Cowboys & Lawyers - Part 12

Cowboys & Lawyers: Part 12

Attorneys of 19^th Century Central Florida

A series inspired by Pine Castle Historical Society’s

Will Wallace Harney: Orlando’s First Renaissance Man

By Richard Lee Cronin

A Kittery, Maine Attorney,

A Pine Castle, Florida Lawyer,

Two central Florida Law Partners,

And a second train for Orlando, Florida

This Blog is dedicated to the Kittery, Maine Cronin Clan

Upon arriving at Orlando in Spring of 1885, a visiting lawyer from Maine likely traveled around the city on a handsome surrey, complete with a fringe on top. Horse-drawn carriages by this time had become John G. Sinclair’s way of welcoming newcomers to central Florida. Sinclair Real Estate agents transported potential buyers in style to view potential parcels for acquiring.

Service had made the Sinclair agency at Orlando the county’s largest land sales agency, and the New Hampshire transplant and real estate office founder was already preparing to open a second office in the outer fringes of West Orange County.

John G. Sinclair Real Estate Office, 1884 Orlando, Florida

Attorney John M. Goodwin, life-long resident of Kittery, Maine, would have been no exception to the receiving carriage tour, especially since he came to Orlando in March of 1885 in search of land - not to settle on, but to develop. Attorney John Goodwin, a non-Florida resident, planned to enlarge Orange County’s Seat of Government. The property Goodwin acquired in 1885 is still known today as “Goodwin’s Addition to Orlando”.

Followers of this Cowboys & Lawyers series now know the fascination Attorneys and Judges had, since central Florida’s earliest days, in being developers as well of Florida’s Citrus Belt. Legal professionals accumulated thousands of wilderness acres in the 19^th century, investment property in a sparsely inhabited area (fewer than one person per one-square mile in 1850), land that became the blueprint for how central Florida evolved. For example: Maitland, Orlando, Sanford, and even the outer fringes of West Orange County, Tavares of today’s Lake County, exist in the form they are today because of 19^th century legal professionals.

John Munroe Goodwin, born 1822 in Maine, is memorialized in his native State as a ‘Goodwin of Kittery, Maine’ family. John and Harriett Proctor (Herrick) married in Maine in 1850, raised their family at Biddeford in York County, Maine. Attorney Goodwin founded his legal practice at his hometown, a practice that spanned more than 40 years. He died at Biddeford in 1905. Harriet Goodwin departed this life three years after the death of her husband of 55 years.

Goodwin family memoirs tell us much about the Biddeford, Maine family, but fails to mention the Attorney’s 1885 involvement in expanding the town of Orlando - in faraway central Florida.

John M. Goodwin’s Addition to Orlando, Florida

Officially recorded in 1887, the most historically significant find in reviewing John Goodwin’s “Add to Orlando” is not necessarily what one sees on his land. Sketched by surveyor Abbot, the Goodwin property is shown as bordering the south side of West Robinson Street, west of and adjacent to track belonging to South Florida Railroad (SFRR). Even more interesting though historically is another railroad track shown as bordering the north side of West Robinson, across the street from Goodwin’s property. That second track is identified as (T O & A R R). Having an east-west alignment, this was track laid down by “Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad”, the second train to service Orlando.

Departing from Tavares, 32 miles of track later delivered passengers and freight to track’s end – at the junction of the north-south track of South Florida Railroad. The first TO&A train arrived at Orlando on July 2, 1885, three months after Attorney John M. Goodwin bought his property.

Take another look at the plat above – specifically to where the two railroad tracks meet, and note an “L” shaded structure. Goodwin’s 1885 Plat provides historical evidence of the planned depot for the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad at its junction with South Florida Railroad.

Directly south of the terminal (below above), Attorney John M. Goodwin sold lots 1 thru 5 of Block A to John G. Sinclair, formerly of New Hampshire – at that time of Orlando’s Sinclair Real Estate agency. Thirty-two miles northwest, at the Tavares end of this same track, a few blocks off Sinclair Avenue in that up and coming ‘Darling Settlement of Orange County’, was located John G. Sinclair’s second sales office.

