A Tale of Two Cities

Only twenty years after pioneering Eau Claire, many of its good citizens set out to tame another wilderness.

But the 1870s were pretty bleak in general, with seven bust years including a mini-depression from '74 to '78. The Eau Claire Weekly Free Press chronicled the economic problems in its typically subdued style. "TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP," an 1876 headline blared. The subhead read: "Vagrants and Unfortunates Thicker in Eau Claire Than Hair Upon One of Our Canines."
Meanwhile, stories about a certain city in Florida began appearing in the same paper:

"... We bespeak for Orange City a proud career in the future progress that inevitably awaits the Land of Flowers," the paper opined in 1877. "Thus far no undertaking has flourished as rapidly nor kept pace with its onward march.... Art and science have displaced the crude elements, and will soon display the wonders of a new creation."

It's really no mystery why tales of the new "Eldorado," "Astoria," or "Arcadia" (as Orange City was variously described in news items of the day) - where every pothole was a crystal lake and "globes of sweet nectar" fell into one ' s hands - appealed to the winter- and depression-weary northwoods pioneers. Besides, what do red-blooded Americans legendarily do when faced with trouble? Light out for new territories, of course.

And that's just what scores of Eau Claire's earliest settlers laid plans to do in the mid-1870s. In the process, they created a town and left a mark on Florida's history.

Dr. Seth French, a prominent Eau Claire physician and one of the proprietors of a leading drugstore in town, had been an army surgeon during the Civil War, which had given him some exposure to the South. His initial Florida plunge had been at Sanford, where his imprint still remains on French Avenue.

From 1870 and 1874, French divided his time between the two states, spending his summers in Eau Claire, and he must have inspired his northern friends with fantastic tales of Florida's weather and opportunity.

As a result, in 1875 a group of nine, all from Eau Claire, ultimately bought about 3200 acres in central Florida's Volusia County, for $1.25 per acre. David P. Graves, William Holly, and James M. Smith joined forces with three couples - Allen and Louisa Cameron, John and Mary Stillman, and John and Emma Thorpe - to form six partnership shares.

(Since much of French's business was in Sanford, Seth and Harriet French did not officially become participants until May of 1877, when Graves, who owned the largest share, sold them a one-eighth ownership.)

The group, which formed as the Wisconsin Company while its members were still in Eau Claire, was apparently informal: their Florida land purchases were made in their respective names, and the Wisconsin Company name does not appear in any of the land acquisitions.

Early in the summer of 1875, even while the Wisconsin Company was forming, Hugh and Sophie DeYarman (who had run the Monongela Hotel on Eau Claire's west side since 1858) made arrangements with the Wisconsin Company to put up a hotel in this new settlement, which the Company was promoting as "Orange City," even though they were building almost on top of an existing settlement called Blue Spring.

It was a good thing the DeYarmans got a jump on the project, because just months later, another wave from Eau Claire - 14 altogether, including children - was on its way south. When they got to the "city," they found only one room of the DeYarman Hotel finished. There was little good water and few amenities. There were no stores to buy goods.

Freeman Grover and other workers were hard at the task of building the hotel, getting additional lumber ready by working a sawmill procured in Enterprise (James Spaulding later built one). In the meantime, however, Orange City's newest arrivals all ate and slept in the DeYarman Hotel's one room.

In the following months, houses up quickly, which was a necessity. By the time Orange City was platted in 1876, more than 50 people from Eau Claire and its environs had made their way to the new town.

Six streets were named after the Wisconsin Company organizers: Smith (which was later renamed Landsdowne), Graves, French, Thorpe, Holly, Stillman (later Oak) and French. Eau Claire pioneers Mr. and Mrs. Sparkman, W.W. Leavitt, and Edmund Carpenter, also lent their names to some of Orange City's streets.

At a town meeting about the time of the platting, the town organized its first public school. The Wisconsin Company donated a site across from the DeYarman Hotel, and $75 to boot. Other citizens contributed either money or work. George Parker, who was 22 and single at the time, gave $25: after getting married and sending four children through the school, he said his money was well spent.

Late in 1877, the Rev. Henze Smith Leet journeyed from Deland to officiate Orange City's first preaching service in the barroom of the DeYarman Hotel - 19 years after one of Eau Claire's first sermons was supposedly preached in the barroom of what was then its own DeYarman Hotel.

