Cornelius Van Santvoord (CVS) Wilson was born in New York. By 1880 he was in Orange County (the Orlando area) with his wife Harriet (née Hunter) and five children. There he started his first newspaper. They moved to Manatee in 1885 and he started another newspaper, the Manatee County Advocate. Then tragedy struck. During the second wave of Yellow Fever, Harriet and one of their sons, Arthur, died within days of each other in 1888.
In 1898 CVS married Rose Phillips. He closed the Advocate and started Sarasota’s first newspaper, The Sarasota Times, which he ran until his death in 1910, at which point Rose took over. She ran it until it was sold in the 1920s. Both Rose and CVS are buried at Manasota Memorial Park.
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All images taken by MVHP staff in 2022 unless otherwise noted.