  

Unlike John Goodwin, Isaac Browne decided to swap the frigid New Hampshire winters he had been accustomed to and instead enjoy year-around tropical temperatures in downtown Orlando, Florida. He came to Orange County in 1882, attracted to the area because, quoting fellow New Englander John G. Sinclair, “he wanted to live where the residents of Orange County are free from those sudden climatic changes which are so severe a tax upon the vital energies of residents of the Northern States”. An 1886 directory listed Isaac as an orange grower, living in downtown Orlando on Gertrude Street, north of the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad”. (See directory below)   

1886 Webb’s Directory of Orlando, Florida
Orange Grower Isaac A Brown(e) and Attorney William R. Anno

A reporter for the Burlington, Iowa Hawk-Eye interviewed a few Orlando residents in late 1882, and upon returning home, his newspaper published a full page article promoting central Florida. One individual interviewed was identified as “Colonel W. R. Anno, President of the Tavares, Orlando, and Atlantic Railroad”. Four years later, an advertisement for “W. R. Anno, Attorney At Law” appeared on the very page (above) as a resident listing of Orlando orange grower Isaac A. Brown(e), a native of Exeter, New Hampshire.

William R. Anno came to central Florida from Kentucky in the 1870s. Little proof of his one-time existence here remains, although the most obvious landmark is Anno Avenue in historic Pine Castle. Originally West Avenue, Anno and the next two streets to the west were part of an 1884 Addition to Pine Castle by Attorney William R. Anno, President in 1882 of the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad.

The other two Pine Castle streets, Maud and Blanche, were named in 1884 by Attorney Anno, but then renamed by the county in 1955. Maud and Blanche were daughters of Pine Castle homesteaders, William R. & Sarah (Nute) Anno.

Attorney W. R. Anno owned another city lot off Maude Street, but this parcel was not part of either Pine Castle or Orlando. Nor had the street been named for Attorney Anno’s daughter.

William R. Anno was deeded, in 1882, a town lot in the newly established city of Tavares. The third lot north of Maud Street on St. Clair-Abrams Avenue, this property was part of a new city which had captured the imagination of most every Orange County resident – and many a New Englander as well.

Maud Street was named for a daughter of Attorney Robert L. Summerlin, Orlando’s Mayor in 1880, whereas St. Clair-Abrams Avenue was named for Attorney Alexander St. Clair-Abrams. Partners in an 1878 Orlando Law firm, the two also became, for a brief 14 months, partners in the 1881 formation of the town of Tavares.

While one can drive St. Clair-Abrams Avenue and Maud Street today, it is no longer possible to drive Summerlin Avenue of 1882. After dissolving their partnership, Summerlin was renamed – twice – the second time to Rockingham Avenue, in “compliment to Hon. Frank Jones, of New Hampshire.” This Tavares artery is still known as Rockingham Avenue today.

A politician, astute businessman, and Capitalist, Frank Jones of Portland, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, not only invested in property at Tavares, he owned as well several town lots at John M. Goodwin’s Addition to Orlando. At one time, the Frank Jones Brewery of Portland was considered the largest brewery in the nation. The success of Frank Jones enabled him to invest in hotels, railroads and even – with regard to central Florida – a new town.

Frank Jones came to the rescue of Tavares in its time of need – which turned out to be more than once! One was his payment of $13,000 to construct the Lake County courthouse at Tavares.

Legal professionals changed the face of a central Florida wilderness into an American Paradise, and nowhere in Florida’s Citrus Belt was this fact more prevalent than in a tiny sliver of land in West Orange County separating Lakes Dora and Eustis. First known as “Hull Place”, and later, Tavares, the origins of more than 40 Lake County towns and place names evolves from here, a place where Cowboys & Lawyers of Orange County imagined a magical place named for “a descendant of The Hermit – Tavares!”
  

This September: The extraordinary story of 

TAVARES

Darling of Orange County

Birthplace of Lake County

By Richard Lee Cronin

Certainly not every pioneer who came to Florida was an Attorney. Nor was every Capitalist who helped turn a wilderness into America’s 19^th century Paradise a lawyer. Still, as I hope this series has demonstrated, the legal professionals of the 1800s sure had a fondness for Florida’s amazing Citrus Belt.

TAVARES: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County, will be available at Amazon this September.

