Harry
Newell and Gertrude Sweet were both born in 1862, during the first part of the
Civil War. Harry's birthday was in August
and Gertrude's was in July, making her the older by less than a month. The Sweets were originally from New Orleans. Gertrude's father, Charles D. Sweet, was a pioneer surveyor to Orange County,
who laid out the streets for the future City of Orlando. He named Sweet
Street (later Colonial Ave.) for the family and another, Gertrude St., for his daughter. In July of 1881, he would become
one of Orlando's first mayors. No
records survive as to how the family traveled to
Central Florida, but the Sweets happened to come to Orlando in the same year
that Jacob Summerlin and several other prominent pioneer families would come to
settle there. Harry's marriage to
Gertrude and his connections to the community through those original pioneer
families would serve him well for the rest of his life, socially and
professionally.
During the
cold, dreary Baltimore Winter of 1879-80, Florida might have seemed like a far-off
tropical paradise to a 17-year-old Harry Newell. Atlantic
Monthly, and Harper's Magazine,
had been publishing favorable articles about Florida since 1870, and it was
fast becoming the destination of choice for well-heeled tourists, and fortune
hunters, from along the Eastern Seaboard.
There was a mystique about the place.
It was the nation's newest, most exotic frontier, but access to its
interior was limited mostly to travel by steamboat.
On January
4, 1880, it was reported in the Weekly Floridian of Tallahassee, that
President Grant had departed from Savannah, Georgia, aboard the steamboat CITY
OF BRIGHTON and had landed at the docks Fernandina, to be greeted by brass
bands and enthusiastic hoards of well wishers. (He was there to feel out the
political support that he could expect in Florida if he ran for a third
presidential term, but that was not reported in the papers.) While in
Fernandina he would become the guest of Senator David L. Yulee and his railroad. Encouraged by his reception in Fernandina, he
had taken Yulee's private rail car inland to Baldwin, Florida, then south and
east to Jacksonville, where Grant was met with another enthusiastic reception. He spent a few more days in and around Jacksonville,
then caught a riverboat that was headed south along the St. John's River. Along
the way there would be more stops, more speeches, and more boat changes. By January 10, Grant was on Lake Monroe in
the vicinity of Mellonville, (Sanford) Florida, where he participated in a
ground-breaking ceremony for the South Florida Railway (a line that would
eventually connect the St. John's River, to Charlotte Harbor on the Gulf
Coast), but with that first spade-full of earth, he would be opening up Orlando,
and the rest of land-locked Central Florida, to an explosive development boom.
The twenty
three mile road bed from Sanford to Orlando had already been surveyed by Samuel
A. Robinson, the same man for whom Robinson Ave. was named. (Eventually Harry and Gertrude would build
their home overlooking Lake Eola, at 215 East Robinson Ave., but more on that
later.) By June 1, 1880, thirty-pound iron rails for the three-foot,
narrow-gauge railway had been laid as far as Longwood. By July 1, the rails had reached Maitland,
and by October 1, the line was as far as Orlando with a small depot planned for
the southeast corner of West Church and Gertrude Street. For the next two years, Orlando would be the
end of the line for the South Florida Railroad.
We don't really
know how Henry got to Orlando, but most sources agree that he had arrived there
some time in 1880 (after October 1, if my guess is right). There was regular deep-water steamboat
service being provided from New York and Philadelphia, to Charleston, Savanna,
and Fernandina, with rail services that could be hop-scotched from any of those
ports to Jacksonville. He could have
come to Jacksonville by rail, or entered Florida at Fernandina and taken a
smaller steamer down the intercostal waterway from there to Jacksonville. The jetties at mouth of the St. John's River
were still in the planning stages, which meant crossing the shallow bar at the
river's entrance was a hazard to be avoided whenever possible. Deep water vessels could get across the bar
at high tide with the aid of pilots from Mayport, but that could be "very
troublesome and dangerous," especially in bad weather. One traveler of the time allowed that there
two ways of getting to Jacksonville then, and no matter which one you picked,
you always wished you had taken the other.
