The first settlements within the borders of present day Okeechobee County came about as a direct result of military actions. Both the villages of Basinger and For Drum were settled near the sites of earlier military installations.

Fort Drum was established in 1849 between the Second and third Seminole Wars, during a period when renegade Indians were responsible for a series of murders of white settlers. The time of peace between the two wars was an uneasy peace, at best, and following the killings, the Army established a series of military posts which stretched across the state from Fort Brooke on the West Coast to the Indian River on the East Coast.

The first families to settle in the Fort Drum area arrived at that location in the mid-1870s. Those first settlers included Joel Swain, henry Parker and Henry Holmes. Henry Parker left Basinger about 1874 and moved to Lake View, a settlement near Lake Marian, in present-day Osceola County. About 1878, he moved once more and settled at Fort Drum. His first wife, Elizabeth, had died while they were living in Lake View, about 1876. She was only 37 years old. He had married the widowed Elizabeth Brinkley Holmes in Columbia County in 1858. She had one son, Henry Holmes, who was born in 1856.

Mr. Parker married Rutha Ann Richards following the death of Elizabeth. At the time he moved to Fort Drum, he was a member of the Brevard County Commission. He had previously served as a Brevard County judge when he was living in the Basinger area. He was born on August 15, 1832, and died October 3, 1908 at the age of 76.

The late-Addie Holmes Emerson (1901-1983) was one of 14 children of Henry Holmes, who was the step-son of Henry Parker. Mr. Holmes was married twice, with nine of his children coming from his first marriage to Joanna Morgan Holmes, who died in 1894. The following year, he married Carrie Roberts from Orlando, and five children were born during this marriage.

My mother married my father when he had nine children. I asked her, Mother, what ever possessed you to marry a man with nine kids? She said, he looked like he needed some help. That was her answer to my question., she told her audience. Harley Holmes was the eldest son of Henry Holmes from his first marriage. He was born in 1878. Harley owned and operated a general store in Fort Drum around the turn of the century. His daughter, the late Thelma Holmes Walker, recalled some of those days during an interview in 1989.

I worked in the store. We didn’t keep it open all the time. I’d have to take the key and go out there and wait on people when they came. The Indians traded there a lot. They would sell hides and we shipped them. I can’t remember here the company was located, she said.

For a little more then two years, from November 25, 197 to January 26, 1910. Harley was the postmaster in Fort Drum. The postal facility was located in the store. Thelma recalled sending out and receiving the mail in those days before the railroad came through. J.M. Lee would go over in a horse and wagon to meet the train and pick up the mail. Sometime, he had to wait a long time. And then, he met the train in the night to send it out, she said.

She recalled some of the breakfasts of her childhood. We had a big field of cane. We had a cane mill and we mad syrup every year. We had to strip that cane and they called it Japanese cane. It was the best syrup in the world, I thought then. But, I don’t care for it now, she said.