The entrance is marked with concrete pier, iron gates, and a nameplate, which was placed on the pier in 1960. The plate states the cemetery was established in 1879. Whitaker family descendants donated the gates and nameplate.
In 1910 the cemetery was enclosed with a balustrade type fence in the Italian Renaissance style. It is 46 inches tall with a 12-inch post cap. The fence is made of cement with added local shell.
The focal point of the cemetery is the vault of William and Mary Whitaker. This vault is 7 feet 6 inches tall with sides of 9 feet by 9 feet. It is constructed of hand formed concrete blocks covered with cement.
Early graves have been constructed with brick and covered in plaster, built above ground in a rounded configuration. All graves are arranged in rows in an east-west pattern. There is a record and history of every person buried in the cemetery. The cemetery contains 48 burials with 41 additional plots available for future family burials. The cemetery occupies a bit less than a half-acre (.47).
The first burial took place here in 1879 with the internment of Carrie Whitaker.
William died in 1888. By 1895 the children were married and gone. Mary Jane moved to Tampa, and died there in 1908.
About 1910, son Whitaker C. Whitaker, a prominent Tampa attorney, had constructed a cement block fence enclosing the cemetery and burial vault of William & Mary Whitaker.
When the estate of Mary Jane Whitaker was settled, a tract of land was bequeathed to the eldest son, Dr. Furman Chairs Whitaker of Bradenton. The tract was eight acres and located between what is now the North Trail and Cocoanut Avenue and Hog Creek and Twelfth Street.
Between 1910 and 1925, various members of the Whitaker family were buried within the cemetery. Maintenance of the cemetery was provided by the family; primarily William R. Whitaker of Manatee. A crew worked to remove the weeds and trimmed the trees. In 1925 Dr. Whitaker sold the entire eight acres to a developer from
Chicago. In order to preserve the graves, Dr. Whitaker purchased the ground in the newly developed Manasota Cemetery at Onesco. Initially, he planned to move all the graves, including the vault, to the Whitaker area in Manasota.
Dr. Whitaker consulted with his brother Charles, who was an attorney in Tampa. Charles advised him that the cemetery itself was safe, so Dr. Whitaker allowed the land to be sold for taxes.
During the depression years of the 1930s, the cemetery was vandalized. Parts of the wall were broken and the beautiful iron entrance gates were stolen. Foreseeing the difficulty in caring for the cemetery, Dr. Whitaker deeded the historic cemetery to the Sara DeSoto Chapter of DAR.
When the DAR acquired the land adjacent to the cemetery and dedicated a chapter house there, the Whitaker descendants established a fund to restore the cemetery, repair the historic wall, and attach a memorial plate to the wall at the entrance.
Internment arrangements for the 82 gravesites are handled by Helm Brothers of Bradenton. The DAR members open the chapter house during the committal service, and refreshments are provided for the family and friends attending the burial service.
Nelly Louise Whitaker Petree is the most recent pioneer relative to be buried here. She was interred 2 July 2005, and the Sara DeSoto DAR chapter hosted a reception for the family after the service in our chapter house next door.
Nelly Louise Whitaker Petree, granddaughter of Furman Chair Whitaker, was born December 19, 1910, and died June 23, 2005. Furman Chairs Whitaker was born in 1856 in
Manatee County while the family was taking refuge from the Seminoles. In 1895, he graduated second in his class from Hahneman Medical College in Chicago, Illinois. He became the first Manatee County native to become a doctor and practice in his home county. He died in 1945. He was the son of William Henry and Mary Jane Whitaker.
William Henry Whitaker, whose remains rest in the vault, was the documented first white settler in Sarasota. He arrived in December 1842. He was the patriarch of the Whitaker family and an early trader and developer of the area. Whitaker built a home with the help of his half brother Hamlin Valentine Snell, at Yellow Bluff.
The home was built from cedar logs rafted from Longboat Key. William later brought his bride, Mary Jane Wyatt Whitaker of Manatee, to the home. The first two children were born in this home. Nancy Catherine was the first white child born in
Sarasota.
An oil painting of Yellow Bluff can be seen on the wall of the west room in the adjacent chapter house. Yellow Bluff is located west of the cemetery, near the bay, about where the Acacias and the New Bay Bluff condos are located.
The Seminole upraising in 1856 caused most of the west coast settlers (from Manatee to Fort Myers) to leave their homes and take refuge at Branch Fort on the Manatee River
. During the encampment, the Whitakers' first son, Furman Chairs Whitaker was born. Also during these days the Seminoles burned the Whitakers’ home at Yellow Bluff.
When the threats ceased, the Whitakers returned to Yellow Bluff and built a new home on the east side of what is now the
North Trail and Twelfth Street, just west of the cemetery. Pictures of the new home were taken and you can see the cemetery wall in the background. This home was torn down in the 1920s.
The Sara DeSoto Chapter of the NSDAR has owned and maintained the cemetery since 1939, and as a condition of the gift to the nonprofit organization, the cemetery can only be used for internments of Whitaker family descendants.
Maintenance of the cemetery was a condition of the gift to the DAR. By verbal understanding between the Sara DeSoto Chapter of DAR and Dr. Whitaker, permission was granted for the burial of any lineal descendant of William and Mary Whitaker and their spouses, as long as space remained.
The DAR undertook the maintenance of the cemetery area, and formalized the previous verbal understanding by a 5 October 1970 resolution entered into the chapter’s meeting minutes as a Declaration of Policy of Pioneer Whitaker Cemetery. The resolution was registered and filed in the records of Sarasota County. Dwight Whitaker, brother of Anton K. Whitaker and the children of Dr. Furman Chairs Whitaker, made a scale drawing and identified all the graves and took photographs of the graves and the second Whitaker home.
On 5 January 2004 a public hearing was held before the Sarasota City Commission to present the application for historic designation of the cemetery. The Commissioners unanimously approved and the plaque indicating historic designation was placed at the entrance in April 2004.
References:
The Lures of Manatee
The Mangrove Coast
The Story of Sarasota
History of Anton K. Whitaker
Whitaker Pioneer Cemetery book, Barbara Hodalski
Roy Aach, PE
Mary McFate