For more on William R. Anno and the Pine Castle region, check out my 2017 Award Winning: Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County 

I invite you to also visit my website, www.CroninCooks.com - the central Florida online history store, or you can contact me at Rick@Croninbooks.com

  

Cowboys & Lawyers Part 11 - Summer 2020 Edition

Cowboys & Lawyers

The Summer Edition

A CitrusLAND Blog Series by Richard Lee Cronin

Old McDonald had a farm, and he had a 19^th century law practice too!

A central Florida newspaper correspondent of long, long ago, inspired a prosperous Kentucky publisher to look into Florida’s up and coming Citrus Belt. The Louisville schoolbook publisher did just that, and he then began buying up land – lots and lots of land.

During the 1880s the Louisvillian publisher acquired: 21 acres on Lake Virginia alongside Rollins College; a city lot at Clement R. Tiner’s 1884 town of Pine Castle; another town lot a mile north of Pine Castle at Stanley J. Morrow’s 1885 town of Troy; and then partnered with a fellow Kentuckian in the founding of the entire city of Lakeland. Interested in more than land, he also became a partner in a consortium of Attorneys that were preparing to construct the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad.

It was a time in central Florida’s history when everyone seemed to be into building railroads. The personal automobile invention was still decades distant. Most of those who lived in the area at that time journeyed either via horseback or horse drawn carriage, a tedious undertaking on the sand rutted trails of 19th century central Florida. 

So, in 1880, when two trains finally began operating in Orange County, it was clearly a time to rejoice. In no time at all plans emerged for a dozen additional railroads, but the TO&A was thought of by many as unique. The TO&A, you see, was planned as one spoke in a transportation wheel-like hub that promised to improve life - and fortunes - for every resident and land speculator in central Florida.

As for the Louisville publisher first mentioned above, he brought real railroad experience – for he had been one of the original founders of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and the Texas Pacific Railroad, high-profile railroads up north. This fellow from Louisville added prestige as well as cash for the new railroad - a train having plans to serve the darling of all Orange County towns:

TAVARES

Arriving

September, 2020

The Louisville book publisher also influenced others to find their way to Florida’s Citrus Belt, among whom was Andrew McDonald, a retired Louisville Attorney.

McDonald Depot, 18 miles northwest of Orlando, was established by Lawyer Andrew McDonald, wife Jane (Gay) McDonald, and neighbors John & Mary (Sessions) Wilkins. McDonald Depot on the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad line was “200 yards from the community of Grasmere”, as the Orange County Gazetteer reported in 1887, midway between towns Plymouth and Zellwood. 

McDonald Depot is at the center of this 1890 map above

Today, Orlando-Apopka Airport on Highway 441 sits across from Wilkins Street, site of the 1880s McDonald Depot.  

Andrew & Jane McDonald arrived in Florida in the early 1880s. Sons Dr. M Gay McDonald and younger brother George N. McDonald, a real estate agent, settled at the Grasmere community as well. A Grasmere Post Office opened January 20, 1885, soon after surveyors had selected right-of-way land in that section for the laying down of track for Tavares, Orlando, and Atlantic Railway.  

1885 Plat of McDonald & Wilkins Subdivision showing "Depot" 

The family relocated from Louisville, Kentucky – home as well to John P. Morton, the prominent book publisher who assisted in founding two of our Nation’s most well-known railroads – and who, in 1885, became a stockholder as well in the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad Company.

Lawyers and legal professionals were by no means the only central Florida homesteaders, but these professionals did seem to have a fascination with America’s 19^th century Paradise. This Summer Edition of my 2020 Blog series will introduce many more fascinating pioneers - lawyers, judges, and legal professionals - and their remarkable plans for West Orange County - a land YOU know today as Lake County. 

My next episode of Cowboys & Attorneys will introduce a York, Maine Attorney and his connection with the Orlando Depot of the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad.

This September: The extraordinary story of 

TAVARES

Darling of Orange County

Birthplace of Lake County

By Richard Lee Cronin

P. S. The road in front of John P. Morton's 21 acres at Winter Park is presently known as Holt Avenue, but this road was first known as Kentucky Avenue, as in Louisville, Kentucky.

