First train to LAKELAND

First train to LAKELAND

A full-page March 12, 1890 advertisement in the Florida Agriculturist newspaper reads much like a history of the victorious town in a battle between two place names. Last week’s blog told of a Lake Parker town of Acton, now little more than a ghost town. A few miles west of Acton a fellow named A. G. Munn laid out his town of LAKELAND, the winner in the battle between the two towns, and in 1890, Munn was selling the Tremont Hotel at Lakeland, said to have been built, per the full-page advertisement, “in the Fall of 1884, enlarged during the Winter of 1885-86, and thoroughly repaired and repainted in February 1890.”

Abraham Godwin Munn (1819-1909)

Abraham Godwin Munn (1819-1909), of Louisville, Kentucky, founded Lakeland on 80 acres he purchased in 1881-82. President of an Agricultural equipment manufacturing firm at Louisville, Munn originally selected DeLand as the site for his winter residence, arriving there, reported the Florida Agriculturalist, March 2, 1881. The paper wrote that Mr. Munn of Louisville “invested largely in the fine residence on the place he purchased from Dr. Lancaster.” The residence had presumably been the home of Dr. George W. Lancaster (1836-1913), an early DeLand pioneer.

Munn kept his property and interest in DeLand, for in 1889, he was listed as a partner in the St. Johns and DeLand Railway Company, a venture desiring to build a line between Lake Beresford and DeLand. Abraham Munn’s son, Morris G. Munn, established a farm in the DeLand area.

Two other railroads however became of interest to Abraham G. Munn long before he invested in the short 1889 DeLand line. These two railroads were mentioned in Munn’s 1890 Tremont Hotel advertisement. “Lakeland,” the Munn’s ad stated, “is at the Junction of the South Florida and Florida Southern Railroads, and now has 11 passenger trains daily.” Lakeland was described in Munn’s advertisement as “beautifully laid out with wide streets and is the highest point on the South Florida Railroad line, and very desirable for a winter home.” Interested parties could buy the hotel of 36 guest chambers, said to have had 4,000 guests since first opening, at “a bargain, on easy terms.” Interested parties were encouraged to contact Morris G. Munn at DeLand.

Kentucky Avenue, Lakeland, circa 1880s, Munn Public Park at right

As viewed from the railroad tracks, courtesy Floridamemory.org

Abraham Munn, son of Ira Munn (1792-1857) and Elizabeth (Godwin 1796-1878), had been a native of New Jersey who relocated at a young age to Louisville, Kentucky. On November 13, 1844 Abraham married Rebecca (Morton). Other than spending winters in Florida – either at DeLand or his Lakeland property, Abraham did not move to Florida as a full-time resident. He died at Louisville October 18, 1909.

South Florida Railroad’s extensive 1887 travelogue described central Florida’s terrain heading west from Kissimmee, explaining how the grade ascended in terraces ranging from 65 feet above sea level near Lake Tohopekaliga to 210 feet at Lakeland. “An energetic settler and English company have cut 3 ½ miles of canal,” reported the travelogue, “and are engaged in redeeming these meadows, which will be astonishingly fertile.” One supposes the brochure might have been talking about Englishman Piers Eliot Warburton and his lakeside town of Acton (Last week’s blog).

The travelogue continued in his description: “Lakeland unites to its natural advantages and present opportunities as the junction of the main line and Pemberton branch of the South Florida Railroad, the prospective hope of drawing to it the associate lines of the West Coast.” East-West South Florida Railroad and north-south Florida Southern Railroad had both set their sights on Lakeland. “The town,” the travelogue added, “is more city-like than any point north of it, and is laid off about a main plaza forming a square of ten acres, with the railway extending along one thoroughfare.”

The main plaza was that of today’s Munn Park (outlined in green below on the early plat of A. G. Munn’s Town of Lakeland. The red line indicates the path of South Florida Railroad.)

