Yet Another Dora of Lake Dora?

A Merry Christmas Florida Blog by Richard Cronin

Historic Mount Dora, Lake County, Florida

Miami, Florida, Christmas Eve 1925:

Jasper Winslow Crawford married Florida native Dora E. Aman in Miami on Christmas Eve one hundred years ago. The ceremony was a small one, and the marriage lasted only five years due to Jasper’s accidental death, but because their wedding was published in a newspaper, this 24^th of December 1925 event became the start of my quest to resolve another intriguing Florida mystery, who was this Mrs. Dora Aman?

Why a mystery? Because Mrs. Dora Crawford died thirty-one years after her marriage to Jasper, and it was her obituary that caught my attention. The Tampa Tribune of 2 November 1956 reported: “Mrs. Dora Crawford, 86, for whom Mount Dora and Lake Dora in Lake County were named, died yesterday in Miami.”

I knew this Lake Dora namesake claim was wrong the moment I read it, but I also knew that it was only a matter of time before AI and/or Wikipedia discovered this article and added it to an already confusing mystery about Lake Dora’s namesake. I realized too, however, that regardless of the inaccuracy of a family’s oral history, more often than not, there is often something about an oral history that is based on facts. The challenge is, of course, to separate fact from fiction, and in this case, doing so began with determining Mrs. Dora Crawford’s identity.

In addition to allegedly being Mount Dora’s namesake, Mrs. Crawford, said her obituary, “had been the first postmaster of Daytona Beach prior to her coming to Miami thirty-three years ago from Jacksonville.” Dora Aman - Crawford of Lake County, therefore, also had ties to Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and Tampa.

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Too Many Dora’s

Mrs. Dora E. Crawford was not Daytona’s first postmaster. She couldn’t have been, for the first Daytona post office opened in 1871, the same year Matthias Day of Ohio, as stated in my newly released Historic Towns & Places, founded the town of Daytona. Loomis Day, son of Matthias, was Daytona’s first Postmaster, and Dora would have been but one year old at that time.

In 1905, however, a Daytona Beach branch post office opened, with Mrs. Dora E. Aman being the first postmaster of that branch. A portion of the family history as told in Dora’s obituary, therefore, was accurate. Dora was the wife of William E. Aman, residents of Daytona Beach in the year 1900. Dora and William had married at Altoona, in Lake County, on 21 May 1889.

The town of Mount Dora was named circa 1882 for Lake Dora, and Mount Dorans for decades have embraced an unsubstantiated legend claiming Widow Dora Drawdy was Lake Dora’s namesake. Like that of Dora E. Aman’s family history, portions of Dora Drawdy’s oral legend were based on facts. Widow Dora Drawdy, for example, was indeed a Lake County homesteader at the time the town of Mount Dora was established, but her homestead of 160-acres was located six miles from Lake Dora.

The legend of Dora Drawdy says she cooked for the land surveyors working in her area, and in return for her kindness, they named Lake Dora in her honor. One big problem with the legend, however, is that Dora Drawdy did not relocate from Georgia to Florida until 1860, twelve years after the first written document recording the name “Lake Dora.” In other words, Lake Dora had already been named when Dora Drawdy and her family arrived in Florida!

Family histories, especially those of the early Floridians, often confused facts as the stories were passed down over the course of years and decades. Mrs. Dora Aman, aka Mrs. Dora Crawford, had lived for nearly 60 years at Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, and Miami after she had had any connection with Lake County.

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Miss Dora Hinson of Altoona

Mrs. Dora Crawford’s death notice at age 86 was on the surface convincing. “Her father, the late Thomas J. Hinson,” said her obituary, “was a Lake County lumbering industry pioneer who named the town and lake in her honor and also gave (the town of) Altoona its name in honor of his Pennsylvania birthplace.”

Informative yes, but her obituary was not exactly precise. Thomas J. Hinson (1851-1918) was a native of Georgia, not Pennsylvania, but when he and older brother Francis Hinson arrived in Central Florida in the late 1870s, both brothers filed for homesteads in northwest Orange County, in an area currently part of Lake County. Francis laid out the town of Altoona in August 1882, and Francis and Thomas both served terms as Altoona Postmaster starting in 1880. Dora married William Aman at Altoona in May of 1889.

Francis and Thomas were residents of Altoona, not Mount Dora. Fourteen miles separate the two towns. Thomas J. Hinson’s homestead number 2379 was applied for on the 3^rd of December 1880, with his 160 acres being located not at Lake DORA but rather on the southwest shore of Lake DORR. An 1879 map of the area prepared by Surveyor E. R. Trafford, shown below, shows Lake Dorr as already named as of that time. The town of Altoona was not part of the original map but instead penciled in after the fact.

Lake DORR, 1879 Orange County FL Map by E. R. Trafford

Who named Lake Dorr and Altoona remains a mystery to this day, but we can say with absolute certainty that Miss Dora E. (Hinson) Aman-Crawford, despite being born in the early 1870s, was not the namesake of Lake Dora. It’s certainly possible that Thomas J. Hinson named the lake bordering his homestead Lake Dora before realizing that name was already taken, so the last letter was changed to make it Lake Dorr. Such a thought, however, is mere speculation.

Dora Drawdy was not Lake Dora’s namesake either, for Lake Dora was named between 1846 and 1848 by Surveyor Charles C. Tracy, who wrote of crossing “Lake Dora” in his 1848 survey notes. Charles Tracy interrupted his surveying of the area surrounding Lake Dora in 1846 to return to Jacksonville, where he married Theodora (Flotard).

By 1850, Charles C. Tracy was in California, surveying the San Francisco area. His wife and two daughters joined him there a year or two later. Theodora (Flotard) Tracy became one of the earliest theatrical stage performers in the State of California. Her stage name was “Mrs. Dora Tracy,”

You can learn all the details about Lake Dora's namesake in three chapters of Mount Dora: The Lure, The Founding, The Founders.

Meanwhile, I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Best regards, Rick Cronin and CroninBooks.com

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February 21 & 22, 2026