Origins of Lakeland Series, Parts III and IV

Unfortunately, realities of economics and Mother Nature soon intervened disastrously to dispel prevalent optimism. The railroad planned its routes, but investors declined to risk their capital. Progress ground to a halt.

Compounding that setback, steady rains drowned the peninsula through the summer before a deadly hurricane lashed the region in early September. Storm winds and precipitation pummeled residents for over sixty hours, destroying field crops and citrus plantings. Fences and farm buildings collapsed as flood waters washed away bridges and rendered roads unusable. One county man lamented, “1878 has been one of the most disastrous years in South Florida than any known by its oldest settlers.”[i]

New Year 1879 brought anything but relief. Tornadoes ravaged Polk before drought stunted new crops. Human tragedies, too, rocked Spring Hill. Young Mary Hill, “a keen bright eyed handsome girl just entering her teens,” burned to death in spring when her dress caught fire. L. M. Ballard’s “neighbor and friend” T. M. Johnson meanwhile killed himself when a gun accidentally discharged.[ii]

 _{[i] Canter Brown, Jr., Florida’s Peace River Frontier (Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991), 257-58; “The Gale in Polk County,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), September 7, 1878.} 

 _{[ii] “Spring Hill, April 4th, 1879” and “Spring Hill Items,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), April 12, June 12, 1879.} 

 _{[image] Elizabeth Duffey Journal, early Polk County lake} 

Ongoing publicity surrounding railroad schemes meantime continued a trickle of immigration into the area, and occasionally an innovation whispered better times ahead. James Kirkland, for example, bought “the old orange grove place known as the Peter Hays place.” About the same time L. M. Ballard’s brother J. M. Ballard sparked industrial enterprise along the military road at Scott Lake by installing “a mill, gin etc.” Several hands are employed,” a resident reported in late June, “and soon we hope to see it in operation.”[i]

Postmaster Ballard, though, captured the hard tenor of the times. “We are all mutually interested in [the railroad’s construction] and our prospect hinges thereupon to a great extent,” he declared in April. “How long till the work will commence, who can tell. I am tired, good bye.”[ii]

The doldrums persisted into the 1880s as the whistles of locomotives resounded from as far away as ever. Intent upon forging progress, Northern investors William Van Fleet and Alfred Parslow personally took charge of the principal railroad scheme, soon renamed the Jacksonville, Tampa, & Key West Railroad. Critically, financing remained elusive.[iii]

 _{[i] “Spring Hill Items,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), July 5, 1879.} 

 _{[ii] Ibid., “Spring Hill, April 4th, 1879,” April 12, 1879.} 

 _{[iii] Florida Agriculturalist (DeLand, Fla.), March 10, 1880, p. 5.} 

 _{[image] Van Fleet and Parslow at office circa 1880, courtesy of Family Memoirs.} 

On the positive side, Spring Hill constructed a “new school house and church.” The structure, though, failed to impress even locals. “It is a log cabin hard to describe,” one onlooker recorded in 1883, “three floors, and two windows without glass, and the shutters useless or broken from the hinges, so that in stormy weather it gives little protection; and having no stove or chimney, when the winds are chilled by winter frost or dampened by winter’s mists, the little ones who are doomed to sit and [digest] lessons in that rookery are not likely to place a high estimate on Mr. Ballard’s ideas of comfort.”[i]

Matters reached a low ebb in November 1880. At that time postal authorities discontinued service at Spring Hill, partially because communities of the same name already existed in Hernando and Volusia Counties. Ballard somehow rebounded and convinced the government to reauthorize service under a new name. Accordingly, the Medulla post office opened for business in January 1881 with Ballard as postmaster.[ii]

 _{[i] “Spring Hill Jottings,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), May 13, 1880; “Reply to L. M. Ballard,” Bartow Informant, October 27, 1883.} 

 _{[ii] “Spring Hill” and “Medulla,” Polk County, Florida, Records of Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971, M841, Vol. 42 (1876-1889), 114-15, National Archives, Washington, DC.} 

 _{[image] Medulla School House circa 1880, courtesy of Florida Memory} 

The Lakeland Ledger’s Martha F. Sawyer explained the new name to readers. “Scuttlebutt of history has it that the name was given to the town as the connecting link on the stage coach line [from Tampa to] Bartow and Fort Meade,” she wrote. “The medulla oblongata, of course, is the lowest portion of the brain connecting with the spinal cord—a connecting link. Hence, the town’s name—shortened, of course, from the biological name, medulla oblongata, to ‘Medulla.’”[i]

 _{[i] Martha F. Sawyer, “Polk’s Past: Polk History About Towns Lost and Found,” Lakeland Ledger, June 1, 1988.} 

