There is a pretty little waterway in St. Petersburg, Florida, called Frenchman’s Creek that boaters and fishermen have been frequenting for years. Those who have been there might wonder who the “Frenchman” was who was memorialized in the creek’s name. If those boaters and fishermen are bird lovers, they will not be pleased to learn that the namesake of the creek was a really despicable bird hunter named Jean Chevelier. His real name was Alfred Lechevelier (nicknamed Jean Chevelier for some unknown reason), and he bought the Maximo Point in St. Petersburg, a picturesque point that is now the site of Maximo Park.
Michael Grunwald, in a really good book about an important source of water in Florida, “The Swamp,” 2007, called Chevelier “Florida’s most notorious plumber.” And Jack Davis, in his recently published book, “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea” (2017), noted that “the healthiest spot on earth was anything but that for birds” after Chevelier arrived in the 1880s.
The Frenchman, who apparently came from Montreal or Paris, tried and almost succeeded in wiping out the plumed birds of St. Petersburg and the Everglades before sending on the feathers and sometimes the complete dead bodies of thousands, maybe millions, of birds to milliners in New York and Europe so that women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries could have the latest fashions in their hats.
The Frenchman also somehow got his name on Chevelier Bay in the Ten Thousand Islands, very near to Watson’s Place on the southwestern coast of the state and near where the famous Loren “Totch” Brown lived and hunted. Chevelier and his cronies wantonly killed thousands of roseate spoonbills, egrets, herons and hawks. Thank goodness conservationists like Marjory Stoneman Douglas and even Harriet Beecher Stowe helped stop the mass killing of the birds.
The Tamiami Trail was built by the Chevelier Corporation, also named after one of the worst hunters that ever came to the state. The 1958 movie entitled “Wind across the Everglades” had Burl Ives portray the plume hunter. It’s interesting how such a pleasant-sounding French name, Chevelier, has a sordid history behind it.
Anyway, those who fish Frenchman’s Creek might not be pleased at the origin of the name, but they would surely be happy to know that the “Journal of the American Medical Association” in 1885 named Maximo Point the “healthiest place… of any portion of Florida.” I have not had the privilege of fishing in the creek, but my son, who lives nearby, likes the park and the creek.
Kevin McCarthy, the award-winning author of “South Florida Waterways” (2013 – available at amazon.com for $7), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.