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100
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https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/c120e160eb2e8fc0ce6ac7264dbc12fa.pdf
df7400b08bd76fd5ff1eea67da3d1323
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oviedo Collection
Alternative Title
Oviedo Collection
Subject
Oviedo (Fla.)
Description
Collection of digital images, documents, and other records depicting the history of Oviedo, Florida. Series descriptions are based on special topics, the majority of which students focused their metadata entries around.
Oviedo began on the south shore of Lake Jessup as a settlement called Solaria's Wharf. Some of its early settlers include Dr. Henry Foster, Joseph Watts, and Steen Nelson. Citrus and celery dominated the area's farmland, although Central Florida suffered a severe freeze in 1894. Oviedo suffered another disaster in 1914 when a fire wiped out much of the downtown section. Disaster hit again in 1929 with the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. That same year, Oviedo's fruit crops were decimated by a fruit fly infestation. Another fire destroyed the Wheeler Fertilizer Plant in 1946. Nonetheless, Oviedo continued to grow, with new paved roads going to Geneva and Chuluota and the opening of the Citizens Bank of Oviedo in 1948. In 1949, Oviedo began receing once-a-day bus serviece to Orlando from Greyhound Lines. By 1950, Oviedo was the second largest town in Seminole County, following Sanford. The Oviedo City Hall was built that same year and in 1968, Florida Technological University (present-day University of Central Florida) opened, bringing new residents to the area.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2494" target="_blank">RICHES Podcast Documentaries, Episode 41: Oviedo, with Dr. Richard Adicks</a>." RICHES of Central Florida. https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2494.
Robison, Jim. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/796757419" target="_blank"><em>Around Oviedo</em></a>. 2012.
Adicks, Richard, and Donna M. Neely. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5890131" target="_blank"><em>Oviedo, Biography of a Town</em></a>. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1979.
"<a href="http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68" target="_blank">History</a>." City of Oviedo, Florida. http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68.
"Oviedo Began as Solaria's Wharf." <em>The Oviedo Heritage</em>, June 30, 1977.
Contributor
Cepero, Laura Lynn
Cepero, Nancy Lynn
Cepero, Ray
Coverage
Oviedo, Florida
Has Part
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/147" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society Collection</a>, Oviedo Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Moving Image
A series of visual representations that, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III
Alternative Title
Oral History, Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III
Subject
Oviedo (Fla.)
Citrus--Florida
Citrus fruit industry--Florida
Packing-houses--United States
Agriculture--Florida
Celery
Description
An oral history interview of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III, a descendant of the Wheeler and Lawton families in Oviedo. The interview was conducted by Desta Lee Horner at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, on June 18th, 2019. Some of the topics covered include the family history of the Lawtons and Wheelers, the significance of the pine timber industry in Oviedo, the career path of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr., the role of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr. in the incorporation and development of Oviedo, withstanding freezes and destruction of crops and trees, shipping citrus on the railroads and the decline of the citrus industry in Oviedo, working in packing houses, varieties of citrus production in Oviedo, transitioning from citrus to celery production, how packing houses served a social function, building a railroad on muck land and dealing with derailed trains, how Seminole County was formed and the consequences of its formation, George Kelsey and enforcing the law in a small town, eccentric characters and interesting stories from Oviedo, how churches influenced life in Oviedo, how the Oviedo lights became an urban legend, how being a bedroom community shaped the City of Oviedo, how the Oviedo Fire Department evolved, his experience with race relations in Oviedo, how Alafaya Trail became a paved road, deciding on where to build Florida Technological University, and his closing remarks.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 The family history of the Lawtons and Wheelers <br />0:02:58 The significance of the pine timber industry in Oviedo <br />0:03:38 The career path of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr. <br />0:07:30 The role of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr. in the incorporation and development of Oviedo <br />0:09:32 Withstanding freezes and destruction of crops and trees <br />0:10:24 Shipping citrus on the railroads and the decline of the citrus industry in Oviedo <br />0:14:30 Working in packing houses <br />0:16:35 Varieties of citrus production in Oviedo <br />0:18:11 Transitioning from citrus to celery production <br />0:25:25 How packing houses served a social function <br />0:26:35 Building a railroad on muck land and dealing with derailed trains <br />0:30:51 How Seminole County was formed and the consequences of its formation <br />0:39:08 George Kelsey and enforcing the law in a small town <br />0:40:41 Eccentric characters and interesting stories from Oviedo <br />0:43:32 How churches influenced life in Oviedo <br />0:45:17 How the Oviedo lights became an urban legend <br />0:47:10 How being a bedroom community shaped the City of Oviedo <br />0:48:29 How the Oviedo Fire Department evolved <br />0:50:46 How being a bedroom community shaped the City of Oviedo (continued) <br />0:53:14 His experience with race relations in Oviedo <br />0:57:25 How Alafaya Trail became a paved road <br />0:59:19 Deciding on where to build Florida Technological University <br />1:01:28 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III. Interview conducted by Desta Lee Horner in Orlando, Florida, on June 18, 2019.