 _{[image] Human Central Nervous System and Peripheral Nervous System Connections, sketch illustrating medulla oblongata, circa 1890} 

Meanwhile, Ballard inched along a slow road to bankruptcy. His arrest in spring 1881 for selling liquor without a license dealt a severe blow, although a jury absolved him in May. Given that the scandal temporarily closed his operations, he spent his time up the road toward Tampa at Shiloh, a new community that his friend James Taylor Edwards was promoting just south of Cork in Hillsborough County. The two men partnered there in a saw mill.[i]

After the Medulla store reopened, Ballard quickly found the need for another partner to assure adequate financing. Edwards came to the rescue by recommending young Andrew Jackson English, with whom he had associated in Hillsborough. The Shiloh promoter further aided his friend by opening a cotton gin that promised to bolster the local economy. Still, by November Ballard had removed his name from the business and informed English that “he thought he would go into bankruptcy.”[ii]

Matters tumbled downhill from there for Ballard. February 1882 saw him buy out English’s interest supposedly on behalf of his brother Hiram D. Ballard, who formerly had run a Bartow saloon. The transaction raised questions of fraud, and creditors sounded an alarm. Litigation led the sheriff to seize and lock the Medulla store on July 17, 1882.[iii]

The Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railroad ironically had announced in March the long-awaited onset of grading its route east of Tampa. As L. M. Ballard’s luck would have it, the line passed nowhere close to Medulla.[iv]

 _{[i] “Circuit Court, Polk County” and “Shiloh,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), May 28, July 2, 1881.} 

 _{[ii] George P. Raney, comp., Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Florida during the Years 1883-4 (Tallahassee, Fla.: Floridian Book and Job Office, 1885), 666; “Shiloh, Fla., Oct. 30, 1881,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), November 6, 1881,} 

 _{[iii] Raney, Cases Argued and Adjudged, 661-83.} 

 _{[iv] “Personal,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), January 12, 1882; “Medulla Jottings,” Bartow Informant, April 22, 1882.} 

 _{[image] Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad circa 1890, image courtesy of Florida Memory} 

Settlers reacted in fury. “Will the people generally be satisfied with this state of affairs?” one man demanded. “No; Medulla will not; although we may be overlooked, as usual heretofore, and our land all withdrawn from market for railroad speculation, and remain in the pine forest, with all the impositions combined with which Polk county is saddled, we say no; we can and must do better than let it stop there.”[i]

Fury notwithstanding, Medulla’s moment had passed. As if to signify the change, the Scott Lake saw mill closed in July, a few days before Ballard lost his store. The reason given the public was “the lack of demand for lumber.” In fact, local construction demand already had collapsed. The eyes of future development had turned elsewhere.[ii]

 _{[i] “Medulla Jottings,” Bartow Informant, April 1, 1882.} 

 _{[ii] “Floridiana,” Florida Daily Times (Jacksonville, Fla.), July 8, 1882.} 

 _{[image] Logging crew at work in Polk County, circa 1880s, image courtesy of Florida Memory} 

As Lewis Moses Ballard’s personal fortunes—and the village of Medulla’s generally—reeled in early 1882 from legal, economic, and transportation calamities, areas close to proposed railroad construction attracted eager settlers. This change in local dynamics carried more significance for Lakeland’s future than anyone understood at the time and set the stage for key events to come.

A “Local Intelligence” report published February 16, 1882, in Alabama’s Tuskegee News must be read within that historical context. “Dr. J. A. Chapman and family, Mr. Clough, of this County, and Mr. Trammel, of Chambers, and others, making twelve persons, left last Saturday [February 11], by way of Columbus, Ga., for their homes in Polk County, Florida,” it recounted.

“We express the feeling of all who know them, by saying that we greatly regret their removal, but hope they will more than realize all their expectations in their new homes, and we commend them to the people anywhere their lot may be cast.”[i]

 _{[i] “Local Intelligence,” Tuskegee News (Tuskegee, Ala.), February 16, 1882.} 

 _{[side photo] Dr. James Appleton Chapman (1835-1935), found on Ancestry.com} 

As the item foreshadowed, Chapmans, Cloughs, and Trammells stood out in developments that flowed, in part, from Medulla’s eclipse. Although many of their family members settled early on several miles north of today’s downtown toward Lakes Galloway and Gibson, Reuben C. Clough chose a 120-acre tract immediately northeast of Lake Wire and its International Ocean Telegraph connection with the outside world. Oak Street between Florida and Iowa Avenues formed the homestead’s southern boundary with Memorial Boulevard (earlier, North Street) capping the parcel on the north. An additional 40 acres lay to the east above Parker Street. [i] 

