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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