Cowboys & Lawyers: Part 2 - Joseph McRobert Baker

Cowboys & Lawyers: Part 2

Central Florida Attorneys of the 19^th Century

A CroninBooks.com 2020 Blog Series adapted from

Will Wallace Harney: Orlando’s First Renaissance Man

By Richard Lee Cronin

The Honorable Joseph McRobert Baker of #Gatlin Hill

Honorable Joseph McRobert Baker

To truly appreciate the role Joseph McRobert Baker played in the early development of central Florida one must first realize that: (1) #Orlando did not yet exist when he first arrived in Orange County; (2) That ruins of old Fort Gatlin, 5 miles south of present-day Orlando, were visible on the 40 acres the man purchased; and that (3), Aaron Jernigan’s Orange County Militia of 1856 had only recently assembled at old Fort Gatlin, half of which was on Baker’s property.

Attorney Baker, Jacksonville’s Mayor in 1850, was deeded 40 acres fronting both Lake Jennie Jewel and Lake Gatlin, but neither lake, as I established in my Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes book of (2019), had been named as of the time of Attorney Baker’s acquisition.

Lake Jennie Jewel as seen from old Fort Gatlin

Photo by Stanley J. Morrow (1886)

Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes Exhibit

Also made known to central Florida history in my, Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County, the portrait of James McRobert Baker, shown above, is Exhibit 10 in my book. Stanley J. Morrow snapped this Lake Jennie Jewel photo above in 1886 – taken from old Fort Gatlin.

A Virginian by birth, Joseph McRobert Baker was brought to Georgia by his father, a Baptist Minister. Young Baker attended Mercer University at Macon, married Georgian Anne Paschal (1830-1909), and the family, including Joseph’s father, moved to Florida around 1849. Joseph McRobert Baker became Mayor of Jacksonville in 1850, a position which not only launched a career in politics, but also introduced the young lawyer to the wilderness of central Florida.

Sumter County was carved from Marion County on January 8, 1853, and Attorney Baker was named that new County’s Circuit Judge. Judge Baker’s personal residence remained at Duval County, and he traveled the Sumter County “Circuit” via horseback. #Adamsville, at the time the only semblance of a town in the newly established county, served as its first county seat.

Neighboring Orange County of 1853 lacked a real city as well. Or perhaps I should say Orange of 1854 lacked a real city in 1853! #Enterprise, along the north shore of Lake Monroe, could be considered a town – but Enterprise was about to become part of a newly formed Volusia County in 1854.

Attorney J. McRobert Baker is found representing an Enterprise landowner, on the north shore of Lake Monroe in 1854, in a legal dispute. That same year, Isaiah D. Hart, founder of Jacksonville, was acquiring property at Fort Reid – where his son in law lived. Daughter Julia had become the second wife of Dr. Algernon S. Speer in late 1853, and by 1854, Hart and Speer were attempting to make their town of Fort Reid the Orange County Seat of Government. Was it a coincidence both the founder and ex-Mayor of Jacksonville were dabbling in central Florida development?

Meanwhile, Benjamin F. Whitner, dubbed the ‘The Architect’ in my book, Will Wallace Harney: Orlando’s First Renaissance Man, was working on a plan for Orange County and lands south of Lake Monroe too. Whitner had been the first surveyor to arrive in the area in 1843, and by September 1, 1853, the ex-surveyor had turned grower. He purchased a remote lakefront parcel on what is currently Lake Gatlin.

Whitner expanded his Lake Gatlin landholdings the following March, and again in 1860, when his deeds totaled nearly 300 acres, all within a stone’s throw of old Fort Gatlin. In fact, Benjamin F. Whitner owned all of the land around Lake Gatlin but one corner. Attorney Joseph McRobert Baker “of Sumter County” owned that corner - 40 acres adjoining Whitner’s 300 acres. Fewer than a dozen families however lived within shouting distance of 1860 Fort Gatlin.

