Part 1: Elusive Estelle
Lake Estelle Postcard, Orlando, Florida
On the northern outskirts of downtown Orlando is the start of a chain of picturesque lakes, each of which has played as important a role in the history of our Orange County seat of government origins as any one person or event. Not included within the boundaries of the 1857 village of Orlando, the Ivanhoe Chain of Lakes did in fact serve as the gateway to a place historian Eve Bacon, while describing Orlando nearly 50 years ago, said “lacked even so much as a creek to call its harbor.” More than merely a gateway to Orlando in the 19th century, however, much of the early history of the development of South Florida can be traced to the Ivanhoe Chain of Lakes.
County seats of the 19th century were typically placed in an easily accessible location, such as alongside a river, lake or a railroad line, but the county seat of Orlando was founded instead on an abandoned 1840s military trail deep in the heart of a difficult to reach wilderness. A village 417’ square with four crossroads, three of which were dead end trails, Orlando was Platted in 1857 to have twelve small “city lots” surrounding a courthouse square. Historians have long questioned the reason for establishing Orlando at this location, a site that did not have even a lake for drinking water within its borders, let alone “so much as a creek to call its harbor.”
Surviving and eventually becoming a thriving city when other want-to-be towns of early Orange County became downgraded to ghost towns, for the better part of a century the principal entry into the Orange County seat was via a skinny sliver of land which formed a causeway between a nearly unbroken chain of lakes flowing west to east. Although this land bridge is no longer the primary access to Orlando today, the 19th century “causeway” continues to serve as a corridor, shared by both automobiles and railroad activity.
North Orange Avenue alongside Railroad Corridor
A military corridor during the Second Seminole Indian War of the 1830s, early settlers continued using this north-south trail as access to Mosquito County’s interior in the early 1840s. Many of the earliest settlers homesteaded along this abandoned military path turned sand-rutted highway that government surveyors, in 1846, called the Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin Road. By the mid-1840s, Mosquito had become Orange County, and the treacherous dirt pathway to the county seat of the mid-1850s became known as the Mellonville to Orlando Road. By 1915, this very same trail would be known as the Orlando to Winter Park Brick Road, while today we simply know it as North Orange Avenue.
Surveying thirty-six square-mile “Townships” at a time, the earliest surveys of the 1840s divided each 36 square-mile Township into “Sections,” with each “Section” typically numbered from 1 thru 36. “Section 26, Township 22S, Range 29E,” where the village of Orlando was established in 1857, was surveyed by Charles C. Tracy in April 1846. The Fort Mellon to Fort Gatlin trail is shown by Surveyor Tracy as entering Section 26 to swerve around a pond (Lake Eola) and then continuing south along a path that is now Magnolia Avenue. Today, 138 years later, the Orange County Appraiser’s office continues to identify downtown Orlando land as being in “Section 26, Township 22 South, Range 29” exactly as Surveyor Tracy sketched it so very long ago.
Elusive Estelle of Section 13:
A history-rich one-square mile Section 13 is located north of Orlando. Section 13, largely the subject of this blog series, was also part of the area surveyed by Charles C. Tracy in 1846.
Much has been written about certain aspects of Section 13 and especially the lakes found within this square-mile Section, but never, in this author’s opinion, has the true significance of the role Section 13 has played in both the history and mystery about the intriguing origins of Orlando been revealed. In defense of historians, however, telling the story of Section 13 has not been all that easy, but this blog series has, as its goal, to transform the mystery into real-life history.
Within the one-square mile Section 13 is Lake Estelle and Lake Winyah together with a large portion of Lake Rowena and part of Lake Formosa. All four lakes are part of an Ivanhoe Chain of Lakes that as early as 1883 were spoken of as a potential waterway, with the addition of a lock or two, that could provide small steamboat access from Lake Jesup.
When and by whom each of the bodies of water north of Orlando were named is as fascinating a chapter in the story of early Orlando as the founding of the village itself. But what has been said of this region by early historians has not been completely factual. Lake Estelle, as one example, has been suggested to have been named for a lady doctor who became the first physician to treat patients at the Florida Sanitarium & Hotel, a hospital facility founded on the lake’s shore.
