Back to This Month's Article

CONTACT:
Dean Dixon
Historical Resources Assistant
(941) 749-1800 ext. 4070
March 2002 Article

Introduction: The Manatee County Historical Records Library is a wealth of information about our local past. Documents from as early as the 1850's describe the life and times of Manatee County residents and weave many an interesting tale. Each month, we will post a new story for you based on documents in our library. We invite all of you to come to the library, located at 1405 4th Avenue West, to see these documents for yourself and to touch, feel and experience our heritage.

The Murder of Charles Abbe

Click here to see a 1884 hand drawn map of where the murder took place and where the body was dumped.

Click here to see the 1885 charges against the conspirators.

Charles Abbe was an industrious man and he had high hopes for his new home in Manatee County in 1877. He had been a successful salesman in Illinois for the Singer Sewing Machine Company and he used his wealth to buy large amounts of property in Sarasota. He was appointed U.S. Commissioner for Circuit and District Courts in the area and he was made Postmaster as well. Abbe saw Sarasota as a sportsman's paradise and he made frequent trips back north to bring people down to hunt and stay at his hotel, as well as to promote Florida's products and commercial opportunities. But many of Sarasota's settlers resented Abbe, due largely to ill feelings left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

A strong hatred for many of the northern settlers existed in the area at that time, particularly those northerners who had ambitious ideas that would change the status quo. Charles Abbe held the place of being the most hated among them. There are numerous deeds in the Historical records Library that show Abbe purchased land in many parts of the county. He held land by Sarasota Bay, near Bee Ridge and where the airport is now. His position as Postmaster and US Commissioner for the courts was good enough reason for some southerners, suspicious of anyone who worked with the Federal Government, to dislike him. And, of course, his trips to the North to promote the area only meant that more like him would be arriving soon.

In the town of Sarasota there was a clique, ironically one of the leaders was a northerner, a man by the name of Alfred Bidwell who was a storekeeper in the area before Abbe came to town. He was from New York and his brother was considered a hero in the Union Army during the Civil War. Yet, because of possible political sympathies, or because of some other unknown reason, he got along well with the southern clique, men who were defiantly unreconstructed. The clique was also comprised of several young men who were held sway over by the older men, who claimed to be in a committee with ties to judges and politicians all over the state of Florida. The leaders of the committee would administer an oath to the young men and from then on, there was no question about where their loyalties were, because the price of disloyalty was their life.

Five people had been reported murdered in 1884 in Sarasota, murders among non-whites were not reported in those days, and citizens of Sarasota were growing weary of this criminal streak running through the village. It was not unheard of for a circuit judge to start a trial and leave town before the trial was finished, leaving the accused untried. The reputation of Sarasota was suffering because of crime and the clique was feeling more and more confident that they acted with impunity against folks like Abbe. In the Historical Records Library there are records of trials and court dockets that show the legal activities of Manatee County citizens. One of the things that appears in these documents is that Abbe and Bidwell were harassing each other through the legal system. Charges of running a hotel without a license were filed against Abbe. Abbe checked into whether or not Bidwell was really married to the woman he claimed to be married to. The strife was coming to a boiling point.
In the afternoon of December 27, 1884, several of southern conspirators were congregating together. Drinking and cavorting, their conversation turned to the man that best represented the problems of the world as they saw it-- Charles Abbe. One of the drunken men, Charles Willard, had passed Abbe that morning by the beach where Abbe was repairing his boat with the help of Charles Moorehouse. Willard had tried to engage Abbe in an argument about the state of politics but Abbe would not join in the argument and finally Willard left his company and joined the other conspirators who were drinking at a local's house.

After lunch, Willard had become angry enough that he and another man went back down to the beach and ambushed the postmaster with a shotgun. A double-barreled blast to the head dropped Abbe in his tracks. Having unloaded both barrels on Abbe there was nothing left to shoot Moorehouse who then escaped. Moorehouse ran back to the Abbe home to tell the widow that her husband was dead. The two conspirators were joined by a third and they drug Abbe's body to the bay, loaded it onto a boat, sailed out into the Gulf of Mexico and sent Abbe to a watery grave. The events of the day are well documented in the courtroom transcripts of the trial of Charles Willard and the other two conspirators.

Charles Willard thought that he would be a hero for killing the hated Charles Abbe, In fact, when word of the murder spread through the county, it soon became apparent that, far from making him a hero, this murder was going to enrage Manatee County citizens. One witness in the trial tells of Willard's surprise to find out that he was being hunted for the murder. Willard didn't wait around to see what happened next, he ran from Sarasota and a posse followed close on his heels. The story of the men's secret organization came out and all of the men in the clique soon found themselves arrested and jailed at Pine Level, the county seat at the time. Some of the citizens of Sarasota were ready to lynch the conspirators and they had to be moved to safer quarters. After an intense search that lasted for days, Charles Willard was found. He was barely dressed and barefoot, the ends of his toes were said to have been worn off.

Some of the younger men in the clique began to tell a shocking story of a secret society called the Sarasota Vigilance Committee that had been carrying out murders and terrorizing the county. They told about the senior members coercing younger members into murder by threatening to kill them if they failed to do what they were told. Stories of secret initiations and oaths surfaced. All over the United States, newspapers reported the shocking news coming out of Manatee County about the Sarasota Assassination Society. In the end, nine men were tried for murder and conspiracy. All but one was convicted.