Origins of Lakeland Series, Parts I and II

Lake Hollingsworth, among other sites, has yielded echoes of that rich past into recent times. For instance, portions of more than one dozen ancient dugout canoes revealed themselves as the 20th century neared its close. "Archaeologists from the state dated them to about 1,000 years ago," dredge operator Ken Suttle reported. "They were made without any tools. I keep hoping I'll find a canoe intact with an old skeleton in it."[i]

The Native American presence abruptly terminated in 1836 during the Second Seminole War's opening stages. South Carolina volunteers swooped into the region and destroyed Indian and maroon (that is, black) settlements then serving as refuges. Their charred ruins greeted pioneers after the conflict's conclusion in 1842. The remains could be found particularly on the upper reaches of Peace River at Talakchopco (today's Fort Meade) and at the associated maroon settlement Minatti on Lake Hancock’s southwestern shore.[ii]

Crucially, the Second Seminole War gifted the Lakeland vicinity and Polk County with two types of assets that heavily influenced the flow of pioneers in later years.

 _{[i] "Pieces of Times: Remains of Dugout Canoe Found in Lake Hollingsworth" and "Dredgers Find Junk and History in Lake's Much," Lakeland Ledger, July 9, 1998, September 30, 1999.} 

 _{[ii] Canter Brown, Jr., Florida's Peace River Frontier (Gainesville: University of Central Florida Press, 1991), 43-45.} 

 _{[map] 1849 Survey Map of Florida by John Westcott} 

The first involved military posts. Fort Fraser, at Lake Hancock near Highland City and Spessard L. Holland Elementary School, hosted future president Zachary Taylor. He commanded operations that led at Christmas 1837 to the famed Battle of Okeechobee. After 1849, Fort Meade served to separate incoming settlers from Native Americans to the south and southeast. At one time, all United States forces in Florida headquartered there.[i]

As far as future Lakelanders were concerned, the principal outpost of importance lay a few miles to the west just across the county line. Named Fort Sullivan, it was established in 1839 on Hickipucksassa Creek and offered an official army presence and a variety of durable facilities despite a relatively short-lived existence.[ii]

 _{[i] Ibid., In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940 (Tallahassee: Sentry Press, 2001), 14-21.} 

 _{[ii] Joe Knetsch, "The Creation of Fort Sullivan: Document and Commentary," Sunland Tribune 25 (1999), 43-47; Quintilla Geer Bruton and David E. Bailey, Jr., Plant City: Its Origins and History (Winston-Salem, NC: Hunter Publishing Co., 1984), 18-20.} 

 _{[map] 1860 Map of Florida with detail of forts} 

The post also anchored a military road, an example of the second type of assets gifted by the Seminole Wars. The Fort Sullivan road connected Fort Brooke (Tampa) with Fort Mellon (Sanford). Two Polk County posts protected the chain eastward of Fort Sullivan, including Fort Cummings (Lake Alfred) and Fort Davenport (Davenport). This route passed south of Lake Parker and, subsequently, afforded needed access for many of Lakeland’s earliest settlers.[i]

A second and earlier route rivaled the Fort Sullivan road in importance. It stretched initially from Tampa Bay to Fort Fraser, where a reinforced bridge carried traffic across Saddle Creek and, eventually, to posts on the Atlantic coast.[ii]

Engineers ensured that this military way skirted the northernmost reaches of the Alafia River’s north prong in order to avoid unnecessary bridge building. Locally, it passed slightly north of Linder International Airport before turning southeasterly near the junction of Harden Boulevard and the Polk Parkway. The road then rounded the northern side of Scott Lake before passing on to Fort Fraser. Ultimately, an extension that began a short distance east of Scott Lake led directly to Fort Blount (Bartow).[iii]

The army maintained this second road up to 1850. At that time a conflict that had begun the previous year necessitated realignment. Lieutenant George G. Meade--future victor of the Battle of Gettysburg--resurveyed its course to a Peace River crossing point at Talakchopco, where Fort Meade rose to protect the vital artery. Although haphazardly maintained in the years that followed, the original route continued to draw civilian travelers for decades.[iv]

