CENTRAL FLORIDA'S FASCINATING HISTORY: BEYOND GATLIN: Perils of PINE CASTLE

The Pine Castle - residence of Will Wallace Harney

A complimentary sneak peek of BEYOND GATLIN, due out November, 2017

Chapter 10: Perils of Pine Castle

One might assume development south of Fort Gatlin began in the town of Pine Castle, home to Will Wallace Harney, son-in-law of the Honorable, William M. Randolph. Although such an assumption seems logical, it wasn’t so.

Arriving in late 1869, Harney built a lakefront home on Lake Conway, personally naming his residence Pine Castle. Over time, a city did eventually grow around his homestead, and even adopted the homestead’s signature name, but personal perils got in the way of Harney himself reaping rewards as a town developer. The actual town of Pine Castle was platted in 1884, and not by Will Wallace Harney.

Arriving at Orange County in late 1869, Will Harney had been one of a family that had endured a long arduous journey south. His 25 year young wife, Mary St. Mayer (Randolph) Harney, eldest daughter of William & Mary E. (Pitts) Randolph, made the challenging move to Florida’s wilderness carrying an infant son, William Randolph Harney, born June 24, 1869, the same year of the family’s relocation to Florida.

After debarking at a ‘raggedy’ Mellonville pier, they still had a rugged trail to trek, 28 miles in all. They saw not the first house nor store for the first 22 miles of that trail. Orlando welcomed them at Mile 22, all four acres of this remote County Seat then still containing the charred ruins of the courthouse, burned to the ground a year earlier. Orange County records were destroyed by an arson’s torch, believed set by those involved in a cattle wrestling case awaiting trial, a trial that was awaiting the next circuit judge to arrive from the port at Mellonville.

Across on the east side of the old forts trail was one of only two stores in Orlando’s tiny village, the last place they could buy goods before journeying south the next six miles. And these next six miles would be even more remote than the 22 already traveled.

A newspaperman, Harney had departed Louisville, Kentucky, a town of 100,000 in 1870, and relocated to Fort Gatlin, deep in the wilderness of Orange County, Florida, at a time when the entire county Orange, all 3,000 square miles, had fewer than 2,200 residents.

Arriving during the final days of 1869, Will Harney’s wife Mary died January 8, 1870. Mary (Randolph) Harney was laid to rest beside the old ruins of Fort Gatlin, on part of the land where William M. Randolph made his homestead. Within months of arriving in a land intended to improve his wife’s health, Will Wallace Harney had become a Widower.

Six weeks after Harney’s wife died, Sheriff David W. Mizell, Jr., on February 21, 1870, was shot and killed in an ambush in south Orange County. The Sheriff’s parents lived across the lake from Will Harney, while one of the accused murderers, John J. Barber, lived south of Harney on Lake Conway. The lifeless body of yet another of the accused, Moses E. Barber, was found in Lake Conway, not far from Harney’s Pine Castle residence. Some said Moses Barber had drowned. Others said no, he had been murdered.

As Harney’s infant son was turning one in June of 1870, Will learned of his father-in-law’s failed attempt at constructing Orange County’s first railroad. The long tiring journey from Mellonville to Harney’s homestead on Lake Conway was to remain long and tiring, hardly a prime location for founding a new town.

One could even make the argument that 1870 Orange County didn’t have a town. Orlando was still a four (4) acre village, occupying land donated to the county in 1857. Would be towns of Apopka, Fort Reid, and Mellonville were places where one could buy goods. Not one of these places had yet filed a town plat. And so for Will Wallace Harney there was no incentive to consider establishing a city, not during his early years as a resident of Orange County.

The hurricane of 1871 brought an entirely new set of problems for the locals, Harney included. Repairing extensive property damage meant little or no time to deal with such frivolous matters as town building. The storm (Chapter 8: Harney’s Hurricane) left behind dead cattle, giant trees uprooted, and many of the crops destroyed.

Throughout the decade of the 1870s settlers had little reason to imagine being town developers. Putting food on the family table continued to be their full time job.

But agents of change were gathering at Orange County, and it’s easy to understand why locals may not have at first noticed. Settlers began to find their way south to Orange County. Veterans of the Civil War came for grants of land, given to retired warriors in lieu of wages. Confederate Veterans came first, followed soon after by a number of Union Veterans.

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