Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes - Part 3

 

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes

Celebrating Pine Castle Pioneer Days ONLINE – Part 3

 

Part 3: Devil’s Bay and Rattlesnake Lake

When last we wrote of Surveyor Benjamin F. Whitner and his two assistants, as you may recall, it was Spring of 1843. Three brave souls were mapping, for the first time ever, South Orange County. Starting at Point Zero near Lake Lancaster, the survey party had worked west, clearing a straight path for six miles to a point that is today Valencia Community College on Kirkman Road. Here, at the “Northwest” corner of Pine Castle Township of 1890, Part 2 of my series ended. And it is at this “Northwest” point where, in 1843, Whitner’s survey team made a sharp turn, and began clearing another straight path – this time southbound - for another six miles. Here, at the “Southwest” corner of Pine Castle Township, was the location later surveyors called “Devil’s Bay”.

Orange County map of 1890 of “Devil’s Bay”.

A bay is most often associated with a coastal waterway, but 19^th century surveyors identified some inland areas as a “bay” too. Central Florida has several lakes named “Bay”. In my Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes book I reference a Will Wallace Harney article of May 1875 in which he writes of “a picnic and fish frolic at Bay Lake”. This lake is south of Pine Castle, and still known by that name today. The 1890 map of Orange County shows Pine Castle’s Bay Lake as the headwater for Boggy Creek.

Devil’s Bay of 1890 was just west of the southwest corner of Pine Castle Township (see arrow on map above). Homesteader SELBY HARNEY, the nephew of Will Wallace HARNEY who came to Florida with his uncle in 1869, lived here alongside Devil’s Bay in the 1880s (see L shaped parcel outlined in red on map above). Selby & Trinity (Yates) Harney resided here during Florida’s Great Freeze of 1894-95, lost their crop, and then moved further south. The abandoned Selby Harney Homestead, in the 20^th century, changed hands several times before eventually becoming part of the Martin Marietta complex.

Where exactly is Devil’s Bay? The Orlando Eye, known as The Wheel at Icon Park, is now located where the “35” appears on the map above.

1954 Aerial of Devil’s Bay area Orange County

The aerial photo above was taken before Martin Marietta, and the red arrow (added) points to a depressed area referred to in 1890 as Devil’s Bay. The easternmost shores of Big and Little Sand Lake are visible on the left side of both the 1890 map and the 1954 aerial photo above.

When Whitner’s 1843 survey team arrived at the southwestern-most corner of Pine Castle Township, the first township surveyed in Lake, Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties, the survey party then turned back east. At this point near Devil’s Bay, they began clearing a straight six- mile journey in the direction of today’s Orlando International Airport.

Surveyors pitched tents and set up camps wherever they ended a day’s work, typically said to be about every twelve land miles daily. But the surveyors mapped more than the outer limits of Pine Castle Township, for their task included mapping the entire township, dividing it into 36 individual square-mile Sections. One Section, for example, was the square-mile Section 10, surveyed in 1843 by Whitner and his team. Brothers Isaac and Aaron Jernigan, later that same year, applied for two homesteads of 160 acres each, half of the Section 10 surveyed by Benjamin F. Whitner.

Pine Castle Township Section 29, shown on the 1890 Orange County map above, contains a red square added by this author. Inside that square, dotted lines intersect at a bold black line. This red square is the only alteration I made in Section 29, and I say this because the contents within that square – sketched 130 years ago, – tell a fascinating story of early Orange County.

The bold black line crossing Sections 29 and 32 (top to bottom) is SHINGLE CREEK. Dotted lines are early trails. The trail from the upper right in Section 29 down through Section 31 is nearly identical to John Young Parkway of today. The other trail leaving Section 29 on the right, ends at the 1890 town of Pine Castle. Note too how surveyors show a line, “or ridge” of trees – an Oak Ridge, along each side of Shingle Creek, a riverboat highway during the 1870s and 1880s.

The area east of Section 29 on the same 1890 Orange County map is shown below. Note how the trail leaving Shingle Creek curves northeast to the town of Pine Castle (red star). An orange arrow (added by me) on the map below points to yet another item of interest – RATTLESNAKE LAKE.

One of two 1890 Orange County Rattlesnake Lakes, this one, as reported on page 245 of my Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes, was later renamed ELLENOR for the daughter of Willard & Lena Van Duzor, details of which can be found at Lake ELLENOR on page 89 of my book. “The red blood curdles and hard bones quake,” wrote Will Wallace Harney of Pine Castle in the 1870s, “at the whir of the deadly Rattlesnake.”

