Notable St. Petersburg Residents in the Official Record

City of St. Petersburg pages, state markers and National Register nominations keep naming the same residents: settlers John Donaldson and Anna Germain, founder John Williams, the early mayors Lang and Pheil, realtor Noel Mitchell, developer Perry Snell and author Jack Kerouac.

The St. Petersburg list below keeps to people the public record itself describes, with the record that does it. Living private people and anyone known only from news or encyclopedias are left out by design.

Each entry is expanded below with the details its source gives. The founding years of Williams and Peter Demens are covered at greater length in the St. Petersburg history section's guide to how the city began.

In the city's account, the first Black settlers of the St. Petersburg area were John Donaldson and Anna Germain, who came in 1868, and the National Park Service credits John Constantine Williams of Detroit with founding the city.

Donaldson and Germain married and built a homestead for themselves and their children, and the city says that for two decades no other African American family was settled in what is now St. Pete (City of St. Petersburg). Their arrival came two decades before the railroad and 24 years before the town incorporated.

Williams, born in Detroit in 1817, built the city's first hotel in 1888 and named it the Detroit after his birthplace; the 1975 nomination places it, much altered, at 215 Central Avenue (National Park Service). The two founding records differ on the land: the city says Williams moved to Tampa in 1875 and bought 2,500 acres that would become St. Petersburg (City of St. Petersburg), while the nomination says he first visited the Pinellas Peninsula in 1875 and shortly afterward acquired 1,600 acres from the State of Florida and one other seller. Construction of his home on Fifth Avenue started in 1891, and he died in April 1892, having lived in it only a very brief period, and the nomination says Williams Park downtown is the large central park he is said to have insisted on. Williams negotiated with Peter A. Demens, whom the same record calls a Russian exile and head of the Orange Belt Railroad.

The Williams House survives but not where Williams built it. USF St. Petersburg says the Queen Anne house went on the National Register in 1975 and has stood on its campus since 1995, when it was moved to 511 2nd Street South, next to the 1904 Snell House (USF St. Petersburg).

Two early St. Petersburg mayors stand out in official records: Al Lang, who ordered the benches painted green and helped bring spring training, and former mayor Pheil, the first passenger of the world's first scheduled airline in 1914.

The National Register nomination for the Downtown St. Petersburg Historic District gives Al Lang's dates as 1871 to 1960 and his term as mayor as 1916 to 1919 (National Park Service). It says benches were painted every imaginable color until 1916 and that Mayor Lang passed an ordinance requiring all existing and new street benches to be green, and that he played a leading role in creating the Festival of States to draw winter visitors.

The City of St. Petersburg credits Lang with baseball: in 1914, it says, the city's former mayor Al Lang convinced Branch Rickey to move his St. Louis Browns to the Sunshine City for spring training (City of St. Petersburg). The two records conflict on timing: the city calls Lang the city's former mayor in 1914, while the federal nomination gives his term as mayor as 1916 to 1919, after the Browns arrived. Neither source explains the difference.

A. C. Pheil was already a former mayor on January 1, 1914, when pilot Tony Jannus flew him across Tampa Bay as the first passenger of the St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line, according to the 1976 Florida historical marker on the grounds of Albert Whitted Municipal Airport (Florida Division of Historical Resources). Pheil won the seat with a $400 bid at an auction before the flight, and the 20 mile trip took 23 minutes. The marker says members of the St. Petersburg Board of Trade backed the airline, which stopped flying after a few months.

Perry Snell, a druggist turned developer, put his name on Snell Isle and the Snell Arcade, and realtor Noel Mitchell started St. Petersburg's green bench custom with 50 advertising benches in 1908.

The National Register nomination for the Snell Arcade says Snell was born in Kentucky in 1869, bought property in St. Petersburg on a vacation, came back to live in the city by 1904 and became a real estate developer in 1905 (National Park Service). From 1905 to 1942, it says, he raised the value of more Pinellas Peninsula property than any other individual or group. He developed most of the land east of Fourth Street from Fifth Avenue North to the north end of Snell Isle, worked around Mirror Lake and Crescent Lake, and gave his tracts the names Bayfront, North Shore and Granada Terrace.

Snell began Snell Isle in 1925 as homes in Spanish and Italian styles, and hired architects Richard Kiehnel and M. Leo Elliott for the Snell Arcade, which the nomination calls the last significant building finished before the 1920s boom tapered off (National Park Service). The same nomination mentions Doc Webb, who started the little drug store that became The World's Most Unusual Drug Store.

Noel Mitchell's mark is the bench. The downtown district nomination says that in 1908 Mitchell, a realtor, had a St. Petersburg craftsman make him 50 benches, painted them orange and lettered them with his company slogan; the benches came in every color until Mayor Lang's ordinance required green (National Park Service).

St. Petersburg preservation staff recommended in 2022 that the John Louis (Jack) Kerouac House become a Local Historic Landmark because the author of On the Road lived there from about 1968 until his death in 1969, his last residence.

The city staff report for case 22-90300001 recommended approval of the owner-initiated request under criterion C, with Literature as the area of significance and a period of significance of 1963 to 1969, and referred it to City Council for first and second reading and a public hearing (City of St. Petersburg, 2022). It says the ranch style masonry house was built in 1963 by Ridge Development in Disston Ridge Estates, a subdivision the city approved in February 1962, and that Kerouac lived there with his wife and his mother.

According to the report, the three moved to St. Petersburg in 1967 and first lived in the house next door, then settled in the designated house after another stretch up north. The report calls Kerouac, best known for his second novel On the Road, published in 1957, a spokesperson for the Beat Generation, and, citing a Florida Humanities article, notes that Florida does not appear as the setting for his works (City of St. Petersburg, 2022).

The staff report found that the house keeps six of seven integrity factors (location, design, setting, materials, workmanship and feeling), more than the one or more that local designation requires (City of St. Petersburg, 2022).

Most of the places tied to these residents are public or visible downtown: Williams Park, the Detroit hotel building on Central Avenue, the Williams House at USF St. Petersburg, Snell Isle, the Snell Arcade and the airline marker at Albert Whitted Municipal Airport.

The National Park Service district nomination says Williams Park holds a remembrance of John C. Williams, co-founder of St. Petersburg, for whom the park is named, along with a memorial to St. Petersburg soldiers who died in the World Wars (National Park Service). USF St. Petersburg reported in 2022 that more than $561,280, with matching funds, would go to restoring the Williams House, including foundation work, a new roof and hurricane panels (USF St. Petersburg).

Last verified: October 18, 2026. Sources re-read that day: the city's History of St. Pete page and 2022 Kerouac staff report, the Florida Division of Historical Resources airline marker, and National Park Service nominations for the Williams House, the Snell Arcade and the downtown district.