James M & Frances E (Hewlett) ALDEN
Pine Castle Historical Society
Appreciation Edition
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| From the 1915 book, Early Settlers of Orange County by C. E. Howard |
A long-time resident of the
county, Annie wrote of the “bleached
trunk and bare wide-spread branches of an immense dead live-oak, still standing. It is said that red men and white men met here to hold a
council. The Council Oak stands,
her white arms held aloft, a silent protest against the injustice of war, a
ghostly presence lamenting her children, a memorial of them, which time, nor
storm has expelled in all the years since then.”
Rollins College President William F. Blackman authored ‘History
of Orange County’ a dozen years later. Blackman too wrote of a legendary tree.
“There is a tradition,” he wrote in 1927, of a meeting between the Army and
Indians near FORT GATLIN, a meeting
said to have taken place “under a huge
live-oak tree, and this oak, now no
longer existing, was long-known as the Council
Oak.”
The
Council Oak vanished between 1915 and 1927, but fortunately, Annie Whitner included with her historical
account a painting of the tree, along with this comment: “a beautiful picture has been
painted of Council Oak by Mr.
J. M. Alden, of Orlando, a
talented member of our association.”
Upon
reading her account, two questions immediately came to mind. Where is J. M.
Alden’s painting now, and who was the “talented
member” of Mrs. Whitner’s historical association?
James
Madison Alden and Annie
(Caldwell) Whitner made for a most unlikely pair, as their families had
been staunch enemies only a few decades earlier. By 1915 though, both were working alongside one another in an attempt
to preserve central Florida history. Born 1859
in North Carolina, Annie grew to adulthood at Fort Reid, a mile east
of modern day Sanford. She arrived
with her parents at a time Sanford was little more than a ‘concept’ of a port
town on the St. Johns River.
Alden was a
New Englander, born in Massachusetts in 1834.
An Orange County farmer by the turn of the 20th Century, James M.
Alden was by that time in his second
career, having already completed nearly a half-century of outstanding military service
to his country.
Alden was a Yankee. Annie (Caldwell) Whitner was a Confederate.
By 1915, both were proud Floridians.
Both were proud Americans!
Even before Annie Whitner was born, James
M. Alden had already become a distinguished Navy artist. Traveling with the
United States Exploring Squadron led by Captain
Charles Wilkes, young Alden’s sketches of Northwest Territory earned him
the title, “James Madison Alden, Yankee Artist of the Pacific Coast”.
Google this title for even more information on the man and his famous works.
During the Civil War, at a time when Annie was an infant, James M. Alden served as
Navy Secretary to Rear Admiral David
Dixon Porter. Assigned to Washington, DC, Alden remained in DC after the
War, continuing to serve Admiral Porter.
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| Yosemite Falls, by James M. Alden, Yankee Artist of the Pacific Coast |
Frances
E. Hewlett was born in England and employed as a Clerk at the Treasury
Department in Washington, DC by 1880.
Single, and twenty-six years younger than James
M. Alden, Frances became Mrs. Alden
after the death of the first Mrs. Alden, and after resigning her Pensions
Department position in June of 1890.
Frances however
had already teamed up with fellow DC Pension Clerks to become an Orange County
land speculator a full year prior to her marriage to James M. Alden.
In fact, I first introduced Frances E. Hewlett in Chapter Eight, ‘Pen Pals’, of my Historical Novel, The Rutland Mule Matter. Frances, and another true-life Pension Clerk Eugene P. Mallory, are approached by an
Orange County lad named Othman Rutland.
A nine year old boy in 1865, Othman
recalls the time a Navy Officer delivered a mule to his family home at Apopka.
Desperate to learn of what happened to father, Othman travels as an adult to DC in 1888, hoping to solicit assistance from two clerks with whom he has something in common – Orange County
landownership.
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Othman’s father
had gone missing during the closing days of the Civil War, and those still alive
and living in Orange County who might know what happened to Isaac N. Rutland weren’t talking.
Washington DC clerks, many of whom really did become Orange County land
speculators in the 1880s, were Othman’s final hope if ever he was to learn the
truth about his father.
Isaac, Othman, Frances E. HEWLETT, Eugene
and a return of a mule are all
historically accurate, as is the ultimate answer that Othman finds inside an 1865 U. S. Provost Marshal’s file, a
file folder buried in DC, and labeled, The
Rutland Mule Matter. Yes, even the Provost Marshals’ file is historically
accurate!
It was while researching Frances E. Hewlett that I doubled back
to James Madison Alden. I had
researched Fort Gatlin and the ‘Council Oak’ years earlier, learning of
the Navy Artist, and of how valuable his paintings had become. I asked about
the Council Oak painting and
discovered, with assistance from Christine
Kinlaw-Best of Sanford Historical
Society, that his painting was gifted to Orange County Historical Society in 1971. I passed that information along to the folks at the Society,
informing them as well that the man’s other works are now quite valuable.
Lieutenant
James Madison Alden retired a Widower in early 1890, and later that same year, he married Frances E. Hewlett in
Washington, DC. On the 7th of February, 1895, Frances E. (Hewlett)
Alden purchased 45 acres on the
west side of Lake Pineloch. Buying
the land from Albert G. Branham, deeds
for this Alden parcel reference earlier deeds issued by R. F. Eppes. [Robert Francis
Eppes, born 1851, was the son of
Francis Wayles Eppes]
James
& Frances (Hewlett) Alden owned an orange grove on a
portion of 160 historic Orange
County acres. First owned by Lady
Isaphoenia C. Speer, this parcel was situated alongside the Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road, THE
first north-south road in the county. The Alden land sat north of the historic Fortress Gatlin.
The very land owned by the Alden’s
was also the home, in 1871, of Frances W. Eppes, grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. And on this
historic property also grew an “immense live-oak tree”, the legendary Council Oak.
Historian Kena Fries, in her 1938
book ‘Orlando in the Long, Long Ago,’
dedicated a chapter to Council Oak: “On the west side of Pine Loch
Lake, where the old trail worked its way thru the pine woods, there once
stood an immense live oak, said in its glory to have been the largest live oak
in all of central and south Florida. It was known as ‘council oak’, the gathering place of the Seminole warriors.”
The daughter of Orange County surveyor John
Otto Fries, Kena, in describing “the
old trail,” a/k/a/ the Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road, went on to say; “In September 1904, while spending the day with the late J. M. Alden, we rowed across the lake.”
An ancient Indian trail became a
military route leading from Lake Monroe to Fort
Gatlin. The Council Oak was
located on the trail, on the west side of a lake named by the grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. A parcel
chock full of central Florida history, including an historic old oak tree, was
preserved for history by a retired Navy Officer turned Orange County Citrus Grower.
James
M. Alden died at Orlando May 10, 1922.
His Widow, Frances E. (Hewlett) Alden, passed
away April 16, 1930. Both were
buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River
from Washington, DC.
The Alden property at Lake
Pineloch became Pine Loch Heights
in 1921. Blogger Syd Albright wrote of James M. Alden and his wife in an October
12, 2014. In his blog, Albright said
the Alden’s: “retired to OAK KNOLL,
Fla, near ORLANDO. He spent the rest
of his life tending his fruit trees and painted until 1915 when his eyesight failed.” Council Oak may well have been the
last painting of James M. Alden, and one most wonder, did the Council Oak have anything to do with
his naming his acreage, Oak Knoll?
Research
compiled by Richard Lee Cronin
My thanks
to Pine Castle Woman’s Club and their Pine Castle Historical Society for
allowing me to present to their organization on Sunday afternoon, March 12,
2017.
