Symposium to focus on city's founder

Peter Demens, who built the Orange Belt railroad line from Sanford to St. Petersburg, was born 150 years ago Monday.

By ANDREW MEACHAM

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- A postmistress in a postage-stamp town had a problem: The town needed a name. The 30 people who lived there called it Wardsville, after the family that owned the general store and post office. Ella Ward consulted with a representative of a Russian railroad baron, who thought his boss might like the name St. Petersburg. It stuck.

Peter Demens, who brought the railroad into town and kick-started the city's growth, was born 150 years ago Monday. Eckerd College will host a symposium on his life, with tours and lectures through the afternoon and evening.

Experts from the bay area and Russia will address, among other things, popular accounts of how St. Petersburg got its name. A common version has Demens winning a coin toss with Detroit businessman John Williams, who then christened the Detroit Hotel as a consolation prize.

"That's a legend," said Bill Parsons, who teaches history and Russian studies at Eckerd. "It doesn't have any historical foundation that we can find."

Planners of the symposium tried to strike a balance between informing people who know little about Demens and staying abreast of the knowledgeable.

The day starts with a presentation at Dendy-McNair Auditorium on the Eckerd campus. At 3 p.m., Mayor David Fischer will dedicate a historical marker at Demens Landing. A walking tour follows, led by University of South Florida historian Ray Arsenault. Stops along the way include First Avenue S and Second Street, once the site of a Russian-style train depot, and the Detroit Hotel.

Scholars regard Demens and Williams as co-founders of St. Petersburg. Williams owned 500 acres of land, including all of downtown. Demens is remembered primarily for building the Orange Belt line, which carried passengers and citrus from Sanford to St. Petersburg. He never owned a house here and stayed in Florida only eight years, 1881-1889. Whenever he was in town, Parsons said, "More than likely he stayed in his railroad car office."

He was born Pyotr Alexeyevitch Dementev in 1850 in Tver province, about 200 miles southeast of St. Petersburg, Russia. By age 5, both aristocratic parents had died, and the boy was raised by an uncle. He changed his name to Peter Demens after traveling to the United States in 1881.

After a few days visiting a relative in Jacksonville, Demens migrated to Longwood, a town just south of Sanford. He took a job in a sawmill. After a year he sent for his wife and four children in Russia.

By 1883 Demens had bought the saw mill and was making railroad ties. By the time he was pointing his Orange Belt line toward St. Petersburg, he had earned a reputation as a driven entrepreneur, writes Ray Arsenault in St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream.

"The "damned Russian' seemed to be everywhere, badgering friends and brokers for loans one minute, and driving his work crews to the limit the next."

Inna Povedskaya, curator of a Demens exhibit in Tver, will give a 4 p.m. lecture at the St. Petersburg Museum of History: "Why did Demens give up his life as a Russian aristocrat?"

The symposium's final event, a 7:30 p.m. panel discussion at Dendy-McNair, will attempt to answer other questions about St. Petersburg's co-founder, among them how Demens explained America to his fellow Russians. The panel of scholars includes Peter Demens Tolstoy, a descendant of Peter Demens and novelist Leo Tolstoy.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

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