If Henry
slept in Fernandina, he could have stayed at the Florida House. Ulysses Grant had stayed there at least one
time in 1866, and may have revisited the place on his return to Florida in
January of 1880. The place still looks much the same as it did then, and still
operates as a bed and breakfast hotel, serving cracker-style meals at big
communal tables, with cornbread, collard greens, black-eyed peas, catfish, and
quail etc.
Leaving
Fernandina by steamer, the route would have led south, down the back (west)
side of Amelia and Talbot Islands, and past a cut at the north end of Fort
George Island where, passing on his left, Henry could have seen the dilapidated
Big House on the Kingsley Plantation. At
that time, there would still have been some of Kingsley's former slaves and
some of their descendants, still living in the tabby cabins that form a large
semi-circle behind the plantation's main residence, and a smaller building
which had been the home of Anna Madegigine Jai, an "African
Princess," whom he recognized as his legal wife.
Passing out
of Sister's Creek and into the St. John's River, or crossing the bar at the
river's mouth, he would have seen the twin lighthouses at Mayport. The paddle- wheeler would have turned west
and followed the old navigational route that followed the old northern cut,
behind Islands Blount and Bartram. About
twenty miles inland, where the river narrows, he would have come to
Jacksonville. During the Civil War,
Union soldiers had burnt all of the sawmills, docks, and the naval stores that
sat along Jacksonville's waterfront, but Henry would have seen only bustling
new wharfs serving the steamboats, tall ships, and the well dressed tourists
who had come there to escape the harsh Northern Winter, or invalids seeking a
better climate for whatever ailed them.
Jacksonville was in the middle of a tourist boom, with several big,
expensive, new hotels that catered to wealthy tourists, and the grifters and
quacks that followed in their wake.
If Henry
had arrived in Jacksonville by rail, he would have left the old depot at the
foot of what is now Pearl Street, and walked east, parallel to the river, down
Bay Street, toward the steamer docks. He
would have passed bars, brothels, gambling parlors, and "curio shops"
that would have been instantly recognizable to today's tourists as souvenir
shops. They sold alligators, live or
stuffed, snake skins, alligator teeth, sea shells, coral branches, egret
plumes, sawfish bills, citrus, costume jewelry, and/or nick-knacks crafted of
shells. He may have even stopped at the
post office on Bay Street to address a post card or to drop a line to the folks
back home. "Having a wonderful
time…The weather here is…Love to All, Hank."
From the
waterfront wharfs, he would have boarded a river boat for the next leg of his
journey. The train from Jacksonville
went west to Baldwin through Gainesville and on to Cedar Key, but the best way
to get from Jacksonville to Sanford would have been by steamboat. The trip, barring difficulties or layovers,
would have taken about fifteen to thirty-six hours and would have cost between
two and nine dollars for the whole trip. Poor meals and bad sleeping
accommodations would have all been included in the price of a ticket.
According
to A. J. Hanna, The St. Johns: a Parade
of Diversities (1943), some time
after 1878, but before 1883, the Baya and the Post Steamship Lines, had
embroiled themselves in a price war with each other, competing for passenger
business between Jacksonville, Palatka, Enterprise, and Mellonville. After fares were first cut in half, then
slashed to nothing, Captain H. T. Baya, upped the ante by putting an
"Italian band" on his ships to entertain his passengers. John A. Post answered by putting a
"German band" on his ships.
Harry was, of course, Irish, but it is just possible that he could have
actually worked his way to
Mellonville, by playing in one of the bands.
Leaving the
dock, the steamer would have headed south, with its first brief landfall at Orange
Park on the west side of the river. For the next stop, the steamer would glide
almost directly across the river to Mandarin Landing, which lay just beyond the
winter home of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The Stowe house was an ornate little "cottage" with a large
outdoor porch that faced the river. The
porch and the roof over it, had been cobbled around a large oak tree that
spread out over the house. When the
Stowe family was in residence, the riverboat pilot would swing close to the
bank and give a long tug on the steam whistle.
