This historical marker sits basically on the corner of Orlando Avenue and Harmon Avenue and…read morecommemorates the birth of this section of town when Walter Washington Rose platted this land in November of 1924. The name "Orwin" was a combination of Orlando and Winter Park, which I found interesting. This area must have been so different back in 1924 and in the over a century that has passed, this area would be unrecognizable to the people who first came to this area. We must remember the footsteps that brought us to where we are today and this was a great bit of info on the history of the area

The Old Folks Home is a beloved part of the history of Seminole County. It is believed to be the…read moreonly County run Old Folks Home left in existence in Florida. The Old Folks Home was built in 1926. At that time Seminole County was only 12 years old. Social Security did not yet exist and there was a need for a place where seniors who were destitute and had no one to care for them could live. The Seminole County Board of Commissioners approved $9,020.00 to purchase 82 acres where a County Home for the poor could be created. The board spent $35,306.00 to build the home. Every resident had a private room and they shared chores and activities creating a family atmosphere. A large orange grove provided a modest income, and residents tended a vegetable garden. Chickens, hogs, and dairy cows helped to make them almost self sufficient. A superintendent and his family lived on site and a nurse, Miss Rachel Lee from Mississippi was available for sick residents until 1964. In 1965 this building was converted into offices for the County Agricultural and the Home Demonstration Agent until November 1980, when the new agricultural building was completed. The building was vacant until 1982 when the County Commission approved the establishment of a Historical Museum in the former Old Folks Home. You can now visit this historical building and see displays related to the history of Central Florida.

This is located within Greenwood Cemetery and remembers a respected family that resided here in…read moreOrange County, Florida and can trace their lineage to Thomas Jefferson. I have said it before, but it bears repeating, we need to remember and acknowledge the footsteps from our past that brought us to where we stand today. This was a nice find in the historic cemetery known as Greenwood.

I was exploring the history of Orlando in the historic Greenwood Cemetery when I discovered this…read moremarker dedicated to the Eppes and Shine families buried here. I learned from the sign that they were descendants of Thomas Jefferson who made their mark on early Orlando. Francis Wayles Eppes VII, was 8 years old in 1809 when he spent Christmas in Virginia with his grandfather Thomas Jefferson who had just completed two terms as president. Francis's mother was Jefferson's beloved daughter Maria who died during child birth in 1804 when he was three. His father John Epps was a congressman who remarried and was often away in Washington, DC. so Francis grew up in the care of his grandfather. Francis was the only one of Maria's three children to live to adulthood. Jefferson had set aside the family outpost called Poplar Forest, a 300 acre estate near Lynchburg, Va. for Francis as his inheritance. When Francis turned 15, Jefferson sent him a letter with this advice "Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor. This, of all human qualities, is the most amiable and endearing to society." Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, when Francis Eppes was 25 and married to Elizabeth with two children. The Jefferson family ended up selling Monticello and Poplar Forest due to debts and legal problems. Francis Eppes landed in Tallahassee with his young family but his wife Elizabeth would pass here during child birth like his mother and two of his seven children died in infancy. Francis Eppes remarried Susan Margaret Ware (1815-1887), the daughter of a governor of Georgia. They lived at Pine Hill, a 1,900-acre plantation, and had six more children, four girls and two boys. Francis Eppes founded St John's Episcopal Church and went on to serve two terms as mayor of Tallahassee in the 1840s and 1850s. He was one of the founders of Florida State University when in the 1850s he helped establish the West Florida Seminary that would become the university where he would serve 11 years on the school's board, eight of them as president. The Civil War hit the Francis Eppes family hard. Eppes sold his land but it was purchased with worthless Confederate money. The family was broke and they moved further south into what would become Orlando, a frontier outpost that sprung up from Fort Gatlin, an outpost during the Seminole Wars. In Orlando Francis Eppes became a citrus farmer. Three of the Eppes daughters married three Shine brothers in 1866. Martha Virginia married Capt. Thomas Jabez Shine, called T.J., Capt. Tom Shine, a Confederate veteran, was the director of the First National Bank, a board of trade officer, an alderman, and commander of the Orlando Guards, later named Shine Guards. In 1879, Thomas built a home on Orange Avenue with the first indoor bathroom in Orlando. The first sidewalk in the city ran past the house and it had a tennis court. He named the cross street Jefferson Street in honor of his wife's family Caroline Matilda married David Shepard Shine who became deputy clerk of Orange County and was appointed postmaster. Caroline and her sister Martha served their communities as members of the Rosalind Club, Sorosis, and with other charities. The third Shine brother Dr. William F. Shine was married to Martha Eppes. Unlike the previous two couples, they did not live in Orlando. Dr. William F. Shine, served as a Civil War surgeon and practiced medicine in St. Augustine after the war. Maria Jefferson Eppes founded the St. Augustine Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution which bears her name. Francis Eppes died on May 30, 1881 a few months before his 80th birthday. Francis Eppes and Susan Ware Eppes are buried in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery in a family plot with members of the Shine family, including T.J. Shine, and their descendants. The Shines are noted for being among Orlando's earliest civic minded families. Marker F-838 was erected in 2014 by The City of Orlando and the Florida Department of State.

"Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse…read moreof your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus It is quirky discoveries like this that make it fun to explore. While driving around after having just picked up lunch at the Pastrami Project, I discovered a miniature Statue of Liberty standing in the traffic island at the intersection of North Magnolia and North Orange Avenue across from Lake Ivanhoe. This Statue of Liberty has been keeping watch since 1953. She was a gift from the Boy Scouts of Central Florida Council as part of their Strengthening Arm of Liberty program. The program placed around 200 statues all over the country between 1949 and 1953. This statue costs $350 and the scouts raised the money with the help of the Kiwanis club. The base was paid for by the City of Orlando. After 30 years, Lady Liberty was looking the worse for wear when she was noticed by Robert G. Neel, President of Woodlawn Memorial Park. He raised the money to have her refurbished in Pennsylvania. The city paid to add new walls in her traffic island, add new irrigation lines, floodlights, and landscaping. The statue was rededicated on June 27, 1985. Of the original 200 Statue of Liberty statues, approximately 50 have been lost or destroyed. Orlando is proud to have their statue looking great and promoting the patriotic message of liberty, justice, and freedom.

While certainly not as grandiose as the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island, this miniature creation…read morelocated on the corner of North Magnolia Avenue and North Orange Avenue right by the entrance to Interstate 4 is a nice addition to the local art here in Orlando, Florida. I believe that local art adds a bit of colorful personality to the often impersonal asphalt and steel of our cities and adds a splash of insight into a community's mindset and ambitions. I am glad for this little statue in my community.

Woodlawn Memorial Park in Gotha has so many interesting memorials and statues including a replica…read moreof the Liberty Bell! I actually had to do a double take. Seeing such an iconic American symbol in the middle of a cemetery wasn't something I was expecting, and I had to find out how it ended up here. While the original Liberty Bell hangs on Market Street in Philadelphia, there are actually more than 50 full size replicas scattered across the United States, along with one that was gifted to Japan. They can be found in places like schools, restaurants, casinos, parks, and in private collections. The bell at Woodlawn is one of four replicas in Florida and one of six located in cemeteries across the country. In 1972, Woodlawn commissioned this full size, fully functional replica from the renowned Paccard Bell Foundry in France. It is the same foundry that cast the Liberty Bells distributed by the U.S. Treasury in 1950. The cemetery intended to use the bell as a promotional centerpiece leading up to America's Bicentennial celebration in 1976. After the festivities concluded, it was permanently installed in the Garden of Eternal Liberty atop a three tiered concrete pedestal beneath a wooden steeple. Before finding its permanent home, the bell traveled throughout Central Florida. A 1972 edition of the Orlando Sentinel reported that it was displayed at the Orange County Courthouse, where Mayor Carl Langford and County Commission Chairman Paul Pickett planned to ring it upon the signing of the Vietnam peace treaty. On Columbus Day in 1975, the bell was displayed at a middle school in St. Cloud as part of a celebration honoring America's heritage, where members of the public were invited to participate. I love stumbling across unexpected pieces of history like this. It's amazing to think that a replica built to celebrate the nation's 200th birthday is still standing nearly 50 years later. Discovering the bell hidden in the back of a cemetery yet in plain site during America's 250th anniversary made it even more special to me.

Quaint and vibrant downtown. We love coming as a couple, with friends or the kids for a family…read moreouting. There are some great restaurants and activities, especially the Saturday Farmers Market or the splash pad for the kids to best the FL heat. You can plan a quick visit or a full day of fun, there is plenty for everyone.

