A Guide to the Thelma Peters Papers

Contents

• Overview
• Biographical Note
• Scope and Content
• Restrictions
• Related Material
• Index Terms
• Administrative Information
• Bibliography
• Container List
  • Papers pertaining to Florida
  • Short stories and poetry
  • Ephemera relating to organizations
  • Correspondence
  • Correspondence and documents relating to the Caribbean area and Central America
  • Book manuscripts
  • Book related materials
  • Ephemera
  • Newspaper clippings and ephemera
  • Periodicals collected by William H. Gleason
  • Photographs

Overview

Biographical Note

Teacher, historian, and author Thelma Peters specialized in north Dade County, Miami and the Bahamas. She was active in the Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1940 until about 1989, and served as President of the Florida Historical Society, 1974-1976.

Born in Independence Mo., April 22, 1905, Thelma Peterson came to Florida in 1914 when she was ten years old. After spending a year in Sebring, the Peterson family continued on to Miami, where they settled on 12.5 acres of isolated pine ridge near Lemon City. Peterson graduated from Miami High School in 1922, and attended Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia, on a $200 scholarship.

In 1926 she married Tom Peters, her high school sweetheart, whose father was South Florida's well-known "Tomato King" and the owner of the Halcyon Hotel on Flagler Street. The couple honeymooned in Bimini, where they endured the 1926 hurricane. At first presumed dead, they returned to Miami, which had also been devastated by the storm. That same year, after the land bust wiped out her father-in-law's fortune, Peters began teaching at William Jennings Bryan High School.

In 1930, at age twenty five, she became a teacher at Edison High School -- a position she was to hold for twenty-seven years. In later years she earned her M.A. at Duke University and her Ph.D. at the University of Florida. She taught at the University of Miami, became the first chairwoman of the social studies program at Miami-Dade Community College, and developed the first Latin American history class for Dade public schools.

Peters is perhaps best remembered for the energy and enthusiasm she strove to research and preserve South Florida's past. She gave countless talks and presentations that demonstrated the value and relevance of local history. Her years of research yielded three seminal works: Lemon City, Miami 1909, and Biscayne Country, which provide a detailed depiction of pioneer life in South Florida. As part of her efforts to preserve the region's history, she served as interim director of the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (1974), president of the Florida Historical Society, and associate editor of Tequesta the Journal of the Historical Association.

Peters also wrote articles for national magazines, including Colliers, Women's Day, and Seventeen. She published a novel set in the Bahamas entitled The Cove of the Silver Fish, as well as scores of published poems that her sister Rachel Roller later collected in a book. She biked across England, and traveled widely from Russia to India. She divorced her husband, but maintained friendships with his family. In 1993, in order to be near her son, she moved to a retirement home in South Carolina, where she remained until she passed away in 1996.

Scope and Content

The Thelma Peters Papers document various aspects of her career. Research files contain valuable information on Miami's early history, while her professional correspondence offers biographical insight into Peters' careers as teacher and pioneering historian. Similarly personal correspondence, photographic slides, and diary and notebook entries offer a good deal of information on the Caribbean and Latin America. Together they reveal that, even when not in her beloved South Florida, Thelma Peters possessed an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail.

The papers contain correspondence, research, literary manuscripts, photographs and slides pertaining to Dr. Peters' career and research. Copies of first hand accounts are also included, for example, the section of Parson's diary pertaining to George Buck's 1895 cruise. One box contains periodicals acquired by William H. Gleason while living at Biscayne (present-day Miami Shores); Gleason participated in state and local politics during Reconstruction.

The papers are arranged in the following series:

1. Papers pertaining to Florida
2. Short stories and poetry
3. Ephemera relating to organizations
4. Correspondence
5. Correspondence and documents relating to the Caribbean area and Central America
6. Book manuscripts
7. Book related materials
8. Ephemera
9. Newspaper clippings and ephemera
10. Periodicals collected by William H. Gleason
11. Photographs

Restrictions

The papers are open for research.

Permission from Historical Museum of Southern Florida staff required prior to reproduction of photographs in a publication. Please contact archives staff for more information.

Related Material

The archives also has Thelma Peters' Travels in the Caribbean, 1952? and ca. 1991. This collection contains 2 typescripts and 188 photographs and postcards relating to her 1952 trip throughout the English-speaking Caribbean. One typescript is the journal written during and shortly after her trip. Years later she rewrote edited the journal (the second typescript). It was published posthumously as Fantastic Journey. A doily she tatted during the trip is in the museum's objects collection.

Index Terms

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation:
Thelma Peters Papers, Historical Museum of Southern Florida

Provenance:
Bequest of Thelma Peters, 1996.

Bibliography

Peters, Thelma. The American Loyalists and the Plantation Period in the Bahama Islands. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Florida, 1960.

Peters, Thelma. Biscayne Country, 1870-1926. Miami, Fla. : Banyan Books, c1981.

Peters, Thelma. The Cove of the Silver Fish. New York : Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, c1959.

Peters, Thelma. Fantastic Journey : Thelma Peters takes a Sabbatical in the Caribbean. Miami, Fl. : Historical Association of Southern Florida, c1999.

Peters, Thelma. Lemon City : Pioneering on Biscayne Bay, 1850-1925. Miami : Banyan Books, c1976

Peters, Thelma. Miami, 1909 : with Excerpts from Fannie Clemons' diary. Miami, Fla. : Banyan Books, c1984.

Container List

Papers pertaining to Florida, 1568-1990 (bulk 1969-1990)

Short Stories and Poetry, 1952-1978

Organizations, 1927-1990 (bulk 1965-1990)

Correspondence, 1908-1992

Correspondence and documents relating to the Caribbean area and Central America, 1939-1951

Book Manuscripts

Book Related Materials

Ephemera

Newspaper Clippings and Ephemera

Periodicals Collected by William H. Gleason, 1871-1898

Periodicals received by William Gleason in the 19th century at Biscayne and passed on to the Barnotts. Mrs. Barnott then gave them to Thelma Peters.

Photographs