At the sound of the whistle, Mrs. Stowe would emerge from the cottage
wearing a long Victorian dress, plunk herself down at a writing table on the
porch, and mug for the appreciative, passing tourists.
The Stowe
house, and the orange groves behind it, had once been owned by Zephaniah
Kingsley. Kingsley, a Scots born slave
trader, had come to Florida from Charleston during the first Spanish period,
and had owned considerable properties from Draton Island, on Lake George, all
the way down river to Ft. George Island. Eventually, the Mandarin property was
deeded over to his black wife Anna Jai, who was herself a slave owner. (This may have followed a domestic squabble
over Kingsley's involvement with other "women of color," who also
became members of the extended Kingsley family.) "Nor did Zephaniah Kingsley ever so far
neglect his Negresses as to select a bedfellow outside their ranks…He visited
them all as often as circumstances and his vitality allowed." (Hanna).
Mrs. Stowe
came to Florida just after the Civil War, and had originally bought or leased
some 1000 acres of grove property on the Orange Park side of the river (part of
the old Laurel Grove Plantation, also previously held by Kingsley). Her son, Captain Fredrick Beecher Stowe, had
suffered a head wound at Gettysburg, and had also "succumbed to the curse
of strong drink." The change of
climate, and work in the groves, was supposed to have had curative effect on
the son; but at some point, the mother showed up, found the property in
shambles, sold the place, and moved to Mandarin.
(According
to Ed Smith, who wrote Them Good Ole Days
in Mayport and the Beaches, (1974), there was supposed to have been a
cannon ball lodged in the trunk of the oak tree that the Stowe house had been
built around. About 1988, using Ed's
landmarks, I found what I believed to be the tree, but there was no trace left
of the house or a cannonball.)
Beyond Mandarin, also on the east bank of the
river, is Picolata. Picolata had once
been a strategic entry point to Old St. Augustine from the river. During the first Spanish occupation of
Florida, a fort had been built there to protect St. Augustine from an overland
invasion mounted from the river.
According to William Bartram, circa 1765, the fort was a square thing,
30 ft. high, fitted with loop holes, topped by 8 lb cannons, surrounded by a
moat or ditch, and had walls of coquina that had been quarried from Anastasia
Island. By Bartram's second visit, circa
1774, he notes, with disappointment, that the fort had been
"dismantled."
In May of
1840, a troupe of Shakespearean players and musicians was making the trip from
Picolata to the opera house in St. Augustine, in a wagon train, when they were
attacked by a band of about thirty Indians who killed three actors, and a
clarinet player, then looted the wagons.
Breaking open the actors' trunks, the Indians robed themselves in
theatrical costumes and proceeded to Fort Seale, near St. Augustine, where they
"had danced all around the place, challenging the soldiers to
fight…" The same group was later
seen "skulking around" near Mandarin still wearing "actors'
dresses," where they killed several settlers, burned their homes, and
drove off the livestock.
By the time
Harry saw Picolata, it had become a "miserable place," rude by even
cracker standards: "A shaky, rotten, wooden pier at which steamers
discharge their burdens; a one-story shanty, and a ten-feet-square grog-shop on
the shore." In 1874, there was
still a stage line to St. Augustine, through a swampy road, but tourists
complained of drivers who were surly and undependable. Eventually the landing at Picolata was
supplanted by the wharf at Tocoi, just two miles to the south.
Tocoi was
served by the St. Johns Railroad, a mule powered train that ran the eighteen
miles to St. Augustine on tracks of wood. By
1874, the mules had been replaced by, "a little asthmatic tea-kettle of an
engine…hitched to two dilapidated boxes on wheels…the rails of pine and cypress
were worn, chipped, shivered and rotten."
By 1879, the rails had been upgraded to iron, and the train was making
two round trips a day to St. Augustine.