Reuben Clough’s brother Claude recalled that, when he arrived January 26, 1883, “there was but few signs of habitation” anywhere near the family property. The principal one was Reuben’s “shack,” which sat north of Peachtree Street between Florida and Tennessee Avenues. Claude in a short time noticed something very important. While walking one day in the forest between the Clough shack and Lake Mirror, he stumbled across stakes “with numbers near the top of same” that marked the survey line of the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West (J, T & KW) Railroad. [ii] 

  _{[i]  C. D. Clough, “Lakeland Thirty Years Ago,” Evening Telegram (Lakeland, Fla.), January 7, 1915.} 

  _{[ii]  Ibid.} 

 _{[map] Zoning map city of Lakeland, showing Trammell and Clough property} 

By that time the route should have been graded and tracks laid, but chronic financial shortfalls had stalled construction. Instead, Polk County newcomers found themselves grumbling along with longtime residents. Meanwhile, development had exploded in other peninsular areas after Governor William D. Bloxham in summer 1881 had broken the longstanding court injunction that had barred state support of rail lines. Bloxham raised the needed $1 million by selling 4 million acres of state lands to Philadelphia business Hamilton Disston. In Polk County, Disston selected 102,000 acres.[i]

Unfortunately, Disston wealth brought no benefit to the J, T, & KW Railroad nor to a competing line named the South Florida Railroad that also hoped to build from Kissimmee to Tampa through Polk. Dr. James Appleton Chapman, nearly 50 years of age and a Confederate veteran, admitted to his Alabama home folks in August that “there has been no sudden boom.” He boasted, though, that “as soon as we get transportation this section will be a garden, as the more northern portion now is, and then while the settler is waiting for his grove to come into baring; he can make a handsome living raising vegetables for the northern market.” Chapman insisted, “So far we have not regretted our move.”[ii]

  _{[i] Canter Brown, Jr., In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940 (Tallahassee: Sentry Press, 2001), 132-33.} 

 _{[ii] Ibid., Florida’s Peace River Frontier (Orlando, Fla.: University of Central Florida Press, 1991), 268-69; “Medulla, Polk County, Fla.,” August 17th, 1883,” Macon Mail (Tuskegee, Ala.), September 26, 1883.} 

 _{[side image] Hamilton Disston (1844-1896)} 

C. D. Clough’s father James M. Clough agreed with his friend Chapman. “When the railroads reach Polk county and furnish us transportation we too can help furnish the world and the rest of mankind with everything in the fruit and vegetable line at all seasons of the year,” he declared. “The plan here is to select suitable soil, plant your groves and in the intermediate space you can raise all kinds of crops, until the orange commences to yield fruit, then leave it to monopolize the ground and then clear and plant another grove, proceed in the same way.”[i]

As time slowly passed and anxieties mounted, several notable developments occurred. First, by spring 1883 L. M. Ballard had regained control of his Medulla store and reopened it for business. He optimistically touted the “best bargains ever offered.” Another year would be required, however, before the Florida Supreme Court cleared him of criminal fraud charges. In the interim Ballard sought to re-establish momentum at Medulla while rebuilding his own finances. That the village had gained another store or two during his troubles blocked his path. By fall he desperately was seeking alternatives.[ii]

As Ballard had quickly discovered, though, the J, T & KW’s route selection already had sealed Medulla’s fate by denying it transportation. On the other hand, several newer settlements located in closer proximity to the rails had begun to claim attention. Foxtown, for instance, lay north of Lakes Gibson and Parker. The rural community reportedly contained “upwards of fifty families” by summer 1883.[iii]

 _{[i] “Letter from Florida,” Macon Mail (Tuskegee, Ala.), February 14, 1883.} 

 _{[ii] George P. Raney, comp., Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Florida during the Years 1883-4 (Tallahassee, Fla.: Floridian Book and Job Office, 1885), 661-83; “L. M. Ballard,” Bartow Informant, June 2, 1883.} 

 _{[iii] “Railroad Matters,” Bartow Informant, June 9, 1883.} 

 _{[image] Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West map for Tropical Trunk Line} 

Sanitaria, located on Lake Ariana (now, Auburndale) a dozen miles or so east of Reuben Clough’s homestead, constituted the most significant of the new places. Dr. John Patterson—grandfather of future Governor and United States Senator Lawton Chiles--and his brother Hugh aimed to attract there “the invalid” as well as “the pleasure seeker.” This “Tennessee settlement” by summer 1883 rivalled Medulla with “a store, saw-mill, church, school and a post-office.” Reports rumored its backing by J, T & KW president William Van Fleet.[i]

 _{[i] Ibid.; “Sanitaria, Bartow Informant, September 8, 1883.} 

 _{[Map] Sanitaria listed on map of Florida}