Angas, Robert Moore, 1887-1955

William Moore Angas was born in 1855 in Great Britain. He moved to Florida in 1895 and was employed as an agent and manager of several British owned companies operating in Florida over the period of 1895 until his death in 1932. The principal companies with which William Angas was involved were two British companies, the Land Mortgage Bank of Florida, Ltd. and the Florida Syndicate, Ltd., described briefly by Alfred P. Tischendorf ("Florida and the British Investor", Florida Historical Quarterly 33, October 1954, p. 120). William's son, Robert Moore Angas, was a Jacksonville civil engineer born in 1887. Robert Angas conducted his deceased father's business from 1932 until all transactions were concluded in 1953.

In addition to the Land Mortgage Bank of Florida and the Florida Syndicate (succeeded by the Keighley Company), the primary companies represented by William Angas include a third British company, the Indian River Association, and two Florida companies, the Florida Finance Company and the Hollybrook Company. The oldest of the companies, the Land Mortgage Bank, was founded originally only to lend money on Florida mortgages. The Bank's principal properties were in Jacksonville residential properties and several orange groves. As a result of hard times following the freeze of 1895 and of poor, if not fraudulent management by its U. S. agents prior to Angas, the company was forced to foreclose on many properties throughout Florida, making it a large land owner by default. The same adverse conditions also forced the company into liquidation. When properties were foreclosed they usually reverted to the company's English liquidators, Robert Thomas Heselton and Benjamin Septimus Briggs, so technically the Bank never owned property at all, except that some deeds were made to it in error, rather than to the liquidators.

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