08/15/2026
Today we’re celebrating the 150th birthday of Lillie Pierce Voss, who on August 15th, 1876, was the first child of European descent known to be born between Jupiter and Miami. Lillie was born in the Orange Grove House of Refuge, as her father, Hannibal Dillingham Pierce, was the manager of the station, located in what is now Delray Beach. Orange Grove was one of five stations built along the isolated coast to provide shelter and safety to shipwrecked sailors.
The Pierces were among the first families to permanently settle along Lake Worth; they arrived in 1872, when South Florida was still a largely uninhabited wilderness. Lillie’s older brother, Charles W. Pierce, worked for a time as one of the barefoot mailmen, Boynton Beach’s postmaster, and author of “Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida”.
Transcripts of oral history interviews recorded with Lillie reveal colorful details about the earliest days of pioneer life on Hypoluxo Island; she recalled houses with palmetto roofs, and remembered there being “a few million mosquitoes to the square inch.” Her days were spent hunting, fishing, sailing, and learning to read from her mother, Margretta Moore Pierce; many evenings were spent singing songs with her parents while Charles played the violin. According to Lillie, holidays were always an occasion for local settlers to gather for picnics on the shores of Lake Worth. This interview is available on the Historical Society’s YouTube channel.
In 1894, Lillie married Frederick C. Voss, a boat captain and steam engineer with whom she had six children; the couple lived in Hypoluxo together until Fred’s death in 1957. Lillie died in 1967 at the age of 91, and in 2013, she was posthumously inducted into the Florida Hall of Fame. Her life and legacy are of the greatest importance in understanding how Palm Beach County came to be what it is today. Happy 150th birthday, Lillie!
