HomeMy WebLinkAboutLake Jesup Faces Changes-1994 Lake Jesup faces change
Development, land deals nothing new to the Tuskawilla area
This is the second of a three-part series marking the
35th anniversary of Winter Springs. chartered June
20. 1959. This week: Three flags over Winter Springs. q=_By Jim Robison (7 5 6 7/(i-14 .,mss= '�'
OF THE SENTINEL STAFF JR
.Three national flags flew over frontier Florida from �_the late 1700s to the early 1800s. During that time, a British lord's indigo plantation, a New York mer-
chant's timber crews on Spanish land and an Ameri-
can homesteader's farmland spread south from the Seminoles past •
shore of Lake Jesup.
In the time it took Florida to pass from Spain to WINTER SPRINGS
Great Britain, back to Spain and then to the United
States, the shore along Lake Jesup provided fertile First Seminole War. After Gen. Andrew Jackson in-
soil to grow indigo to provide deep blue dye for the vaded Spanish Florida as part of his campaign to
British Navy, It offered dense woods for oak and drive the Seminoles and their black allies out of the
pine lumber needed in Spanish settlements, and Southeast. Spanish grant holders sold their land to
open space for citrus, corn and sweet potato fields avoid losing their rights to it under American law.
that fed a pioneer family and their livestock.
Moses Levy, a New York merchant, amassed hun-
Some of the British settlers arriving in the New dreds of thousands of acres of Florida's wilds in the
World drifted south to Florida after the Spanish years just before Spain surrendered Florida to the
abandoned it and the other colonies moved toward United States in 1821. He made a fortune in lurr{ber-
revolution. The British Crown awarded up to 20,000 ing and trade with the Spanish. His holdings *om
acres of wilderness land to wealthy people who Spanish land grants included all of what toda ,is
would sponsor settlers. Winter Springs. ,
Dutch immigrant John Gerard William de Brahm Henry Gee was a wealthy landowner and slave
in 1764 surveyed the grant lands. Cartographers used owner for whom Lake Jesup's Gee Creek is named,
Brahm's work to prepare maps of the area, including and his son, John Henry Gee, was an Army doctor
the river that would carry settlers to the interior. The during the Seminole wars of the late 1830s and early
river that Spanish maps identified as the Rio de San 1840s. They persuaded territorial governor Richar0
Juan became the St. Johns. In 1766, botanist John Call to give them part of the old Levy grant along
Bertram,with his son,artist and scholar William Bar- Lake Jesup. Call had been a military aide to Jacksod.
tram, camped on the south shore of Lake Jesup Courts later voided the Gee land rights as the federal
while surveying the river. government opened vast tracts of the interior to set-
The British established about 100 plantations tiers,
iv
along the St. Johns River and on the east coast near Homesteader Vincent Lee arrived with four either
New Smyrna. Settlers grew indigo, rice, sugar and families at the steamer wharf at Meilonville in 1841.
citrus and produced turpentine and pitch from pine These first homesteaders taking advantage of the
trees. government's offer of land and six months' rations
M indigo plantation along Lake Jesup may have were bound for the wilderness lake named by wili-
been as deep into Central Florida's interior as the tan map makers for their commander durin t e
British reached during the 20 years they held Floe- Seminole wars,Maj. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup.The,++gg��,vC•
ida. ernment had agreed to settle any conflicts witistU
owners of old Spanish land grants.
Growing and processing indigo for a cloth dye pro-
vided substantial profits until development of a Homesteaders cleared palmetto hammocfag{o
cheaper chemical-dyeing process came along about plant cash crops of citrus and cotton and sweet MM11--
the time of the Civil War. toes and corn for their tables. Hostilities were.. j
near the forts, but when rumors spread of Semi'
Historian Brenda Elliott believes 60 black slaves raids in the surrounding country, Lee move s
worked at the Lake Jesup plantation, which may family closer to the protection offered by Fort
have been owned by Lord William Beresford, who (Orlando) in about 1843. The military later
owned another indigo plantation at Blue Springs, Lee's abandoned home near Tuskawilla on the sialL
downstream on the St. Johns. John and William Ber- west shore of Lake Jesup. We J.
esford owned land at Lake Jesup in the late 1760s.
After Britain gave Florida back to Spain in 1783, By the end of the Civil War,though,the settle t
then known as Tuskawilla Landing included ei 'lp
Madrid encouraged further settlement and trade in 10 large and sound houses. i i 0
7 Y/ /�
furs,hides,indigo,rice,lumber and tobacco. x•
But planters and settlers fled interior Florida after Next week: Settlers journey from the backwoods jet
raids by bands of renegades at the beginning of the supplies at the wharfs at Tuskawilla Landing. :`;F'