J. P. Morton parcel on Lake Virginia at Rollins College, Kentucky Avenue is now Holt Avenue

Visit my website at CroninBooks.com

Cowboys & Lawyers - Part 10 - Thomas E. Wilson

Honorable Thomas Emmett Wilson

Orange Boulevard of Seminole County, a busy rural thoroughfare today serving bedroom communities west of downtown Sanford, Florida, was once a roadbed for the train that opened-up the wild west – Central Florida’s wild west that is. Few obvious signs remain today of 19^th century cities founded along the route of Orange Belt Railroad, but glaring evidence does indeed exist.

After crossing State Road 46 heading south, Orange Boulevard intersects with Wilson Road, an east-west artery memorializing a leading Orange County Attorney of the 1870s and 1880s, the Honorable Thomas Emmett Wilson. Head east off Orange Boulevard a short distance on Wilson Road and you will soon come to yet another memorial for the man, Emmett Street.

Turn south at Wilson and Emmett and note the two arteries of yesteryear, 5^th Street and 1^st Street, both lonely remnants of the 1880s town of Sylvan Lake – a railway stop on the Orange Belt Railway – a town founded by Attorney Thomas Emmett Wilson.

Residence of Attorney Thomas E. Wilson

Railroad tracks laid down by Orange Belt Railway are long gone, and the land in these parts has, since 1913, been part of Seminole County. Much of the rich history of these rural communities though had been forgotten – despite survival of hints in the form of monikers that long ago identified railroad towns such as Sylvan Lake, Paola, Island Lake, Glen Ethel and even Palm Springs. 

I myself first learned of the historic significance of such ‘place names’ a dozen years ago, and I profiled each, as well as towns Altamont (no ‘e’), Forest City, Lakeville, Clarcona, Crown Point, Winter Garden and Oakland, in my second book – still popular today – CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains (Second Edition released in 2015).

CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains

True-life central Florida pioneers, and Florida’s Freeze of 1894-95

Click on cover to read my 5 Star review and/or to buy it now at Amazon

Any biography of Thomas Emmett Wilson however would need to point out that the founding of his town of Sylvan Lake was easily the least of this bachelor’s many accomplishments. The end of the line for Orange Belt Railroad, for example, was St. Petersburg – on the Gulf Coast - a town founded by the railway’s founder, Russian immigrant Peter A. Demens. Thomas E. Wilson's client was the Orange Belt Railway, and at the founder’s direction, Wilson filed the town charter establishing the city of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Born 1847 at Putnam County, New York, Wilson came to Florida in the early 1870s as a Veteran of the Civil War. He had served four years with New York’s 8^th Calvary before being admitted in 1868 to the New York Bar. As an ex-Calvary officer, he was quite comfortable traveling rough dirt roads of central Florida selling his legal services via horseback. Wilson served as State Attorney from 1873 through 1877, and then, in 1880, was the local Attorney in the organization of South Florida Railroad. He was also the lawyer for Florida Midland Railway, and in the mid-1880s for the Orange Belt Railway.  

In addition to owning more than four thousand acres scattered throughout Orange County, he had also traveled the world. Wilson’s around-the-world expedition took him to Australia, New Zealand and, said a biography appearing in the Sanford’s Gate City Chronicles of 1910, “to the borders of the Antarctic Ocean, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.”   

   

Thomas E. Wilson was 54 years old when he married his neighbor and stenographer, Elizabeth A. Fox. They had no children. Attorney Wilson died at Sanford in 1924, at the age of 77.

And so it was no surprise that, while researching for my next book on central Florida's fascinating history, that I once again stumbled upon Attorney Thomas Emmett Wilson. That, however, is a story for later this year.

Cowboys & Lawyers will continue while I continue to research and write my next book - due out later this summer. In the meantime, stay safe and wealth - and read a good book or two.

Visit CroninBooks.com to view your central Florida history store.

Sarah of Lake Conway - Conclusion

Sarah of Lake Conway

Solving the Mystery of Orlando’s Origin

A 2020 Women’s History Month Special Edition Blog

A New York City resident in 1874 when she purchased land at Mellonville on Lake Monroe, Mrs. Sarah C. Taylor had remained, until now, an elusive link in learning the truth about the founding of Orlando. Fact is, we simply did not know! So, in my book First Road to Orlando, I suggested my version after first analyzing the many 'other' long-standing versions. I did not know of Sarah at that time, but I do believe her fascinating story compliments that of my earlier theory.

