Information provided by the courtesy of Steve Rajtar. Transcribed from: A Guide to Historic Orlando, The History Press, page 11, 2006. The passage of the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 opened a vast area to settlement. One could move onto land at least two miles from an established fort, erect a home and become a citizen-soldier. After defending the land from Indians for five years, the homesteader would receive title to up to 160 acres. Two who took advantage of this opportunity were the area's first permanent settlers, Aaron and Mary Jernigan, who moved from Tallahassee in 1843. They brought about seven hundred head of cattle and established their homestead around a log home on the northwest shore of what later bacame Lake Holden. In 1845 Florida became a state and Aaron was elected as Orange County's first representative to the state legislature. The Jernigans established a trading post and a small settlement around it took on the name of Jernigan. On May 30, 1850, Jernigan was granted a post office and Wright Patrick of South Carolina served as the first postmaster. He was succeeded by Aaron Jernigan. Aaron was indicted for murder following an 1859 brawl at the post office and jailed in Ocala before escaping and moving to Texas. After twenty-five years he returned to Orlando where he died in 1891. end of transcription. Aaron Jernigan became the captain of the militia in Orange County. He is buried in Lake Hill cemetery in Orlo Vista. Websites containing more information about Aaron Jernigan: http://en.Wikepedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Jernigan http://www.cfhf.net/orlando/people/jernigan.htm http://lakeholden.org/history/jernigan_hunt.shtml http://home.att.net/~mboots/Jernigan_Homepage/XXVI.htm From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Aaron Jernigan (September 14, 1813 – August 25, 1891) was the first settler of what is now Orange County, Florida. Originally from Georgia, he lived for a time in the Tallahassee area before moving to Orange County in 1843. He was influential in the city of Orlando's early development; the town was called Jernigan until 1857. Jernigan and his wife, Mary, settled on the shore of Lake Holden, purchasing 1200 acres and moving some 700 head of cattle down from Tallahassee area where Jernigan and his brother Isaac (who also moved to Orlando) continued to own land and raise cattle. Jernigan cleared a spot near Lake Conway and built a small cabin, and began planting crops including corn, cotton, rice, sugar cane, pumpkins, and even melons. Jernigan was a successful tradesman and merchant. He was also a captain of the local militia that patrolled against renegade Seminoles. Jernigan's settlement quickly grew and he was elected a county representative in 1846. By 1850, according to state files, the Jernigan home had become the nucleus of a settlement and designated a post office. He died in 1891, and was buried at Lake Hill Cemetery in Orlo Vista. A memorial plaque placed at his grave in 1971 honors him as "Orlando's first settler." William Morgan sends us the following article entitled The Jernigan Hunt, which was written by Michael Pollick, and published in the Florida Magazine on January 2, 1983. This article also appeared on the 'Jernigan Family Homepage' and is used with the knowledge of MS. Marla Boots If you can add to our knowledge base on either Aaron Jernigan or Lake Holden History please drop us a line Jernigan Hunt On Colton's 1855 map of Florida, there is no Orlando. Instead, a couple of miles south of the present downtown, in the italics used for the smallest settlements, there is "Jernigan." For a few short years--from the late 1840's to about 1857--the tiny settlement started by Aaron Jernigan was a gathering place for Central Florida's first white families. They exchanged gossip, bought supplies, and picked up their mail at the Jernigans'. Now, nobody knows exactly where it was, or what it looked like. Nobody knows what Aaron Jernigan looked like; no photo of him is known to exist. And, few people care. One of those few is Roy Singer of Maitland, who calls himself a "backyard archeologist," and spends his weekends researching historic sites. He found musket balls across U.S. Highway 17-92 from the historic marker for Fort Maitland, just before a condominium went up on the site. In the shadow of the Winter Park Public Library, he has found a 12-foot-deep brick cistern that provided water for the Hotel Seminole before it burned down in 1902. The woman who owns the land wants him to cover it up again so she can sell the property to a developer. Before the remains of Jernigan, too, become entombed in blacktop, Singer wants to unearth Orlando's past. "Jernigan is really our roots," he says, the trace of a Long Island accent still evident after his 10 years as a hardware inspector at the Orlando Naval Training Equipment Center. "This brings us back to Year One of Central Florida." Singer's search started in the summer of 1976, when as president of the Florida Marine and Archaeological Society, he corresponded with Phillip A. Werndli, a state historic-site specialist, who told him, "What I'm trying to find first of all is Jernigan." There are actually two sites associated with Jernigan, as specified in the files Werndli sent