Monday, October 9, 2017

Town of EDGEWOOD, Florida

Two cities now encroach on the one-time homestead of the man most often credited with naming Pine Castle. The acreage upon which Will Wallace HARNEY built his historic pine residence is today part of Belle Isle. Still another sliver includes, to quote a Town Plat of Edgewood, “a portion of Lot 1, Harney’s Homestead.”

Each of today’s three ‘place names’ associated with Pine Castle are rich in South Orange County history, but as for this blog, I’ll be zeroing in on the origins of one specific locale, the origins of a Town of Edgewood!  


1860 Homestead of James J. & Lydia Patrick
Government Lot 4 & SW ¼ of SW ¼ Section 13; 23S; 29E

Edgewood Town Hall, on Larue Avenue, is south of the original town site. A product of Florida’s 1920s ‘Land Boom’, the original Edgewood was north of Lake Mary Jess Road, midway between 1880 towns Pine Castle and Gatlin, on land dating to the earliest South Orange County settlers.

John T. Jerkins lived at Hawkinsville, on St. Johns River, in 1856, when the 30 year old Orange County resident followed Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Trail south, all the way to the end. Here, Jerkins enlisted with Aaron Jernigan’s Volunteer Militia at Fort Gatlin. Likely using a Military Land Warrant, Jerkins acquired 74 remote acres beyond Gatlin, acreage along the west shore of the upper basin of Lake Conway.

Jerkins sold his 74.4 acres September 18, 1858, to a fellow Volunteer Militiaman by the name of James J. Patrick. Known to surveyors as “Lot 4 and the southwest ¼ of the southwest ¼ of Section 13,’ (above map), this very same parcel, by 1915, belonged to two land developers; H. Carl Dann and J. B. Long.

Dann & Long subdivided a portion of their land, naming the development CONWAY HEIGHTS. Newspapers of 1915 reported over the summer that improvements had been made to ‘Orlando to Pine Castle’ road, and that on August 24, 1915, a hundred or more cars would form a convoy, driving all the way from Sanford to Kissimmee. Dann & Long’s property sat east of South Florida Railroad’s track, and east too of the soon to be heavily traveled road rechristened, ‘Dixie Highway.’

Conway Heights offered six, long slender lakefront lots, each stretching from Dixie Highway east to the shore of Lake Conway. John & Eleanor Droege, of New Haven, Connecticut, bought three (3) adjoining lots, each being 650 feet deep, having a combined 135 foot frontage on the lake as well as Dixie Highway. OAK LYNN Drive, off Hansel Avenue, is currently in the vicinity of the three Droege lots, where the New England couple built their winter residence, complete with a, “boathouse and bathing pavilion,” on Lake Conway.

The 20s Boom

Orlando Attorney Edward S. Bridges acquired the Droege property, including the boathouse and bathing pavilion, July 12, 1920. Bridges however did not keep the parcel. He instead deeded the land that same month to his brother-in-law and sister, Robert M. & Lucy (Bridges) Shearer, both of whom were returning to the United States after a long overseas stint.

Native Kentuckians, the Shearer’s bought additional nearby acreage, and on January 26, 1926, as Mayor of the Town of Edgewood, Robert SHEARER approved OAK LYNN at EDGEWOOD, a subdivision of 100 plus lots platted by the Alleman Brothers. A 1929 Orlando City Directory includes the following listing: “Colonel Robert M. Shearer, President Orange County Mortgage and Investment Corporation, wife Lucy B., home address Oak Lynn Edgewood, Florida. Phone 7558.”


Robert M & Lucy B Shearer, Circa 1919

Forty (40) years after Clement R. Tiner platted his Town of Pine Castle, residents new to Orange County, and unfamiliar with the amazing history of the place, laid out a new Town of Edgewood. Their new city, over time, started encroaching southward, on land once owned by William A. Patrick, and later platted by the son of Will Harney, William Randolph Harney – but then, that’s a story in and of itself. You'll find it in Beyond Gatlin!

During the year 1900, Robert M. Shearer was serving in the Philippines, in the Army, but so too was the 1884 Postmaster of Conway, another startup town east of Fort Gatlin. Orange County Surveyor Augustus C. Hart was likewise in the Army, also stationed in the Philippines. Another fellow, an Ohioan, soon to be elected President of the United States, was in the Philippines too, and by remarkable coincidence, all four of these individuals were to influence the 20th century development of South Orange County.

Pine Castle of yesteryear is a borderless community today, a ‘place’ remembered by nearby residents of each location. Beyond Gatlin, a History of South Orange County, delves much further into the lives of remarkable central Florida pioneers, and the many challenges the bravest of the brave faced head-on, events that shaped the earliest settlements south of the county’s seat of government at Orlando.

BEYOND GATLIN
A history of South Orange County


Between two beautiful lakes and projecting into a third,” central Florida’s Fort Gatlin, established in 1838, became a hub for the earliest settlements south of Orlando. BEYOND GATLIN is a history of true-life courageous pioneers, hardy men and women who endured an endless barrage of challenges to establish 19th century settlements of Kissimmee City, Shingle Creek, Pine Castle, Mackinnon, Troy, Gatlin, Conway, Campbell City, Runnymede, and 20th century communities of Taft, Prosper Colony, Edgewood, Belle Isle. Beyond Gatlin also goes in search of the real Fort Davenport, the ridge of Oaks, and more. 97 Exhibits and an extensive bibliography support this 236 page history of how South Orange County and early Osceola County came to be.

BEYOND GATLIN, AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM


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