MOUNT DORA: The first Mount Dorans - Part One

Enchanting Mount Dora, Florida

Much has been written of the origin of enchanting Mount Dora, but how accurate are the traditional beliefs about Lake County’s charming village along the east shore of Lake Dora? Today, a leisure stroll of 1583 feet can provide many surprising answers about the FIRST Mount Doran’s, and so I invite you to join me on just such a stroll - a walk of 1583 feet along 5th Avenue in downtown Mount Dora. I will even do the walking, so all you need do is sit back, relax, and enjoy reading about 175 years of Mount Dora's fascinating history. And awaiting us at the end of this southbound 5^th Avenue stroll is a true story that is bound to astonish you.

First steps of the FIRST Mount Doran:

Our walk begins at a place which will seem, at first, an unlikely starting point. None-the-less, to fully appreciate the town’s real origin, our walk of 1,538 feet needs to commence at the crossroads of 5^th Avenue & Hawley Street. If you do not recognize the latter street name it is because the road now goes by the name, Tremain Street.

There are no retail stores to be found at this intersection, and the oldest existing structure here was not built until 1940. Still, 5^th & Hawley is vital to the telling of Mount Dora’s history, for the area’s first-ever recorded footsteps occurred at this exact spot. Here? Yes, here!

“I began at the northeast corner of Section 31” was the exact sentence penned 173 years ago by Surveyor James M. Gould. Believe me, I have no intention of making a land surveyor out of you, but the importance of Gould’s 1848 notation cannot be overstated in its relationship to the founding of a town 33 years later. The exact spot Surveyor Gould was writing about in 1848 is now the intersection of 5^th Avenue & Tremain Street. And you need not rely merely on my word for that fact.

The Lake County Property Appraiser identifies each corner of 5^th & Tremain as located in a different "Survey Section”. The northwest corner, says the Appraiser, is in Section 30, whereas the northeast corner is in Section 29. A law office on the southeast corner is, according to the County appraiser, in Section 30, while the bank on the southwest corner is in Section 31. To be more specific, the bank is in “the northeast corner of Section 31.” I've added a survey of the four corners below, which I'll get to in a moment. 

Surveyor James Gould, in 1848, added that after starting at the northeast corner of Section 31, he then began walking “23.30 chains,” the equivalent of 1,537.8 feet, due west to “Lake Dora.” If one desired to duplicate Gould’s walk today, as I plan to do in this series, it would be relatively easy – walk west – downhill -on 5^th Avenue until you reach the Lake Dora shoreline.

Of importance is this: the Survey completed in 1848 became the source for writing a homestead deed thereafter. In fact, thirty-four years after Surveyor Gould wrote of the northeast corner of Section 31, a different surveyor, paid to stake out a new town, identified this same spot as “Block One of the Town of Mount Dora.” A square known as Block One today is nearly identical to Block One of 1882. The only significant difference is Baker Street of today was Hawley Street back in 1882.

You now know where our 5^th Avenue stroll begins. Remote wilderness in 1848, our walk of 1,537.8 feet today heads west to Lake Dora, but all along the way is a rich history of the earliest days of this town. This series intends to share that history, and then, upon reaching the lake, I will challenge the validity of the traditional “legend” about the naming of Lake Dora.

Annie – the SECOND Mount Doran:

Land west of 5^th Avenue & Tremain Street, prior to the town of Mount Dora being established, belonged to one of the bravest frontierswomen of 19^th century central Florida. Her name was Annie Stone, and in 1880, it did not matter if you looked north, south, or west from today’s intersection of 5^th & Donnelly, you would still be gazing on Annie Stone’s Homestead of 182 lakeside acres.

Talk about a lady worthy of recognition during Women's History Month!

It was Annie, not John P. Donnelly, who established a town at this location. Annie Stone’s town however was named Glencoe. Now, I realize such a statement is contrary to traditional history, but then, such is often the case when it comes to researching central Florida’s true history. 

And I do not expect you to accept my historical version as accurate without proving such a claim.

1848 survey versus Annie Stone Homestead of 1878-1883

So, first, allow me to remove all doubt about my claim, a task easily accomplished. My exhibit above shows James Gould’s survey of 1848 twice. The left side is the survey as James Gould sketched it. The right side has a few notations to assist in better understanding his document. 

My red arrow above points to where the intersection of 5^th & Tremain is today. Note how Sections 29, 30, 31 and 32 converge at this spot. Section 29, northeast of the intersection, is shown to be one mile by one mile, as is Section 32 below it. Sections 30 and 31 both have less than a square mile of landmass, that is because of Lake Dora.

