For those of you that enjoy air conditioning in the humid heat of the Deep South, you have a particular family buried in the Milton Cemetery to thank for it. As the story goes, the diseases of "Mal-aria," the Italian word for "bad air" and yellow fever used to be the scourge throughout the South. Not realizing that both were caused by mosquitoes, it was thought to be due to rapid decomposition of vegetation that created noxious effluvium, or poisonous marsh gas. But unlike malaria, yellow fever killed from 12 to 70% of its victims. So great was the terror, that victims were buried as quickly as possible, sometimes before they were actually dead. But they noticed that yellow fever disappeared upon the arrival of cold weather (when mosquitoes died off).
Following the yellow fever epidemic of 1841, Dr. John Gorrie surmised that maybe "cold air" was the healer. But ice could only be obtained from the wintry northern lakes, stored in underground ice houses, and shipped around the Florida Keys in sawdust to the Gulf Coast. In 1844, he began to write a series of articles on "The prevention of Malarial Diseases." By May of that year, he constructed a model machine based on his principles of refrigeration. He found that "if the air were highly compressed, it would heat up by the energy of compression. If this compressed air were run through metal pipes cooled with water, and if this air cooled to the water temperature was expanded down to atmospheric pressure again, very low temperatures could be obtained, even low enough to freeze water in pans in a refrigerator box." The compressor could be powered by horse, water, wind driven sails, or steam power.
Dr. Gorrie submitted his patent petition in 1848. He fully demonstrated his machine, which produced ice in quantities, but leakage and irregular performance sometimes impaired its operation. He passed away on June 29, 1855 before he could gain financial backing for his venture. But others would dust off his patent and improve on his working prototype. He was buried in in Gorrie Square in Apalachicola and his wife and son in Marianna, Florida.
However, his daughter Sarah Susan Gorrie married Gabriel J. Floyd and gave birth to Caroline "Carrie" Floyd in 1863. Carrie grew up to marry Samuel Jessie Stewart before they moved to the community of Bagdad in 1886. She passed away at the age of 81-years old on February 28, 1945 and was buried in the Milton Cemetery alongside her family.
John Gorrie's Refrigeration Prototype
Pensacola News Journal 3-1-1945
John Gorrie's granddaughter Caroline "Carrie" Floyd Stewart
Buried Milton Cemetery 2-28-1945