PINE CASTLE: Home for the Holidays: Part 5 - Lady Isaphoenia

 

PINE CASTLE

Home for the Holidays

Celebrating America’s Paradise

 Part 5: Lady Isaphoenia

 

Isaphoenia C. (Ellington) Speer 1824-1867

Any history discussion of Fort Gatlin and nearby Pine Castle without inclusion of Lady Isaphoenia, arguably the most remarkable central Florida frontierswoman of all-time, would be nothing less than an injustice to the remarkable history of this area. Lady Isaphoenia was first introduced by this author in the first sentence, of the first paragraph, of my first book. Here is that exact 2013 introduction:

“Prologue: The Lost Kingdom of Central Florida

Lady Isaphoenia arrived in central Florida a wife and mother to five, the youngest not yet then a year old. Within 3 years, and after giving birth to a sixth child, Isaphoenia began accumulating land, lots of land! This intriguing lady’s true story is fascinating, especially when considering the pivotal, albeit long overlooked, role she played in Central Florida’s earliest stages of settlement.”

CitrusLAND: Curse of Florida’s Paradise, (2013); Second Edition (2016)

 

Isaphoenia came to central Florida in 1854, arriving with husband James G. Speer the same year Orange County’s coastal beaches, and all land east of the St. Johns River, was removed from Orange and made apart of a new Volusia County. Half of the nearly 500 Orange County citizens residing here in 1850 became residents of Volusia County as of 1854, leaving 250 or so settlers to populate 3,000 square miles of Orange County’s smaller wilderness. 

Orange County of 1854 had NO city. There were no roads to speak of either – only sand-rutted trails accessible via horse, ox team, or walking. Coming ashore at Mellonville, on the south shore of Lake Monroe near where Sanford is today, the Speer family followed a trail inland 1.5 miles to an abandoned Army fort named Reid. There they found the first of two Orange County stores in existence at that time, the second being a bit further south - like 20 miles dirt miles south – where a remote settlement was still two years shy of becoming the Village of Orlando.

That was Orange County of 1854 – no town and only two stores in a land of 3,000 square miles of free-ranging cows, a few log cabins, lots of palmetto brush - and far too many sandspurs.

 Orange County of 1850 offered ocean-front property at New Smyrna

(New Smyrna of 1845 was Orange County's Second Post Office)

Seventeen years after Isaphoenia came ashore in central Florida, another pioneer told of his difficult journey from Lake Monroe to Orlando, and of seeing only one house and store between Fort Reid and Orlando - at Maitland. Neither the house nor store house however had existed when Isaphoenia made that same difficult trek in 1854.

Orange County of 1854 was a treacherous place for a man to live, but an even tougher place for a woman to survive. Many a frontierswoman perished their first year in Orange County's wilderness, often during or soon after childbirth.

 

Isaphoenia C, (Ellington) Speer and husband James Gamble Speer are most often associated historically with Orlando and West Orange County’s Oakland, history ignoring their intriguing and mysterious association with land further south at Lake Pineloch (#5 on map). At 160 acres square, this property served, literally, as a gateway to the origins of settlements at Fort Gatlin and Pine Castle. The old Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin trail, the main road to Fort Gatlin up until the mid-1870s, crossed the acreage Lady Isaphoenia acquired in 1860.

Even today, travel south on Orange Avenue toward Pine Castle crosses over land once deeded solely in the name of Isaphoenia C. Speer.

 Number 5 on map is the 160 acres owned in 1860 by Isaphoenia C. Speer; See Parts 1 thru 4 of this series for details about the homesteaders of areas identified above as parcels 1 thru 4.

 

The mystery and intrigue of these 160 acres extends beyond her ownership to include the next owners, Francis W. Eppes (80 acres) and Nicholas P. Trist (80). Eppes is well-known to local history as the grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. Trist, not as well known in this area, was the husband of a Jefferson granddaughter, and the ex-President’s Private Secretary.

In 1868, William Mayer Randolph arrived in central Florida with his family, purchased 200 acres adjacent to the front door of old fortress Gatlin – directly south on the trail of the 160 acres Lady Isaphoenia had owned prior to her death a year earlier. Widower James Speer had tried to sell his deceased wife’s land in 1868 – even going as far to sign a contract – but Randolph arranged for that sale to be voided, acquired the property himself, and then conveyed half each to Eppes and Trist. Thousands of vacant acres surrounded Lady Isaphoenia’s land in 1868, so what was so special about the 160 acres along the west shore of Lake Pineloch?

