The Watermen of Sebastian
Working the Indian River Lagoon
I wish you could have seen the hundreds of white pelicans that hung around the fish house when a boat came in.
Dot Judah still remembers the pelicans. Her husband, Clarence Judah, fished six days a week on the Indian River Lagoon, and when his boat came in loaded, hundreds of white pelicans gathered around the fish house. That image of a working dock, a tired fisherman and a sky full of birds captures Sebastian, a town built around the rhythms of the lagoon for more than a century.
The Ais and the Early Settlers
Long before settlers built a dock on the Indian River, the Ais people fished and gathered shellfish along its shallows. Shell middens, mounds of discarded shell, still mark the lagoon coast. By the usual local account, about forty pioneers established a village south of the St. Sebastian River, first called Newhaven and renamed Sebastian in 1884, according to the Sebastian River Area Chamber of Commerce and the St. Lucie Historical Society.
A Village Built on Mullet
Before the railroad, the river was the main road, and settlers moved goods by boat. Henry Flagler’s railroad and the icehouses that came with it turned commercial fishing into Sebastian’s defining industry. By about 1900, some 200 people lived in the Sebastian and Roseland communities.
Three families came to define it. The Semblers settled from New York State in 1901. Archie Smith’s family arrived in 1924, and he bought the waterfront property that became the Archie Smith Fish House in 1927. The Judahs arrived several years later, and Judah and Sons operated for some seventy years before closing in 2019.
Many fishermen worked through the night, bringing mostly mullet to the dock in the early morning to be cleaned, packed in barrels with shaved ice and pushed by trolley to Indian River Drive for shipment. Every week, one or two trucks arrived from as far away as New York, stopping at each fish house to load crates of iced fish.
Paul Kroegel and Pelican Island
Paul Kroegel, born in Germany in 1864, came to Sebastian in 1881 to homestead with his father and brother near the lagoon. From his homestead he could see Pelican Island, a small mangrove island of about five acres that by 1902 held the last brown pelican rookery on Florida’s east coast. During the Feather Wars, plume hunters killed wading birds by the thousands for the hat trade, and no law yet protected the island.
Kroegel sailed out in his own boat and stood guard; by one local account he sometimes fired his gun as a warning. Naturalists, among them ornithologist Frank Chapman and William Dutcher of the Audubon movement, appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt. On March 14, 1903, Roosevelt signed an executive order making Pelican Island the first federal bird reservation, the beginning of the National Wildlife Refuge System. On April 1, Kroegel became its warden, paid one dollar a month by the Florida Audubon Society because Congress had provided no funding.
Kroegel became the first warden of Pelican Island in 1903 and served for more than two decades; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dates the end of his tenure to 1926. He died in Sebastian in 1948. A bronze statue by Rosalee Hume was unveiled in 2003, the refuge’s centennial.
What Remains Today
The Archie Smith Fish House property, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and acquired by Indian River County in the mid-2000s, is managed as a conservation area. Its old ice house was taken down in 2022 after its floor collapsed, but the dock and pier remain. The Sebastian Fishing Museum at Sebastian Inlet State Park, with a replica fish house and dock, commemorates the Sembler, Smith and Judah families.
Quick Facts
Earliest people
The Ais, who left shell middens along the lagoon
Original name
Newhaven; renamed Sebastian in 1884
Fishing families
Semblers (1901), Smiths (1924), Judahs
Archie Smith property
Purchased 1927; National Register listing 1994
Pelican Island
Executive order March 14, 1903; first federal bird reservation
First warden
Paul Kroegel, from 1903; paid $1 a month by the Florida Audubon Society
End of Kroegel’s tenure
1926 per the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Kroegel statue
By Rosalee Hume, unveiled 2003
Kroegel’s death
1948
Did You Know?
- Pelican Island was the first federal bird reservation in the United States.
- The first refuge warden was paid one dollar a month by the Florida Audubon Society.
- Trucks came weekly from as far as New York to buy iced Sebastian fish.
Vocabulary
Midden: a mound of shells and other refuse left by people who lived in an area for a long time.
Rookery: a place where birds gather to nest.
Warden: an official who guards a protected place.
Discussion Questions
1. How did fishing shape daily life in Sebastian, from schedules to shipping?
2. Why did Kroegel’s work protecting birds depend on outside supporters?
Related Articles
- FLH-0094 — The Mullet Men
- FLH-0095 — Living From the Lagoon
- FLH-0086 — The Watermen of the Ten Thousand Islands
Sources
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge history. fws.gov
Indian River County. Archie Smith Fish House Conservation Area materials.
Vero Beach Magazine. Dot Judah recollections (cited via secondary description; not independently examined).
Copyright © 2026 Wm. E. McMullen II. All rights reserved. Published by Florida Learning Hub.