Bee Ridge Woman's Club

Among the eight hundred heads of households in Manatee County in 1880 (Sarasota County was not created out of Manatee County until 1921), were Isaac Alderman Redd and his wife, Eleanor. They were the first settlers in the Bee Ridge Community, arriving in 1867. To the west, Sarasota was also being settled. In the winter of 1910, Mrs. Potter Palmer, a wealthy Chicago widow and international socialite, came to Sarasota, with her brother, father, and two sons. Mrs. Palmer and her relatives found their investment interests stimulated by that first visit. Working with Jospeh Lord, a Chicago-based lawyer and major investor in Sarasota, they began to acquire thousands of acres. Eventually, the Palmer interests held an estimated one-fourth of the land in present-day Sarasota County.  

In 1912, the Town of Bee Ridge was platted (but never chartered) by Jospeh H. Lord and Mrs. Palmer’s son, Honore Palmer, through their business partnership, the Sarasota-Venice Land Company. The Bee Ridge project covered an area of twelve-square-miles and included a stretch of railroad tracks and lots laid out over a quarter of a mile from First and Fourth Streets. Growth in the Bee Ridge community continued to be noted in the local newspapers well into the 1920s. Between 1923 and 1925, more than fifty new homes were constructed. In 1925, a fund was established by property owners for landscaping of the residential and business sections of the community. That year Bee Ridge was taken into the incorporated City of Sarasota, although it has since then been removed from the city’s boundaries. 

Women’s clubs, which proliferated in the nineteenth century, were an important avenue for intellectual pursuits and civic involvement. The initial impetus for the formation of a women’s club was often the desire to improve the physical surroundings in order to insure healthful and clean-living conditions. Village improvement societies, usually organized by women, were among the first started in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1853. The first such group in Florida was established in 1887 by women in Green Cove Springs. Their group was incorporated in 1889 as the Ladies’ Improvement Association of Green Cove Springs, Florida. Their goal was to promote neatness and order in the city and do whatever may tend to improve and beautify the town as a place of residence and keep it in a healthy condition. The several women’s clubs that had been formed in Florida by 1895 collectively established the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs. The Florida group of women’s clubs was admitted to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in January of 1898 and was incorporated in 1915. The Florida Federation remains an active organization with a membership of over thirty thousand. 

On October 12, 1915, a group of Bee Ridge women met at the newly completed Bee Ridge Hotel and organized the Get Together Club. The Club’s general purpose was to promote sociability among the community’s residents and to improve and beautify the community. The Club was often the first contact newcomers would have with their neighbors in the farming community. Mrs. Potter Palmer graciously allowed the Club to hold its meetings in the Bee Ridge Hotel at no cost. An initial fee of five cents was paid by each member, with an additional monthly fee of one cent. There were eleven charter members, and Mrs. Dumbaugh was elected as the Club’s first president. Three women were elected to serve as a committee to visit strangers and neighbors each month. The Club began with eleven members and had grown to eighteen by January 1916. 

With very little social activity in the community, the Club was appreciated and enjoyed by the women, most of whom had moved to the area from northern states. In 1917, Club member Eva Stockett suggested that the Club become a formal Woman’s Club with the adoption of a constitution and by-laws. Eight charter members of the earlier Get Together Club became members and signed the constitution of the new Bee Ridge Woman’s Club.  

In April of 1920, a committee was formed to investigate the purchase of a lot for a clubhouse. The following month the Club voted to purchase Lot 21 for fifty dollars. Half of the purchase price was paid at that time and the balance was paid in full by June of 1921, when plans were made to raise money for the cost of constructing a clubhouse. John Mackintosh, an architect and husband of the Clubhouse Building Committee’s chairwoman, Ethel Mackintosh, was credited with the design of the clubhouse. Thomas A. Crisp, a general contractor, was selected to build the clubhouse – his wife, Annie, was also a member of the Bee Ridge Honan’s Club at the time. Construction was completed in October 1922.  

Bee Ridge Woman's Club, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 28th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/77843978.

Bee Ridge Woman's Club, Sarasota History Alive. Accessed January 22nd 2021. http://www.sarasotahistoryalive.com/history/people/bee-ridge-woman-s-club/.