 _{[i] Ibid., "Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Cummings and the Fort Brooke to Fort Mellon Road," Sunland Tribune 26 (2000), 21-26.} 

 _{[ii] Brown, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, 49-52.} 

 _{[iii] “General Highway Map, Polk County, Florida [January 1971],” Maps Collection, Polk County Historical and Genealogical Library, Bartow.} 

 _{[iv] Canter Brown, Jr., Fort Meade, 1849-1900 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 1-8.} 

 _{[map] 1861 Map of Polk County, Florida showing roads and trails} 

After the Second Seminole War's end newcomers such as Silas McClelland and Chesley D. Hill family members trickled into the region thanks in good part to the implementation of an impediment to settlement further south. This consisted of an army edict announced in 1845 that created a neutral zone west of Peace River and north of Bowlegs Creek (a small stream three miles below Fort Meade). Within the zone, civilians generally were forbidden.[i]

 _{[i] Brown, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, 63-70, 91-92.} 

 _{[image] Silas McClelland (1795-1875)} 

Area place names honor some individuals who passed through as they skirted the neutral zone. Lake Hollingsworth, for instance, honored the John H. Hollingsworth family and Lake Boney recalled the presence of David J. W. Boney. Similarly, Lake Parker preserved memory of cattleman Streaty Parker.[i]

Meanwhile, in the mid-1840s the Fort Sullivan vicinity—located four miles northeast of modern Plant City’s downtown—faintly took on some semblance of a rural community by the name of Itchepuckesassa and, later, Cork. From there, hardy pioneers pushed eastward toward Indian Pond in today’s Polk County. Members of the Frier, Rushing, Lanier, and other families named their new home Socrum. In time, the locale rechristened itself Kathleen.[ii]

 _{[i] Survey map, Township 28 South, Range 24 East, General Land Office (GLO) Early Records, Bureau of Survey and Mapping, Division of State Lands, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee; “Lakeland’s First Citizens and Some of the City’s Early History,” Lakeland Evening Telegram, November 14, 1919; Brown, In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living, 40.} 

 _{[ii] Brown, In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living, 35-36; Bruton and Bailey: Plant City, 18-20. See also Lois Sherrouse-Murphy, Communities of the Kathleen Area (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2015); Bob Tiller, “Socrum Region, Polk County,” Polk County Historical Quarterly 12 (June 1985), 3.} 

 _{[image] Streaty Parker (1823 - 1884)} 

A final artery of significance to pioneers required another two decades to appear. Following the Third Seminole War and the Civil War, the International Ocean Telegraph Company in 1867 constructed a telegraph line through the peninsular from Lake City to Punta Rassa. It continued underwater from there to Key West and Havana, Cuba.[i]

Locally, the line ran from Fort Dade (Dade City) to Socrum, then turned southeast to skirt the eastern side of Lake Wire, thus affording that pool its name. The poles thereafter traced through Bartow to Fort Meade, where they turned east to cross Peace River before again veering south. To service the line, the IOTC constructed a road. Accordingly, many arrivals from the north would travel the famed Wire Road to Lakeland homes.[ii]

 _{[i] Canter Brown, Jr., “The International Ocean Telegraph,” Florida Historical Quarterly 68 (October 1989), 135-59.} 

 _{[ii] Ibid., 158-59; Brown, In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living, 105.} 

 _{[Image] 1915 Lake Wire, Lakeland, FL} 

Meaningful Steps...

