Brock & Fisher Residence at Seneca

 

HISTORIC LAKE COUNTY HOMES

Part 1: The Brock & Fisher Residence (1900)


 County Road 439, Seneca, Florida

 

If hundred-year old residence walls could speak, imagine the spellbinding stories we would learn about central Florida’s history. Inanimate walls however remain silent throughout the passing of decades, and so we can look instead to deeds, and other sources, to learn of the extraordinary men and women who, in the 19th century, migrated to Florida’s Citrus-Belt and built some of Lake County’s earliest homeplaces – some of which are still standing today. Learning of such amazing pioneers is the mission of this blog series – an undertaking that will include writing of the bravest of brave pioneers – men and women - pioneers who played a role in helping to tame a remote wilderness, and while doing so, left behind a memorial in the form of their own personal homeplaces.

The Brock & Fisher Residence is one such homeplace. Today, dozens of vehicles pass by this historic structure daily, but most likely fail to even notice the aging wooden residence only yards from road’s edge, hiding amidst a wall of trees. This two-story house fronts County Road 439 at the intersection with Lake Seneca Road, one of few remnants of the once-upon-a-time town of Seneca, Florida. Founded in 1884 as an Orange County want-to-be city, Seneca of today is one of the numerous Lake County Ghost Towns dating to the 1880s.

Snowbirds Thomas Brock and Marion (aka Marvin) D. Fisher, each a native of Tioga, in Spencer County New York’s “Finger Lakes” district, purchased this five-acre parcel in 1889. The land description today – 130 years later – is identical to the deed’s description issued in 1889.

Brock and Fisher built a residence – according to Lake County Property Appraiser records - in the year 1900, eleven years after the Tioga partners had purchased their land from the ‘Town of Seneca’ developer, Wellington Bramhall, also of New York’s “Finger-Lakes” district. Bramhall had relocated to Florida from the Lake Seneca area of New York in 1881, and after scouring the countryside for a perfect parcel, Eustis land agent John A. MacDonald showed him land adjacent to an unnamed lake - and that waterway soon became known as Lake Seneca.


 Lake Seneca looking north from Lake Seneca Road

Town of Seneca was established in 1883 when Wellington Bramhall and brother in laws Walter S. Pike and George D. Butler, subdivided their parcels and began selling town lots. By 1887, Seneca – served by a stagecoach running from Eustis, boasted of having a Seneca House hotel run by proprietor Charles Simpson, two churches, the Seneca Academy school, five stores, and nearly 400 nearby residents. Two years later, Wellington Bramhall sold a parcel of five acres to Brock and Fisher. The two Tioga snowbirds paid $3,000.00.

Meant as a winter residence in Florida’s “Tropical Paradise”, New Yorkers Thomas Brock (1833-1903) and Marion D. Fisher (1843-1917) could escape harsh northern winters in sunny Florida, a residence that remained with two family’s until November 28, 1917, when a Florida Tax Deed sale, “assessed in the name of Brock & Fisher”, transferred ownership of five acres and the home to one Edward L. Parker of Clermont, Florida.

Parker acquired numerous Lake County lots during 1917 by paying off the outstanding unpaid taxes, but the two-story house likely served as the homeplace for Edward & Lenora (Sansbury) Parker and their ten (10) children. Edward Parker (1868-1939), a turpentine processor, shipped his product from Altoona.

The Brock and Fisher Residence changed hands several times in the Roaring 20s as yet another Florida Land Boom promised wealth to land developers – and by 1930, the home and land was owned for a time by Ira & Fannie Miller – who bought up several Seneca properties after the Land Bust of the 1927-28.


1930 Revised Plat of Town of Seneca (Red line is alignment of Lake Seneca Road east of intersection with CR 439, Green Line is alignment of Chautauga Street off of CR 439)   

 

On July 7, 1930, Ira and Fannie Miller, in partnership with George W & Ruth Bayless, filed a “New Map of Seneca”. Optimism apparently ran high despite the Great Depression of 1929 as the Miller and Bayless tried to breathe new life into a town founded nearly 50 years earlier. But the city named for a New York Finger-Lake was not meant to be. By 1940, the W ½ of the NW ¼ of the NW ¼ of the SE ¼ of Section 19S; 27E, a parcel more simply described as the Brock & Fisher Residence of 1900, again fell into foreclosure.

A pristine rural area today, this 130 years young Lake County residence has been an eye-witness to a string of daring visionaries who took on such catastrophic challenges as deep-freezes that all but put an end to the Citrus Belt in this region by wiping out the citrus trees, two World Wars, and a Great Depression.

So, the next time you travel between 44 and 44A on County Road 439, slow a tad bit near Lake Seneca Road and take a glimpse at a memorial to 13 decades of local history.

And in the meantime, we take the stagecoach back to Eustis for our next Historic Lake County Home – a structure that almost makes The Brock and Fisher Residence look like a youngster!

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