CENTRAL FLORIDA'S FASCINATING HISTORY: Women's History Month

Frontierswomen of Central Florida

Emma Jane (Little) Tallant

A Women’s History Month Tribute

By Richard Lee Cronin, CroninBooks.com

17 March 2022

Day 17

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

#Leroy of Altamont

A town of Altamont (without an ‘e’) was founded nearly a decade before Altamonte Springs (with an ‘e’) was established in north Orange County (currently Seminole County).

Founded in 1873 by Dr. Washington Kilmer, the first Altamont Postmaster for his town was Delia (Leroy), the wife of Dr, Kilmer’s neighbor, John Katline. The Altamont Post Office was established December 30, 1874, in the vicinity of the intersection of present-day Douglas Road and SR 434.

Within only a few years, a newspaper at Cortland, New York, Delia’s hometown, announced the death of their former citizen: “Delia L. Katline, of Altamont, Orange County, Florida, April 22d, 1877, in her 39^th year of age.” Delia died soon after becoming the first postmaster in the vicinity of modern-day Altamonte Springs.

#Little of Mount Dora

The following is an excerpt from, Mount Dora: The Lure. The Founding. The Founders. “Emma J. Tallant is the spirit of Christmas giving in Mount Dora.” Such was the stated opinion of Mabel Norris Reese, a Mount Doran who knew Mrs. Tallant well and wrote of the remarkable lady in a two-part ‘Lake County Personalities’ Mount Dora Topic series. Noteworthy is that the 1952 series required two parts, appearing December 11 & 18, to fully cover this selected citizen.

Not only was Mrs. Tallant regarded as the spirit of Christmas in her town, wrote Mabel, “her home is the North Pole of Mount Dora.”

Emma Jane Tallant was a member of King’s Daughters Club for nearly 32 years when interviewed for the 1952 article. And be it serving as Chairman of a soup committee during the Depression or overseeing the collection and distribution of clothing and toys for Mount Dora’s needy children at Christmas time, Emma remained at the forefront of the King’s Daughters charity work.

She worked throughout the year assisting the needy, said the Topic, and Emma “will not give any clothing to her list of needy that is not in perfect condition, her co-workers in King’s Daughters reveal. She washes it, mends it, and irons – just as the giver should have done – before she puts them into the closet just off her living room”.

This enchanting Mount Dora lot once owned by Emma J. (Little) Tallant

Sixteen years young when she first arrived at Mount Dora in 1907 as Emma Jane Little, she lived most of her life as a Widow. Her parents, Charles & Mattie Little of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, first brought her to Mount Dora as a teenager. Her father purchased the vacant building at Fourth and Donnelly Street and opened the Robert Burns Hotel. Although snowbirds, there was scarcely a year during which Emma didn’t come south to Mount Dora.

Born at Hopkinton July 12, 1890, Emma Jane Little married Eugene Andrew Tallant on November 30, 1913. Emma and Eugene Tallant were likewise snowbirds, although during the Great World War, the two stayed mostly at New Hampshire. Then the influenza outbreak of 1917-18 hit, and although both became infected, Eugene did not survive. He died November 4, 1918, days shy of the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary. Emma (Little) Tallant never remarried.

#Low of Lake Highland

“Her form could be seen floating among the orange trees,” wrote historian Kena Fries in 1938, in telling of an event that had occurred many years earlier on Orlando’s Lake Highland. “A jolly Christmas party” Miss Fries said, “the guests leaving long after midnight, in the darkened house the hosts slept peacefully. In the early morning the wife awoke, a choking sensation in her throat. The room was filled with smoke, and lurid flames leaped about the building. Frantic efforts failing to arouse her husband, she ran to the nearby water plant, clad only in her night robes.”

The tragedy on Lake Highland, which is not found in other local histories, tells of a young bride who, after her husband was rescued, collapsed, and died of exhaustion. “After that, for many years, just before sunrise on the morning of December 27^th, her form could be seen floating among the orange trees, from the charred remains of the old house to the water plant, where it dissolved into thin air and vanished.”

Orlando’s Water Plant was built at Lake Highland in 1887, so, was there really a ghost visible among the orange trees surrounding the water plant? Here are some facts. You decide!

The Ghost of Lake Highland, an October 2014 Blog by R. L. Cronin

The most popular guy in town during the summer months of the 1880s was quite likely John W. Anderson. He managed Orlando Icehouse! Born in Indiana, Anderson grew up in Iowa, where, following the Civil War, he married Miss Adeth Bell Gibson.

Five days after the birth of the second Anderson child in 1877, Adeth died, so John married his deceased wife’s sister, Emily. In 1881, John and Emily relocated to Orlando, Florida. By 1886, John W. Anderson relocated his family to Lake Highland, but he did not buy the property they settled on.

The deed to Anderson’s land had been issued to, “Emily Gibson Anderson, sole heir at law of Peter Gibson, deceased.” Peter, a resident of Ryegate, VT, had purchased five acres, land on which Lake Highland Preparatory School is now located, and following his death, the land was deeded to his only surviving daughter.

Peter died in his Vermont hometown, and was buried at a Ryegate hillside cemetery, where a handsome grave marker memorializes not only the life of Peter, but that of his wife too. And there, on one side of Peter’s tombstone, is a bone chilling inscription, a tragic story replicated in the annals of Ryegate, Vermont history, but forgotten in the annals of a wilderness town far to the south.

Peter had married Emily #Low in 1846. They were parents of two girls, Adeth and Emily, both of whom, according to the Vermont town’s history, had been married to John W. Anderson. As for the bone chilling inscription, it reads: “Emily Low Gibson died at Orlando, FL, December 23, 1883.”

“A jolly Christmas party” said Miss Fries of her haunting Orlando story, “the guests leaving long after midnight, in the darkened house the hosts slept peacefully. In the early morning the wife awoke.” Rye, Vermont recalls Emily Low Gibson, a central Florida frontierswoman who died in 1883. And now you know the facts, what do you think?

Was Emily Low Gibson the ghost of Lake Highland’s Water Plant?

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