A.    G. Munn’s 1884 survey of his town of Lakeland

Of each description of Lakeland, and for most every town in this vicinity for that matter, is that “it is hard to believe the babe born the day it was incorporated is yet in long clothes; or that four years ago there were more wild cats and panthers than men and women in the city.” Abraham G. Munn acquired his land only four years before the arrival of the Lake Monroe to Tampa Bay train.

There is far more to the story of Lakeland’s founders and founding, a history requiring its very own blog series, but for now – in the interest of telling how a train to Tampa Bay influenced the development of central Florida – suffice it to say that Abraham Godwin Munn envisioned the town of Lakeland, a city he first platted in 1884.

This blog series resumes next Friday as the South Florida Railroad continues to lay down track toward the Gulf of Mexico. Next Friday we enter Hillsborough County, stopping first at Plant City.

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First train to ACTON of Polk County

ACTON: Sister city of Mackinnon of Orange County & Sarasota, Florida

“For a short time,” according to Lakelandgov.net, the city of “Lakeland had a rival town on the south side of Lake Parker, the largest lake in the city. That town was called ACTON. It had a church before Lakeland did, and more importantly, a railroad depot.” The railroad depot was a stop the South Florida Railroad line.

Origins of three sister Citrus-Belt cities: Sarasota, Mackinnon and ACTON, date to the four (4) million acres Philadelphian Hamilton Disston acquired in the early 1880s. That land deal allowed the State to settle its pre-Civil War debt, thereby freeing up public lands for use in encouraging investors to build railroads. The Disston investment resolved the Vose injunction which had been in place since 1870, and immediately increased the desirability and value of South Florida land.

With the court injunction settled, Hamilton Disston recovered a portion of his large investment in Florida by selling chunks of his 4 million acres to other land speculators. An English consortium became one of the speculators, a group who organized themselves as The Florida Mortgage & Investment Company Limited. Two of the named English officers of that company were Robert W. Hanbury and Piers Eliot Warburton.

Hanbury and Warburton appeared in Orange County by April 1883. That August, a one-square mile town of Mackinnon was laid out in South Orange County, north of Kissimmee. A depot on the South Florida Railroad line was built at Mackinnon, where Florida Mortgage & Investment Company began selling lots in their new Town of Mackinnon.

Sir William MacKinnon, namesake of

Town of Mackinnon is featured in my 2017 book;

Beyond Gatlin: A history of South Orange County

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Meanwhile, Piers Eliot Warburton represented Florida Mortgage & Investment Company at Sarasota. A historic marker at the Five Points intersection in downtown Sarasota tells of how, in the spring of 1885, a surveyor for Florida Mortgage & Investment Company laid out the town. Piers Warburton however didn’t concentrate only on Sarasote. That very same year, Webb’s Historical, Biographical & Industrial magazine reported that Acton, Florida, in Polk County, had a railroad depot at city center as well as two hotels – Acton House & Lake House on Lake Parker. The land agent at Acton, said Webb’s, was Piers E. Warburton.

John Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902), aka Lord Acton of England, as described by the Acton Institute of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was “the magistrate of history.” Among the well-known personalities of the 19^th century, says the Institute, one of Lord Acton’s quotes attributed to the man is the oft used: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton was the grandson of Sir John Acton (1736-1811), celebrated commander of the British Naval forces. Piers Eliot Warburton had been a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy prior to crossing the big pond to represent English investors in the United States.

Winifred Hodgeon arrived at New York a single gal August 23, 1886. Leaving England with her mother at the age of 19, Winifred settled first at Orange County, where she began acquiring land. In 1889, Winifred married Piers Eliot Warburton, and the newlyweds settled at Acton, the new city in Polk County developed by English investors.

Piers Eliot Warburton, Winifred Ann (Hodgeon) and sons

“To show what ladies can do in Florida,” reported Weekly Floridian on June 7, 1888, “Mrs. Logan, of Acton, has growing on her place oranges, lemons, figs, guavas, peaches, bananas, grapes, pineapples, strawberries, citrons, Brazilian papaws and Scuppernongs.” The town founder by Piers Warburton made the news again August 6, 1889: “Sir Francis Osbourne, a genuine English nobleman who has more title than money, is working in a sawmill at Acton at the rate of one dollar a day.”