The simple answer - family!

1876 Death notice of William M. Randolph

Was it a coincidence that Lady Isaphoenia had lineage ties to the Eppes family? Was it purely coincidental that Lady Isaphoenia descended as well from a Virginia Jones family, a family who had a proud heritage of men named Orlando? Was it a coincidence William M. Randolph, in 1876, returned to Virginia to live out his final days on earth at the residence of William Strother Jones?

 Vaucluse, Virginia, residence of William Strother Jones

The Jones residence has been restored as a B&B. One of the bedrooms is named "The Randolph".

Coincidences - No! Fort Gatlin had originated in 1838 as a military fortress, but the earliest of settlers to follow had big plans for this remote region. Lady Isaphoenia played a role in that grand plan, and for that reason, any history discussion of Fort Gatlin and nearby Pine Castle, in South Orange County, must include Lady Isaphoenia, the most remarkable frontierswoman of central Florida, first introduced by this author in the first sentence, of the first paragraph, of his first book.

Her legacy, as well as that of her family’s connection to the development of Orlando and South Orange County, unfold on the pages of three of my central Florida history books, a trio that is a perfect holiday gift set for every history lover in your family.

CitrusLAND: Curse of Florida’s Paradise

First Road to Orlando

Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County

 

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BEYOND GATLIN: A History of South Orange County

Rated 4 Stars at Goodreads.com  

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A Central Florida Civil-War Novel

Based on true-life pioneers and a real-life mystery

THE RUTLAND MULE MATTER

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Happy Holidays 

PINE CASTLE - Home for the Holidays Part 4: NATHANIEL POYNTZ

 

PINE CASTLE

Home for the Holidays

Celebrating America’s Paradise

 

Part 4: Nathaniel Baldwin Poyntz

Nathaniel Baldwin Poyntz (1847-1928

“Too old” was the bureaucrat’s 1926 excuse as to why Nathaniel Baldwin Poyntz had been denied his soldier’s bonus application. Then nearly 80 years old, Nathaniel learned of the denial while at work in a Massachusetts Army field office. At that time, 60 years after the Civil War had ended, Nat Poyntz was the only Confederate Veteran still on active duty roles of the Regular Army. But not only had his special bonus been denied – Poyntz was also unable to retire from the service because, said the Army, there was no provision in the retirement laws for the “Poyntz case”. And so Nathaniel Poyntz continued working as a Boston Quartermaster field clerk until his death in 1928 – a week before Christmas.

A native of “neutral” Kentucky, Nathaniel B. Poyntz likely lied about his age when enlisting in the Civil War at Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky. It appears he was only about 14 years of age when he enlisted in Company C of Kentucky’s 9^th Confederate Calvary. The Blue Grass State was likewise home during the Civil War of Pine Castle homesteader Will Wallace Harney. Harney was one of three co-publishers at the start of the War at a Louisville newspaper that was a staunch Union supporter – again, in a state that had pledged neutrality in the conflict.

After War’s end, Nathaniel Poyntz, in 1870, relocated to Orange County, where the Confederate Veteran homesteaded on 78 lakeside acres at Lake Conway (see #4 on map below), land adjoining Will Wallace Harney’s lakeside homestead. Ex-Union newspaperman Harney, by 1870, had become the Widow of a proud Louisiana Southern Belle.

Today, Nela Avenue heads east from Orange Avenue along the south property line of the 1870s homestead of Nathaniel B. Poyntz. Matchett Road now runs north from Nela Avenue, crossing the one-time Poyntz homestead in its approach to the Harney homestead.

Nathaniel B. Poyntz Homestead (#4 above); other numbered homesteads of this series: 

W. R. Anno #1; Florence Milton #2; William & Minnie (Iverson) Randolph #3

Enemies during the Civil War, the veterans who relocated to central Florida immediately after the war set aside their war-time differences to become neighbors, friends, and even civic leaders.

Nathaniel Poyntz married Levinia Strode in 1872, and soon thereafter, he returned to his Pine Castle homstead accompanied by his hometown Kentucky bride. But then, a few years later, he decided to settle instead in downtown Orlando. The Poyntz family move to Orlando coincided with the start of Nathaniel’s active involvement in Orlando development. After two years as Orange County Tax Collector, he teamed up with central Florida’s legendary pioneer James Parramore to form Poyntz & Parramore Real Estate Company.

