The Deering Estate is pulling a forgotten name out of the historical record: Laban Bethel, a Bahamian crew member who helped navigate botanist John Kunkel Small's 1917 expedition through the Everglades aboard Charles Deering's boat, the Barbee.
The Palmetto Bay landmark featured Bethel on Monday, Aug. 10, as part of its weekly #MuseumMonday series on X, posting a photograph of expedition crew members hauling woven bundles through overgrown terrain alongside a marriage register from 1913 that the estate used to document Bethel's Bahamian origins. The register, from St. Andrews Church in Exuma, Bahamas, records the union of "Saban Bethel" and Frances Strachan.
The estate described Bethel as a crew member who supported the team through low waters, grounding incidents and challenging canal navigation during Small's May 1917 collecting trip into the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee region.
Small, a taxonomist at the New York Botanical Garden who made more than 35 expeditions to subtropical Florida, described the landscape as mysterious, largely unmapped and rapidly changing, according to the estate's May Instagram post about the Barbee. Charles Deering provided the boat, named for his daughter Barbara, and the crew scraped canal bottoms, weathered sudden squalls and relied on the captain's ingenuity to keep the vessel afloat.
The spotlight on Bethel fits a broader pattern at the estate, which sits at 16701 SW 72nd Ave. along the southwestern edge of Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve. Many of the workers who built both the Deering Estate and Villa Vizcaya were African-American or Afro-Bahamian, laboring during intense racial segregation in early 20th-century South Florida. The #MuseumMonday series has previously featured a rare late-1800s photograph of settler John A. Addison with Seminoles on land now part of the property, and a 19th-century surveyor's theodolite.
The Historic Richmond Cottage, where visitors can learn more about the Small expeditions, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Upcoming at the Deering Estate:
- Sunday, Aug. 16, 4 p.m. — jamJam Strawberry: "Strawberry Sweets," an immersive performance at the Visitor Center Theater. Free with RSVP on Eventbrite.
- Saturday, Aug. 22, 2–4 p.m. — Opening reception for "The Vessels of Memory We Carry," a mixed-media exhibition by artist Tori S. Scott exploring Gullah Geechee heritage. Richmond Cottage Garden Room. Free tickets on Eventbrite.
