Back in the 1880s, Florida was looking for colonizers to settle in Sarasota. They began passing out fliers and pamphlets all over Scotland, with newspaper articles stating how "marvelous" Sarasota was. Many Scottish families bought many acres of land, about 40-acre estates and town lots were bought. Everyone who had contributed to buying a large acre of land assembled in Glasgow, where they would be called "The Ormiston Colony."
On the 10th of December, 1885, the Ormiston Colony arrived at New York, where three days later, they would board the steamship called "State of Texas", setting their journey to Fernandina, arriving about four days after their initial departure.
When they arrived, it was there that they were told that the the town had not even been built yet, but promised that the resources were arriving soon. The colonists then searched and searched, from the North to the South coast. That's when they realized that the city of Sarasota was just a name they put on a map, there were some old shacks where Sarasota "was", but the city itself was just nonexistent. A.C. Anton, a local representative of the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company, stated that the Colonists simply arrived way too early, and again, promised them that Sarasota would quickly become the finest place in all of Florida.
The colonists kept searching for their promised 40 acres of land, but found out that they built them miles away from the original "city". Although exhausted, the colonists began working on their lands, but conditions became harsh. The colony had failed as most of the money invested in the colony was lost. It made the colonists poor, most of them even begging for cash just to move up North to stay with family. The company still provided temporary housing and such, but although Sarasota would struggle for the next ten years, The Colonists, although failed, laid the foundation for what Sarasota would become of today.