The merger through marriage of Piers Warburton and Winifred Hodgeon consolidated large landholdings that stretched from South Orange County and Polk County. Winifred had acquired scattered parcels west of Mackinnon, including a large parcel that is now part of Disney’s Magic Kingdom.

Piers Eliot & Winifred Anne (Hodgeon) Warburton returned to England after Florida’s Great Freeze of 1894-95. Like so many other central Florida pioneers of the 19^th century, their land became worthless as dead citrus trees littered the route of South Florida Railroad. Eventually their long-abandoned property was sold for unpaid taxes to the next generation of speculators, firm such as Munger Land Company of Missouri.

Piers Warburton at England died in 1927. His Florida bride of 1889 survived him, living in England until her death in 1954.

South Florida Railroad in Polk County before towns Acton & Lakeland

The Acton railroad depot, says Lakelandgov.net, burned down “under mysterious circumstances, and a new depot was built in Lakeland. Acton began to decline and was gone by 1906.” But Acton was not the only South Florida Railroad ghost town. Mackinnon of Orange County also fell to ghost town status. One of the three sister cities in which Piers Warburton played a role in developing however did survive and flourish. And today, Sarasota’s Five Points remains the hub of Sarasota, Florida.

This blog series resumes next Friday as the South Florida Railroad inches further west - to that next depot beyond Warburton’s town of Acton. Next Friday, August 23, 2019, Lakeland, Florida.

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First train to AUBURNDALE

“In a cluster of a wild scenery of lakes, but on the broad hump among them, is pretty AUBURNDALE, laid out with curved and straight avenues, like the spokes and felloes, on concentric rays, so as to utilize the building sites.” (South Florida Railroad 1887)   

Lakes Stella (foreground) & Adriana (background) - Auburndale, FL

Not a lot could be said of Auburndale in the South Florida Railroad travelogue of 1887 because at that time the settlement was little more than an idea of a railroad pioneer having no connection with the firm laying down track across his homestead. As for the 1887 descriptive brochure, this region southwest of Kissimmee “was more well known by hunters, passing by park-like open pines, as free of undergrowth as a trimmed lawn, or by green coverts of the deer, and where the slender cougar lies in wait for the doe, at the watering places.”

Kissimmee City of Orange County – for several years the southernmost city in the United States having train service, became Kissimmee of Osceola County on May 12, 1887. Five years had already passed since Orange County correspondent Will Wallace Harney, representing the New Orleans Times-Democrat, journeyed 498 miles into the Florida Everglades, departing out of Kissimmee on a 14 day expedition down the Kissimmee River, crossing Lake Okeechobee, and heading west on the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf of Mexico.

James E. Ingraham had been especially interested in Harney’s journey into the Everglades, for as President of South Florida Railroad, Ingraham planned to be aboard the second expedition a year later, a journey to be made in search of the best railroad routes in South Florida.

Available this FALL 2019

PINE CASTLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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Central Florida’s Acclaimed Poet, Writer, Historian, Correspondent

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NOTE: This book is being a publication and sold by the Historical Society.  

Harney had long advocated train service for central Florida’s citrus belt, writing of plans for a Lake Monroe to Tampa Bay train as early as 1871. He wrote on numerous occasions of attempts to connect the St. Johns River with the Gulf of Mexico, stating in one 1877 article, “If we could get a short railroad of a hundred miles or so connecting Orange with Tampa, it would add greatly to the advantage of both, and would build up Hillsborough County.”

Nearly a decade would pass before Harney’s prediction would prove to be true, but while Will Harney of Orange County was writing his October 1877 article, an Illinois doctor was making his way to Tallahassee, Florida with an idea of his own.

