First Steamboat on Lake Monroe

 Holiday Post Part 2 

‘Essayons’ Lakes Monroe

Cruger & DePeyster Sugar Mill Ruins, courtesy Florida Memory Project

A year following steamboat Florida entering Lake George in May 1834 (Part 1), the December 1835 Dade Massacre, during which 108 soldiers were killed, combined with a total of 16 plantations burned on Christmas Day of 1835, resulted in a buildup of troops to defend the Florida Territory. Burning of the plantations at New Smyrna and Spring Garden, including the Cruger & DePeyster Sugar Mill as the ruins of which is shown above, brought troops up the St. Johns River. A United States territory then, it was to be another decade before Florida was to become a State.

Chapter One of my CitrusLAND: Curse of Florida’s Paradise quotes from the personal memoirs of frontierswoman Jane Murray of New Smyrna. Jane describes her home being attacked and burned by Indians, and of how, alone with her small children, she managed to escape as her home burned to the ground. Georgia newspapers of January 1836 reported accounts of an attack on nearby Spring Garden too, and of troops boarding the streamer John Stoney in route to the St. Johns River.

Central Florida history by Richard Lee Cronin

www.CroninBooks.com

As troops began positioning, General Winfield Scott arrived at Volusia landing, south of Lake George on the St. Johns River. “Finding there the United States steamer Essayons, I embarked in her and with a guard of only seventeen men determined to penetrate, by the St. Johns, the southern part of the peninsular as far as practicable.” General Scott stated the reason for the expedition was to chart the course and depth of the river, and said that he found, “no difficulty in passing up to the head of Lake Monroe and might have carried that at point a draft of eight or nine feet of water.”

1840s survey of Lake Monroe and St. Johns River east of todays Sanford

Dates stated above are especially noteworthy in putting the legend of Orlando Reeves to the test. Supposedly killed by Indians near Lake Eola in September 1835. Reeves, according to a tablet attached to a rock at Lake Eola, was on night duty when attacked. Orlando and much of Orange County however was at that time Indian territory. According to General Scott’s published report of May 1836, the Army had not yet commenced land exploratory missions prior to May 1836, nor did such a campaign commence until after Fort Monroe had been established in December 1836.

The Orlando Reeves fable lives on because of a rock at Lake Eola

First Road to Orlando, by Richard Lee Cronin, exposes the truth!

 

General Scott had determined that they had sailed 200 miles south via river from Volusia landing, commenting that he thought they could have gone another fifty or sixty miles south towards Cape Florida had they been able to cross the bar. The “bar” mentioned by Scott was likely where the river flowed from Lake Jesup, just beyond present day Sanford. The General added, “such point, we found about eight miles below Lake Monroe, on the east bank. A leading trail passes through it”. The “trail” was likely the trailhead where Camp Monroe would soon to established, this trail being the north end of what in 1838 became the Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Trail, aka, by 1856, The First Road to Orlando.

185 years ago this month, in December 1836, Army troops established Camp Monroe on Lake Monroe. A pier was built extending out into Lake Monroe for offloading soldiers and supplies, and soldiers spent Christmas of 1836 guarding a lonely wilderness outpost far from home. Two months later, in February 1837, their fortress was attacked by Indians and, as a battle ensued, Captain Charles Mellon was killed.

President James Monroe, father of the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation to European Powers that there would be no further colonization of Latin America, had died July 4, 1831. Lake Valdez as the “Second Lake” on the St. Johns River had been named prior to the United States taking possession of the Florida Territory, was changed to Lake Monroe in honor of the 5^th President – the third to have died on the Anniversary of our Nation’s Independence. Camp Monroe, in 1837, was renamed Fort Mellon in honor of Captain Charles Mellon. Troops then began preparations for an exploratory journey of 28 miles due south – deep into an unknown wilderness.

As troops marched south in the direction of Lake Tohopekaliga, they paused to established a supply post after about a day's journey - naming that post Fort Maitland. The post was named in honor of William Seton Maitland, a fellow soldier who had died of injuries at the Battle of Wahoo Swamp.

The march continued south until they reached a position to establish yet another fortress, naming that post Fort Gatlin in honor of Dr. Gatlin, a casualty of the 1835 Dade Massacre. Both fortresses were established in 1838 - and yet neither was named for Orlando Reeves - primarily because there was no such soldier.     

Our holiday series blog will continue.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM

RICHARD LEE CRONIN, and

CRONINBOOKS.COM