Will Wallace Harney wrote of historic Fort Gatlin in 1871. Harney referred to this area as Gatlin Hill (also the title of Chapter 10 of Will Wallace Harney, Orlando’s First Renaissance Man). He rode through the old fort on his “wiry grass-fed pony” while on his way to claim a homestead on Lake Conway. An entire decade later, Harney’s mother in law, Mary Ellen Randolph, purchased “the McBaker lot”, as she referred to the 40 acres in her Will.

1879 Sketch by Civil Engineer E. R. Trafford

Green Square is the parcel owned by Attorney J. McRobert Baker

Red Arrow shows 1860 trail to Fort Gatlin;

Blue arrow shows new 1879 direct railroad route

What happened then to the Honorable Joseph McRobert Baker? And what exactly did he and his neighbor, Ex-Surveyor Whitner, have planned for the site of old Fort Gatlin?

During the 1850s, Baker served three terms in Florida’s Senate representing the 19^th District. A district then including Orange County, (you will hear more about the 19^th District as this series continues), minutes of a December 22, 1858 Senate session record a motion that was submitted by “Mr. Baker of Sumter County”. The motion was “a bill to be entitled an Act to incorporate a company to be called Alachua & Columbia Railroad Company.

Attorney Baker, like most every 19^th century central Floridian, was well-aware of the importance railroads were to have on the success or failure of central Florida settlements. Whitner, for example, began working on plans for an Orange County railroad in the 1850s, when he and Baker first acquired the land at Fort Gatlin.

Years later, as a friend of Will Wallace Harney during the 1870s, Whitner’s railroad plans resurfaced. The idea was for a railroad to run south from Lake Monroe to Tampa Bay. Sound familiar?

The railroad plan was to cross Whitner’s property, but by 1870 the ex-surveyor had recruited another lawyer. (You will meet the ‘other’ attorney in a February post).

America’s Civil War and Reconstruction Period interrupted Ben Whitner’s 1850’s railroad plan, and although he returned in 1870 to try again, the first train would not depart Sanford bound for Orlando until South Florida Railroad finally laid down track in 1880 (#Sunrail now follows the alignment first sketched by the county’s 19^th century ‘Architect’. And yes, the railroad track of today crosses over a slice of land once owned by Benjamin F. Whitner).  

As for Attorney Joseph McRobert Baker, his fate was dictated by the Civil War. He enlisted in Pickett’s Florida Calvary at the start of the War and was at first part of a Home Guard unit. In 1864 however, he and too many other young Floridians found themselves at far off Richmond, Virginia. The Confederate Army was struggling to survive there, and Attorney Joseph McRobert Baker died there - January 24, 1864 - of injuries sustained in battle.

At the start of the Civil War, Joseph McRobert Baker’s portrait, shown at the beginning of this blog, hung above the fireplace of the Baker family residence. The Baker home was taken by Union troops during the War, and Baker family history tells us, that as the Union Army departed the home, a soldier stabbed Baker’s portrait with his sword - explaining the tear – easily visible in the vicinity of Joseph McRobert Baker’s heart.

Joseph McRobert Baker – together with whatever dream he had for Fort Gatlin – perished.

Next Friday, Cowboys & Lawyers continues with Attorney George Baird Hodge, the Brigadier General of #Longwood.

COWBOYS & LAWYERS WAS INSPIRED BY:

Chapter 6: Cowboys & Lawyers, Will Wallace Harney: Orlando’s First Renaissance Man, by Richard Lee Cronin, published by Pine Castle Historical Society: “Author Cronin sets the stage for his Harney biography with little known facts about pioneer Florida, where he corrects history and then expands it 100 fold!” Pine Castle’s Pioneer Days, February 22 & 23 of 2020, will be celebrating the arrival – 150 years ago this year – of Will Wallace Harney, Pick up your authors’ signed copy of this book at Pioneer Days (Admission to Pioneer Days will be FREE this year).

And this series was also inspired by the Central Florida research of Richard Lee Cronin and his books: First Road to Orlando; Beyond Gatlin, A History of South Orange County; CitrusLAND: Curse of Florida’s Paradise; Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes; The Rutland Mule Matter; CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains.

VISIT CroninBooks.COM booth at Pine Castle Pioneer Days, February 22 & 23, 2019.