McDougal’s Hammock of Lake Conway:

1879 Lake Conway area map by E. R. Trafford

McDougal's Hammock was that land between the middle and lower basins above

Note the heavy line showing the 'trail' that a railroad would follow in 1881

Mellonville, now a ghost town, was still a port of entry in 1874, although its neighbor, the port of Sanford, was becoming a serious challenger to assuming the title, “Gateway to Orange County”. Sarah decided to buy her first Orange County lot at Mellonville.  Less than a year later, solely on her own, she purchased one hundred acres on Lake Conway, (see above map) 30 long sand rutted miles south of Mellonville. It was then a full-day’s journey or more from Lake Monroe to Lake Conway.

A portion of Sarah’s property on Lake Conway was what pioneer and historian Will Wallace Harney referred to as McDougal Hammock. “It seems to be an island hill,” wrote Harney in March of 1876, “a soft mass of verdure, light green, deepening in shadow and rising to a soft knoll.” John McDougal, a native of Scotland, had been a long-time Tallahassee merchant prior to the Civil War. His central Florida land speculating days ended in 1874, by selling his Lake Conway hammock to Sarah C. Taylor of New York City.

Florida history, it seems, had taken a Manhattan sabbatical following the Civil War! That’s why Florida native Sarah C. Taylor was living in New York City in 1870. Sarah had married John M. Taylor on 15 September 1864, relinquishing at that time her maiden name - Broome. At the time of the 1870 census, Sarah was a New Yorker, living with two siblings, Thomas H Broome and sister Julia, and their cousin, John Dozier Broome (future Deland Attorney), and her uncle - a well-known Floridian, James E. Broome, an ex-Governor of the State of Florida.

Panhandle Broome’s:

Flashback 20 years to 1850, and six-year old Sarah lived with her parents in Florida’s Panhandle, along with two older brothers: Robert W. Broome and George Knox Broome. The family lived at Madison, where Benjamin F. Whitner, Jr. also lived., Ben was the young man who first surveyed most all of South Orange County in the 1840s – and even owned nearly 300 acres of the county by 1860, as I pointed out in my book, Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County. 

Benjamin Whitner, Jr. is also referred to as central Florida’s “Architect” in Chapter 7 of my latest book, Will Wallace Harney: Orlando’s First Renaissance Man, commissioned by and for the Pine Castle Historical Society.

More than a biography of a man, this is the history of his beloved Pine Castle 

While Sarah lived at Madison, Florida in 1850, Surveyor Whitner’s father, Ben Sr., was living at Tallahassee. He was the neighbor of James E. Broome – brother of Sarah’s father, John S. Broome. James E. Broome was getting ready to run for the office of Florida Governor. He won, and in October 1853, as Sarah turned 9, her uncle James became Governor of Florida. 

On October 5, 1857, the last day in office for Governor James E. Broome, Benjamin F. Caldwell of Talladega, Alabama – on that exact same day – signed a deed gifting four (4) acres of Orange County land – at the Village of Orlando - for a county courthouse. Governors make a lot of last minute decisions on their last day in office - decisions such selecting a controversial location for a county seat.

Then came the Civil War, and everything, including central Florida history, was put on hold. It was because of this protracted War and Reconstruction Period that a lot of history was forgotten!

Broome’s in Orlando’s Closet:

Now, back to 1870, Sarah’s two older brothers lived in Florida while she lived with her uncle and younger siblings in New York City. Her brother George lived at Gainesville, and brother Robert, an attorney, lived at Lake City. The next-door neighbor of Robert W. Broome was William Wallace McCall, also an attorney.

As already stated, Sarah bought her Mellonville land in February of 1874. Two months later, in April 1874, Lake City Attorney William Wallace McCall made his first of several land purchases at the village of Orlando. Then, on January 14, 1875, Sarah C. Taylor, by that time a resident of Gainesville, Florida, purchased her one hundred plus acres at Lake Conway.