James Gould’s survey of 1848 was used as reference in 1883 to write a homestead deed to Annie E. Stone after she had completed a five-year residency requirement, which places Annie Stone on the lakeshore of Lake Dora as of 1878. Using the 1848 survey, Annie was deeded the land I outlined in orange, property described as being the south half Section 30, and all of the landmass in Section 31 of Township 19 South, Range 27 East.

The line dividing Section 30 and 31 on Gould’s survey became Mount Dora’s 5^th Avenue in 1882.

Annie Stone herself wrote a deed June 30, 1881 for a sale of part of her homestead. That deed has the following language: “Block #23 in Section 30, Township 19 South of Range 27 East, in the town plat of Glencoe as laid out on Mrs. Annie Stone’s Homestead in Orange County.” (As of 1881, Mount Dora was still part of Orange County).

After selling a small parcel of her homestead in 1881, Annie married John P. Donnelly, and in March 1882, newlyweds John & Annie Donnelly issued another deed having this language: “In a plat of a village on the Homestead of said Annie E. Stone in Section 30, Township 19 South of Range 27 East.” 

On the exhibit above, the Section 30 number is circled in red for your convenience in locating. 

Fast forward to present day, and 13^th Avenue is the north boundary of Annie’s Stone’s 19^th century homestead. To the south, historic Lakeside Inn, built in 1883, occupies part of Annie’s original 182 acres. Annie owned nearly one mile of Lake Dora shoreline when she married John P. Donnelly, the one pioneer most often cited as founder of Mount Dora.

“Her residence and grove are nearly a half mile north of Mount Dora,” said a traveling reporter in 1882 in describing the home of newlywed Mrs. Donnelly, “but stands on ground high above the water, and the path from house to lake is a perfect little Eden of trees, vines, and moss a la nature.” This was the original home Annie Stone, not the historic Donnelly House of Mount Dora built on Donnelly Street in 1893. The original wharf was described as being near Lakeside Inn, so a half mile north would place her residence north of 5th Avenue.  

Annie (McDonald) Stone – Donnelly (1849-1908)

Born 1849 at Wood County, Ohio, Annie McDonald first married William Stone. After the birth in 1856 of Nellie, a daughter, the Stone family relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, where William worked as a railroad clerk. By 1880, Annie was divorced and residing on her homestead at Lake Dora, while a nearby neighbor, John P. Donnelly, had just settled on his land.

Lake Dora of 1880 was not easily reached. The nearest train was at Fort Mason, and the first train had finally arrived that spring. It was a long difficult 1881 land journey from Fort Mason to Annie Stone's Glencoe, but then, in 1882, the Dora Canal was dredged. Larger steamboats could navigate the canal to reach the new town of Tavares, and Lake Dora introduced travelers as well to Glencoe – aka Mount Dora.

Fifth and Tremain 

Intersection of 5th & Tremain Street, Mount Dora

And so, as we look west from the crossroads of 5^th & Tremain, aka 5^th & Hawley of 1882, we now know our downhill westbound stroll will be crossing land first owned by Annie (McDonald) Stone, an amazing 19^th century frontierswoman, and mother of a child not yet a teen when she first arrived in the wilderness of western Orange County. The same property, in 1882, became jointly owned by Annie’s groom, Mr. John P. Donnelly of Pennsylvania.

It is time to get moving, and as there is no better way to be greeted at any town than by the Mayor and or Chamber of Commerce President, this will be our greeting in the next segment of this series. One and the same, a Mount Dora Mayor and Chamber President lived here at the southwest corner of 5^th and Tremain. A bank is here now, where James Gould began his walk west in 1848, and where we will begin our walk wet when The First Mount Dorans resumes in Part 2.

This series was created from research generated while writing my book, Tavares: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County. Chapter 26 of my book is MOUNT DORA: The Eastern Gateway. 

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 Lake County, established May 27, 1887, was carved from portions of Orange and Sumter counties. The Legislature had defined borders but allowed the 2,200 plus registered voters to decide where to place the county seat. Four elections and a courthouse battle later, Tavares, on August 10, 1888, finally became the official seat. The selection process lasted 440 days from start to finish.

TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake county, is a history of how Florida's Great Lake region transitioned from a wilderness into a vibrant Citrus Belt district. Amazing pioneers dared to dream big - dared to imagine such places as Leesburg, Lady Lake, Mount Dora, Montverde, Eldorado, Eustis, Umatilla, Astor, Clermont, Yalaha and Tavares, to name a few. A section on each place name will be found in this book.

RATED 5 STARS from Four Amazon verified readers, this is a story of triumph over tragedy; of homesteaders becoming town builders; of steamboats and railroads forging a new homeland, and of remarkable men and women who made it happen. There is even a touch of mystery and intrigue.

The story of the earliest days of settlement of Florida's Lake County, a history you can buy now at Amazon simply by clicking on the book cover above.