Monday, April 17, 2017

ELIZABETH of PALM SPRINGS, Seminole County, FL

Blog Series: Central Florida Would-Be TITANS
Part 2: Elizabeth of Palm Springs, Seminole County, FL

A Seminole County Ghost Town today, PALM SPRINGS began as a railroad hub in 1888 Orange County, a city developed by Elizabeth McClain Saunders-Massey.

As we passed through Palm Springs,” wrote Amos Root, a passenger on one of six daily trains passing through Elizabeth’s 1895 Palm Springs, “I got just enough of a glimpse to feel I wanted to stop there.” Amos did return, but curious central Floridians might find themselves asking today, “returned to where?”


1890 Orange County Map: (A) Orange Belt Railway from Sanford; (B) Florida Midland Railway from Longwood, now SR 434; (C) Hoosier Springs Grove & Estate; (D) Intersection of I-4 & State Road 434 today; (E) Lake Brantley.


Elizabeth came to Florida in 1887 because of her son’s deteriorating health. Setting out from Toronto, Canada, the Widow Saunders arrived in the widely-promoted land of health, wealth and sunshine, a land I call CitrusLAND. Timing is crucial to appreciate Elizabeth’s legacy, for women of the 19th century were typically confined to the difficult task of homemaking and child rearing. The business world was a male thing. But in 19th century central Florida women, such as Widow Saunders, were breaking with tradition.

A biography of Elizabeth M. Saunders-Massey, as our Palm Springs developer was known in 1915, was included with a collection of biographies of Orange County settlers, and began by stating: “Usually men are the earliest settlers.” Even in 1915 the author understood the significance of her achievements, a lady who lived in the “mansion on the hill-side and orange grove known as the “Hoosier Springs Grove.”

Our story of Elizabeth of CitrusLAND began at a place called Hoosier Springs.


1885 Plat of Hoosier Springs (Partial)

Widow Saunders bought the 161 acre homestead of Ingram & Gertrude Fletcher, closing on her purchase January 28, 1887. The land itself had been sub-divided in 1885 as both a personal residence on the Wekiva River and a town of “Hoosier Springs” on the south side of the planned Florida Midland Railway track. (Hoosier Springs, in the 20th century, became SANLANDO SPRINGS.)

But Hoosier Springs of 1887 had not been a success story. Elizabeth’s deed spells out the town’s lackluster development. Excluded from all 161 acres was a one acre church lot; a 0.87 acre town lot sold to brothers Frank & William Baker; and the standard right-of-way path allowing two railroads to cross over the property. Most all of the town first platted by the Fletcher’s remained unsold and undeveloped.

The mansion on the hill-side and orange grove known as “Hoosier Springs Grove,” as the CitrusLAND home of Elizabeth Saunders was described, had been the winter residence of a one-time prominent banker from Indianapolis, Ingram Fletcher. As his native Indiana was the Hoosier State, hence – Hoosier Springs!

Bordering the less than successful town of Hoosier Springs was yet another tiny village, a much older want-to-be town known as Altamont. First envisioned in 1874 by a New York doctor, Washington Kilmer, this neighboring town was no more a success than Hoosier Springs.

Had Elizabeth looked across her 1887 landholdings, she would have seen the unfulfilled dream towns of two city planners, two adjacent towns having a hundred plus vacant town lots each, acreage crisscrossed by two railroads. Surrounded as well by countless citrus groves though, the potential of her landholdings likely seemed endless.

Within five months of closing on her land, the Widow Saunders revised the Altamont plat, merging Kilmer’s city with the old Hoosier Springs town she had acquired from Ingram Fletcher. Elizabeth however dressed up the layout of the town by adding a dozen ‘Town Squares’, each crossroad square called out by such names as Gardenia Square, at the junction of Saunders and Cambridge Streets; or Oleander Square where Orange Avenue crossed Toronto Street.


A portion of 1887 revised Altamont Town Plat

A month later, June 14, 1887, Elizabeth sold her first town lot. Lot 18 of the new Town of Altamont fronted Railroad Street, on the east side of the Orange Belt Railway and Florida Midland Railway crossing. The Baker Brothers, lot number 22, was on the west side of the crossing, where they operated a general store and railway depot. The buyer of lot 18 was William Massey, the man Elizabeth would soon marry. (William died soon after they married, and so Widow Saunders became Widow Massey.)

ALTAMONT could boast of location, location, location, but so too could a neighboring city three miles east. That town, ALTAMONTE, was situated on another railroad line, the South Florida Railroad, and that location had a luxury hotel as well. Distinguishing the two locations became crucial, and so on the 12th of January, 1888, one year after Widow Saunders acquired Hoosier Springs, Frank W. Baker, the merchant of Lot 22 in Altamont, became Postmaster of a newly formed Palm Springs Post Office.

Palm Springs 1893: The spring from which the place takes its name is about one quarter of a mile north of the store. Hoosier Springs is a short distance west of the store.” Illustrated Orange County, 1893

Having viewed Palm Springs in 1895 from onboard Orange Belt Railway, Amos Root returned a day later to personally “investigate” the area: “In a little shady nook were great palm trees that threw their protecting branches all over and around, and a beautiful crystal spring boils up, sending out a volume sufficient to make a good sized creek. The waters are just warm enough for nice bathing, and there are seats arranged on the mossy banks, making it a most inviting place for picnickers or pleasure-seekers.”

