UNRAVELING
A MYSTERY OF HISTORY:
PINE
CASTLE’S 19th CENTURY SECRET
An 1886 Pine Castle death became a mystery for the
ages, a secret kept by the town’s citizens – a secret that over time was
explained away by blaming Florida’s Great Freeze. Pine Castle’s death however had
occurred nearly a decade before Florida’s worst-ever freeze of 1894-95, long
after the body of Charles Goodspeed Nute had been laid to rest at Orlando’s
Greenwood Cemetery. So why the secrecy about Nute’s death? What was Pine
Castle’s 1880s secret? And was the very reason for residents at a hopeful new
Orange County railroad town on the southern outskirts of Orlando, the decision
to keep secret details of a May 26, 1886 death, proven to be justified?
Noah
H. Grady House, Randolph Avenue
Courtesy Orange County Appraiser's Office
Answers to each intriguing question are revealed by
fusing together histories of three residences of 1880s Pine Castle. Of the
three 19th century homes however, only one still stands today, that
being a residence on Randolph Avenue built in 1885 by Noah H. Grady. At times
referred to as the “Founder’s House” and/or “Lancaster House,” this very parcel
is jam-packed full of history. And this very parcel is also where the unlocking
of Pine Castle’s secret of the ages begins.
Now located in the 20th century town of
Belle Isle, the 19th century home built by Noah H. Grady was
originally part of the Will Wallace Harney homestead. For a brief time in
history, this home, which I will refer to as the Grady House from this point
on, sat within a stone’s throw of the real Pine Castle – the home built by Will
Wallace Harney a decade before Grady arrived. Harney’s Pine Castle residence is
the second of three residences in our quest to unravel the 1880s secret of the
town named Pine Castle.
A Missouri native, Noah Hamilton Grady arrived a
single man at Pine Castle in 1884. He bought two acres from Pine Castle
residents Isaac & Sally Aten on September 2, 1884. Said in the deed as
being “a square,” the parcel Grady purchased was further described as located
“on the east side of Randolph Avenue.”
Noah H. Grady was living at Pine Castle, with his
parents Josephus & Serelda Grady, in 1885. He gave his occupation in the
census of that year as “Law & Insurance.” Noah was again listed in the
Orange County Gazetteer of 1887, a partner in Ormsby, Knox & Grady
Insurance. Noah’s residence in 1887 was listed not as Pine Castle though, but
Main and Magnolia in Orlando. (Noah’s partner, Collis Ormsby, had relocated,
not surprisingly, from Louisville, Kentucky, the prior homeplace of Will
Wallace Harney.) After 1887, Noah H. Grady vanished from central Florida, and
history mistakenly recorded his departure as the result of Florida Great Freeze
of 1894-95.
Noah married Annie L. Veach at her birthplace of
Bartow, Georgia on October 20, 1891. Their first child, Henry Veach Grady, was
born at Missouri in August of 1892. Annie Veach Grady, child number two, was
born at Chattanooga, Tennessee in April of 1894 – eight months before the first
of two back to back freezes wiped out central Florida’s citrus industry. (Noah’s
wife Annie was a niece of Orlando Dentist John W. Veach. Noah and his bride therefore
may have met in central Florida prior to their departure from Orlando and Pine
Castle.
The Noah H. Grady parcel became Lot 7 of the Will
Wallace Harney Homestead plat filed at Orange County in 1891. Orange County
Appraiser’s office identifies the house on Randolph Avenue referred to as the
Grady House as being part of Harney’s Lot 7.
1891
Plat of Will Wallace Harney (Blue square is Lot 7)
A deed dated July 6, 1897, after Florida’s Great
Freeze of 1894-95, conveyed “Lot 7 of Harney’s Homestead” back to Isaac and
Sally Aten after they paid in full the $2.35 in unpaid property tax. Sold at
tax auction after the freeze, this is possibly how the “faux-history” of the
Grady house began, but the property had obviously been abandoned long before
the freeze.
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Florida’s Indian
River Duchess (Not Jennie Busch!)
Seven Honorable
Floridians (The Seven who voted NO)
Pine Castle merchants, Isaac & Sally Aten had
originally purchased this parcel directly from Will Wallace Harney on September
9, 1882. The original Harney-Aten deed is also historically significant, for
the deed, signed by Will Wallace Harney, describes the purchase as being “two
acres on the east side of Randolph Avenue,” the exact description of the sale
in 1884 to Noah H. Grady. Why is this deed significant? “Randolph Avenue” was
spelled out in a deed as early as 1882. Harney’s plat showing Randolph Avenue
was not recorded until 1891, and the first plat of the town of Pine Castle,
recorded by Clement R. Tiner, to the west of Harney’s Homestead, was not
recorded until 1884.
