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By Jon Letman, Bulletin Editor
Strolling beneath the shade of palms and tropical fruit trees, through the dappled light of The Kampong’s dense canopy, it is difficult to imagine how the property looked more than a century ago. Long before its previous owner, plant collector and avid gardener Catherine “Kay” Sweeney, gifted her home and garden to the Hawai‘i-based Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden1, the property was rugged pine rockland2 habitat growing over coastal limestone substrate, typical of the Miami area. Notably, it was also home to Miami-Dade County’s first female doctor Eleanor Galt Simmons.
Born in Delaware County, New York in 1854, Eleanor Galt earned her medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1879. Along with her contemporaries, which included some of the first Black, Indian, and Native American female physicians in the United States, Galt was the embodiment of progress in late 19th century women’s rights.
By 1884, Dr. Galt had established a practice serving patients in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Staten Island, and other parts of New York. In addition to her medical practice, she had taken up scientific illustration, producing anatomical drawings of reptiles and amphibians based on specimens provided by the Smithsonian Institution. The year after she married Captain Albion Simmons in 1891, the couple took the unusual step of moving to south Florida which was at the time a remote, difficult to reach, sparsely populated region of the United States.
For centuries, what is today south Florida was the homeland of the Tequesta, Miccosukee, and Seminole people. Florida became a U.S. state in 1845, a century which saw a large influx of immigrants from the Bahamas, Europe, and other parts of the United States. When Dr. Galt Simmons and her husband reached Florida, they settled in a budding community called ‘Cocoanut Grove,’ which remains one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas of south Florida. There, they purchased an eight-acre site for the sum of $4,868 where they built an oolite limestone house which was used as an office and barn for the doctor.
The office and stable of Dr. Eleanor Galt Simmons is recognized as one of the oldest buildings standing on its original foundation in Miami-Dade County. Photo by Kampong staff.
In her adopted homeland, Dr. Galt Simmons treated patients for injuries that included gunshot wounds, bones broken in horse falls, and infectious diseases like dysentery and typhoid. Her practice took her to isolated communities to care for patients using medicines, some based on local plants. Galt Simmons had studied meteria medica, the science of using natural ingredients for medicine, so it would not have been out of character for her to bolster her medical knowledge from Indigenous healers and migrant settlers. During her time in Florida, she became best known for her commitment to caring for any patient, regardless of race, class, or gender in an age when doing so was not a given.
In the late 19th century, doctors often prepared their own medicines — a combination of powders, poultices, and tinctures. These treatments included flowers, herbs, and other plant material which were dried and ground into paste and applied topically, mixed with alcohol or vinegar and administered in small doses, or simmered to create an extract to be sipped like tea. Research by the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida suggests that Galt Simmons interacted with tribal members as she traveled in the Everglades and elsewhere.
Following Galt Simmons death on February 6, 1909, the Dade County Medical Association published a “resolution of respect” which lamented her passing, describing her as “one who has labored long and faithfully in her noble calling, and who was never too tired, no storm too fierce to brave, to minister to the wants and suffering of others, under difficulties that we might consider impossible and insurmountable.”
In 1916, the Galt Simmons property was purchased by renowned botanist and plant explorer David Fairchild and his wife Marian, from which time the property came to be known as The Kampong (a Malay word for ‘village’ or ‘cluster of houses’).
In his 1947 book The World Grows Round My Door, Fairchild describes a little stone barn on his property, writing, “I felt it must be filled with the romance of somebody’s life. And it was. Every time I enter my study here I see a bell-stop of bronze. A tiny spider has made its web over the hole where the push button once was, but the name of “Dr. Galt Simmons,” now green with copper oxide, is the key to the life of pioneering romance; to the life of a remarkable woman…”
Fairchild continued, “In this barn she kept her little pony, and on it she rode about the countryside doctoring the settlers, and the Seminoles as well, far up the coast of Biscayne Bay. Her fame as a surgeon made her well known in places too far away for the pony to carry her, and there she had to go by sailboat.”
Fairchild used Galt Simmons’s office and stable, adding a second story which became his study. That building is today recognized as one of the oldest structures in its original location in Miami-Dade County. In 2017, it was registered as a Florida Heritage Site and commemorated with a plaque.
Late last year, The Kampong installed a historic exhibition inside the restored office and stable of Dr. Galt Simmons. Outside the building, NTBG staff have planted a medicinal garden that includes elderberry, saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), and resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides). Elsewhere grows aloe vera, guava, and Spanish moss— some of which were used medicinally by Florida’s Indigenous people for generations.
Inside the office, the exhibit explains how Florida plants such as gumbo-limbo trees (Bursera simaruba) and Carolina willow were used to treat a variety of ailments. The exhibit highlights the medicinal traditions of Native cultures as well as Bahamian migrants who have contributed much to Miami’s culture and community. Also on display are a selection of books about medicinal plants, early medical training for women in the United States, and the history of Florida. Dr. Galt Simmons’s office is available for viewing upon request or on select Saturdays. The exhibit stands as a testament of The Kampong’s long and diverse history, and as a serene garden where science, education, history, and culture meld as one.
The Eleanor Galt Simmons Exhibit was made possible with the support of The Rosenberger Family Trust, Baptist Health, and The Villagers, Inc.
[1] Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden was renamed as National Tropical Botanical Garden in 1988 to reflect its presence in Florida and Hawai‘i
[2] Pine rockland is a diverse habitat comprised of low-lying palmettos, slash pines, shrubs, ferns, and grasses growing on oolitic limestone substrate