Dr. Hartwell C. Howard came to Florida in 1876 primarily for health reasons. Recovering from pneumonia, Florida’s climate had been what the doctor ordered. On November 20, 1877, Dr. Howard attended a board meeting at Tallahassee of Florida’s Internal Improvement Fund (IIF), a   committee established in 1855 for the purposes of improving Florida’s transportation. Chaired by Florida’s Governor, the IIF was a powerful committee, except when it came to approval of post-Civil War rail service throughout the state. (New York capitalist Francis Vose had been granted an injunction preventing Florida from using public lands to build rail service until his debt was resolved).

Minutes of the November 1877 IIF meeting offers insight into Dr. Howard’s idea: “Dr. H. C. Howard, on behalf of the Gainesville, Ocala & Charlotte Harbor Railroad, appeared before the Board and made a proposition.” Dr. Howard’s plan was for the state to sell his railroad firm, at five cents per acre, portions of public land on six miles on each side of proposed railroad line, with the stipulation that the sale would not “go into effect until the claims of Vose and others are settled.”

A group of Illinois investors, much like the folks in Orange County, were attempting to obtain approval to build a railroad in South Florida as early as 1877. Dr. Howard was the first President of the Charlotte Harbor bound train, a railroad that later became Florida Southern Railroad.

Auburndale Main Street, photo by Alice E. Kaszer (1890-1975)

Proud of their long-time doctor, Champaign County, Illinois has on file an 1887 biographical sketch of Dr. Hartwell Carver Howard (1829-1922), which says this of the good doctor: “He has heretofore been quite prominently identified with railroad interests.” Dr. Howard homesteaded 158 acres in Florida’s developing Citrus Belt, receiving a deed for the Polk County land dated March 20, 1885. Dr. Howard’s property was located on the southeast shore of Lake Ariana.

The 1887 biography of Dr. Howard offers a bit more insight on the man: “He has also been occupied in buying and selling Florida orange lands, having a town laid out on his own estate there, AUBURNDALE. He donated 80 acres of land to secure the South Florida Railroad through that town.”

It has been suggested, incorrectly, that Auburndale was originally SANATORIA, and that the town was founded by a Frank R. Fuller. As of 1887 however, both towns are shown on a Polk County map. The two separate settlements were nearly 2 miles apart.

Edwin Monroe Howard (1857-1930), eldest son of Dr. Howard, lived at Auburndale in 1900 with his wife, Belle (Brooks) Howard (1862-1939). Their next-door neighbor at the time of that year’s census was Ephram M. Baynard, a fruit grower, who in 1913 built his residence facing Lake Stella in Auburndale at a cost of $7,500, shown below courtesy Florida Memory project.

Built in 1913, The Baynard residence became Kersey Funeral Home

This blog series continues next Friday as the South Florida Railroad, under Henry Plant, continues to lay track in the direction of Tampa Bay. Next up, an Englishman lays out a town northeast of Lakeland – a town named ACTON.

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First Train to KISSIMMEE

A train arriving at KISSIMMEE CITY in March of 1882 was a more important event in the story of central Florida than the arrival 16 months earlier of the South Florida Railroad at Orlando.

George M. Barbour, author of Florida for Tourists, Invalids & Settlers (1882), wrote of his first impression of the Orange County seat of government, describing it as “as old place, typical of the South. The ‘boom’ that has enlivened every other spot in Orange County seems to have left ORLANDO comparatively untouched.” The first train’s arrival at Orlando in late 1880 was an important event indeed in the county’s history. For nearly 40 years settlers and visitors had to trek a difficult sandy path 22 miles in length to reach Orange County’s courthouse square.

Further reading: First Road to Orlando by Richard Lee Cronin

But not until the railroad arrived at Lake Tohopekaliga was it possible for all of Orange County, present day Orange, Osceola and Seminole Counties, to reach its long-sought potential. “In June 1881,” wrote Sherman Adams in his 1883 Orangeland publication, “an extension was surveyed from Orlando, to Kissimmee City; the work commenced in July, and the road opened for business in March 1882.” The earliest architects of central Florida’s railroad corridor had gathered a dozen years earlier to jump-start the building of this much-needed train.

