Pine Castle Pioneers / Pine Castle Lakes
Celebrating Pine Castle Pioneer Days ONLINE – Part 1
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.
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.
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.
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