The trip took thirty-five minutes each way, and cost twenty-five cents
for a round trip ticket.
The next
stop of consequence would have been Green Cove Springs, which lay about 30
miles south of Jacksonville. It was a
popular tourist destination in Harry's day, served by the Clarion House and
several other, large wood-framed, hotels that had bathing facilities built
around the 3,000 gallon a minute mineral spring for which the town was
named. For 25 cents, Harry could have
had a nice long dip in the 73 degree water.
Today the spring feeds a large municipal swimming pool not far from the
river's edge. (Green Cove Springs was
also once home to John G. Borden, pioneer manufacturer of condensed milk fame.)
At river
stops where there was more than one major hotel, tourists would be met on the
docks by "vociferous colored men," each trying to steer the traveler
to a different hotel. (Anyone familiar
with Bahamian cab drivers has seen the drill first hand.) There would have also been straw-hatted
stevedores to assist with cargo, and draymen in ox carts stacking fire wood for
the steam boilers. To mimic the florid
style of the day, a-la Sidney Lanier, et al. "stout, sable-skinned sons of Ham,
their ebony brows brimmed with the broad thatch of the fragrant Florida
frond."
Fifteen
miles south of Green Cove Springs is Palatka.
Today it is an odd mixture of Late Victorian thread-bare elegance, and
contemporary red-neck, Wal-Mart sprawl, with nothing to recommend it as a
destination for the modern tourist; but in 1880 Palatka was a fairly
interesting river stop, with broad docks, clean, regular streets, and nice,
well appointed hotels, that served food fit to brag on. It was also an important hub on the steamboat
line, since it was the change-over point for travelers who were picking up
boats heading up the Oklawaha River. The
Oklawaha flows into the St. John's River just south of Welaka and offered
tourists a water route inland to places like Silver Springs. Just
south of the Oklawaha, the river begins to widen as it breaks into Little Lake
George. If Henry had read Travels, by William Bartram, he would
have known that their respective trips, made more than 100 yr. apart, were
carbon copies of one another, beginning at Fernandina, or Jacksonville
(Cowford, in Bartram's day), and ending on "Long Lake," (Lake Dexter?) about 10 miles south of Lake George
proper. Bartram, traveling in a small
sail boat, mentions a May-fly hatch just south of Picolata, and a Mullet run at
the south end of Lake George, that is met by a flotilla of hungry gators. These two events would have occurred in the
spring, while Harry, as I said before, was probably traveling some time between
early October and late December.
Entering
Lake George, the first thing Harry would have noticed are the two islands at
the lake's northern end. The larger,
more easterly island is called Draton.
It can be reached today by two small fresh-water ferries that travel at
odd intervals, carrying residents back and forth to what is mostly a privately
owned island. Bartram spent a night on
the island and described a reflective, man-made lake with a surrounding
ceremonial grove at the end of a sunken earthwork highway which, he speculated,
had been the work of some long departed Indian "Prince." He also mentions that the island had abundant
deer, bears, turkey, hogs, and wild orange trees.
Across from
the island, on the mainland, Bartram describes still more Indian mounds, Mt.
Royal, and Mt. Hope, which had been named by his father on a trip they had made
together "fifteen years" earlier.
The mounds are still visible and stand not too far from the site of the
ferry and a nice little fish camp called the Georgetown Inn, I believe. It has tin roofs covering the floating docks
at the water's edge and nice, clean little cabins behind them. The place is quite scenic, especially just
after sunset, with large moss draped oaks and cypress trees along the lake's
edge. Locals at the fish camp told me that Draton Island is still full of deer,
hogs, turkeys, and ticks.
At the
southern end of Lake George, is the Volusia Bar. It was a frequent grounding hazard for many
19th Century steamers. Near this spot Bartram describes catching
"trouts" (i.e. largemouth bass), by using an artificial lure he calls
a "bob" and cooking his fish over an open fire, seasoning them with
salt, pepper, and the juice of wild oranges.
