A very different Florida history
Historian and Author, Ted Ehmann meticulously researches and fashions
Florida history, forgotten or nearly forgotten.
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One of Florida's Most Important Histories
Today, cattle ranching remains one of Florida’s important industries. The author takes you back to the roots of modern-day cattle culture when the fate and the future of the wilderness lands with its roaming cattle hung in the balance.
This story chronicles an era in Florida history when cattle was king. A truthful account of a vanishing history filled with bigger-than-life cattle ranchers who rose in prominence and wealth
after, and in many ways due to, the war between the states. Cattle and not cotton became Florida’s successful cash crop.
This is also the story of Fort Ogden , now a ghost town, it grew from a frontier military outpost to become a major city and home to the Age of the Cattle Barons after the war. It was the time of the Wild South and a time when everyone had a hand in cattle, but only a few cattle barons made the rules and ordered the affairs of justice and commerce.
My latest works now available
This is the story of one man’s journey to follow his dreams and the people and times that made those dreams manifest. They say that” no man is an island” Wells Moses Sawyer’s life bore this truth out. This is the story of an individualist, a romantic who navigated the social transformation that came with the birth of the Modern Age with grace, humor, and above all, beauty. Born to pioneer parents, Sawyer traveled the world in pursuit of beauty and knowledge, helping to found two important art colonies along the way and making friends in every port-o-call. In the end, this self-taught and highly skilled artist and anthropologist made his mark and left behind an incredible body of work. Ted Ehmann’s latest book will soon be available. Self-published, In the Presence Of Beauty, is Ehmann’s homage to the artist and free spirits everywhere.
$29.95 Autographed copies for presale available by contacting the author,
teddyehmann@earthlink.net www.tedehmannhistories.net
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THE SEQUEL TO THE PEOPLE OF THE GREAT CIRCLE
Author Ted Ehmann in this new work continues his rethinking of the one hundred and twenty-year-old narrative about the mound-builders Indians in North America. Revisiting the archaeological excavation of a large burial mound on Lemon Bay in what is today Englewood, Florida in, 1938, Ehmann solves the mystery surrounding its construction while simultaneously dismantling the view that such enterprises are proof of a local society becoming more “socially complex.”
Ehmann has researched the mound-builders for the past thirty years. His new research reveals the truly cooperative nature of these strictly hunter-gathering civilizations while exposing the racism then and now that has influenced the science. Particularly the application of “environmental archaeology’, a purely Euro-centric view forced upon the highly adaptive and cooperative societies in Florida.
In this sequel to his first study on South Florida’s Calusa, The People of the Great Circle, Florida plays a significant and very early role in a continent-wide revival of beliefs and rituals that go back to the stone age, not the opposite, which has been believed till now.
It took Congress until 1990, after decades of grave looting conducted under the guise of scientific research, to pass the Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. While expressing the importance of burials for gathering reliable ethnological data the author demonstrates that all the data can provide answers by revisiting each and respecting the beliefs and practices that are inseparable from the site and those buried there.
Ehmann credits and dedicates his work to the theories of the Ohio Hopewell Mounds researcher A. Martin Byers. Byers’ study entitled The Real Mound Builders and his discovery of “Collective Burial Locales, when applied to Florida, completely alters the previous narrative of who, what, when, where, and why. This made-up narrative essentially stole the thunder of the Calusa and others in South Florida. Ehmann’s new view restores the Calusa and their neighbors to their rightful place in world history.
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LIVING IN YOUR SUBJECT
Once Upon a Time on Charlotte Harbor
I write the histories of the place where I live. Writing Florida's forgotten histories allows me to live fully in this place. Everywhere around me has a different presence, since I have delved into the everything from the geologic events that created the landscape, the fauna and to the numerous people that lived in and were connected to this place over the past 13,000 years.
Charlotte Harbor is a unifying theme that connects all of my books.
HISTORIES OF FORGOTTEN FLORIDA
When I share my histories with others, the most common response is "why haven't I heard about that before/". I know because that was my response to some incredible facts and histories that I discovered when I retired here in 2016.
I have been an interdisciplinary learner and teacher all my life. My bookshelves are filled with books on every subject and in most disciplines. As an artist and teacher by profession, I have always seen connections that most people do not recognize.. I never thought about being a writer of history. Florida, specifically "forgotten Florida" called this new chapter in my life forward. Once you make new discoveries, important ones, they must be shared. Every book proposal that I have submitted to a publisher, states upfront, that If I don't write this story and you don't publish it, it will be lost to future generations..
Since the 1920s Florida has been a winter destination. People come and go. Rootless people in places overtime actually lose their histories and stories. Similar to its beautiful natural environment, Florida's stories are also endangered. Each one of my histories, slows you down enough to
learn the stories of places and people long-gone, but now remembered. All my subjects as as relevant today as they were in the past, and some more so. I hope you enjoy them.
Now in 2020, I start yet another venture ,creating history. Sometimes, it is not just enough to reflect on and chronical the past. It is time to submit your talents and insights to the social good, thus putting into action the lessons from history.