Harry Alexander Newell

 

 

Book Cover

 

Map of St. Johns River



Harry's son Alex seated far left with cornet

1880: Harry Newell's Orange County Prelude

by
McFadden Alexander Newell III (Alec)

May 1, 2006



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

 



Wednesday, April 5, 2006

George Rippard Newell (1858-1898)

 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.