Meaningful steps towards Lakeland's eventual establishment in the mid-1880s followed quickly after the Civil War’s conclusion. That disastrous conflict, by crippling Southern economic underpinnings and impoverishing many, prompted a thin but steady tide of immigration into peninsular Florida. Most arrivals desperately sought relief and opportunity.[i]

Jesse Keen typified the movement as well as any other individual. Although a Confederate veteran, he faced the wrath of ardent Rebels in Columbia County, Florida, for avoiding service during the war’s final years. Accordingly, in 1866 Jesse and wife Elizabeth endured the arduous overland trek to a new, if isolated, homestead in what would become West Lakeland. At the foot of an oak tree, Jesse erected a new home within one week. “The dimensions of this first house, built of logs or poles, were 10x12 feet, with a dirt floor,” recalled county historian M. F. Hetherington.[ii]

Few neighbors greeted the Keens. The John Futch family in the Winston area stood out as the closest. Scattered homesteads containing Raulersons, Hamiltons, Combees, and perhaps a few others constituted the area’s remaining population. The historic Socrum neighborhood near Indian Pond lay an arduous journey to the north .[iii]

 _{[i] Canter Brown, Jr., Florida’s Peace River Frontier (Orlando: University of Central Florida Press, 1991), 195-200.} 

 _{[ii] Jesse Keen file, Confederate Pension Application Files, 1885-1954, Series 587, Florida Archives, Tallahassee; M. F. Hetherington, History of Polk County, Florida (Reprint, Chuluota, Fla.: Mickler House, 1971), 85.} 

 _{[iii] Hetherington, History of Polk County, 85.} 

 _{[map] 1875 Florida Map, Rand McNally} 

... a few rural homesteads

Notably, for a generation a few rural homesteads had graced the territory four to six miles south of the Keens that lay along the old Tampa to Fort Fraser and Fort Blount (Bartow) military road. The Silas McClelland family, with crucial assistance from slave workers, had helped to pioneer the settlements. Although Silas had died by the time of Keen’s coming, McClelland family members remained. Supplementing their numbers, Georgian Alfred Washington Lunn ventured to the vicinity in 1869 with two sisters. He homesteaded a tract on modern Lunn Road before marrying Silas’s daughter Julia McClelland in 1870.[i]

While the McClellands and Lunns did not want for necessities, most of the region’s postwar newcomers qualified as impoverished or nearly so. With transportation limited to deteriorating and sometimes impassible military roads, old Indian paths, and the International Ocean Telegraph Company’s Wire Road, access to markets for crops or cattle loomed as a forbidding challenge. Subsistence requirements dominated daily lives.

Daniel H. Sloan, Sr., born at Socrum in 1864, recalled prevalent conditions. “I never saw a cookstove until I was nearly grown,” he related. “The cooking was done in heavy pots in open fireplaces. Most of the clothing we wore was made of cloth woven on the old-time looms, and it was sewn by hand—there were no sewing machines. There were no sawmills. The houses had split puncheon floors (a puncheon is a split log with the face smoothed) and there were split boards for doors, roofs and all.”[ii]

 _{[i] Clifton A. McClelland, Silas and Penelope (Anderson) McClelland and Some Descendants, 1790-1987 (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1987), 21-24; “Alfred Washington Lunn, 1844-1939,” Polk County,  Florida Genealogy Trails , accessed November 3, 2018.} 

 _{[ii] Bill Whitehead, “Carpetbagger Brigade Fails to Stir Polk,” Lakeland Ledger, September 11, 1958; “Daniel H. Sloan, Polk County Pioneer, Dies,” Tampa Tribune, November 2, 1934.} 

 _{[iii] Whitehead, “Carpetbagger Brigade Fails to Stir Polk.”} 

 _{[image] Typical homestead dwelling, Israel and Mary Ann Vickers Sherouse with Etta, Nettie, and Paul, courtesy of Kathleen Area Historical Society} 

There were no wire or plant fences ...