Type
Moving Image
Source
Wheeler III, Benjamin Franklin. Interviewed by Desta Lee Horner, June 18, 2019. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>, Orlando, Florida.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/collections/show/128" target="_blank">Oviedo Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES.
Has Format
Digital transcript of original 1-hour, 3-minute, and 31-seconds oral history: Wheeler III, Benjamin Franklin. Interviewed by Desta Lee Horner. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES</a>, Orlando, Florida.
Coverage
Five Points Operations Complex, Sanford, Florida
Florida Technological University, Orlando, Florida
Holler Chevrolet, Winter Park, Florida
Memorial Building, Oviedo, Florida
Nelson and Company Packing Plant, Oviedo, Florida
Oviedo, Florida
Oviedo Depot, Oviedo, Florida
Oviedo Drug and Meat World, Oviedo, Florida
Creator
Wheeler, Benjamin Franklin III
Horner, Desta
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES</a>
Date Created
2019-06-18
Date Copyrighted
2019-06-18
Format
video/mp4
application/pdf
Extent
1.83 GB
281 KB
Medium
1-hour, 3-minute, and 31-seconds audio recording
31-page digital transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Civics/Government Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III and Desta Lee Horner and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES</a>.
Rights Holder
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES</a>
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Curator
Cravero, Geoffrey
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
Robison, Jim. "<a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1991-01-27-9101260420-story.html" target="_blank">War Forced Lawtons to Leave Georgia Children's Families Played Big Role in Building Town</a>." <em>Orlando Sentinel</em>, January 27, 1991. Accessed July 23, 2019. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1991-01-27-9101260420-story.html.
"<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>." Oviedo Historical Society, Inc. http://oviedohs.com/.
Adicks, Richard, and Donna M. Neely. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/oviedo-biography-of-a-town/oclc/5890131" target="_blank"><em>Oviedo, Biography of a Town</em></a>. S.l: s.n.], 1979.
Robison, Jim. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/collections/show/147" target="_blank"><em>Around Oviedo</em></a>. 2012.
Click to View (Movie, Podcast, or Website)
<a href="https://youtu.be/J4b2TL_y3oM">Oral Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin Wheeler III</a>
Transcript
Horner
My name is Desta Horner from the Oviedo Historical Society and I’m here with Ben Wheeler, whose family had been residents in Oviedo for many generations. We’re gonna talk about the history of Oviedo. This interview is being conducted at the University of Central Florida in collaboration with the RICHES program.
Ben Wheeler’s been around a long time. Tell me something about you and your family.
Wheeler
Well, my earliest ancestor t—to come here was a Civil War widow named Narcissa Melissa Lawton . She had several children, one of which married my great-grandfather, John Thomas Wheeler. Um, they moved to Dade City and he had a stroke. He was a sawmill man. And he had a stroke and died. So R. W. Lawton, who would have been Narcissa’s brother, sent one of the Aulins—I think it was Theodore —to Dade City with a two-wheel oxcart. And loaded them up, whatever little bit they had, which probably wasn’t much, and brought ‘em back to Oviedo [sniffs].
Horner
Who married Wheeler in order to get the Wheeler in your name? One of the Lawtons married a Wheeler?
Wheeler
Yes. Clara Isabelle Lawton married John Thomas . Um, she was—no. She wasn’t a widow. Narcissa was a widow.
Horner
Mhmm.
Wheeler
And this was her daughter.
Horner
So she married a Wheeler.
Wheeler
Yes.
Horner
And that—was that Ben Wheeler I? The Ben Wheeler?
Wheeler
His name was Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr.
Horner
How many more Benjamin Franklin Wheelers are there?
Wheeler
Two more.
Horner
Two [laughs].
Wheeler
My father and me.
Horner
Oh. Okay. So the, uh—so the Whee—how did the Wheelers get here? I mean, the Lawtons got here after the Civil War. Where did B.F. Wheeler, Sr. come from?
Wheeler
W—w—well, John Thomas, who was B.F., Sr.’s father,…
Horner
Ah.
Wheeler
…came here after the Civil War. And he claimed a homestead and sawed all the timber off of it. And once the timber was gone, he let it grow back. And that’s when he moved to Dade City[, Florida].
Horner
Well, the timber was always a big—particularly pine timber…
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
…was always important in Oviedo. What did they do with the pine—with the pine? Cut it up? Saw it up? What do you do?
Wheeler
It was used mostly for lumber. The first thing they did was chip it for turpentine. And once the trees had g—given up all their turpentine, then they would cut ‘em and make lumber out of ‘em.