Perhaps a warning for those approaching the two Rattlesnake lakes, later developers, no doubt desiring to attract buyers for their developments, changed both Rattlesnake Lakes, opting for more pleasant names. Female names, Ellenor and Kathryn, were selected for each body of water. Where, you might ask, is Kathryn? That one-time Orange County Rattlesnake Lake is now part of Seminole County.

1890 Orange County map of Rattlesnake Lake and Pine Castle

 

Pioneer Days weekend would have been this weekend had it not been cancelled due to the pandemic. The Pine Castle Historical Society was to again sponsor the “History Tent”, and I had been invited to do an in-person presentation of Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes. Instead, I have adapted my talk to this online format, a four-part series, the conclusion of which will be the next post. In the meantime, I invite you to check out my books either at my webpage or my Amazon Author Page. (You can click Follow Author on my Amazon author page and receive alerts about new publications as they come online).

Pine Castle Historical Society awarded me their 2017 Historian Award for my book, Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County, and much of this four-part series was taken from that book as well as Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes, an encyclopedia-style book of how 303 central Florida lakes came to be settled and named. Both books can be purchased at Amazon.

On March 17, 2021, I will be the online guest speaker at the Orlando Remembered Group meeting which begins on Zoom at 9:30 AM. My talk is entitled, Harriett, Henrietta & Orlando’s Girl School, in honor of Women’s History Month (for details email Rick@CroninBooks.com ).

On March 25, 2021, Winter Garden Heritage Foundation is sponsoring my live on-line presentation of, When Winter Garden was Oakland. Details on how to tune in to this special West Orange County presentation will be posted as the date approaches.

IF YOU ENJOY CENTRAL FLORIDA HISTORY, YOU WILL LOVE

  CRONINBOOKS.com

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Read reviews and purchase books at my Author Page above

 

Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes (2019)

THE AWARD WINNING - Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County (2017)

First Road to Orlando (Second Edition 2015)

The Rutland Mule Matter – A Novel (2015)

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

TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County (NEW in 2020)

 

Perfect for WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

 

FLORIDA’S INDIAN RIVER DUCHESS

Download for only $3.79!

 

Author for Pine Castle Historical Society Publication:

Will Wallace Harney – Orlando’s First Renaissance Man

 

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes - Part 2

 

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes

Celebrating Pine Castle Pioneer Days ONLINE – Part 2

 

Orange County’s FIRST paid job: Clear a straight path SIX MILES long!  

ORLANDO, settled in 1856, is not in PINE CASTLE Township. Orlando Township, six miles by six miles like that of Pine Castle Township, was not surveyed until April 1846, three years after Pine Castle Township had been surveyed by Benjamin F. Whitner.

Arriving in Mosquito County at Lake Monroe in 1843, Surveyor Whitner followed a sand-rutted military trail south, skirting after nearly 15 miles the abandoned fortress Maitland, then proceeding south past a swamp area known today as Lake Eola. Whitner and two laborers, Hale and Randles, continued down the wilderness trail, strolling a narrow winding path through towering pine trees and scrub brush - now Magnolia Avenue in the heart of downtown Orlando - then continuing another mile before finally stopping to set up their equipment to begin work.

They may well have been the only living souls in all of Pine Castle Township that first day, the day Benjamin Whitner began surveying the northernmost line of what was to be 540 square miles of mapping – the very first of which was 36 square miles that later surveyors would call Pine Castle Township, a landmass beginning just north of present-day Kaley Avenue, shown as the top red line on the 1879 map of Orange County below.

 

Pine Castle Township (red square) on the 1879 Orange County map above shows 4 named lakes in the 36 square miles: Clear; Holden; Jessamine and Conway. (Note unnamed Lake Lancaster in upper right corner of red square.

Below: Benjamin Whitner’s 1843 survey of the southern portion of Clear Lake. 

Surveyor Whitner worked his way south from the starting line until reaching present-day Kissimmee. In the 1840s, Benjamin F. Whitner of Florida’s Panhandle, with the help of two “chainmen”, surveyed 540 square miles south of downtown Orlando. Whitner then, after finalizing the surveys, began buying land inside the Pine Castle Township, acreage where he had first begun his surveying work in 1843.

