Dade County FlArchives Biographies.....Hardee, M. C. 1864 - 
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Nancy Rayburn http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00025.html#0006128 November 5, 2015, 3:16 am

Source: Vol. II  pg.142  The Lewis Publishing Co. 1923
Author: History of Florida, Past and Present  

        M. C. HARDEE, a citizen of Miami since 1919, is a veteran of many 
years’ experience in the fruit and vegetable growing industry of Florida. He is
widely known, and the claim is made for him by his associates of being one of
the largest if not the largest individual grower of tomatoes on the southeast
coast. For several years he has been actively interested in the tomato
production on from 1,200 to 1,500 acres of land along the east coast from Dania
on the north to Royal Palm Hammock on the south. He owns a large amount of both
vegetable and citrus lands in Dade and Broward counties.
	Captain Hardee, an honorary title bestowed upon him by his friends, was 
born in Hines County, Mississippi, in 1864. His father was a native of North 
Carolina, member of the well-known southern family of that name, of which 
General Hardee, commander of Hardee’s Brigade in the Confederate army and 
author of “Hardee’s Tactics,” also belonged.
	M. C. HARDEE came to Florida in 1884, and for a time was a wage worker 
in Marion County. After about a year he started a citrus grove, principally 
lemons, at a place he secured at Moss Bluff, about sixteen miles from Ocala. 
The freeze of the winter 1885-86 brought disaster to this enterprise. His next 
experience was working with the construction department of the old Florida 
Southern Railroad, then being built from Ocala to Charlotte and Punta Gorda,
now part of the Atlantic Coast Line System. After about two years he became a
carpenter at Ocala. From there in 1890 he moved to the Indian River at Eden in
St. Lucie County, where he made another venture of growing pineapples, and
this, too, culminated in a freeze. The two disasters left him undaunted as to
his faith in the splendid future of this country, and his third site of a
location was at Boynton, and what is now Palm Beach County, where he made a
modest start as a tomato grower. Since then, matching his tenacity and hard
work against various reverses, he has progressed to his conspicuous position as
a man who has achieved permanent success as a tomato grower, and ranks probably
supreme as an individual in that industry in South Florida.
	One of the several projects in which he is interested is a tract of
nearly 300 acres in Broward County, near Hollandale, in which M. C. FROST is
his partner. This plantation is one of the larger on which has been installed a
pumping system for removing the surplus floodwaters during the season of heavy
rains. Through the operation of this pumping plant the waters have been removed
from the tomato fields rapidly enough to eliminate the danger of flooding and
complete loss even during some of the heaviest rain falls encountered in
Southern Florida.
	Besides the tomato growing land in Broward County, Captain Hardee owns 
and operates various tracks for tomato production in the southern part of Dade 
County, including 160 acres at Snapper Creek, 100 acres at Rockdale, 240 acres 
at Goulds, 350 acres at Homestead. At Homestead he has 100 acres in grapefruit.
	Captain Hardee established his home in Miami in 1919, and besides
attending to his vegetable and citrus fruit growing enterprises, he is in the
produce brokerage business with Gentile Brothers, under the firm name of Hardee &
& Gentile. This firm as brokers handles about 2,500 acres of vegetables,
principally tomatoes, of their own production and the products of several other
large concerns as well. Captain Hardee was one of the incorporators of the
Dania Bank, and from the time of its incorporation until he came to Miami in
1919 he served as its president. He then resigned. He is a stockholder and
director in the First National Bank of Miami.
	Captain Hardee married Miss MAUD SHEEHAN who was born on the eastern 
coast of Maryland.

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