Photos adapted from Florida Memory Project & Find-a-Grave memorial
Two Orange County delegates voted against Florida’s 1861
Secession, but as years passed, one was erased from the pages of early
historical accounts. In 1927, Historian Blackman wrote of delegate Woodruff,
yet never mentioned delegate Rutland. It was during my search for the missing
Florida delegate that I happened upon an Isaac N. Rutland deed in which he
acquired 200 acres from “Arthur M. REID of Duval County.” The deed proved Isaac
was still alive in 1863. I eventually located an 1865 Provost Marshal file
titled The Rutland Mule Matter, in
which was correspondence from Mrs. Rutland, wanting her mule returned. Isaac, I
learned was deceased. The REID deed helped me track down Isaac, and in turn helped
me write the conclusion to my book, The
Rutland Mule Matter. But who was Arthur M. REID?
Straddling both sides of the Wekiva River in 1863 Orange
County, the land REID sold to RUTLAND was smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It
was however adjacent to acreage belonging to Isaac N. Rutland, 80 acres he had
named RUTLAND’S Ferry. Today, SR 46 crosses the river at Rutland’s Ferry of
yesteryear.
The Land Office had made out a deed to Arthur M. REED, not
REID, dated within two months of Isaac Rutland’s deed. Orange County had
indexed the name as REID, while Duval County’s 1850 census listed Arthur &
Harriett READ. Harriet N. REED signed the Reid sale to Rutland, so Arthur’s
actual name, it seems, was REED!
This week long series has covered a Governor REED, a
Territorial Governor REID, a British Capitalist named REED and Orlando’s town
builder REID, all of whom played a unique role in the 19th century
development of central Florida. So who then was Arthur M. REED, aka REID, aka
READ – all of Duval County?
Born 1813 at Hartford, Connecticut, Arthur came south as a
young man in the 1830s. He married Harriett at St. Augustine in 1838, and the
next year, October of 1839, he was living at Jacksonville and working as an
Army Pension agent. The second Seminole Indian War was going on at the time.
By 1860, as winds of a Civil War began blowing, Arthur M. REED
was running his own bank at Jacksonville, owned Mulberry Grove Plantation on
the St. Johns River, and had just acquired 200 acres on the Wekiva River in
Orange County. Then came War, and the REED family reportedly moved to the
plantation because Union troops were occupying Jacksonville.
Civil War obviously interrupted whatever he had planned for
his Wekiva River property at Rutland’s Ferry in Orange County. After War’s end,
Arthur, still in Jacksonville, got into the real estate business, listing his
office as 1 ½ Bay Street in the 1870s, while his residence was given simply as
“up the river.”
Arthur’s wife Harriet had been a native of Indiana. The couple
had two children, twin girls, born at Jacksonville in 1842. Named Harriett
Douglas REED and Louisa Burritt REED both girls married a PEARSON, and one of
the girl’s settled originally at Volusia County. Arthur & Harriett died at
Jacksonville, she in 1894, he in 1899.
Meanwhile, at Longwood, Florida, a Russian immigrant had set
out in 1886 to open up West Orange County to development by building a
railroad. The Orange Belt Railway paved the way for dozens of new towns
stretching from Lake Monroe to the Gulf of Mexico. One such town was Forest
City, where tomorrow, we conclude our week-long series, REED vis-à-vis REID.
For more
on central Florida history, visit www.CroninBooks.com
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