Captain Peter Demens came to the Iamosa Colony in 1891 and bought the stone ranch house at the northwest corner of Hillside and Archibald. A successful businessman and citrus farmer, Capt. Demens was instrumental in bringing a railway line into the area to support the growing agricultural community. A former captain in the Imperial Guard at the palace of Czar Alexander II, he named St. Petersburg, Florida, after the city where he had been born.