Nathaniel and Levinia, (“Vina” to locals), built a handsome residence at the southwest corner of Magnolia Avenue and Amelia Street, adjoining property that, in 1885, became part of a “Poyntz & Parramore Subdivision”. (The Poyntz home, in 1900, sold to Alexander H. Darrow of Chicago, Illinois, who converted the structure into the Darrow Hotel. A third owner expanded the 15 room Darrow Hotel into the Wyoming Hotel).

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Around the time Nat relocated from Pine Castle to Orlando, in 1875, he also teamed up with a small group of pioneers to establish Orlando’s Greenwood Cemetery. He then established the first bank in Orlando around 1883, although banking eventually proved to be Nathaniel’s central Florida downfall. Also in 1883, Nathaniel Poyntz teamed up with Pine Castle’s William R. Anno (Part 1 of this series), and others, to organize the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad. (As told in my book, Tavares: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County, Anno and Poyntz were two of three “Pine Castle Boys” (pages 264-270), with the third being John P. Morton - a long-established Louisville family and friend of the Will Wallace Harney family.

Nathaniel Poyntz was among the first of many Orange County pioneers to take interest in the new 1882 town of Tavares, personally acquiring in February of that year several downtown lots.

Lavinia (Strode) Poyntz died at her family home in 1894 at the age of 46. “She possessed many excellent qualities”, said her obituary, “and was an affectionate wife and mother and her home bore an enviable reputation for genuine hospitality that was shared by hundreds of people in every walk of life.”  

After the death of Lavinia in 1894, a personal tragedy coinciding with Florida’s horrific Freeze of 1894-95 which brought about the collapse of central Florida’s economy, Nathaniel Poyntz returned to active military service. He served in both the Philippines and World War I, and thereafter, continued serving as a Quartermaster clerk for the Army at Massachusetts. Poyntz died at his Massachusetts post on the 18th of December, 1928, and was laid to rest alongside Levinia at their hometown of Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky.

Is Holiday Shopping on your mind?

Give a lasting gift of central Florida history

BEYOND GATLIN: A History of South Orange County

Rated 4 Stars at Goodreads.com  

Not quite at the Free shipping order amount?

A Central Florida Civil-War Novel

Based on true-life pioneers and a real-life mystery

THE RUTLAND MULE MATTER

VISIT CRONINBOOKS.COM WEBSITE FOR MY COMPLETE COLLECTION

Click on this link to purchase a book now: 

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Gatlin-Orange-Florida-History/dp/1977714730/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Beyond+Gatlin%3A+A+history+of+South+Orange+County&qid=1604499081&sr=8-1

Happy Holidays 

PINE CASTLE Home for the Holidays Part 3: MINNIE

 

PINE CASTLE

Home for the Holidays

Celebrating America’s Paradise

Minnie (Iverson) Randolph - Part 3

Mrs. Minnie Iverson Randolph (1912 Atlanta, Georgia)

Dateline Atlanta, GA 1947: “Her husband was William Beverly Randolph, a wealthy Floridian, who was also a spoiled scion, she says, and when her son, William Beverly Randolph II, was 12, the elder Randolph died and left her with a frozen orange grove, no money, and a growing son.”

Pine Castle’s Hoffner Avenue of today, heading east from Hansel Avenue, crosses first land that in 1870 was the northernmost tip of Will Wallace Harney’s historic homestead. After that, nearer to Marinell Drive, Hoffner Avenue encroaches on a peninsular having Lake Conway on either side, acreage that is yet another historic homestead dating to the early 1870s. Better known for its third owner, Charles H. Hoffner, who bought the abandoned homestead after Florida’s Great Freeze of 1894-95, this property had originally been the homestead of William Beverly Randolph I.

Mary Caroline “Minnie” Iverson, daughter of pioneer Alfred Holt Iverson, became the second wife of William Beverly Randolph, son of William & Mary (Pitts) Randolph, landowners in 1870 of extensive land at Fort Gatlin as well as proprietors of the Orange House Hotel at Fort Reid. They were also in-laws of Pine Castle's very own, Will Wallace Harney.