The author of ‘Gleanings in Bee Culture’, Amos Root wrote of touring central Florida months after the freeze of 1894-95. The region’s future at the time of Root’s visit was not yet known, although perhaps unknowingly, he predicted the area’s fate while at the same time telling of a little shady nook known as Palm Springs: “In consequence of the freeze, however, business was, as might be expected, dead, and things looked dull.” 

Elizabeth McClain Saunders-Massey had been mother to seven. She buried two husbands and five of her children prior to 1900. The son she brought south because of his poor health, John McClain Saunders, was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando after his death, August 30, 1906. John’s Orlando physician at the time of his death was Dr. Washington Kilmer, formerly of Altamont.

Elizabeth and her only surviving son, Thomas Malcolm Saunders, returned north to Canada. Thomas died in April, 1917, in France, during World War I. One month before her 83rd birthday, eight years after Seminole County carved away a portion of Orange County, Elizabeth McClain Saunders-Massey, on June 3, 1921, passed away at Ontario, Canada.  The year of her death, only one of two 1921 Seminole County maps included Palm Springs. Soon thereafter, most every sign of Elizabeth’s once-upon-a-time town began to vanish.

Florida’s Great Freeze of 1894-95 destroyed not only the State’s record-setting citrus crop, projected to be nearly 9 million boxes, it wiped out as well the ambitious dreams of many of the wealthiest individuals in the world.


Racing along at a top speed of nearly 6 mph, travel aboard Orange Belt Railway in the spring of 1895, and meet the visionaries, men and women alike, those who had given it their all to establish West Orange County.

CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains includes stops at Sylvan Lake; Paola; Island Lake; Glen Ethel; Palm Springs; Forest City; Toronto; Lakeville; Clarcona; Crown Point; Winter Garden and Oakland.

CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO VISIT AMAZON.COM SITE

Along the 35 mile West Orange County route of Orange Belt Railway you will meet many of the region’s earliest settlers, including: Edward T. Stotesbury; John Parker Ilsley; Brothers Alastair & William MacLeod; Whitner; Benjamin M. Robinson; Thomas E. Wilson; Fox; Mary Lambert; Dr. Washington Kilmer; Ingram Fletcher; Roswell Fulmer; Walter W. Hunt; Mrs. Elizabeth (McClain) Saunders-Massey; Peter A. Demens; Allan MacDowell Smyth; the Root family; John G. Hower; George Reed; Alice C. Hill; Samuel Hyde; Sidney Witty; David E. Washburn; Robert A. Mills; Mahlon Gore; the Roper family; the Speer family and many others.



CitrusLAND books, the true history of the people and events that shaped central Florida, by Richard Lee Cronin. Copyright 2015.       

Sunday, April 2, 2017

CLEMENT R. TYNER (TINER)

Blog Series: Central Florida Would-be-Titans 
PART One: CLEMENT R. TYNER (aka TINER)

He’s the reason Orange Avenue south of Oakridge Road parallels the railroad tracks, and he also laid out what is today Lancaster Road, Anno Avenue, Fairlane Avenue and yes, even Tiner Avenue, spelled with an ‘I’. Not one of his 1880s streets are known by the names he first gave to each, but that’s because all were renamed by Orange County in 1955. Despite the town’s name being inspired by a house Will Wallace Harney built, Pine Castle the town owes its very existence to Clement R. TYNER, a 19th century pioneer, and the first in our series; ‘Would-Be Central Florida Titans’.


Pine Castle Depot, located at C. R. TINER’S Pine Castle

Twice the man served as first Postmaster of a newly established CitrusLAND frontier post office. In February 1884, Clement became a town founder, recording the original 80 acre town plat of Pine Castle. Sub-dividing nearly 200 town lots, Tyner opened the first of at least two mercantile establishments, one located in the town he founded.

A native of Florida’s untamed wilderness, Clement R. TYNER was born in 1846 at Marion County. His parents, Leonard & Mary (BLITCH) TYNER, had obtained a permit to homestead 160 acres there before surveyors had completed Marion County’s mapping. Leonard, selecting land southwest of present day Belleview, settled on land adjacent to his father, John G. TYNER (1794-1883).

The TYNER family next relocated to WELAKA, on the St. Johns River north of Lake George in Putnam County. But next, and possibly due to Union gunboats on the river all during both the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction Period, the town’s population suddenly dwindled. Most residents moved on, including the TYNER’S. By 1869 the family had resettled again, this time in Orange County, selecting an isolated parcel far from the St. Johns River pier on Lake Monroe.

Age 23 when he first arrived in the isolated region south of the County’s War torn Seat of Government, Clement R. TYNER became witness to early efforts, during 1870, to build a railroad linking Orlando with Mellonville. That venture quickly failed, but the locals desire to connect steamboats plying Lake Monroe with the Port of Tampa far to the south of TYNER”S homestead endured.