Worth noting also are the two streets laid out in 1882
by Will Wallace Harney. Each connects with one another – the intersection of
Randolph and Wallace – and each connects with Lake Conway, but neither connects
with any offsite artery.
So, Isaac & Sally Aten first owned
the Lot 7 Harney Homestead parcel, sold it to Noah H. Grady, who then built a
home on the land, but then departed central Florida by 1886-87. The Aten’s then
bought this same Lot 7 back in 1897 for the cost of the unpaid taxes.
Why did Grady leave town, only to restart his
insurance company at Chattanooga, Tennessee?
In 1884, Attorney William R. Anno lived on 160 acres
at Pine Castle. That same year, half of his land became an addition to Clement
R. Tiner’s 1884 Town of Pine Castle. William Anno’s 80 acres doubled the size
of the town. Anno Avenue, running north and south today, divides Tiner’s original
city and William R. Anno’s addition to the west. Anno’s other 80 acres, land
north of Oakridge, fronting little Lake Mary on the west, north to Lake Mary
Jess Road, was where the personal residence of William and Sarah Anno was
located.
The Anno residence is the third home important to
unraveling Pine Castle’s secret of the ages.
“The residence and home of the said first part, W. R.
Anno and his wife Sarah,” was sold, as per a deed dated February 15, 1889, to
Orlando Attorney E. R. Gunby. The Anno’s departed Pine Castle, although
William’s wife Sarah likely never forgot what occurred at their Pine Castle home
a short 3 years earlier, March 6, 1886.
Everything about Pine Castle changed during 1886-87.
Noah H. Grady gave up on his Randolph Avenue investment at Pine Castle. Clement
R. Tiner abandoned his new town of Pine Castle and relocated, with his mother -
further south to Lakeland in Polk County. Other second-generation Pine Castle descendants
likewise moved to Polk and Hillsborough County. Will Wallace Harney, a prolific
writer of the 1870s and early 1880s, after selling a second Novelette for
publication in 1887 by Louisville’s ‘Southern Bivouac’, suddenly stopped
writing about America’s ‘Gardens of the Hesperides’ – central Florida’s Eden.
Coming this fall!
And in time for
Christmas giving, THE biography of
Pine Castle's - Will Wallace
Harney
Sold and distributed by Pine Castle Historical Society
Request to be notified when available by sending an email to
WillHarney@CroninBooks.com
South Florida Sentinel of Orlando, on May 26, 1886,
reported: ‘Mr. Charles G. Nute died at the residence of his son-in-law and
daughter, Colonel and Mrs. W. R. Anno, near Pine Castle, at noon Monday, of
paralysis. Mr. Nute was stricken with the fatal disease Thursday evening while
at the tea table.” The fatal disease Charles, 75 years old, died of was not
mentioned further – not that is, until 43 years later, when a descendent of
Charles Goodspeed Nute wrote that Charles had died at Orlando, May 26, 1886, “from
Yellow Fever.”
Orange County had built a reputation on the notion
that it was free of Malaria and yellow fever, exempted of the fearful diseases
because of its perfect location. Railroads of the 1880s opened up the
opportunity for town building in central Florida, and 150 new towns spring up,
promoted by prolific writers such as Will Wallace Harney and others - who
promoted central Florida as being unequaled the world over for its healthful
living.
Tampa and Jacksonville headlined the 1887-88 Yellow
Fever Epidemic that kept land buyers away from Florida. As the death toll
mounted, northern cities along railroad lines refused to allow trains to stop –
refused to allow passengers from Florida to depart. Harper’s Magazine included
sketches of Northerners denying passengers to depart in their town. Florida’s
growth stopped dead in its train tracks – as residents remaining in central
Florida lived in fear.
Helen (Heig) Warner, a resident of Runnymede near
Kissimmee, wrote home to her mother on June 18, 1887: “There is a scare of
yellow fever just now, we are in quarantine.”
As the epidemic cleared, trains finally began to
deliver potential buyers once again to central Florida – until that is,
December 29, 1894, when the first freeze struck. A second colder freeze rained
down on central Florida February 7, 1895. “Multitudes,” said Benjamin M.
Robinson, brother in law of Will Wallace Harney, “abandoned their groves and
homes, in some cases leaving tables set and beds unmade, and went away.
America’s Paradise fell from grace. By the year 1900,
fewer people were living in Orange County than lived here in 1890.
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Beyond Gatlin: A
South Orange County History
And much, much more history
by Richard Lee Cronin