Widow Minnie (Iverson) Randolph was interviewed a second time on August 3, 1947 when she was 89 years of age. At that time, Minnie was still a fulltime employee, President of Randolph Beauty Shop of Atlanta, Georgia. She had been interviewed thirty-two years earlier, in 1912, at which time the Georgia newspaper proclaimed Minnie Iverson Randolph as “one of the most successful of Atlanta’s women in business.”

#3 on above map: Homestead of William B & Minnie Iverson Randolph

#1 and #2 are explained in Parts 1 & 2 of this Blog Series 

As a young girl, Minnie came to Orange County in the late 1870s, living first near Maitland with her father and stepmother. The family later moved further south to Shingle Creek. By the mid-1880s, Miss Minnie was investing in land, buying for example a town parcel on the corner of Central Avenue and Gertrude Street in downtown Orlando. Minnie then married William B. Randolph on June 10, 1884, and their first and only child, William B. Randolph II, was born near Pine Castle in 1892.

Mrs. Minnie Randolph traveled to Atlanta in 1895 for a singing debut, where she was proclaimed to be “one of Florida’s most-delightful sopranos”. Later that year the freeze occurred, and Minnie relocated with her son to Atlanta, where she went to work in the advertising business. By the early 20^th century, Minnie changed careers once again, entering the beauty business.

“I simply had to do it,” said Minnie in 1947 of entering the Beauty trade, a career change that led to her training the first-ever class of beauty operators at Atlanta Opportunity School.

Doris Lockerman, Woman’s News Editor for the Atlanta Constitution in 1947, described the 89 year old Minnie as keeping a “doll-size little body straight as a ramrod, her blue eyes mischievous and clear, ‘though I read every night lying down, and her crown of white hair high on a lofty head.”

“I think children ought to be taught family backgrounds,” said Minnie Iverson Randolph, for it “would give all youngsters a feeling of confidence.” Although she spent only a brief time as a resident of Pine Castle, Minnie’s upbringing at Orange County’s 19^th century wilderness had no doubt implanted – as Will Harney himself described his fellow Orange County pioneers – “as having the pluck and energy” necessary to face adversities head on, tackle every challenge life presented - and rise to success at a time in our history when few women ever entered the business world.

 

THE perfect holiday gift this season: Central Florida History by R. L. Cronin 

In May of 2018 this author received the following email: “I am a direct descendant of Wm Beverly Randolph, Sr (my father is his grandson) and was completely awed by your tree. I spoke my great-great grandparent’s names for the first time today! My father’s Randolph lineage was always mysterious. My father was raised an only child by his mother and never spoke of Randolph relations other than Minnie.”

Mary Caroline ‘Minnie’ Iverson died at Dekalb, Georgia on July 2, 1953.

BEYOND GATLIN: A History of South Orange County

Rated 4 Stars at Goodreads.com  

VISIT CRONINBOOKS.COM WEBSITE FOR MY COMPLETE COLLECTION

Click on this link to purchase a book now: 

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Gatlin-Orange-Florida-History/dp/1977714730/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Beyond+Gatlin%3A+A+history+of+South+Orange+County&qid=1604499081&sr=8-1

Happy Holidays 

PINE CASTLE: Home for the Holidays Part 2: FLORENCE

 

PINE CASTLE

Home for the Holidays

Celebrating America’s Paradise 

Part 2: Florence (Clark) MILTON 

Looking west from Cypress Grove Park to the Milton Homestead

During the summer of 1876, Pine Castle’s very own Will Wallace Harney wrote the following: “The benefit to a pioneer settlement by the presence of an active Christian lady, keenly alive to the moral and religious destitution around her has never been better illustrated than by the generous energy of Mrs. MILTON, a settler among us.”

Lake JESSAMINE became the location of the first Christmas service held in a church building south of downtown Orlando. The year was 1876, and the Christmas service was made possible by the untiring efforts of the devout Christian lady Harney wrote of earlier that year. Mrs. Milton was the Christian lady’s name, and the church building campaign she began was to raise funds to construct a church on the north shore of their Lake HOGAN property.

“Lake HOGAN,” wrote correspondent Harney in March of 1876, “is a half a mile from me and about six feet above Lake CONWAY and has nearly as large a basin. If it was emptied into Lake Conway without an outlet provided, it would ruin much of the Conway land.” There is no Lake Hogan today, but the number of similar sized lakes to that of Conway, within a half mile of the Harney homestead, can be counted on one finger.