Horner
Were there a lot of sawmills? I read one place where there were five sawmills in the area. I…
Wheeler
I couldn’t swear to the number, but there were several.
Horner
In order to slice those into planks for…
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
…houses.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
Kay. Well, Wheeler set up a business. Who did he set up a business with? What—what business did he get into?
Wheeler
Well, his father died when he was 11. And he had a younger brother and a mother to support. And R.W. Lawton brought him back here. And he just took any kind of work he could get [clears throat]. One of the things he said he did was hoe orange trees. There was a big grove out there where Winter Springs High School is now. And he said he would walk out there, hoe trees all day and walk back for a penny a piece.
And there was a—the Coast Line—the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad had a—a depot agent here named Mr. Crutchfield. And he and my grandad took a shine to each other. And he let him hang around the depot. And he taught him Morse code. Let him help sweeping[sic] and whatever needed to be doing[sic]. And my grandfather ended up being the depot agent when Mr. Crutchfield retired.
Well, as depot agent, he made a princely sum of $15 a month, which r—really—a lot of people couldn’t even get a job. But he got that. And that’s when he endeavored to buy the property on—south of Lake Jesup, where the big brick house is.
Horner
Where the Evans-Wheeler house …
Wheeler
Right. And he obliged to pay $5 a month on a mortgage. Well, he said there were a half a dozen old tangerine trees on the place. And started taking care of ‘em. And about the second year he was attending to ‘em, they yielded six boxes—which, a box is two bushels—of tangerines. And he took ‘em down to Nelson Brothers Packing House and sold ‘em and got $5 a box for ‘em. Now, that’s like six months’ worth of mortgage payments. And he said that got his attention. And as time went by, um, Mr. Fred Nelson wanted to get out. And so, my grandfather bought his portion of Nelson Brothers. And later, Mr. Steen Nelson wanted to get out. So he bought his portion and then he named it Nelson and Company.
Horner
But, actually, it was Wheeler who owned it. Why didn’t he change the name to Wheeler?
Wheeler
Because the brands they had were already established. And he didn’t want to start over.
Horner
So everybody up North that this was—the fruit was shipped to…
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
…knew that name: Nelson.
Wheeler
The brand name was White Rose.
Horner
When there was a White Rose label…
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
…you knew it came from a good place [laughs]. W—well, what business did your—your grandfather get into if he owned a—the citrus packing house, Nelson and Son—and Company? What else did he do?
Wheeler
He was a real forward-thinking man. And he saw opportunity where a lot of people didn’t. He, um—he was instrumental in getting Oviedo incorporated as a city. It was one square mile.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
But the relations with Sanford as the county seat were such that he didn’t foresee Oviedo getting a fair shake out of the county. And so, he got it—got Oviedo incorporated.
He was also on the county commission. He, um, was the driving force behind the county buying what’s now called the—well, what is it called? The Five Points Complex ? Eh, the original purpose of it was to have, um, indigent home and, um, pauper’s cemetery. That grew into being an old folks home. And they grazed—they raised all their own food.
And then years later, the—the county began moving their facilities out there. Their fire department and courthouse and jail and animal control.
Horner
And sitting in the middle of all of that official administration is still what was the old folks home.
Wheeler
Yes.
Horner
It’s still there.
Wheeler
Yes.
Horner
It’s never demolished.
Wheeler
It’s now part of—it’s now the home of the Museum of Seminole County History.
Horner
One of the things about the citrus industry in Oviedo was the freezes that would happen regularly. How did people withstand the destroyed[sic] of—of their crop? And sometimes even destruction of their trees?
Wheeler
Well, all of ‘em didn’t stand it. Um, there was a disastrous freeze in 1890-f—December of ’94 and February of ’95. And i—it was—it was destructive enough that a lot of people just gave up and moved. Uh, there are stories about houses with dishes still on the table and food in ‘em. And th—they were just left. People just le—just lost heart and left.
B—but the—the few that remained eventually did come back. Uh, my grandfather being one. Mr. Lee—C. S. Lee being another one. And there’s probably some names that I don’t recall now.
Horner
What about the Clonts’s? Were they doing c—uh, cel—um, citrus at that time?
Wheeler
No. The Clonts’s came in 1924.
Horner
Mkay. Mm. Well, when you have this packing—and Wheeler—I mean Nelson and Company packed fruit…
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
…in these crates to send north. Um, how could you send them north? On the steamboats that originally plied the s—Lake Jesup? Or how did they get them up north to New York?
Wheeler
I’m sure at some point they shipped ‘em on a steamboat. But my recollection is the railroads.
Horner
And which railroads did…
Wheeler
Well, there were two that came to—to Lake Charm. That was the Atlantic Coast Line and there was the Seaboard Air Line. And they both had s—spurs that went down into Black Hammock to the celery pre-coolers and washhouses. At one time, there was[sic] two trains a day—one on each railroad out of Oviedo—of nothing but produce [sneezes]. Excuse me.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
There’s a lot of, uh, confusion about the two railroads because they later merged and became Seaboard Coast Line. And then they was[sic] incorporated into the family lines. And then it was Seaboard’s system. And then it became CSX [Corporation], which is what it is now.