We do not know why Whitner bypassed 23 miles of wilderness prior to starting his survey work. What we do know is that Benjamin Whitner was unlike most every other surveyor who worked in central Florida during the 1840s. Most were roving surveyors, meaning they moved from one territory to the next as the U. S. Land Office needed surveying completed in its new territories. Most of those who surveyed central Florida moved on to Nevada and California by the 1850s. But Benjamin F. Whitner of Madison, Florida was different.

First to survey land in Orange County, Whitner was also among the first to buy Orange County land (beginning in 1851). He was among the first to cultivate Orange County land (farming sugar cane at Lake Gatlin in the 1850s). He was among the first to serve as an Orange County Commissioner (1867); and was a partner (with William M. Randolph) in constructing the first ever free-standing hotel in Orange County (1869). There is good reason to believe Whitner was first to conceive of a railroad to run from Lake Monroe to Tampa Bay.

For 38 years (1843 - 1881), Benjamin F. Whitner worked as an active participant in settling and promoting two of the earliest settlements south of Lake Monroe, Fort Reid and Fort Gatlin.

Of the many lakes surveyed in 1843 by Whitner in Pine Castle Township, he named only two, Clear Lake and Lake Conway. All other lakes in the township were named after 1843, with most being named in the 1870s and 1880s by early pioneers who homesteaded on or near each lake. Whitner is believed however to have named, in the 1860s, Lake Gatlin, where he then owned nearly 300 acres.

Of the two lakes named by Whitner, Lake Conway memorialized his 1843 boss, Florida’s Surveyor General, Valentine Y. Conway (1803-1881) of Stafford County, Virginia. And perhaps impressed by the clarity he found at one other, Clear Lake is identified by that name on Whitner’s 1843 survey (see above). Other lakes surveyed by Whitner were simply noted as a “Pond”.

 

In the late 1870s, Dr. Robert Hamilton McFarland named Lake Lancaster, as I explain on page 171 of my book, Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes.

Doctor McFarland had married Sarah Lancaster at Fulton, IL on March 11, 1847, and a daughter, Rosa Lancaster McFarland, had been born prior to the doctor relocating his family to Orlando. The southernmost tip of Lake Lancaster, likely the first “Pond” Whitner surveyed, remained unnamed nearly 40 years until Dr. McFarland lent his wife’s maiden name to the lake – a name it is still known by these many years later.

“The water in Lake Lancaster in those days,” wrote one 1880s pioneer, “came up to the road and as we stopped to water the horse on our way to the village, many alligators would slide into the water only to come back again to the warm sand as soon as we had gone. Mother was young, slender, and about five-feet tall, but did her share of snake killing and one day killed a six-foot rattler”.

Located near “Point Zero” of Pine Castle Township, as I explain in Part 1 of this series, Whitner and two chainmen would have worked their way west along the north line of “Township 23 South; 29 East”, or as surveyors of 1890 called it, Pine Castle Township”. (As stated in Part 1, the name “Pine Castle Township” was applied to this area not by Whitner, but rather by surveyors in 1890).

1890 Pine Castle Township (page 1 - Lake Lancaster at top center) See note in upper right corner

To fully appreciate the difficult challenges three courageous souls confronted in 1843, I borrow this excerpt from ‘Taming the Illinois Wilderness’ by Author Pat Camalliere:

“Imagine hills, valley, rivers swamps, woods, etc. A typical location such as a heavily wooded area required surveyors to run a straight line through the woods from one fixed endpoint to the next. An axe man would clear a path through the trees and the underbrush while a flagman provided a sighting target for the surveyor. Once the straight line was cleared, two chainmen would measure and set a mark identifying the distance. The surveyor would then bring up the rear, sighting using a compass to make sure the crew stayed on course. A good surveying party could survey about 12 miles in one day.”

 

Surveyor Whitner’s first “endpoint” was “Point Zero” near Lake Lancaster, as defined in Part 1 of this series, at the intersection of Curry Ford Road and Ferncreek Avenue. The other “Endpoint” was six miles due west, at the opposite end of Pine Castle Township. And along the way, while clearing the brush and trekking through swamps, there were those alligators and snakes later pioneers spoke of.

Six miles due west of Lake Lancaster today is Kirkman Road’s centerline, at Valencia Community Campus in Metro West. The campus encircles charming Lake Pamela, (page 230 of Orlando Lakes: Homesteads & Namesakes) a modern-day name for a body of water once known as Lake Moody. Pioneer Jacob Moody owned land here in 1912, although before that, William Thompson of Washington, DC had owned this land. Thompson, Chief Engraver for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, had died in 1901. Of this man it was said: “The numerous copper plates in the archives engraved by him show the excellence of his work and form an enduring monument to his patience and industry.”

