People
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Eldon E. Williamson
E. E. Williamson Road is a major east-west side road connecting Markham Woods Road with Longwood Hills Road, crossing Interstate 4 in the process. It was named after Eldon E. Williamson, who moved to Longwood in the late 1930s. He said when he moved to town the only hard-surfaced road through town was 427, which was then known as the Old Dixie Highway. He served several terms on the city commission between the mid-1950s and early 1970s. He was born in 1899 and died in 1974. Eldon was a member of the Longwood Town Council in the 1950s and a…
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Francis Oliver, Oral History
Local historian Jason Byrne interviews Francis Oliver on July 2, 2018 11:50AM at Patio Grill in Sanford. Francis is a civil rights activist, community leader, career educator, founder of the Goldsboro Museum, and longtime resident of the black community of Sanford’s Goldsboro district. INDEX OF CONVERSATION 0:38 The “Overground Railroad” – Escape from Jim Crow 1:00 Family moving to Goldsboro in 1946 2:18 Family farm back in Alabama 6:28 Early memories of Sanford and Goldsboro 10:14 Attending Savannah State University and husband dying in Vietnam 10:55 Return to Sanford and early career teaching in public schools, desegregation 12:15 Growing up…
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John Neill and Eva Searcy
John Neill Searcy arrived in Mellonville (Sanford) by steamboat and homesteaded in the Longwood area in 1873. He first settled near the Longdale/Sky Lark/Candyland Park area before relocating to the south shore of West Lake. Mr. Searcy was originally from Tennessee and served as a sergeant in the Confederate army during the Civil War. His father (also named John) was a doctor and joined him in Longwood. They and several other prominent citizens helped build the Christ Episcopal Church on West Church Street. The church held its first service on Easter in 1882. In 1885, he married Eva Lessie Muzzy.…
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John Otto Fries
1838-1931 Surveyor
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Aaron Jernigan
Martha B Jernigan Tyler (1838-1926) was quoted in Kenna Fries’ 1937 book “Orlando in the Long Long Ago” as writing: “My father was Captain Aaron Jernigan, a brave soldier. Father moved to Florida in 1843, bringing his cattle, an old white gentleman and some negroes. The following January he moved mother and us children down. We had seven hundred head of cattle. Our nearest neighbors were at Fort Reed, which was a mile from Sanford. My father settled on a place two miles and a half south of Orlando. It is now owned by Mr. Overstreet. Mr. Aurthur Quinn and…
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Mahlon Gore
Gore said in 1908 of his first encounter with Orlando: “I walked over from Sanford, taking two days to make the trip. The sand was deep and the last end of the road stretched out unaccountably long. At about the present intersection of Magnolia Avenue and Livingston Street, was a little house owned and occupied by a clergyman named Beverridge, pastor of the Presbyterian church. And a block to the east, discernible through the trees, was another, the home of E. W. Spier. No other buildings were in sight, but meeting a man on horseback, I inquired how far it…
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Thomas W Lund, Jr.
The Frederick DeBarry steamship was captained by Thomas Lund, Jr. It was part of the Clyde Steamship Line from Jacksonville to Enterprise and Sanford. The Lund family—Thomas Lund Senior and then Junior—were primary steamship captains in the early days of regular service between Jacksonville and Sanford. Captain T. W. Lund of the Clyde Streamship Company described his earliest memories of coming to what is now Seminole County: “In the year 1873, June 6, I came to Florida to visit my parents; my father was operating a steamboat between Jacksonville and Salt Lake, the latter the nearest point to Titusville by…
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Frederic Henry Rand
One of the earliest settlers of Longwood was Frederic H. Rand who arrived in Longwood the year the post office was established. Like Henck he was from Boston. He purchased several large tracts of land on the west side of Longwood and planted citrus. In 1891, it was reported that he owned 40 acres of citrus, one of the largest grove owners in the Longwood area at the time. Rand helped organize the first Episcopal mission in Longwood in 1877 which constructed Christ Church on West Church Avenue in 1880. The church, which is still being used, was dedicated on…
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Edward Warren Henck
Edward Henck (1846-1930) arrived in Mellonville (Sanford) by steamboat in November 1872 from Boston. He looked at some maps of available homesteads and picked out a few promising locations. Horses were scarce, so he started walking south. He diverged from the main trail to Orlando and took a more western fork near Soldier Creek. He arrived on the southern shore of East Lake and decided to call it home. Edward put in a homestead claim for the eastern side of the section that stretches from 434 on the south to almost Longwood Hills Rd on the north, from Milwee Street…
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Stephen John Levi Hooker
Stephen John Levi Hooker was born to a pioneer family in Alachua County in 1837. Among his other siblings he was especially close to older brother William Pearch Hooker. It was a hard life on the Florida frontier, especially growing up without a father. James Tarpley Hooker was killed serving in the Second Seminole War in 1836, just months before Stephen’s birth. Though their line of the Hooker clan wasn’t especially wealthy, their uncle William Brinton Hooker was once dubbed the “cattle king” of Florida. He had extensive cattle holdings in the open range of Central Florida ranging from Arcadia…