Who Was Caesar Dean?

Long before strip malls replaced the undeveloped vistas along US1 and Dixie, Florida’s treasure coast was blanketed with miles of pineapple fields. Starting in the 1870’s in our Stuart area, local families began the grow process and within two decades, Jensen Beach was known as the “Pineapple capitol of the world”. But with miles of pineapples and just one family per grove, how did the delicious crop gain its popular success? 

Many of Martin county’s migrant worker population came from the Bahamian channel of islands. Without the opportunity to employ men who needed work, the pineapple industry may never have met its short-lived success. (Flagler’s railroad, trade with Cuba, and pineapple disease destroyed the once booming pineapple industry in the 1920s-1930s) One such man was named Caesar Dean, a Nassau Bahamian. He was recognizable from Fort Pierce down to the Florida Keys. Caesar appears to have moved to Florida sometime in the early nineteen hundreds and worked in the Florida Keys before heading north to eventually homestead in Martin County. His skills included expert diver, shipwreck salver, master fisherman, muscular pineapple thrower, and even screen actor! Newspaper records indicate that Caesar also was a hero, saving more than one life on different occasions. Want to catch a glimpse of Caesar in action? Turn on the locally filmed movie, Robinson Caruso, and look for Caesar playing the character known as “Friday”. Aside from having a great resumé, his peers loved him as well. When Caesar lost his house in a hurricane, he and his family were only temporarily displaced until Miss Emily S. Perkins used her inheritance money to “build the old life-saver” a new one. One can only assume that Caesar’s kindness rarely went unnoticed.

When Caesar Dean passed in a hospital in Miami, his obituary was bursting with nothing but praise. “Death wrote “finis” to the life of a colorful Martin County negro when Caesar Dean died in a Miami hospital last Thursday. Caesar was a man of powerful physique and superb seamanship. In his earlier years, he was a diver, credited with the feat of bringing up two copper plates per dive in the salvaging of the material from the bottoms of wrecked ships…” Was Caesar Martin County’s first treasure diver? Hopefully more research on legendary Caesar Dean will allow more answers to be revealed surrounding his time on our coast.

This article was written by Chessy Ricca for Stuart's Hometown news. Available to read here:

https://www.hometownnewstc.com/news/who-was-caesar-dean/article_4ba9a0a2-48c6-11ee-a060-031d3b8b41fd.html