THE POWS of Lake Adelaide

The POW’s of Lake Adelaide

Once the location of one of the two springs that gave the name to the Seminole County town of Altamonte Springs, Florida, Lake Adelaide, part of Orange County in the 19th century, holds the secrets to the founding of one of the area’s earliest settlements. The POWs of Lake Adelaide is the name of Chapter Four of my book, Altamonte: A History of Altamonte Springs, Florida, but you can read this chapter now, in its entirety, courtesy of this blog. Enjoy

Chapter Four: The POWs of Lake Adelaide

Snow on the Lake’s West Shore:

One month after Dr. Washington Kilmer arrived in Tallahassee via his historic walk from Ohio, two Chicagoans applied at the General Land Office for homesteads in Orange County. Each obtained a site containing 157.73 acres. Of the two, Edgar James Snow decided to live on his land, whereas the second, Edwin Ruthven Bradley, chose soon after to move further south to Lake Worth, near Palm Beach. Bradley’s 1915 obituary, published in the Miami News, tells us that he became one of the earliest settlers of Florida’s southeast coast.

Snow and Bradley, however, had visited the Land Office on the same day, Thanksgiving Day, 28 November 1872, to apply for homesteads in the same one-square mile Section 13, Township 21 South, Range 29 East – an area that is today a busy hub in Altamonte Springs.

Ironically, Snow and Bradley applied for their homesteads precisely ten years to an identical holiday in 1882, when Thomas C. Simpson of Newburyport, Massachusetts enjoyed a Thanksgiving Day feast in Orlando. Following that 1882 holiday with George E. Wilson of Altamont, among others, Simpson proceeded to acquire a thousand acres of undeveloped land in north Orange County, land surrounding the homesteads of Edgar James Snow and Edwin Bradley.

Throughout the decade prior to Simpson’s arrival in 1882, Snow had established a village on a corner of his 158 acres. He had named the village “Snowville.” His land also bordered a spring-fed body of water unnamed when he and his bride arrived in 1872, and so Edgar named the lake for his bride, Adelaide (Favor) Snow.

Married 25 April 1871 in Chicago, Illinois, nineteen months prior to Edgar and his bride relocating to the wilderness of Orange County, Snow’s spring-fed Lake Adelaide of the 19th century is still known by the same name today, although the spring no longer exists.

Edwin Ruthven Bradley and Edgar James Snow presumably came to Florida together, although no evidence of them doing so has been found.  Both men came from Chicago though, and both applied for their homesteads on the very same day. Bradley, after relocating to Palm Beach in 1875, became a mail carrier, where “for several years he made weekly roundtrips between Palm Beach and Miami on foot,” said his obituary, stating further that “he crossed two rivers on this route, using rowboats that he kept at each location.” Bradley died in Homestead, Florida 20 May 1915 at the age of 75.

Edgar James Snow died 6 May 1917 at the age of 76 in Portland, Oregon, where he had lived and worked since 1887. But during his lifetime he also lived about a dozen years in Orange County prior to going west to work on the railroad, leaving, curiously, about the time numerous railroads were being built in Orange County.

And before coming to Florida, Snow had also done a lot of walking.

Snow at the Battle of Franklin

Exhibit 28: The Battle of Franklin by Kurtz & Allison (1891). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Edgar Snow enlisted in Company B of the 51st Illinois Infantry for a three-year stint in the Civil War. Leaving home for the warfront on Christmas Day of 1861, then 21 years of age, Private Snow carried with him a small bible, a gift from his mother. On the inside flap of the bible his mother had printed, “Edgar J. Snow, Dec. 25, 1861.”

Long after departing Snowville for the west coast, Civil War Veteran Edgar Snow recalled in an interview for The Adams County News of 20 March 1915 of him spending many weary evening hours finding comfort while reading his bible. He read it both while holed up in a trench enduring a battle, and in the encampment at the end of a long day of treacherous marching. This interview was held because after 51 years of being lost, the bible was returned to Edgar Snow, and he recalled for the interviewer how his bible came to be lost.

Edgar told of November 30, 1864, the day he had participated in the Battle of Franklin, “when General Schofield’s (Union) army,” said Snow, “was hurled against the pick of the Confederate force under (General) Hood.” He had just been promoted to Corporal for valiant service in assisting a wounded officer days before the “reb calvary swooped down on them, and he was taken prisoner. Stripped of everything he had save the clothing on his back,” said Edgar Snow, “his father’s watch was taken from him, and the Bible he carried through three years of fighting was thrown aside.”

Nineteen hundred Americans, Union and Confederate young men combined, died on 30 November 1864 during the Battle of Franklin. Nearly five thousand were wounded, and another eighteen hundred, on both sides, were taken prisoners. And of the 1,104 Union soldiers captured by the Confederates, one was Corporal Edgar James Snow.