Winter Garden has grown considerably since I first moved to Orlanda back in 2001. The Winter Garden…read moreHistoric District is a great place to come and walk around, do a bit of shopping and/or grab something to eat. Winter Garden has truly come into its own as a community and is not just an outpost west of Orlando. This area is convenient to get to by Highway 408 or East Colonial Drive. They have a great farmers market here on Saturdays, which I would also recommend. Winter Garden has a lot of history here in central Florida, but we also must embrace the Winter Garden of today and where it is headed to in its tomorrows. The area is quaint and enjoyable. It is easy to see why it is so popular. Overall, I would definitely recommend here and I will give it a rating of five stars.

Much like the Fort Ogden marker…read morehttps://www.yelp.com/biz/fort-ogden-historical-marker-arcadia?hrid=7iTRrXh-ADzYRK34B2XaeQ a few miles down the road, the US army set up this fort in an effort to "quell" the natives and bring European settlers to Central Florida. It's not a great chapter in American history but it is the history and markers like this tell the story. It reads the same on both sides. "During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Abraham Eustis left Volusia County headed toward the Withlacoochee River as part of a military action in response to the December 28, 1835 massacre of Major Francis L. Dade and his command near Bushnell. In March 1836 the troops camped nearby while a bridge was constructed over the Ocklawaha to the west. They built a fortified stockade about one mile south of this location, on the east side of Smith Lake. It was named Fort Mason, most likely to honor Lt. Col. Pierce Mason Butler who led the expedition and after whom Fort Butler, near Astor, was also named. After hostilities ended, Fort Mason became a supply base to support and encourage settlement in the area, which would later become Lake County. With the coming of the railroad in the1880s, a town on the north shore of Lake Eustis took its name from Fort Mason." The road is wide enough with a breakdown lane that you can pull over to view the sign. [Review 16814 overall - 1538 in Florida - 327 of 2022.]

In honor of February Black History Month I present this historic marker I found while walking…read morethrough Heritage square Park in downtown Orlando. I am familiar with the dark blue historic markers erected by Florida Department of State but this is the first time I have come across a marker from the Equal Justice Initiative. The Equal Justice Initiative was founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest attorney. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly convicted, as well as challenging racial and economic injustice. Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy which I have read and highly recommend. This marker is in front of the Orlando Regional History Museum, a former courthouse and it tells two stories, on one side is the sad fate of July Perry and the other side tells the broader narrative of racial violence in America which set the stage for what happened to Mr. Perry and the town of Ocoee. According the marker thousands of African-Americans were victims of racial violence and lynching in America between 1877 and 1950. It was especially prevalent in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. As African-Americans sought equal rights after the Civil War, threats of violence and violent acts were used to terrorize them into subordination. Black people were falsely arrested, dragged from jail by a mob, and hanged and burned in a public setting to send a message to the community. Although many details and names have been lost to time, over 300 documented lynchings took place in Florida with 33 in Orange County. The other side of the marker recounts the lynching of Julius "July" Perry. Ocoee, Florida, chartered as a city in 1925, grew from a small citrus farming settlement in the mid-19th century near Lake Starke and Lake Nona. Half of the community was of African-American ancestry. Ocoee is infamous for the 1920 massacre that following attempts by Black residents to vote in the 1920 presidential election. People were killed, homes destroyed, and Black residents were forced to flee. Mose Norman, a black man, was assaulted while attempting to vote. He sought refuge in the home of his business associate July Perry. The men had come from South Carolina looking for better work and land to cultivate. Mr. Perry was an Ocoee straw boss which meant that no African-Americans would work for a white employer unless they came through Mr. Perry who would get a cut and determine how much the workers would be paid. Mr. Perry held power in the community as an independent farmer and labor broker. A mob surrounded the home where Mr. Perry's wife and children were also inside and attacked the men. Mr. Norman and Mr. Perry's family was able to escape but Mr. Perry was severely wounded during the gun battle and taken to the Orange County Jail. The next morning a mob took Mr. Perry from his cell, beat him, and hanged him within sight of the home Judge Cheney who had encouraged African-Americans to vote. After his death, Mr. Perry's body was shot repeatedly. Author Zora Neale Hurston wrote in a published account of the 1920 massacre. In the ensuing violence over the next two days, 25 black homes, two black churches, and a masonic lodge in Ocoee were destroyed and 30 African-Americans were murdered. The entire black community of Ocoee was driven out within a year, July Perry is buried in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery. His land was taken over by Bluford Sims, a Confederate veteran and prominent member of Ocoee's white community. This marker was erected in 2019. While learning about this dark chapter in Orlando's history can't right the injustice done to the Ocoee community, by remembering Julius "July" Perry's name and story, dignity can be restored to a man who was a prosperous business person and a friend to many, both black and white.