PINE CASTLE'S 19th Century Secret

UNRAVELING A MYSTERY OF HISTORY:

PINE CASTLE’S 19^th 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 19^th 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 20^th century town of Belle Isle, the 19^th 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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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.

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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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