The hotel, truly a community center, served as a meeting place for the town's organizational meetings as the first home for Orange City's library.

Eau Claire's expatriates accomplished many of Orange City's "firsts." George Parker, the bachelor who contributed so generously to the new school, was the first bridegroom. Charles Smith was the first postmaster. W.W. Leavitt was the first to build a house in the town limits. W.W. West built Volusia County's first railroad. Orange City's first baby, the Rev. and Mrs. Lewton's daughter, was named after the French's daughter Adele.

And, as you might expect DeYarman, Stillman, French and others were instrumental in chartering and running most aspects of Orange City's government. French also represented Volusia County as state senator from the 29th District in 1879; from that post, his colleagues appointed him as the first commissioner of Florida Bureau of Immigration. William H. Gleason, another of Eau Claire's sons, served as Lieutenant Governor of Florida.

But one of Eau Claire's most famous emigrés didn't make waves in Orange City by building or organizing anything. Fifteen years after Orange City was first settled, Charles Bullen, former president of Eau Claire's legendary Daniel Shaw Lumber Company, discovered Orange City 's new lifeblood and its most precious commodity.

Florida was hardly known for its excellent fresh water supply, but in 1891 Bullen (who didn't arrive in Orange City until sometime after 1888) found a spring of "living water" on his land next to DeYarman Hotel.

It wasn't just good water; it compared favorably with the best known water in the world, the Bethesda Spring water. According to the Orange City Times, November 30, 1893, "Florida is not to be left in anything. She beats the world in fruits, in climate, in health. Now Orange City comes forward with a rock well, or spring, which has all the properties and bears a close resemblance to the famous Bethesda Spring of Waukesha, Wis. The reported slander that Florida has no good water is refuted and the most fastidious tourist can be supplied native Florida water that is not surpassed in the world." The report went no to note that Orange City's water was lower than Bethesda Spring water in all trace minerals except carbonates of iron, lime, and potassium, and that it contained no organic matter at all.

The Eau Claire Leader even gushed that Bullen had found Florida's fabled fountain of youth: "There is good reason to believe that this is the spring the great Spanish explorer [Ponce de Leon] sought in vain in order that he might renew his youth and prolong his life.... It looks now ... as if our Eau Claire man has discovered the famous fountain which the great explorer searched for so long and with so little purpose."

Who knows, but at any rate, in 1905 Bullen's spring water received the highest award given by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (The World's Fair). The water also had a famous fan among Bullen's contemporaries: John D. Rockefeller, Sr., not only drank Orange City water but bathed in it.

What's become of Eau Claire's prodigy? "Orange City" has become a "City," on a small scale at least. It has 6000 residents and a Web site. But, since a disastrous freeze on December 27, 1894, destroyed virtually every citrus tree in the area, the "Orange" part of its name lives on only as a reminder of the nearly 200 groves the town boasted in the 1880s.

Bullen's water not only supplies Orange City's needs to this day, but it has retained its renown. According to the Orange City Chamber of Commerce, "The water is shipped daily in 8000-gallon tank cars and bottles to many parts of America. It is found on the menu of many of the finest hotels and in virtually every large hotel in Florida."

The DeYarman Hotel, dubbed the White Elephant by locals, fell into dilapidation by the 1980s, but has undergone a massive restoration, championed by Dallas Wittgenfeld, chairman of the Orange City Historical Preservation Board, and Harriet French Boyd, Seth and Harriet French's great granddaughter, who now lives in Lake Mary, Florida.

All in all, Eau Claire's mark can still be seen all over Orange City.

The Chippewa Valley, of course, survived its 1870s depression to thrive during the next and coming decades, but while its expatriates wrote letters back and remembered Eau Claire, no one returned for more than a visit. Orange City's northwoods pioneers had found their new home in the Land of Flowers.

- By Frank Smoot. Based in part on newspaper reports from the Four Towns Enterprise, the DeLand Sun News, the Daytona Beach Morning Journal, and the Orange City Times, all of Florida; the Eau Claire Leader and Eau Claire Weekly Free Press of Wisconsin; various promotional publications; and manuscript versions of Our Story of Orange City. Special acknowledgment is due Arthur Franke. CVM has a collection of papers on Orange City, as well as on hundreds of other topics of regional interest, all accessible at the Museum's library.