An Infamous Murder in Pasco County with Palm Harbor Roots

David Wishart, whose family roots originated in Lumberton, North Carolina, reads Palm Harbor Patch and he has never lived here!  He lives in Wilmington, NC.  Because of an earlier article in this column, he was able to determine that Sutherland used to be Palm Harbor and Sutherland is a place that is intrinsically tied to his family tree forever.

Mr. David Wishart’s patriarch of his family was Colonel of Militia Eli Wishart, born in 1813, who was a state legislator in 1860 representing Robeson County, North Carolina.  As told by David Wishart, one of the Colonel’s decendents, Robert Evander (R. E.) Wishart, David’s Great Great Grandfather, became a local hero in North Carolina.  R.E. formed a posse with one of his brothers, Aiden, to avenge the murder of their other brother, Confederate Colonel Francis Marion Wishart by outlaws.  The posse shot and killed several members of this band of outlaws and collected a bounty from the state of North Carolina and its governor.

David Wishart recounts that R.E. migrated into Georgia afterwards and eventually to Florida, where he initially settled in Ocala in the early 1900’s.  He worked in the turpentine industry, supposedly at a tie camp.  Tie camps were places where railroad ties were collected and then distributed, however, resins from pine trees could also be harvested and made into turpentine.  Usually turpentine camps were constructed for this but it would not be unusual for a tie camp to have more than one usage.

R.E. worked in Ehren, Florida which is near the Land O’Lakes area.  On August 19, 1906, R. E. went to see a dentist in San Antonio in Pasco County where he was shot and killed in a case of mistaken identity.  Apparently, the intended target was not harmed. 

So what does all these genealogy stories have to do with Palm Harbor?  R. E. Wishart, by all accounts, one of which is documented in the History of Pasco County timeline from San Antonio, states that R.E.’s body was transported from San Antonio to a town called Sutherland.  Acting on a hunch, David contacted Patch requesting assistance in locating R.E.’s gravesite, if indeed the Sutherland, Florida was the same as Palm Harbor, Florida.  We put him in touch with the Curlew United Methodist Church to begin his search because records were kept there.  David was referred to and then spoke with the person, a Mr. Halloway, who manages the at 16th Street and Missouri Avenue located right near the Palm Harbor YMCA.  Mr. Halloway was able to trace the information David Wishart gave him to an unmarked gravesite, where a Thomas Wishart purchased 6 gravesites.  Thomas apparently was R.E.’s son.

Mr. David Wishart is currently working with the Midway Cemetery to verify that R.E. is buried there and if so, this would be the end of an extraordinary search for David.  If this is truly R.E.’s grave, which most of the evidence favors, David will be erecting a headstone at Midway Cemetery.  According to David, R.E. was also a Mason.  The family mystery as to where R.E. was laid to rest in Palm Harbor and why his body was transported here will soon be no more.