Six months later, on June 3, 1875, Sarah’s brother, Attorney Robert W. Broome of Lake City, arrived at Village of Orlando and called to order the first of several meetings of landowners. Will Wallace Harney, in a published article dated September 8, 1875, reported: “And so Orlando has a charter, and in addition to its handsome courthouse has a Mayor, Council, and ordinances.”

Village of Orlando, Seat of Orange County, circa 1870s. 

Employed as City Attorney for a time in 1875, Robert W. Broome had also served as Chairman of the committee to Incorporate Orlando. Robert then vanished, and by 1880, Robert’s wife was identifying herself as a Widow.

A Colonel & the J. P. & M bonds:

Sarah C. (Broome) Taylor was a land speculator at a time land speculating was primarily a male occupation. Why else would a New Yorker acquire a hundred wilderness acres south of Orlando but then settle at Gainesville the very next year? Was it coincidental that Sarah bought land south of Orlando – within months of her Attorney brother arriving to rescue Orange County’s 18 year-old county seat?

Sanford desperately wanted the title of County Seat in 1874, and time was clearly running out for a floundering little village of Orlando. Timing was right to finish the job Broome & family had begun in the 1850s. Broome was not alone in the origins of Orlando - but they were an important link to the town's survival

How did the New York residents know what was happening back home? In 1873, in New York City, the Great Southern Railroad of Florida was organized. Organized with $9,000,000 in bonds, the charter called for 450 miles of rails, running from Nassau County in the north to Monroe County in the south, and Orange County was listed as being in the path of this new railroad. Will Wallace Harney even wrote of a proposed train to cross over his Lake Conway property.

Harney also wrote a novel: “She is a very lovely character indeed, said the lawyer,” in Harney's City Building in the South; “She is here on business.” His novel was about a pretty lady, a lawyer, a planned railroad, and a Colonel. “The Colonel”, wrote Harney, “has a number of J. P. & M bonds.”

Central Florida and New York City might have been separated by many miles in the 1870s, but the New York Herald managed to bring these two very different locales together on January 31, 1874. On that day the newspaper reported on a U. S. Supreme Court case called 'Florida vs. Anderson', a case dealing with the ‘Jacksonville, Pensacola and Mobile Railroad’. Interesting call letters for a railroad - the J. P. & M! Interesting that Harney concluded his Novel with: "so, under the veil of fiction has been told the story of the founding of one American city and county."

Rail service finally reached Orlando in late 1880, and during the summer of 1881, as track was being laid in the direction of Lake Conway, Sarah C. (Broome) Taylor sold her property. It was as if she had decided her Broome family had completed their elder's wishes. Orlando, Florida remained the county seat of Orange County. Ex-Governor James E. Broome died in 1883, while visiting his Attorney son at Deland, Florida.

Sarah of Lake Conway is representative of the remarkable women of 19^th central Florida. They had faith in the dream of an American Paradise, but their roles in helping to develop this land often became lost amid so much heart break and disappointment. Central Florida pioneers however were tough and resolute individual – men and women both - and we all benefit from their efforts today.

Colonel Whitner, as Will Wallace Harney always referred to his surveyor friend, died in 1881, the same year Sarah of Lake Conway sold her McDougal Hammock on Lake Conway. The 'Architect' of central Florida had lived to witness iron of the SFRR being laid across his land at Lake Gatlin. Colonel Whitner was survived by his amazing wife, Sarah of Fort Reid, but that, my history friends, is a story for another time.

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Home of central Florida's remarkable 19th century pioneers

   

 MY COWBOYS & LAWYERS SERIES RETURNS IN APRIL

Sarah of Lake Conway

The intriguing Sarah of Lake Conway

Solving the Mystery of Orlando’s Origin

A 2020 Women’s Month Special Edition Blog

Sarah of Lake Conway

I recently stumbled across a fascinating 19^th century central Florida lady I’ll call, for the moment, Sarah of Lake Conway. Her married name did not at first set off a red flag for this historian, but if I’ve said it once I’ve likely stated a hundred times – researchers looking to resolve the mystery and intrigue of central Florida history must always look deep into to the genealogy and history of the extraordinary women who assisted in the founding of Florida’s Citrus-Belt.

Sarah of 1874 Lake Conway owned the land inside the red box shown above  

I set out to do a series for Women’s History Month about remarkable frontierswomen named Sarah. There were quite a few such fascinating ladies during the 1870s and 1880s, and while researching for that blog, I stumbled upon another - Sarah of Lake Conway.

