Frontierswomen
of Central Florida
Emily
(Watson) Hull
A
Women’s History Month Tribute
By
Richard Lee Cronin, CroninBooks.com
30
March 2022
Day 30
CitrusLAND is observing Women’s History Month by
honoring extraordinary Central Florida frontierswomen. And as we celebrate
Women’s History Month throughout March, we are also featuring each day a
History Museum, listing their days and hours of operation.
See
also our featured History Museum in this Post
Emily #Watson Hull
of Orlando
Emily is unquestionably the “Mother of Orlando.” Although
she wasn’t the first pioneer to live in the 1856 village, she the kept doors to the
abandoned city open during the Civil War. Had it not been for Emily Watson Hull,
no telling what might have happened to four acres that had been planned by
others as Orange County’s seat of government.
Born at Marietta, GA, Emily Watson married May
21, 1854, and departed soon after for Florida. She was 18 years old when she
and her husband, William Hull, journeyed overland to Orange County, arriving at
Fort Reid (Sanford) with thirty-two (32) other courageous souls in covered
wagons. When the Hull’s arrived in 1855, there was no town of Orlando, and
Orange County’s total population had yet to top 300 residents (Volusia, formed
in 1854, accounted for more than 50% of the Orange County’s 1850 population).
Families had clustered around old fort sites,
places having names such as Fort Mellon, Fort Reid, and Fort Gatlin. There was
no railroad, nor would there be for another 25 years. Roads were dirt paths worn
a decade earlier by the military in search of Indians.
William and Emily Harriet Hull settled first at
Fort Reid, a settlement just over a mile south of Lake Monroe. The family then
moved again about a year later, moving further south to become one of Orlando’s
first families.
Established in 1856-57, Orlando was barely four
years old when the Civil War began, and Emily watched as her husband went to
war with most every male of the village. William was wounded twice, then
captured at Gettysburg and imprisoned for 23 months at Fort Delaware. He could not
return home to Orlando until after War’s end.
While William was away, Emily ran the boarding
house she and her husband at Orlando, caring for the occasional guest. Emily
also served as the Confederate Postmistress at Orlando. “Mrs. Hull furnished
dinner to every man in the county,” says a 1915 biographical sketch, and when
provisions ran low, Captain Mizell’s father, David, Sr., butchered a cow and took
her a quarter.”
Emily and William Hull
While most residents abandoned the village
during the War, Emily Harriet Watson Hull stayed, putting up folks in need of a
room, feeding hungry guests, managing mail, and keeping up the family farm. In
other words, Emily kept the doors to Orlando open, and thereby preventing the
village from becoming a Ghost Town.
William and Emily Hull owned “Lots 2, 3, 4 and
11” of the twelve lot Village of Orlando. Lots 2 and 3 are presently the
location of the old courthouse, the County’s History Museum. In Emily’s day, this
was the location of Worthington House, the boarding house John R. Worthington
built (See also Henrietta Worthington in tomorrow’s final Women’s History Month
post).
Eulalie #Way
of Orlando
Central Florida history
is chock full of legends, some true, others not so true! One legend has to do with
how Orlando’s iconic Lake Eola got its name. Early historian Kena Fries passed
along a legend told her that goes as follows: “Sandy Beach was changed to Eola
in the early 1870s by Bob Summerlin, in memory of the beautiful young
girl, his bride to-be, who died from typhoid fever two weeks before the
appointed wedding day.”
The Iconic Lake Eola, Orlando, Florida
Jacob Summerlin brought
his family to Orlando in 1873, bought 200 acres east of the tiny village of
Orlando, and then platted his land which encircled most all of Lake Eola. During
the summer of 1875, Jacob and eldest son Robert attended Orlando’s meeting
called to discuss incorporating the town after serving 18 years as the County
Seat.
Robert L. Summerlin had
graduated from the University of Georgia with a law degree in 1875 and was
admitted to the Florida Bar the next year. Leaving Georgia and coming to
Orlando, Robert Summerlin then married, but his bride’s name was Texas, not Eola.
Nor did Texas die prior to their marriage.
Eola was the lake’s name
appearing on the 1874 subdivision plat recorded with the Clerk of Court by Jake
Summerlin. So, who was Eola?
Records of the Presbyterian
Church of Orlando organized March 18, 1876, tell of its 11 members, including
“Mrs. Jacob Summerlin, formerly of Flemington, GA”. Located in Liberty County, Georgia,
Flemington had been home to the Summerlin family in 1870. All listed as
Floridians, the family moved there after the Civil War.
The Summerlin’s were family
#13 in Georgia’s 1870 Liberty County census. Family #6 in that very same census
was Widow Sarah A. Way and her daughter, “Eula,” age 16. Robert Summerlin, age
12, and Eula, age 16, were both listed as attending school.
Eulalie Way (1854-1896)
Eulalie Way was born
July 22, 1854, at Liberty County, Georgia. Eulalie never married, nor did she
die two weeks before Robert Summerlin’s marriage. Eulalie Way died October 13,
1896, at age 42, and was buried in the State and County of her birth.
As legends pass from one
generation to the next, facts often become blurred. Eulalie was a popular name
in 1854 when Eulalie Way was born, popular because it was a poem by Edgar Allan
Poe. The poem, “Eulalie,” was about a lover becoming a bride, as one verse
states: “I dwelt alone, in a world of moan, till the fair and gentle Eulalie
became my blushing bride”.
Robert Summerlin, 12
years old, likely did have a crush on an older classmate named Eulalie. And as
his father, in 1874, subdivided land around a lake on the east side of Orlando,
Robert may have convinced his father to name the lake for Eula, his Georgia
crush. But then, as word passed to the surveyor charged with sketching the
plat, the name printed was Eola – and it stuck.
Robert and his bride Texas lived in a home fronting Lake Eola, but
history did not record if Texas Summerlin had ever been told how Lake Eola’s
naming came to be.
Narcissus #Wofford Lovell of
Apopka
Born 1832 in Georgia, Narcissus Wofford married
William Allen Lovell at Habersham, Georgia in 1851. Narcissus and her husband arrived
at Orange County in 1856, when the entire county at the time had fewer than
1,100 citizens, and the entire county was at odds over where to have to their
country seat. William served as Mellonville’s “Rebel Postmaster”, a lakeside
outpost near where Sanford is today, during the Civil War, then after the War,
the Lovell’s moved inland, to the village of Orlando.
Narcissus became mother to 11 children, as well as
each community she and husband William settled in. At Orlando following the
Civil War they established Lovell Hotel at Orlando, and in later years, the
family relocated again to Apopka. Although William Allen Lovell was the first Orange
County Superintendent of Schools, it is apparent by the achievements of the ten
Lovell children who survived to adulthood that education was equally important
to the mother in the rearing of their children.
Narcissus (Wofford) Lovell died 12 August 1897. She is
buried in Apopka’s old cemetery. Her husband of 46 years, William Allen Lovell,
passed in 1903.
Follow
Author & Historian Richard Lee Cronin
https://www.amazon.com/author/richardcronin
Our
History Museum of the Day
Umatilla
History Museum
The
Greater Umatilla Historical Society
299
N. Trowell Avenue
Umatilla,
Florida, 32784
352-809-0369
Open
Saturday, 1 AM to 4 PM (Call ahead to verify)
(Housed
in a circa 1910 schoolhouse)