Sloan continued: “There were no wire or plant fences, but split boards, nailed lengthwise or upright on rails that were also split, were used to enclose pastures and yards. People drove in ox or horse carts or wagons—there were very few buggies—often 10 miles or more to church, and children often walked several miles to school over pig trails, wading branches and creeks. Sometimes it was necessary to swim the horses for those on horseback to reach church.”[i]

Bill Whitehead characterized the pioneer experience in a 1958 Lakeland Ledger column. “It was a hard life, with no relief from the resisting wilderness,” he wrote. “The character of the people who endured it and prospered set the pattern Polk County was to follow.”[ii]

The conditions detailed by Sloan persisted well into the 1880s. Despite repeated calls for improved transportation through railroad construction, the rails halted abruptly at Cedar Key. A court order blocked the state’s ability to subsidize progress, while Florida’s continuing developmental doldrums restrained commitments of private capital. A devastating economic depression known as the Panic of 1873 complicated matters through the decade.[iii]

Admittedly, a few improvements eventually materialized. West of the Keen and Futch settlements at Cork near Hillsborough County’s old Fort Sullivan, for instance, T. D. Sweat by the mid-1870s was operating “a general store, saw mill, grist mill and cedar mill.” Sweat’s businesses at least signaled the possibility of changes to come.[iv]

 _{[i] Whitehead, “Carpetbagger Brigade Fails to Stir Polk.”} 

 _[ii] Ibid. 

 _{[iii] Jerrell H. Shofner, Nor Is It Over Yet: Florida in the Era of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1974), 114-18, 270-74; Canter Brown, Jr., Ossian Bingley Hart, Florida’s Loyalist Reconstruction Governor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 246-48, 259, 279, 286, 289, 291, 299-300.} 

 _{[iv] “Many Pioneers Wanted to Name Plant City ‘Eversville,’ For Its Founder,” Tampa Tribune, August 26, 1951.} 

 _{[image] Pioneer homestead with split rail fencing. Courtesy of Kathleen Area Historical Society.} 

Lewis Moses Ballard

Lewis Moses Ballard proved to be the man to bring those changes to the future Lakeland region. Born at Lake City in 1845, he landed in proximity to the McClelland/Lunn settlements no later than 1877. He intended at the time to take advantage of rumored rail construction eastward from Tampa. Ballard meant to do so by operating a general store not far from today’s Medulla Elementary School. He soon also decided to create a town.[i]

That others coincidentally shared Ballard’s optimism helped to explain the expansive nature of his dreams. Methodist preacher Peles Rowe McCrary, for one, had put down stakes in July 1877. The erstwhile Alabamian claimed 140 acres on Lake Hollingsworth’s west side. Others also slowly began to dot the landscape with cabins, farms, and citrus plantings.[ii]

Land speculators William Van Fleet and Alfred Parslow, too, had caught Polk County fever. They toured extensively in late 1877 and, by early the following year, had begun to publicize its lands and lakes in Chicago and elsewhere. “So favorably are they impressed with the country and its prospective resources, that they are willing to take stock to the amount of one-third in the construction of a [rail]road from here to the St. John’s,” a Tampa editor declared in January 1878. “They demonstrate the earnestness of their purpose by offering to have the route surveyed, and if the people go into the enterprise, to take the cost of the survey in stock.”[iii]

 _{[i] “Lewis M. Ballard, 1845-1906,” H. W. Ballard Family Tree,  https://www.ancestry.com , accessed November 29, 2018; Gary White, “Our Communities: Medulla,” Lakeland Ledger, July 16, 2012; Canter Brown, Jr., In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940 (Tallahassee: Sentry Press, 2001), 124-25; “Obituary,” Courier-Informant (Bartow, Fla.), January 14, 1909.} 

 _{[ii] Shelby Sentinel (Columbiana, Ala.), June 28, 1877, p. 3; “Spring Hill, Polk County, Fla., July 9th,” Sunland Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), July 13, 1878; “Medulla Jottings,” Bartow Informant, May 27, 1882; “Early Settler Tells How Lakeland Began,” Lakeland News, February 10, 1933.} 

 _{[iii] “Florida Affairs,” Savannah Morning News, January 15, 1878; William Van Fleet, “Southern Florida,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1878.} 

 _{[image] Lewis Moses Ballard (1845-1906), found on Ancestry.com}