Luck of the Draw

June 21, 1906 Tampa Tribune Page 1

The family story over the last hundred years was that my great grandfather, William Augustus Lundy gave all his children gold coins from a Pirate's Chest he found buried on his property in Manatee County Florida and they used it to buy land and get started farming.


Well at least one of his kids received the benefit of his father's good investment. These newspaper articles from 1906 tell about his son, James Lundy receiving a windfall on Texas oil land.

Apparently shortly before he died in 1903 William Lundy bought some land in Texas from a speculator for $800. He gave the title to his oldest son James.

James William Washington Lundy was born in 1877 and died in 1953 in Manatee County Florida. He married Ada Bryant in 1902, ran a Grocery Store and was the Postmaster in Parrish, Florida for many years.



June 24, 1906 Tampa Tribune Page 8

In 1906 he sold the land that cost his father $800 a few years earlier for $75,000. I don't know the location of the land or if the buyer struck oil on it. I would imagine they knew there was oil there if they paid such a high price for the land. $75,000 in 1906 is equivalent to almost $2,000,000 today if it just increased based on the CPI.


That might be a story for a future day if I can find the land records in Texas. For now all I know is that James Lundy came out pretty good.