Taken to Georgia’s notorious Andersonville Prison, Edgar J. Snow was held a Prisoner of War for six months. “Andersonville,” says The American Battlefield Trust, “or Camp Sumter as it was known officially, held more prisoners at any given time than any of the other Confederate military prisons. It was built in early 1864 after officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners in and around Richmond to a place of greater security and more abundant food. During the 14 months it existed, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements. The prison pen was surrounded by a stockade of hewed pine logs that varied in height from 15 to 17 feet. The pen was enlarged in late June 1864. Sentry boxes—called “pigeon roosts” by the prisoners—stood at 90-foot intervals along the top of the stockade. Inside, about 19 feet from the wall, was the “deadline,” which the prisoners were forbidden to cross. The “deadline” was intended to prevent prisoners from climbing over the stockade or from tunneling under it. It was marked by a simple post and rail fence and guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed the fence, or even reached over it. A branch of Sweetwater Creek, called the Stockade Branch, flowed through the prison yard and was the only source of water for most of the prison.”

Edgar Snow described for the reporter the horrendous conditions at the prison, stating his daily meal was “a pint of cornmeal ground up with the cob. And as they turned us out,” said Snow, “they did not inform us that the war was ended. Instead, they told us to strike out toward Jacksonville, Florida, several hundred miles distant. We walked all that distance, and when we arrived at the Union camp maybe you think we didn’t eat like starved hobos.” The distance to the union camp at Jacksonville, Florida was in fact 250 miles. 

Conditions were so bad at Andersonville that, after the War, Captain Henry Wirz, the Confederate in charge of the prison and the person convicted of withholding food and medicine from the prisoners, was hanged on 10 November 1865 at the Capital Prison in Washington, DC.

In 1914, fifty-years after the Civil War had ended, Professor Arthur L. Keith of Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, returned Edgar Snow’s bible. A professor of Latin, Greek and Fine Arts, Dr. Keith was also an avid genealogist, tracing his family’s roots to no fewer than four Patriots of the American Revolution. Using the inscription in the bible, Dr. Keith was able to locate Edgar Snow in Oregon. 

Snow’s Return to Florida

Eleven years after departing his Illinois home on Christmas of 1861; eight years after being captured at the Battle of Franklin, and seven years after having walked 250 miles to his freedom in Jacksonville, Edgar J. Snow, at age 41 and recently married, departed Illinois once again. Snow, returning to the south, this time came with a pregnant bride, her parents, and several of her siblings.

On 28 November 1872, the very day Edgar J. Snow applied for his homestead, The News Herald of Hillsboro, Ohio was reporting that Dr. Washington Kilmer of Ironton had arrived in Tallahassee on 21 October. It was to be another thirteen months before Dr. Kilmer and John Katline would open the Altamont Post Office. A settlement did not yet exist in the vicinity of present-day Altamonte Springs, but a small community south of Snow’s homestead, the village of Lake Maitland, was about to celebrate its first year of existence.

Orange County pioneer John Fries, in telling of his arrival to Orange County on Christmas Eve 1871, said he spent much of Christmas Day aboard a rugged buggy-ride in route to Orlando. “I saw but one house between Sanford and Orlando, and a little store building at Maitland, then the metropolis of the region.” Christopher Columbus Beasley opened the Lake Maitland Post Office on 2 January 1872.

As Edgar Snow and his family arrived in Orange County therefore, they knew the region as Lake Maitland, not Altamont or Altamonte Springs. Fanny Favor Snow, the first child of Edgar and Adelaide (Favor) Snow, was born in February 1873, three months after their arrival. Fanny appears to have been the first child born to settlers on land that would soon become Altamonte Springs, Florida.

Both Dr. Kilmer and John Katline were residing on their homesteads by March 1874, but the Altamont Post Office they established did not open until 30 December 1874, nine months after Edgar Snow’s father-in-law died in Orange County. The nearest post office to the Snow Homestead prior to 1875 was the Lake Maitland Post Office, which explains why the obituary of Adelaide’s father, published on 5 April 1874, appeared as it did in the Chicago Tribune.

“Favor: At the residence of his daughter, Mrs. E. J. Snow, Lake Maitland, Florida, Wednesday, March 25, Z. C. Favor, of Chicago, age 68 years.”

Both Zebulon Carr Favor and wife, Harriett (Hichborn), parents of Adelaide (Favor) Snow, came to Florida with their daughter and her husband, Edgar James Snow. Obituaries reporting the deaths of each explains too how the area around Snow’s homestead evolved, for the death of Adelaide’s mother Harriet was reported in The Chicago Tribune of 4 November 1877 and described the area as “Altamonte.”

“Favor: At Altamonte, Florida, October 13, 1877, Harriet Hichborn (sic), relict of Zebulon C. Favor, aged 67 years.”

