ORLANDO Founding Families: The YATES family

Part Two: The YATES family

I have used the word mysterious often when writing about the origin of ORLANDO and do so for good reason. I believe this ‘Orlando Founding Families ‘series will establish that such a description of the city’s earliest days is indeed accurate. The story of Orlando reads much like a Whodunit Novel, with ‘it’ referring to which pioneer was most responsible for the making and naming of Orange County’s Seat of Government.

 

Osceola County was the second home of central Florida’s Yates family

A variety of surnames have long been bantered about by historians as the town founder, names such as Speer, Caldwell, and Worthington the Postmaster. But what about other early residents of Village of Orlando, like maybe Overstreet or Yates? Or more specifically, James Yates, Jr.?

Central Orlando 1881 (Red X was Merchant Overstreet’s Lot 10 Store)

Orlando’s hub of 1881 (above) embodies that which I’ve dubbed Orlando’s mysterious origin. Extracted from two pages of an 1881 Plat of Orlando, and to support my “mystery” supposition, I’ve cut and pasted a portion from each page of the city’s center, or that area today located at the crossroads of Central and Magnolia Avenues. It’s called Heritage Square today!

Page One of the 1881 plat shows the town north of Central Avenue (above my dotted line on the plat). Plat page one shows the developer as Robert R. REID. Below the dotted line is Page Two, city center south of Central Avenue. Page two shows the developer’s name as R. R. REED (Reid vs. Reed – and so the mystery begins!)

I added the red, green and orange on the above plat. The rest is as shown on the plat recorded with the Orange County Clerk of Court in 1881. The heavy shaded tic-tac-toe board (red square) is the 417’ x 417’ original “Town of Orlando,” actually called out as such on the survey. The red ‘X’ was lot 10, Henry Overstreet’s store (Part 1 of last week). The orange perpendicular line highlights the Section 26 (left) and Section 25 (right) surveyor division line.

Historians have long agreed that the entire four (4) acre 1856-57 Village of Orlando was in Section 26 of Township 22S; 29E, and it appears that way as well on the plat. But what is the narrow space outlined in green? A narrow slice of land 127’ wide by 479’ long, much of this slice is now the Orange County Library, but how did this parcel fit in with Village of 1856-57 Orlando? The answer, James Yates, Jr. and his brother, Needham Yates!

Cattleman Needham YATES recorded an Orange County deed in 1853 conveying 200 head of cattle to four children: William; John; Joseph and Amelia. Two years later, James Yates, Sr. is found on recorded Orange County deeds. The county’s 1856 Militia included James Yates, Jr., (age 33); Henry Yates, (age 30); William B. Yates, (age 30); and Needham Yates, (age 17). So, as these deeds reflect, the Yates family was in the Orlando area even before the village was founded in 1856-57.

In an 1858 deed, James & Mary Yates conveyed a tiny sliver of land to Needham Yates, land described as: “One lot of land bounded on the north by a lot owned by James Yates, on the east by Section 25, on the south by J. R. Worthington’s land, on the west by the village of Orlando, and situated in Section 26, T 22S; R 29E.” This is the same land as outlined in green above!

Of interest in the 1878 deed is a comment about James Yates owning land north of the parcel he conveyed to Needham, land that today would be north of Washington Street. James Yates still owned some land in Section 26, as it suggests, even after deeding part to Needham Yates.

Witnessed by J. R. Worthington and James Overstreet, the deed was recorded three days later by Clerk of Court James P. Hughey. Later documents clarify that the parcel is one and the same as that outlined in green, raising more questions about James Yates’ relationship to the founding of Village of Orlando.

1846 Survey of Section 26 with overlays added by this author

The original 1846 survey, shown above, and like the plat earlier, has been altered by adding color to highlight certain areas. The orange perpendicular survey line again separates Section 25 from Section 26 (Section 26 is left of the line). The one-square mile Section 26 has been further divided into four equal quarters, (NW, NE, SW, and SE). We are interested however only in the lower right “Quarter,” or as surveyors referred to it, “the Southeast Quarter”.