Arriving in south Orange County about the same time as Will Wallace HARNEY, builder of a Lake Conway residence Harney named Pine Castle, goals of Harney and Tyner appear to have differed. Harney seemed to be a loner, whereas TYNER obviously longed for success. The southernmost city at the time both arrived was Orlando, and travel anywhere in central Florida had been, for decades past, via old sand rutted trails. When locals lost hope for their 1870 train, would-be business titan, Clement TYNER, appears to have stepped up to the plate.

Topography today fails to show the eastern branch of Shingle Creek existing at the time Leonard B. TYNER homesteaded 80 acres west of present day Pine Castle. A detailed Orange County map of 1890 however clearly reflects just such a waterway.

Clement R. TYNER possessed a means in 1870 to connect foot traffic on old Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin with nearly 10 miles of waterway to reach Lake Tohopekaliga, where travelers could then continue on toward Tampa. TYNER’S homestead was also the eastern headwaters of Shingle Creek.


Orange Map 1890. Homestead of Leonard B. TYNER (red rectangle)

[About the 1890 map: Red STAR pinpoints trail’s end of the old Forts Mellon to Gatlin Road (1838-1870). Red/white rectangle pinpoints location of L. B. TYNER’S 1869 Homestead. One branch of the Shingle Creek headwaters began at TYNER”S homestead, flowed southwest, as shown by the red arrow, and both branches merged in the vicinity of present day Oak Ridge Road and John Young Parkway].

Clement R. TYNER not only explored Shingle Creek, he also acquired, August 30, 1873, 40 acres west of present day Kissimmee. Part of Orange County at that time, Tyner established Shingle Creek Post Office on November 10, 1873, nine years prior to the opening of a Kissimmee Post Office.

Clement found more than land at Shingle Creek, for here he met and married his first of three wives. He married Mary Yates in 1873, daughter of Needham Yates, the same Needham Yates shot and killed during the notorious 1870 Barber-Mizell Feud.

Historian William F. Blackman wrote in 1924 of the ‘great storm of 1871,’ a hurricane, during which so much rain fell the “Wekiva River was a mile wide”. Will Wallace Harney writings, published as ‘Dateline Pine Castle’, (available at Pine Castle Woman’s Club), also tells of this storm. Harney believed “the eye of the storm passed right over Lake Conway”. Harney also told of droughts of 1872, 1875 and 1876, after which he “feared for settlements on Shingle Creek.” Then came yet another Hurricane in 1876.

It’s plausible that torrential rainfalls, followed by droughts, raised and lowered Shingle Creek, making navigating uncertain, for Clement appears to have lost interest in this waterway. Despite fathering three children prior to divorcing, Clement returned to his parent’s home in 1879, alone, and soon after opened a second post office.

Pine Castle Post Office was established December 8, 1879, one year prior to the first 
southbound train finally departing Sanford, heading in the direction of Orlando. He then focused attention on his own 80 acre homestead alongside Will Wallace Harney.


Marrying a second time February 27, 1881, Clement and his bride, Theodosia E. GEIGER, watched while rails were laid up to, and then diagonally across, their 80 acre homestead. The track maximized rail siding exposure for their land.

A New York Times reporter, traveling with President Chester A. Arthur in April of 1883, described the journey, saying; “after Orlando, there is nothing worthy of a town name until reaching Kissimmee City.” That was about to change though, as Clement R. & Theodosia E. Tyner deeded two (2) lots to the railroad, land to be used for a railway depot, February 29, 1884. Both lots referenced: ‘C. R. TINER”S Town of Pine Castle.” In 1885, Clement & Theodosia TYNER had a store open alongside the Pine Castle depot.

As 19th century central Florida developments had a way of not working out as planned, Clement R. TYNER, after selling only a few town lots, opened C. R. TYNER & Co. even further south, at Lakeland. Clement married a third time at Lakeland, this, his final marriage, was to Elizabeth Gavin.

Try as he did, neither town platting nor rail side stores were meant to be for this would-be central Florida Titan. Clement moved on again, finally settling at Clearwater, where he and Elizabeth lived until his death, at the age of 75, January 29, 1922.

The 1870 Pine Castle residence built by Will Wallace Harney inspired the naming of a 1884 town first platted by Clement R. TYNER, the visionary who laid out streets still in use today, even though by a different name.

Clement was not alone though in such endeavors, and when our series continues April 19th, we’ll tell of Miss Frances E. Hewlett, another fascinating would-be central Florida TITAN.

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BEYOND GATLIN
Coming fall 2017
Inspired by my Pine Castle Woman’s Club presentation:

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA

Reserve your Signed and NUMBERED first print copy:

Gatlin; Conway, Troy, Pine Castle, McKinnon,
Taft, Prosper Colony, Oak Ridge & more!

I will personally notify you by email when this book is available
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Anticipated availability: October, 2017
$16 plus tax with FREE shipping IF RESERVED NOW!

First Road to Orlando; CitrusLAND Curse of Florida’s Paradise, The Rutland Mule Matter and other central Florida books are already available at Amazon.com

NEXT BLOG: APRIL 19, 2017


FRANCES E. HEWLETT of WASHINGTON, DC