The namesake accuracy, however, is more than questionable. The timeline of Dr. Lydia Estelle Parmalee, who in fact was the first doctor to treat patients at the Sanitarium, doesn’t fit!
Lydia Estelle Kynett was born 1866 in Bath, Michigan. By the time of the 1900 census, Lydia was attending medical school in her native state. While still residing in Michigan, Miss Kynett married Rufus W. Parmalee, a Seventh Day Adventist Pastor. The Parmalee’s came to Orlando, Florida, during which time Dr. Lydia Estelle (Kynett) Parmalee worked as the first doctor at the Florida Sanitarium & Hotel on Lake Estelle.
Suggesting that Lydia could be the lake’s namesake sounds reasonable thus far, but an important chapter in Lake Estelle’s history is missing from this scenario. Orangeland, an 1883 publication of the Orange County Commissioners meant to encourage more settlers to consider coming to Florida, mentions numerous area lakes, including mention of Lake Estelle by name.
Twenty years before Dr. Lydia Estelle (Kynett) Parmalee arrived in Orlando, the Orange Land of 1883 listed Lake Estelle as one the lakes in the Ivanhoe Chain of Lakes. Lake Estelle appears as well on the Official Orange County map of 1890.
Neither the name Kynett nor Parmalee are associated with the Orlando area prior to the couple’s arrival in 1905, and original Florida Sanitarium Hospital deeds prior to the Adventist Conference taking over the property includes mention by name of Lake Estelle.
There is no connection between Lydia, who in 1883 was seventeen years old, and the appearance of Orlando’s named Lake Estelle that year. Although Dr. Lydia Estelle (Kynett) Parmalee was in fact the first doctor to serve in the Sanitarium, there is no reason to justify a statement that she is also the namesake of Orlando’s Lake Estelle.
The Early Days of Orlando, Florida
Historians have struggled for decades to explain how the town of Orlando came to be, a mystery that has included even the question as to how the town was named. Even today, a rock memorial at Lake Eola professes the false claim that the city had been named for Orlando Reeves, a claim easily proven wrong today. It’s little wonder, therefore, that names of certain lakes – even Lake Eola itself - are likewise often shrouded in mystery.
The Estelle of Orlando’s Section 13 Lake Estelle, together with Lake Rowena, Lake Formosa, and Lake Winyah are named lakes that date to the 19th century, back to a time when Section 13 was home to two town names and two railroads. A total and unabridged history of Central and South Florida cannot be confined to a one square-mile Section, but the relevance of Section 13, Township 22S, Range 29E is indeed quite amazing.
Through this sliver of land called Section 13 traveled the Scottish investors who established Five Points Intersection in Sarasota during the 1880s. A resident of this Section 13, after contributing to the development of the Section, went south to partner in the founding of 1880s Fellsmere, a town near Palm Beach. Fellsmere in turn contributed to establishing settlements on the Atlantic Coast. A Longwood newspaper editor of 1880 passed through this Section on his way to a new home in Bradenton, where his new newspaper contributed to settlement of that region. Another resident of this Section 13, arriving from New Hampshire, participated in the early development of Tavares. The first railroad Orlando squeezed through the causeway of Section 13 in 1880 prior to proceeding to Kissimmee, and eventually connecting Central Florida with Tampa Bay. Two key founders of Lakeland passed through Section 13, as did others who went on to establish such cities as Lake Wales, Fort Meade and Bradenton.
Long before the adventurers who passed this way on their way further south, however, Central Florida’s first elusive pioneers chose the lakes north of Orlando to call home. And so, it is there, in the decade before the Civil War, that this weekly series needs to start if we are to finally learn of the amazing individuals and history of Orlando’s Section 13. Part 2: Doyle & Brantley will be posted next Friday, 27 December 2024.
I invite you to peruse my website at www.CroninBooks.com to review each of my Central Florida history books.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all!
Comments