The double line in the lower righthand corner of the Southeast Quarter, left of “Lake Eola,” was the old Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road. The red square indicates the four-acre village of Orlando. Professor Wehr also stated in his book, From Mosquito to Orange, that in 1856, the winning location for the county seat was identified on a tally sheet as simply: “Section 26, Township 22 Range 29 south and east.”

Orange County voters decided they wanted their courthouse built somewhere inside the one-mile square Section 26, and within that square mile there was only one road – a short stretch of the old forts trail, passing through the southeast quarter of that section.

“The Orlando Mystery” shown in green atop the 1846 survey happened also to be land Yates conveyed to Patrick in the 1878 deed, but excluding 1 1/3 acres Yates had sold to Jacob Summerlin; and another 1 acre lot containing “2 roods and 16 perches,” the very same parcel James conveyed to Needham Yates in 1858, but “also excepting four acres more or less heretofore sold by J. G. Speer under power of attorney from B. F. Caldwell to said County of Orange.”

Confused? First, the “2 roods and 16 perches” parcel was the very same land as that outlined in green on the first plat above. The four acres exempted is the area outlined in my red square, and the exact same land Benjamin Caldwell of Talladega gifted to Orange County on the 5^th of October 1857.

And so yes, you have good reason to be confused! The 1878 deed, meant to clarify, only makes matters worse, for it suggests James Yates, Jr. owned all land surrounding the 1856-57 Village of Orlando at the time the town of Orlando was formed. The document suggests Yates may have sold to Caldwell – through Speer, while other documents contradict such a suggestion.

UCF History Professor Paul Wehr, author of “From Mosquito to Orange County,” published in 2016 by Pine Castle Historical Society, stated: “Section 26 comprised about 640 acres, but until 1856 no private individual held any claim within its bounds and upon which no one resided except, perhaps, squatters.” Does this comment suggest James Yates, Jr. was a Squatter?

Orange County’s 1860 census found James Yates, Jr. age 38, and wife Mary, age 34, as residents of Orlando. Parents of three children, James and Mary Yates were shown as natives of Georgia, while their children: Agnes (age 14, named for her grandmother); William H., age 10, and Eliza, age 6, were each listed as born in Florida. Barely a town in 1860, Orlando was more the location of two stores along a 25 mile, Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road.

Orlando was all but abandoned when America’s War of Rebellion began in April 1861, and the families of Yates and Overstreet moved further into Orange County’s wilderness. Keeping their cattle hidden from expected Union ‘poachers,’ wanting to cut off Confederate food supplies, was likely their primary reason for moving deep into the cypress swamps of Shingle Creek.

By war’s end, Yates and Overstreet had both abandoned Orange County's seat at Orlando for homesteads on Shingle Creek. A Shingle Creek Post Office was established November 10, 1873, by Clement R. Tiner, husband of Mary Jane Yates, the granddaughter of James Yates, Sr. A niece of James Yates, Jr., Mary (Yates) Tiner was the daughter of deceased Needham Yates, killed in the 1870 Barber - Mizell feud.

Meanwhile, back at Orlando, a big mess was boiling over. Palatka merchant Robert R. Reid had traveled from his home to Orlando on the 7th of January, 1867. He was in Orange County to attend a sheriff’s auction, held on Orlando's courthouse ‘step.’ At that auction, Reid entered the successful low bid of $900, thereby earning him the deed for 114 acres in the southeast quarter of Section 26.

The Sheriff described the land auctioned off as belonging, “to the estate of J. R. Worthington, deceased, 114 acres.” The question now becomes, how did Worthington get the land Robert R. Reid bought at auction in 1867? That's where we pick back up next week!

Next Friday, April 19, 2019: Postmaster Worthington

“First Road to Orlando” is a history of the old Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road and of how a tiny village in the middle of a remote wilderness became the Orange County seat of government.

This Orlando Founding Families delves deeper into the courageous pioneers who found their way along a lonely dusty forts trail – thereby becoming the first families to settle at Orlando.

Central Florida History by Richard Lee Cronin

https://www.amazon.com/author/richardcronin

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