Erasmus H. Tomlinson Papers

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: MSS 2008-001

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of materials of the E.H. Tomlinson and Son Real Estate Company from 1893-1958. The series include client records, correspondence, day books, maps, blueprints, and scrapbooks. Contained in these series are family correspondence, financial records, legal documents, deeds, contracts, reports, photographs, newspaper clippings, postcards, and pamphlets.

The collection documents the activities of the E.H. Tomlinson and Son Real Estate Company during the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and the first half of the Twentieth Century. The collection contains considerable business and family correspondence that gives a first hand account of Florida real estate activities in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Missing from the collection is any documentation relating to how and why the company started and what became of E.D. Tomlinson, his daughter, and the company.

Dates

created: 1893-1958
Other: Majority of material found in 1906-1944

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open to all researchers.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright has not been transferred to the Florida State University Libraries. All requests for permission to quote, publish, broadcast or otherwise reproduce from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Associate Dean for Special Collections & Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Florida State University Libraries as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

Biographical or Historical Information

According to the notes found in the Erasmus H. Tomlinson papers, the E.H. Tomlinson and Son Real Estate Company was established in 1902. The company was run by E.H. Tomlinson, a licensed real estate broker, and was located in Jacksonville Florida. The real estate firm dealt largely with pine and cypress timber lands and colonization tracts but also handled saw mill tracts, commercial property, cattle ranches, turpentine farms, orange groves, and private property. The majority of the real estate properties handled by the Tomlinson's were from Florida, although clients from as far as Seattle, Washington and Grand Rapids, Michigan were not unusual.

Erasmus H. Tomlinson died in September of 1925 and the real estate company was taken over by his son, Erasmus D. (Ras). Ras's daughter Jean provided some assistance with the family business until her marriage to Carlyle Wright in the 1940's. No information on Ras's retirement or what became of the business after his death could be found.