He recants a good hunting story, and describes attacks by
"crocodiles" and mosquitoes.
He also describes a fishing technique that is remarkably similar to the
way spawning bass are caught today.
Bartram
tells of tying three fish hooks together, back to back, with the hair of a
deer's tail, and some red yarn from a garter, to make a treble hook, which is
then covered by a "tassel" of feathers. Using a 10-12 foot cane pole and a short
piece of line, the lure is swung back and forth over a bass bed, just touching
the surface of the water. (In today's
parlance, he would be using a flip-stick with a buck-tailed feather jig.) Bartram notes, with the eye of a true
naturalist, that in the bellies of these fish are frequently found: birds,
fish, frogs, and even snakes. This is accurate, but in the universal fashion of
all fishermen, he estimates these fish to weigh 15, 20, and even 30 pounds!
(The current, official world's record
for a large mouth bass, was set back in 1932, and has stood for 74 years. That fish weighed 22lb. and 4 oz.)
From this
point on the St. John's River begins to narrow and bend more. The vegetation becomes more lush and the
atmosphere begins to take on a more primitive, intimate feel. By now, Harry would have experienced his own
mosquito attacks, and marveled at the wild Hibiscus flowers and orange groves
that grew unattended along the high bluffs that overlooked conical alligator
nests along the river bank. Alligators,
snakes, turtles, egrets and herons, all served as targets for the armed
passengers and "sportsmen," who crowded the decks of the
steamboats. One traveler of the day, a
reporter for Harpers New Monthly Magazine,
noted a tall, sun-burnt cracker who nodded in the direction of a slick, black,
muck-trough leading into the river's edge, "At arrs a 'gator slide."
Another passenger had his wife follow him around the boat with a gun, loaded
and cocked, while he jockeyed for a better platform to shoot from. (This part of the river is also full of
manatees, but I don't remember any mention of them by either Bartram or by
steam boat passengers.)
The last
stop of note, before entering Lake Monroe, would have been Blue Spring. It is astonishingly beautiful. The "boil" lies about one mile east
of the river. It forces thousands of
gallons per minute, of icy blue water out of a limestone basin and into a
spillway or "run" that flows into the river. The water is crystal clear and extremely
blue, even at a depth of only a few inches.
The run is full of fish, fresh and salt water species: mullet, brim,
blue crabs, turtles, four-foot alligator gars, and giant black bass. Just south of the run, facing the river,
there is a long, sloping, grass meadow topped by a large two story house with
an old cracker style, shake-shingle roof.
The house, I believe, had been a boarding house in the late 1800's. Next to the house there is a huge wooden
water tank (probably cypress), that is connected to the house by long wooden
trough that looks like it could have been built by Rube Goldberg or Snuffy
Smith, giving the whole place a rustic charm.
The tank would have caught rainwater, and provided indoor running water to its 19th Century house guests in this most
improbable setting.
Just south
of Butcher's Bend the river widens again into Lake Monroe, with Enterprise at
its northeast corner and Mellonville (Sanford) to the southwest. Mellonville had been Fort Mellon during the
Seminole Wars. By the mid 1800's
Enterprise and Mellonville were both terminal points for the steamboat
lines. I have found a picture of the
dock at Mellonville, taken from the water, showing railroad tracks running out
onto the pier. The picture is dated
1880, and looks exactly the way it
would have appeared to Harry as his steamboat neared the end of its run.