Patriot Thomas Hichborn

AM-REV250 Tribute: The Daughters of the American Revolution had not yet been established at the time of Harriet Hichborn’s death in 1877, but Harriet Hichborn (Favor) Slack, a surviving sister of Adelaide (Favor) Snow, was accepted years later into the Chicago NSDAR Chapter. The biography of Harriet (Favor) Slack described her as personal friends of both Mary Todd Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. A snowbird, then resident of Ft Myers, Florida, Mrs. Harriet (Favor) Slack and her siblings, including Adelaide (Favor) Snow, were lineal descendants of Thomas Hichborn, “one of the Patriot guards of the tea ships” according to the approved application of Mrs. Harriet (Favor) Slack’s DAR application.  

The South Florida Railroad began running trains in November 1880 between Sanford and Orlando, and at that time a flag stop along its 22-mile route was “Snow’s Station.” The Snowville Post Office was established 5 October 1880, with Daniel W. Holden the Postmaster. (Note: It is not known if Daniel W. Holden was one and the same as W. D. Holden, the dinner guest listed with George E. Wilson at the Thanksgiving Day 1882 party. There was also a W. D. Holden living at the time in Orlando, Florida.)

Edgar & Adelaide Snow, on 24 February 1882, deeded twenty acres of their homestead to the South Florida Railroad. The deed transfer identified the Snow’s as being residents of “Snowville.” U S Postal archives show a name change became effective 17 March 1887. By this time, however, Edgar & Adelaide Snow were living in Portland, Oregon as Snowville, Florida became “Altamonte Station.”

Saussy of the Lake’s East Shore

Exhibit 29: Edgar J. Snow and George N. Saussy Homesteaded on Lake Adelaide, Snow’s 160 acres was west (left) of the lake and included a portion of the Altamonte Mall parking lot of present-day. Saussy’s land is the square on the right (east) side of lake.

Dive into Lake Adelaide from Corporal Edgar J. Snow’s homestead and swim across to the far lakeshore and you would find yourself on the homestead of Lieutenant George Nowlan Saussy, who acquired the acreage in August 1876. For four years, he was the neighbor of Snow, as each owned land on opposite sides of Lake Adelaide.

On 14 December 1882, George, and Kate Saussy, while residing in the City of Fernandina, Florida, sold their Orange County acreage to Mr. Thomas C Simpson of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a parcel where today Newburyport St. is the home to the City of Altamonte Springs Fire and Police Departments. The historic Altamonte Hotel once stood in the southwest corner of Saussy’s homestead.

Born 10 March 1842, George Nowlan Saussy enlisted with the first regiment of Georgia Volunteers in January of 1861. By September 1862 he was serving near Frederick City, Maryland when wounded, but returned to his post after recovering. A Saussy family account of his service includes the following: “His horse was shot from under him 13 September 1863, and he was captured 22 September 1863. At that time, he and two others of his command were in the enemy’s line by permission to try to capture Yankee horses so as not to be in the dismounted squad. He was taken to Point Lookout, Maryland and kept there until 17 August 1864, then transferred to Elmira, New York. On 10 March 1865, Saussy was sent by flag of truce to the confederate lines under parole.”

“Also known as "Hell-Mira," says The American Battlefield Trust of the Elmira prison, “it opened in July 1864, and it quickly became infamous for its staggering death rate and unfathomable living conditions due to the Commissary General of Prisoners, Colonel William Hoffman.”

“Hoffman forced Confederate prisoners to sleep outside in the open while furnishing them with little to no shelter. Prisoners relied upon their own ingenuity for constructing drafty and largely inadequate shelters consisting of sticks, blankets, and logs. As a result, the Rebels spent their winters shivering in biting cold and their summers in sweltering, pathogen-laden heat.”

“Overcrowding was yet again a major problem. Although Union leadership mandated a ceiling of 4,000 prisoners at Elmira, within a month of its opening that number had swelled to 12,123 men.  By the time the last prisoners were sent home in September of 1865, close to 3,000 men had perished.  With a death rate approaching 25%, Elmira was one of the deadliest Union-operated POW camps of the entire war.”

George Saussy and Edgar Snow had more in common than merely landowner neighbors on Lake Adelaide. As former enemies during the Civil War, each managed somehow to endure the worst prison facility their armies had established. The Union prison at Elmira was even referred to at times as the Andersonville of the North.

“Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,

Dream of battlefields no more.”

The poetic verse above concluded the obituary of George N. Saussy, a worthy soldier who died 27 April 1916 at the age of 74. His death, reported in The Macon Telegraph of 31 April 1916, offered this of the man’s life:

“Colonel G. N. Saussy was a well-known Confederate veteran. A few years ago, he contributed articles on the Virginia campaigns to The Macon Telegraph. It was hoped he would put them in book form, but the money was lacking. At the time of his death Saussy was superintendent of the Soldiers’ Home at Jacksonville, Fla.”

“Colonel Saussy desired that he be buried by the side of heroes – the Georgia Hussars – with whom he had spent four years in the stirring campaigns of Virginia. He was one of those old Confederate soldiers who “fought and lived,” but beautiful Bonaventure is now his “Soldiers Home.”

Altamonte: A History of Altamonte Springs, Florida, is available now - for details of this book and its link to Amazon visit my website at www.CroninBooks.com

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