Reverend SELLERS Home on Emeralda Island
Reverend Sellers
Residence on Emeralda Island (1863)
The historic residence above could also be called the house that inspired this series. Featured in an early Facebook post, a follower commented that I should do a series about historic Lake County residences - and so, here we are - already on our 7th such historic home. Most fascinating about this home is that it is also the oldest known residence still standing today. In fact, neither Eustis, Mount Dora, Tavares, or Lake County itself existed at the time this home was built in 1863.
Emeralda Island, where this home now stands, was actually part of Orange County. The distant county seat - Orlando - was but a
tiny four-acre village then only six years young. Fewer than 1,500 citizens lived in ALL of Orange County then, and 1863 travel was limited to “real”
horsepower. For those who lived in this house when it was first built, it was more convenient to travel to Ocala rather than to their county seat. Orlando was a full day's journey one way!
Fourteen (14) years before this home was built, Reverend
Willets D. Sellers purchased the land upon which the house now stands. Ten (10) years after the home was built, Widow Sarah Sellers, in 1874, sold the land. Reverend & Sarah Sellers came to Florida from Brunswick, North Carolina, from a native homeland where generations
of Sellers had lived since before the days of America’s Revolution.
Reverend Willetts died May 16, 1858, and by 1860, Widow Sarah (Stanaland) Sellers with living with her son Daniel (1828-1884) in Orange County. The home shown in this blog was built 3 years later, on land Widow Sellers owned until 1874. Sarah died in 1886.
The Sellers Orange County homestead was so close to the Marion
County border that the family was listed in the Marion County census of both 1850 and
1860 rather than Orange. But land transactions were properly recorded at Orange
County, establishing the 1874 buyers as a consortium of neighbor investors - folks from
a small town to the south, a "city" which did not settle on Lisbon as a name until the year 1887, the same year this corner of Orange County became part of a new Lake County.
Reverend Sellers residence at the 'sharp curve' of Emeralda Island Road
Today, Em En El Grove Road at County Road 452 changes its name to Emeralda Island Road. Drive west on Emeralda Island Road until you come to a sharp left turn and here, at that sharp curve, is this amazing 157 years young historic residence. Lake County’s Property Appraiser records show the home as being built in 1863.
EMERALDA ISLAND, aka Esmeralda Island, more than once an S has appeared in the name, was a desirable location for the very reason as SLIGH, the nearby riverport town on the opposite shore of the Ocklawaha River. Before the railroads - of which there were none for the first 15 years this house was occupied - the spooky Ocklawaha River served as an early entryway to Lake Griffin and today’s Lake County region. (Ocklawaha – The River Gateway is the title of Chapter 27 of my latest book “Tavares: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County).
Emeralda Island Marsh on Lake Griffin (Sligh was on far hill on the opposite side of Lake Griffin
Webb’s Historical of 1885 did not consider Emeralda
Island as a town, but while describing the town of SLIGH, mentioned its
neighbor across the river (and inserted an 's'): “Esmeralda Island, two miles east, is nearly one
solid orange grove. From the foot of the lake during the winter of 1883-4 were
shipped ten thousand boxes of oranges, which amount will be materially
increased each season as the trees come into bearing.”
Georgia’s Savannah Morning News also wrote
of Emeralda Island in May of 1885, telling of a proposal to build a railroad
from Silver Springs “to the new town of Lisbon”, adding that the route, as
projected, “is to run through Emeralda Island.” In December 1885, the Weekly
Floridian also told of the planned ‘Leesburg, Esmeralda and Lake George Railway’. Growers
in 1886 offered a bonus to the railroad of $6,000 for a depot stop on their
island.
Emeralda Island as that "one solid orange grove" likely came about by the consortium of investors who purchased the Sellers
homestead in 1874. The new owners, "Andrew J. Cassady and Drs. Leffers and
Hopson", were landowners and town organizers as well of the 1886 “boom town of
Lisbon”. Continue southbound on Emeralda Island Road and, even today, the first sign of civilization you come to will be the community of Lisbon.
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