to Singer: a residence and possibly a general store on the northwest shore of Lake Holden, and a hastily built stockade on the north shore of Little Lake Conway. Unfortunately, the Conway shore had become too built-up with homes for any effective search. However, the Holden shore, though only a couple of blocks from Interstate 4, remains an island of serenity, with an orange grove more than 100 years old, and to the south, woods that probably look much the same as they did when Aaron Jernigan was appraising the wilderness for a homesite. After knocking on his seventh Lake Holden front door, Singer met Patsy and Marvin Powell, who own the 11-acre grove. "They said, 'Yeah, we know all about it,'" he remembers. "I didn't know what else to ask. I was stunned." The Powells took the rubber band off a set of deeds and laid them out on the diningroom table. The deeds went back to when the U.S. government gave Jernigan 160 acres under the homesteading provisions of the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. They showed that the William Holden family had bought the land from Jernigan and the Gore family--from which Mrs. Powell is descended--from the Holdens. It was 1843 when Jernigan, 30, came to Florida from Fort Monaack, Georgia. He hacked out a clearing on the northwest shore of Lake Holden and built a cabin, then he moved his family here. A few other settlers, including his brother Isaac, followed. Gradually, by buying Isaac's and other homesteads, Aaron came to own about 1,200 acres, extending from the east side of Little Lake Conway to where I-4 now slices across the South Orange Blossom Trail. As his landholding grew, so did his importance in the new settlement. He was the first state representative from Orange County, and he was the captain of a local militia that patrolled against renegade Indians. "By 1850," say the state files, "the Jernigan home had become the nucleus of a settlement and designated a post office. Very little information is available on the village of Jernigan itself. It is not known whether it was a town, or just a post office and a store." Whatever it was, Singer and 15 or so club members show up at the grove every other Saturday to search for what's left of it. They swing their metal detectors in slow arcs through the weeds between the orange trees and poke their long steel probes down every couple of feet, hoping for the clink of old glass. Singer has found a knife-sharpening wheel where the Holden house once was. He guesses it's from the 1850's. On the north side of the grove, Singer and his diggers have made their most encouraging find to date--the remains of a small camp. In the loose dirt they found a button, some lead musket balls, a type of ammunition called "buck and ball," and a broken ramrod. Because such musket balls were made in the 1840's, Singer figures they mark the campsite of a small contingent of soldiers sent over from nearby Fort Gatlin. That still leaves Singer without "any positive artifact of Jernigan," and he is running out of places to look in the orange grove. Singer is now seeking permission to search in the tract of woods to the south. If Jernigan had lasted longer, Singer might have an easier time finding it. But, powerful landholding interests to the north politically out-flanked the outpost. In 1857, Jernigan's store was replaced as the area's post office by a new store, near where downtown Orlando is now. And, when one B.F. Caldwell, who owned a lot of land in the same area, cannily arranged to donate four acres for a courthouse in 1857--making that the new county seat--it was the beginning of the end for Jernigan. Eight years later, William Holden, fresh from Virginia, bought Jernigan's property. Although some of Jernigan's descendants still live in this area, they know little of their pioneer ancestor. Some sources state simply that Jernigan became a drifter; others say he remained in Orlando and threw lavish parties here. He died in 1891, and was buried at Lake Hill Cemetery in Orlo Vista. It wasn't until 1971, that a memorial plaque was placed there, honoring him as "Orlando's first settler." "I still have a feeling that there must be something there from the Jernigan period," says Singer. But, "just saying that doesn't mean anything. Finding it means more." Orlando’s history dates back to 1838 and the height of the Seminole Wars. The U.S. Army built Fort Gatlin south of the present day Orlando City limits to protect settlers from attacks by Indians. By 1840, a small community had grown up around the Fort. It was known as Jernigan, named after the Jernigan family, who had established the first permanent settlement in the area. Jernigan had a post office, established May 30th, 1850. Six years later with the settlement expanding northward, the community officially changed its name to Orlando. In 1857, the U.S. Post Office adopted the name change. The Town of Orlando was incorporated in 1875 with 85 inhabitants, 22 of whom were qualified voters. History is not as clear on where the name Orlando originated. There are four stories that are told. One involves Judge James Speer, who worked hard in getting Orlando as the county seat, naming Orlando after a man who once worked for him. Another is that Speer named it after a character from Shakespeare’s, "As You