In my next installment, Benjamin Whitner’s surveying crew leaves Lake Pamela and heads in the direction of Devil’s Bay of 1890. Care to guess where that water feature might have been?

CRONINBOOKS.com

Your On-Line central Florida History Bookstore

Visit my Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/richardcronin

 

Read reviews and purchase at my Author Page above

 

Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes (2019)

THE AWARD WINNING - Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County (2017)

First Road to Orlando (Second Edition 2015)

The Rutland Mule Matter – A Novel (2015)

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

TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County (NEW in 2020)

 

Author for Pine Castle Historical Society Publication:

Will Wallace Harney – Orlando’s First Renaissance Man

 

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes - Part 1

 

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes

Celebrating Pine Castle Pioneer Days ONLINE – Part 1

"Pine Castle Township" of 1890 Orange County 

During the year 1890, under the watchful eye of county surveyor John Otto Fries, surveyors began a massive project having as its goal to identify and map every Orange County property owner as of that year. Their task was enormous, for not only did the county's homestead deeds date as far back as the 1840s, when brothers Aaron & Isaac Jernigan arrived in this remote wilderness then called Mosquito County, but many parcels had since changed hands. Indeed, some parcels had changed hands multiple times.

 1890 Orange County Townships (Included Seminole County of today)

The 1890 project began by using the original 1840s surveyor system of township and ranges. The 1840s surveys were an amazing accomplishment as the project required courageous surveyors to trek through palmetto brush, swamps and lakes, and the unchartered Mosquito County to map the area into increments, or townships, of 36 square miles. Each 1840s township was 6 miles north to south by 6 miles east to west. The chart of Orange County townships above was prepared by the surveyors in 1890.

As for the 1890 project, these identical 6 miles x 6 miles townships were used, only in 1890, each township was named. The 1890 master sheet above, with Township 23 South, Range 29 East outlined in red, was named for the town of Pine Castle – the predominant “place-name” within that territory in the year 1890.

Orange County property records of today identify land using the same Township system as first laid out in 1843 by surveyor Benjamin F. Whitner. In fact, Whitner drove the FIRST stake in the ground in ALL of Central Florida in the Pine Castle Township, but did so 40 years before the name Pine Castle would become associated with Township 23 South, Range 29 East.

 Archway near Lake Lancaster and Point Zero of Pine Castle Township

It’s true! While eager Army troops in 1843 packed up and prepared to leave Mosquito County at Mellonville on Lake Monroe, surveyor Benjamin Franklin Whitner arrived, unloaded his transit and measuring chains, followed the old Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin trail nearly 28 miles south, and drove his first survey stake into the ground to identify Point Zero of what is today the Pine Castle Township. Land at present-day Sanford on Lake Monroe was not yet surveyed, neither were areas at Maitland and Orlando.

Whitner’s first survey stake is but one chapter in the amazing story of central Florida pioneers. Point Zero, just south of the Lancaster Arch (photo above), is near the intersection of Ferncreek Avenue, Curry Ford Road, and Briercliff Drive. None of the roads of course existed in 1843, when surveyor Whitner and two “Chainmen” first identified Point Zero of the Township - 138 miles South (23 X 6) and 174 miles East (29 x 6) of yet another stake that had been driven into the ground at Tallahassee Florida.

Surveyor Whitner completed the FIRST central Florida township in 1843, and while doing so, charted 36 “Sections” which allowed for two homestead deeds to be issued in “Section 10 of Township 23 South, Range 29 East" – two deeds issued to brothers Aaron and Isaac Jernigan. Whitner, before proceeding to survey 540 square miles of South Orange County, also charted each existing lake, identifying each simply as a “Lake” or “Pond”. But of all the lakes Whitner sketched in the Pine Castle Township, he named only two, Lake Conway and Clear Lake.

Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes will pick up here when my ONLINE Pioneer Days Presentation (cancelled due to the pandemic) continues.

In the meantime, here's another brain teaser: Which Pine Castle Township lake had to be shifted west during construction of the Ultimate I-4 project, and what does that lake have in common with a historic downtown Orlando highrise? 

The answer and much more in Part 2, or pages 25-26 of my book: Orlando Lakes: Homesteaders & Namesakes, available at Amazon.

A presentation of Richard Lee Cronin and CroninBooks.com