The South
Florida Rail Train would have left the Mellonville dock, at 4 p.m. sharp and
pulled into Orlando one hour and forty minutes later. As the train slowed to a crawl near Joseph
Brumby's Feed and Grain Store and braked to a stop at the northwest corner of
West Church Street, Harry would have surveyed his new surroundings with all the
optimism of an eighteen-year-old youth away from home for the first time, on
the adventure of a lifetime. Years
later, it may have seemed to some, that from his first foot-fall onto the
unpaved streets of Orlando, fortune had smiled on the lad. Within a very short time, Henry would find
himself at the hub of Orlando's social life: dinning at the tables of the
town's most influential men, giving private music lessons in their parlors, and
winning the heart of Orange County's most beautiful belle. As Harry Alexander Newell stepped down from
the train that day, and paused to brush the dust from his clothes, he would
have been standing, at that very moment,
right in the middle of Gertrude Street.
 |
Gertrude's likeness near the old Depot in Downtown Orlando
Note the rail road tracks directly behind the plack |
April 5, 2006
 |
Net photo (2014) of the house that currently occupies the former site of the
George R. Newell Family Home at the corner of Lake Street and Agnes |
I found what I thought was the original George R. Newell house circa 1885 (pictured) at the corner of Lake St. and Agnes St., facing East out across Lake Cherokee. Painters were at work in the house so I invited myself in and began to interview the painters. They said that the original house had been built along what is still called Honeymoon row, a string of upscale Victorian houses built in the late 1800's by young newly-wed couples. According to the painters, there had been a movement afoot sometimeinthe mid 1970's to preserve the old house, but sometime in the night it was mysteriously leveled by a bulldozer. Another house with a remarkable resemblance to the old one has been built on the same site. The current owners, a Mr Lotz and his wife were described as "artists," with Mr. Lotz being on the faculty at U.C.F. in the Art Dept.
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March 18, 2018
Today, while leafing through an old book** I'd rescued from the family house on 12th Street, I noticed the picture of a steamboat identified as the Volusia, which (I believe) is the same Volusia that George and Harry Newell rode from Jacksonville to Mellonville FL on, in 1880. The book had been a Christmas gift I'd given to Mac, some time back in the late 1980's, and it had been sitting on his bookshelf until the house was sold last year.
**Victorian Florida, America's Last Frontier, by Floyd and Marion Rinhart, Peachtree Publishers LTD, Atlanta Ga. (1986) p.136.
**Victorian Florida, America's Last Frontier, by Floyd and Marion Rinhart, Peachtree Publishers LTD, Atlanta Ga. (1986) p.13
I had guessed that George and Harry had gone to from Jacksonville to Mellonville by streamer, but did not know that, or the name of the vessel, until I received an e-mail from Sara Nielsen, in Feb. 2014. I'd been looking for a picture of the Volusia ever since. The pieces all came together today, ironically the picture had been sitting unrecognized, on my father's bookshelf for past 3 decades. (see below)
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Afterword: March 25,2014
This posting was originally
presented a self published booklet in 2006, with old photographs and
illustrations I'd photocopied from a wide variety of undocumented
sources. The book was written as a historical entertainment for family
members only, so with some reservations, I've decided to reproduce it
here in its original unedited form with only minor changes to accommodate a blog format. Nothing else has been altered.
Last month I received an
e-mail from Sara Nielsen, with an attached newspaper article from the Orlando Sentinel, dated May 15, 1994.* It referenced a series of newspaper columns
written by George Rippard Newell between Nov. 1880 and Feb. 1881 that, when I can access them, should add
important new information to Harry Newell's story. As that information comes in, I will certianly
continue to update and repost it to this blog.
From the fragments I've
seen, Harry probably travelled to Florida
in the company of his older brother George.
They travelled from Savannah to Jacksonville by rail, and from
Jacksonville they travelled by the steamship Volusia to the rail dock at Mellonville, Florida. George expresses some frustration with the Volusia's upriver progress which took
46 hours, and not the 15 to 36 hours that travelers of the day had come to
expect. His comments give insights into
his personality as well as providing valuable first hand details about the journey.
*The article, written
by staff writer Mark Andrews, is entitled "1880's Writer Sees Gems in
Winter's Flowers and Gold in Florida's Oranges." In it he references a series of articles,
originally authored by George Rippard Newell, for the Baltimore Sun.
12:17 AM (3 hours ago)
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