, and lived on the land in a fit habitation for five years. Even with the 1842 Act, very few people came to Pinellas from the 1840s to1880.

Some of the earliest pioneers to brave the wilderness and settle in the lower Pinellas Peninsula included the Mirandas, the Bethels and the Donaldson families. Although the Pioneer era was brief in St. Petersburg, many descendants of these first pioneer families remain in Pinellas today.

John Donaldson, a formerly enslaved man from Alabama, was the first black man to settle on the lower Pinellas Peninsula. After the Civil War ended, Donaldson had accompanied his employer, Louis Bell to the area to start a new chapter. Bell had also employed a young black housekeeper, Anna. Louis Bell, who couldn’t tough out the harsh pioneer life returned to Alabama, however, John and Anna remained.

Donaldson purchased a forty-acre farm one mile northwest of Lake Maggiore, which was known as Salt Lake at the time.  John Donaldson and his new wife, Anna, planted acres of sugar cane and orange trees on their farm. John, who also worked as a truck farmer, a drayman, and timber cutter, would have 11 children with Anna.  Despite the racial tensions that plagued the South, the Donaldsons were accepted and well respected in the Pinellas community.

Even though the population of lower Pinellas remained low well after the Civil War, a small group of dedicated pioneers, like the Donaldsons, created the foundation for the emerging community of Pinellas Village (today’s St Petersburg).  Farming expanded beyond simple sustenance levels and became an important part of local trade, real estate speculation also emerged as a new and promising enterprise, and a post office opened.  At the same time, real other communities began to form across the southern Pinellas Peninsula, including Disston City, now known as Gulfport. 

By the mid 1880’s, real estate developers and railroad magnates were already competing for the rights to bring a rail line to southern Pinellas. Prior to the construction of the Orange Belt Railway in 1888, the Donaldsons remained as the sole African American family in the area. That would soon change.

African American labor was crucial to the early growth of St. Petersburg. After laying the tracks of the Orange Belt Railway, many African American families settled in the lower peninsula. Immediately, black laborers cleared land for roads and construction, picked fruit in the citrus farms, helped construct the city's many hotels and buildings and battled the Florida sun paving St. Pete's streets with Augusta bricks. Following World War II, African American workers also played a substantial role during the city's single-family housing boom of the 1950s.

Although John and Anna Donaldson never saw their little village become a bustling city, their pioneering spirits and determination remain at the foundation for the building of St. Petersburg.