This particular Sarah acquired Lake Conway land in two purchases during 1874. I want to stress again the year – it was 1874! Her Lake Conway land was well south of Orlando, even south of the historic homestead where Will Wallace Harney had settled only four years earlier. Travel was still difficult at best, although Harney tells us that by 1874 a stagecoach was running from Mellonville to Orlando during the “winter and spring”.

Today, residents cross Sarah’s 1874 property via the historic Nela Avenue, driving through a neighborhood already rich in history. But remember, Sarah acquired her land long before Nela Avenue was ever laid out, and long before the first house was built on the peninsular separating the middle basin of Lake Conway from the lower.

1874 was the year Harney began building his ‘Pine Castle’. He celebrated Christmas that year by throwing an extravagant party at his new home on Lake Conway. But central Florida had yet to build its first railroad, and dirt trails remained the sole means of access land on Lake Conway. It is not known if Sarah attended Harney's Christmas party that year.

“A party from the States,” wrote Harney of an Everglades hunting expedition party from the North, visited him in April 1874, having, “trudged by the Pine Castle”. The dirt path leading from Fort Gatlin south to Lake Tohopekaliga – to the future location of Kissimmee City – was not easily traveled. Still, Sarah of Lake Conway purchased more than a hundred acres on the southwest shore of the lower of three Lake Conway basins.

Having come across this Sarah, I wanted to know why she would have been interested in this remote land?

“Hesperian fables true, If true here only.”         

Fewer than 2,200 courageous souls were residents of 1870 Orange County, and the population didn’t increase all that much in the four years to follow. Our Sarah of Lake Conway did move however, relocating from New York City to Marion County, Florida between 1870 and 1874.

She also expressed interest in Orange County land about that same time. But homestead land was cheap and plentiful all along the 25 plus miles between Fort Mellon and Fort Gatlin, the main artery to access Sarah’s property. In fact, after reaching Fort Gatlin, Sarah still had nearly four miles of dirt trail to “trudge” heading to her parcel.

Why didn’t Sarah of Lake Conway simply buy land – one might inquire – at Port of Mellonville, where passengers disembarked the numerous steamboats coming south on the St. Johns River to the wilderness lands of Orange County? Well, that’s where the Sarah of Lake Conway plot thickens!

Sarah’s first land purchase was in fact at Mellonville. She and a brother Thomas purchased Lot 4 of Block 33 at Mellonville, closing on the land deal February 6, 1874. Again – another important date to remember – February of 1874!

Remember Orlando’s Closet?

I released First Road to Orlando in Second Edition in 2015. A history of how the Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin military trail evolved into the first road to a remote county seat of Orlando, the book is presented in three parts. War to War (Part One) and Trail of Retired Warriors (Part Two) tells of how Mellonville, Fort Reid, Rutledge, Maitland and a mysterious little village of Orlando were founded. Part Three then analyzes the merits of each of a numerous versions as to how the town of Orlando came to be named.

My last chapter in First Road to Orlando in entitled Broome’s in Orlando’s Closet. I present in that chapter my theory about Orlando’s origin – a version never before told. Detailed facts were laid out in that chapter, although gaps admittedly did exist. A mysterious Attorney arrived at the little village of Orlando in 1874, 18 years after the village had been established as the Orange County seat. The Attorney of 1874 had a fascinating family connection to a Florida Governor of 18 years prior.

Documented proof however was missing. Why the attorney happened to come to Orlando that year couldn’t be documented - leaving room for doubt in my 2015 Orlando origins theory.

And then, a few weeks back, I happened upon Sarah of Lake Conway. This remarkable 19^th century lady is the missing link to resolving the amazing origin of Orlando. Next Wednesday, in Part Two of this Two Part Blog, I will introduce you to Sarah and her incredible family - all over again. This time, I'll have the documented evidence to support the theory presented in First Road to Orlando. 

5 Star Review at Amazon: "Really enjoyed this book. There are so many interesting facts about Florida and the central Florida area and how we are connected to George Washington."

If you enjoy central Florida history, you will love:

As well as my 2017 PCHS Award winning:

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Sarah of Lake Conway

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