Hugie Oesterreicher

Hugie Oesterreicher was born Sept. 24, 1898, in Palm Valley, Florida, and is buried in Section D of the cemetery. He married Oleta Brown in 1927. A book about their hardscrabble life, “Pioneer Family,” Life on Florida’s 20^th Century Frontier,” by their daughter, Michel Oesterreicher, was published in 2016 by the University of Alabama Press. 

Hughie and his wife, Oleta, lived in their Durbin Creek cabin for the first 12 years of their marriage. They lost all their savings in the Stock Market Crash of 1929, so Hugie resorted to selling moonshine until Prohibition ended in 1933. In 1937, the couple bought Oleta's family dairy farm and homestead in what is now South Jacksonville Beach, which had no electricity, telephone or indoor plumbing and raised hogs and cut palm trees and sold them to local nurseries. In 1945, they mortgaged their home and land to buy a grocery store in Jacksonville Beach. In 1955, they managed a 28-unit apartment complex in Jacksonville Beach and sold their estate in 1963. Hughie died on July 2, 1987, at the age of 88.

"Pioneer Family," Life on Florida's Twentieth-Century Frontier," by Michel Oesterreicher