George REED of Forest City, Florida

REED & REID names are found often in the story of 19^th century central Florida. Fort REID was only the second settlement south of Lake Monroe, founded in 1842 after the Army departed, thinking they had ended the Indian War. Much of East Orange County has its origins in an Englishman named REED, while Orlando, well it could have become a ghost town had it not been for Robert R. REID of Palatka.

People named Reed and Reid had been so involved in the early days of central Florida development that historians began getting them confused. So for the sake of Righting History, the mission of REED vis-à-vis REID Week is to sort one from the other. A six part series featuring six different pioneering families having similar names, I wrap up my series shining the spotlight on George REED, a determined Connecticut merchant whose motto had to be, “if at first you don’t succeed….”

Village of Tontogany, Ohio, 25 miles southwest of Toledo, flourished in the 1870s in part because a railroad line from Cincinnati pushed northward in the direction of Toledo. A native of Connecticut, George and Sarah REED moved west, and by 1860, had settled in Ohio. George REED opened a store at Tontogany, and by 1875, was a Councilman. “The Tontogany fire of December 31, 1876,’ says a Wood County, Ohio history, “destroyed Black & Ingraham’s drug store, William Allen’s store, George REED’s Store, the Masonic Hall above it; Cooley’s Grocery, and Ridgeway’s tailor shop.”

REED picked himself up, dusted himself off, and by 1884 had relocated to Forest City, an up and coming new Orange County town founded by Cleveland Department Store owner John G. HOWER. George REED was appointed Forest City Postmaster March 19, 1884, and the following year, Webb’s Historical described the town as: “three and one-half miles from the South Florida Railway.”

Orange Belt Railway began serving Forest City by 1886, and where a Target Department Store stands today at SR 436 and Forest City Road stood, in the 1890s, “a handsome rail depot, complete with a telegraph office.” On the western outskirts of Forest City was the residence and grove of George REED, overlooking Pearl Lake. Then came Florida’s great freeze of 1894-95, wiping out most every grower and citrus tree.

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Prior to the freeze, Fred H. REED, son of George & Sarah, had gone out on his, and had both participated in and staked a claim during Oklahoma’s Land Rush of 1889. George and Sarah, nearing their 70s when the freeze destroyed their Forest City grove, moved on once again, this time to Oklahoma City. Son Fred, a merchant by then, had opened a furniture store, following in his father’s footsteps.

Whatever anyone might say of the Reid and Reeds of early central Florida one thing is for certain – they were all, in their own special way, a hardy bunch.

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Jacksonville's Arthur M. REED

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 19^th 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.

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Town Builder Robert R. REID

A contentious Governor REED, a fort named for Territorial Governor REID, and a British Capitalist named REED, combined in Florida history to confuse 19^th century surveyors. That confusion spread to historians, as William F. Blackman, in 1927, told of a place called Fort REED, a fortress and town we know now to be Fort REID.

The most confusing of all however, I believe, is found at ORLANDO, the hub of Orange County, and of a merchant from Palatka named Robert Raymond REID III. The son of Territorial Governor REID, the Palatka merchant singlehandedly rescued a county seat on the verge of becoming a Ghost Town. Two Southerners, in 1860, believed they owned a 120 acre tract surrounding a small log cabin courthouse at Orlando. The exact same 120 acres actually! Both men, like so many who had departed central Florida in the early 1860s to fight a Civil War, died in that War.

On the first Monday in January, 1867, the steps of Orlando’s Courthouse was scheduled to be auctioned off - on the steps of Orlando’s Courthouse. As that day approached, 100 miles north, a Palatka merchant boarded a steamboat at his war-torn Teasdale & Reid Wharf. That merchant followed the St. Johns River south, along the same route taken only two years prior by a Navy vessel on a mission – a mission to close out ‘The Rutland Mule Matter’ file.

The merchant disembarked at Mellonville that January of 1867, the very pier where a mule had been delivered in 1865. Here, REID III began a 25 mile trek down on the ‘First Road to Orlando’, passing first through Fort REID, the settlement named a quarter century earlier for his father, REID II. Continuing south REID III eventually arrived at the County Seat, his intended destination, in time to accomplish HIS mission.

Robert R. REID III of Palatka submitted the low bid of $900 to Sheriff John IVEY on the 7^th of January, 1867. Then, with deed in hand, he returned home, perhaps even stopping to visit an aging Veteran of the Indian War, Augustus J. VAUGHN, to thank Fort REID’S elderly homesteader for preserving the fort named for his father.

REID III resumed his role as a prominent Palatka merchant. 13 years later though, he and wife Mary also became Orange County land developers by filing a two page plat of an 80 acre Town of Orlando. The REIDS’S continued living at Palatka. Their two page plat identified the landowner on page one, the north half, as Robert R. REID, while the south half, page two, was said to be owned by R. R. REED.

Now then, about that mule. While researching the man at the center of an 1865 U. S. Provost Marshal file, I happened upon the individual next in this series of Reed vis-à-vis Reed. He will be featured in my Part Five, in this week long series. Arthur Read, aka Reed, aka Reid – tomorrow.