Among the city's first settlers were Samuel and Fannie James, an African American couple and reported to be ex-slaves, known as the Black Diamonds, who settled on the shores of the Lake Worth Lagoon near the current 5th Avenue South in 1885. (The stone monument located at the northwest corner of Lucerne Avenue and J Street inaccurately uses the date 1883, due to a transcription error). The couple made a claim for their land under the Homestead Act in 1885 and received a receipt for their claim on February 1, 1887. Their holdings, originally , increased over time and came to include an additional of homestead land south of Lake Avenue between M and F Streets, in College Park acquired from the estate of William Stephan, where Fannie ran a pineapple farm, and to the south between the current Dixie and Federal Highways, acquired from Swedish immigrants, Olai and Sarah Gudmundsen. The Jameses sold off most of this acreage in 10 and 20 acres parcels to new residents and investors. After Samuel's death in 1909, Fannie sold her remaining 156 acres to developer, Palm Beach Farms company, keeping only an acre and a quarter farmette. The farmette lay outside the new city limits as required by the segregation provisions of the 1913 Town of Lake Worth charter.