Lake HOGAN of March 1876 had been renamed Lake JESSAMINE by year’s end, when the first Christmas Service was celebrated December 25, 1876.

 

Location 2 on the map above was the Milton Homestead. The X indicates the land donated for the first church located south of Orlando, Florida. (For #1, see prior post for the Anno homestead)

Two of Harney’s published 1876 articles in the Cincinnati Commercial unwittingly chronicled the name change of Pine Castle’s second largest body of water. That April, Harney wrote: “The settlements on Lake Conway and Lake Hogan have received a considerable accession from Kentucky this year.”

Thanks in large part to the excellent family research of Kelly Parks it is possible to shed light on the lake’s first name. Hogan is a surname in both ancestries of Orlando’s celebrated Patrick and Jernigan families, Mary Ann HOGAN had married Aaron Jernigan.

The signature of famed Orlando pioneer William A. Patrick was witnessed in 1882 by “A. Hogan”, and until Patrick sold his 80 acres parcel in the mid-1870s, he had owned land bordering the east shore of Lake Hogan. In fact, the property owned by Harney and Patrick provided a land bridge between Lakes Conway and Hogan (aka Jessamine) for southbound hunters, explorers and trekkers on their way to and from the remote regions of Lake Tohopekaliga and the Everglades.

 Lake Jessamine is one of 303 central Florida lakes found in my 'ORLANDO LAKES: Homesteaders & Namesakes', an encyclopedia of 19th century waterways and the pioneers who settled on these lakeshores.

Published articles in the North, authored by Will Harney and other brave souls living in the wilderness of Orange County, attracted northerners to buy Citrus-Belt land to either settle on or invest in. Among these early settlers were new “Kentucky” arrivals Harney had written about, Blue Grass "snowbirds" that included William & wife Florence (Clark) Milton. Retired Historian and UCF Professor Paul W. Wehr, one of the best authorities on Pine Castle history as far as this author is concerned, also described Florence A. Milton as an “active Christian lady”.

Author and UCF retired History Professor Paul W. Wehr, with yours truly, at my Beyond Gatlin book presentation at a Pine Castle Historical Society Quarterly Meeting 

Florence began raising funds to build a Presbyterian church, but after falling short of her goal among the locals, said Harney, she “applied to her old home, the Blue Grass region of Kentucky. The old First church in Lexington gave $30, and Mr. Young of Nicholasville in Jessamine, out of a minister’s scanty salary, gave $20.” The second contributor is worth repeating: “Mr. Young of Nicholasville, Jessamine” County, Kentucky. Nicholasville in Jessamine County was also the birthplace of John H. Harney, the father of Pine Castle’s Will Wallace Harney.

Writing again of the little Pine Castle church, Harney, in a December 23, 1876 newspaper article, wrote: “Mr. Crutchfield, a carpenter, built our church on Lake Jessamine.” Between March and December 1876, the large lake one half-mile from Harney’s homestead changed from Hogan to Jessamine, and that December, church goers in and around Pine Castle gathered for a Christmas service at that new little Presbyterian church - built on land donated by Florence Milton, land that was “200 yards from the margin of Lake Jessamine”. The church was capable of holding, it was said, 100 comfortably and 150 with crowding.

William A. Milton & M. Florence Clark had married October 13, 1869 at a Presbyterian Church in Henderson County, Kentucky. They were Lake Jessamine snowbirds for a time, but settled full time at Louisville, Kentucky. She was born at Washington, DC in 1848, where her father, a Kentucky native, worked as a law clerk. Mrs. Florence (Clark) Milton died at Louisville in 1906, and was buried in the very cemetery where Will Wallace Harney laid to rest his father in 1868. 

Thank you Rudi of Goodreads for the 4 Star Rating of Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County, Florida. Your rating is sincerely appreciated. Rick Cronin

GIVE A GIFT OF HISTORY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

Next Friday we introduce an 89 year young lady who was interviewed at her Georgia business while still gainfully employed. A former Pine Castle resident, she told the interviewer that her husband – “a spoiled scion”, had died when their son was 12 years old, leaving her “with a frozen orange grove, no money, and a growing son”. Minnie’s story is next when my special Pine Castle: Home for the Holidays blog series continues next Friday.