Like It". A third version has Mr. Orlando on his way to Tampa with a caravan of ox. It is said that he got ill, died and was buried, and that folks would come by and say, "There lies Orlando" The most common story is about a company of soldiers on duty during the height of the Seminole Wars. After battling Indians back into the swamps on the east side of Lake Minnie (now Cherokee), the military troop settled there for the night. Sentinel Orlando Reeves was guarding the camp when he spotted a log floating toward him. Recognizing the Indian disguise and wanting to warn his fellow soldiers, he fired his gun. Arrows felled the poor fellow as the Indians came out to ambush the camp. The Indians were chased back again, and the south side of Lake Eola was chosen to bury Orlando Reeves. History of Orlando Some historians date Orlando's name to around 1836 when a soldier named Orlando Reeves allegedly died in the area, during the war against the Seminole Indian tribe. It seems, however, that Orlando Reeves (sometimes Rees) operated a sugar mill and plantation about 30 miles (50 km) to the north at Spring Garden in Volusia County, and pioneer settlers simply found his name carved into a tree and assumed it was a marker for a grave site. They thus referred to the area as "Orlando's grave" and later simply "Orlando." During the Second Seminole War, the U.S. Army established an outpost at Fort Gatlin, a few miles south of the modern downtown, in 1838. But it was quickly abandoned when the war came to an end. The first permanent settler was cattleman Aaron Jernigan, who acquired land along Lake Holden by the terms of the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. But most pioneers did not arrive until after the Third Seminole War in the 1850s. Most of the early residents made their living by cattle ranching. Orlando remained a rural backwater during the American Civil War, and suffered greatly during the Federal Blockade. The Reconstruction Era brought a population explosion, which led to the city's incorporation in 1875. The period from 1875 to 1895 is remembered as Orlando's "Gilded Era," when it became the hub of Florida's citrus industry. But a great freeze in 1894-1895 forced many owners to give up their independent groves, thus consolidating holdings in the hands of a few "citrus barons" which shifted operations south, primarily around Lake Wales in Polk County. Orlando, as Florida's largest inland city, became a popular resort during the years between the Spanish-American War and World War I. During World War II, a number of Army personnel were stationed at the Pine Castle AAF. Some of these servicemen stayed in Orlando to settle and raise families. In 1956 the aerospace/defense company Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) established a plant in Orlando. In 1958, Pine Castle AAF was renamed McCoy Air Force Base after Colonel Michael N.W. McCoy. Orlando is close enough to Patrick Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and Kennedy Space Center for residents to commute to work from the city's suburbs. It also allows easy access to Port Canaveral, an important cruise ship terminal. Because of its proximity to the "Space Coast" near the Kennedy Space Center, many high-tech companies have shifted to the Orlando area. Perhaps the most critical event for Orlando's economy occurred in 1965 when Walt Disney announced plans to build Walt Disney World. Although Disney had considered the cities of Miami and Tampa for his park, one of the major reasons behind his decision not to locate in those cities was the threat of hurricanes. The famous vacation resort opened in October 1971, ushering in an explosive population and economic growth for the Orlando metropolitan area, which now encompasses Orange, Seminole, Osceola, and Lake counties. As a result, tourism became the centerpiece of the area's economy and Orlando is consistently ranked as one of the top vacation destinations in the world. Another major factor in Orlando's growth occurred in 1970, when the new Orlando International Airport was built from a portion of the McCoy Air Force Base. Four airlines began providing scheduled flights in 1970. The military base officially closed in 1974, and most of it is now part of the airport. The airport still retains the former Air Force Base airport code (MCO). It is considered a world-class facility, and it is one of the most heavily travelled airports in the world. In addition to McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando also had a naval presence with the establishment of the Orlando Naval Training Center in 1968. Providing training to recruits as well as being a base for selected post basic training programs, the base had a prominent presence in the area. In 1993, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission ordered that the base be closed. The base continued in a diminished capacity until the base closed for good with the last graduates of the base's Naval Nuclear Power School leaving in December of 1998. The former base has been developed into tracts for upscale housing called Baldwin Park. In the hurricane season of 2004, Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne battered the Orlando area, causing widespread damage and flooding and impeding tourism to the area.