   

The first meeting of the ‘Upper St. Johns, Mellonville and Tampa Railroad’ had been held in March 1870 at Fort Reid’s newly opened Orange House Hotel. The planner’s railroad was to depart Lake Monroe heading south to Orlando, pass beside Lake Conway on its way to Lake Tohopekaliga, and then veer west toward Tamp Bay – almost the exact path of the 1880 South Florida Railroad.

Further reading: Beyond Gatlin, A History of South Orange County

An Orlando to Kissimmee City on Lake Tohopekaliga train began operating in March of 1882, and as the Orangeland publication reported: “During the summer a charter was obtained extending the road to Tampa, the route surveyed and a force of 1,200 to 1,500 men  employed, the Plant railroad syndicate taking a three-fifths interest in the road. So great is the energy displayed that the road is expected to be open to the public early in January 1884.”

The train to Kissimmee City not only made it feasible for the railroad to continue toward Tampa Bay, it opened as well south Orange County to development. Travel inland reduced strenuous day-long land journeys to a journey of only a few hours, while riding in the comfort of Pullman passenger cars. That which is thought of today as the I-4 corridor was born with the completion in 1884 of a Lake Monroe to Tampa Bay railroad. Orangeland of 1883 said it best: “The natural and customary gateway to Orange County is the St. Johns River steamers to Sanford on Lake Monroe, 200 miles south of Jacksonville, thence by the South Florida Railroad to the various towns along its line to Kissimmee City, forty (40) miles to the south. From the several stations conveyances can be had at reasonable prices to any point in the contiguous country.”

New towns sprang up around the stations along the train’s route: Gatlin; Pine Castle; Smithville (Taft); Mackinnon and Kissimmee. As the train’s route was extended westward, Campbell City; and Davenport were established as Orange County towns; followed soon after by a host of Polk and Hillsborough County upstarts, such as Plant City and Seffner. Trains solved central Florida’s challenging transportation problem – and in so doing – Orlando benefited as well.

Philadelphia’s Hamilton Disston made all the difference of course. In exchange for him paying off the State’s past due pre-Civil War debt, the successful saw-blade manufacturer was deeded four (4) million central Florida acres. His land was widely scattered, from Tarpon Springs and large chunks of Hillsborough County, to Pine Island in Charlotte Harbor and acreage near Pine Castle. His massive landholdings south of Kissimmee however is what he is most widely known for.

Hamilton Disston’s presence certainly encouraged establishment of Kissimmee, but the original town founders had been good ole Orlando boys. William A. Patrick, James P. Hughey, Surveyor Samuel A. Robinson and younger brother Norman, all teamed up in 1881 to expand upon what Robert & Rhonda Bass had established as their boarding house during the 1870s.

“The town of Kissimmee is situated,” wrote Adams in Orangeland, “at the head of navigation of the Kissimmee and Caloosahatchee rivers, and has direct water communication through these streams and Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico. It has also railroad transportation northward, and in a few weeks from the issuing of this pamphlet will have railroad communication with Tampa on the Gulf Coast”.

Kissimmee remained part of Orange County until Osceola County was formed May 12, 1887, at which time the town’s importance as a transportation hub and tourist destination elevated it to being named the new county’s seat of government.

“If we could get a short railroad of a hundred miles or so,” wrote Will Wallace Harney in 1877, published that year in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper, “connecting Orange County with Tampa, it would add greatly to the advantage of both and would build up Hillsborough County.” Harney, as it turned out, knew exactly what he was talking about.

To be continued....

This blog continues next Friday as the South Florida Railroad, under Henry Plant, begins laying track in the direction of Tampa Bay, while another railroader takes advantage of his land’s close proximity to found the town of AUBURNDALE.   

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