Horner
When did those trains stop running through Oviedo? ‘Cause there’s no trains there now.
Wheeler
I’d say in the early eighties.
Horner
Why didn’t we need the trains anymore?
Wheeler
Well, all the produce traffic had gone to trucks. The—the railroads were so contrary about the service that people got tired of it. And, uh, at that time [sniffs], the Northern railroads—the Pennsylvania, the B&O —those lines were having terrific union problems. And our stuff would get to Washington, D.C. and sit.
Horner
So Oviedo was in trouble. They couldn’t get it to market.
Wheeler
Right. Right.
Horner
Well, there was another train in Oviedo. The Dinky Line.
Wheeler
That was the Seaboard.
Horner
Was part of the Seaboard.
Wheeler
Yes.
Horner
Mm.
Wheeler
It had previously been the Florida Central and Peninsular [Railroad] [sniffs]. And the tracks were so raggedy that they were forever and a day getting derailed.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
And the local folks nicknamed it “The Friends Come and Push” [laughs].
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
But a lot of people think the whole system was the Dinky Line and it was not [sniffs].
Horner Just the part that ran from Oviedo to Orlando.
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
Okay. How long did the Dinky Line last? That’s not…
Wheeler
Well, it became part of the…
Horner
Ah.
Wheeler
…CSX. And so they all came up about the same time.
Horner
Okay. Why did our—we don’t do and sell and pack citrus anymore in Oviedo. And it was the big moneymaker. What happened?
Wheeler
Because of the freezes and the greening virus [sniffs].
Horner
Shut down the whole citrus…
Wheeler
Shut…
Horner
…part.
Wheeler
… down the whole thing. Statewide production is down 75% now.
Horner
Um, you were talking about—the trains would go to the packing houses. What—how were the packing houses run? Who did the—you just bring it in from the fields and what do you do with it?
Wheeler
Bring the fruit it from the field?
Horner
Mhmm.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
Just pluck it off the tree?
Wheeler
And picked and—and put in boxes. Those two bushel boxes. Brought to the packing house. And then it was graded. And washed. And cleaned. And packed by size into shipping containers. And those went on the railroad.
Horner
Just loaded them up on the railroad.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
But it—yeah. I heard about that. Putting them in by size.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
If it was a bunch of tangerines, you could fit 120.
Wheeler
So many. Depending on the size. Um, and that was determined by the USDA .
Horner
Mm.
Wheeler
You had to have an inspector all—all the time. And the sizes were [sniffs]—on tangerines they were 80s, 120s, 176s, 210 and 246.
Horner
Wow. They must have been small tangerines.
Wheeler
They were. They were little bitty fellas.
Horner
[laughs]. What if you had a grapefruit?
Wheeler
Now, we didn’t pack many grapefruit. I’m not real up on the s—sizes on them. I know there was a 40. And a 48. I think the other one was 72.
Horner
[Inaudible]—those are the small grapefruit. Get 72.
Wheeler
Oranges—round oranges were 80s, 100s, 120s, um…
Horner
Did that mean that we had different varieties of oranges?
Wheeler
Oh, yeah.
Horner
We do.
Wheeler
Sure.
Horner
What varieties did we make—did we s—grow?
Wheeler
Well, we had tangerines. Dancy tangerines. Later, they developed the Orlando tangelo. And we had a world of them. And then, there was the early oranges like the Hamlin. And the pineapple. And the Parson Brown. And the Valencia. But they all come off at different times [sniffs].
Horner
Well, that’s nice. You don’t have to pack ‘em all at one…
Wheeler
No.
Horner
…time.
Wheeler
No. You can’t pack ‘em all at once.
Horner
[laughs]. Who did the work? Who w—who worked in the packing house? Who picked the—the fruit?
Wheeler
Well, you had picking crews. And you’d have a foreman. And he’d go out and recruit help to pick the fruit. And then, the packing house had their own crew that packed. And graded. And put crates together. And everything that it takes to run a packing house [sniffs].
Horner
Did they live in Oviedo?
Wheeler
Everybody did. Oviedo was never—until this latter day—a bedroom community. If you l—if you lived in Oviedo it was because you worked in Oviedo [sniffs].
Horner
Something to do with agriculture.
Wheeler
Unless you were a merchant or a preacher. Or something like that. Yes.
Horner
Um, but by the mid—beginning of the twentieth century, there was a shift from citrus to celery. Who brought celery to Oviedo? And why was Oviedo such a good place to grow celery?
Wheeler
Well, the first place it came to was Sanford. And at that time, they di—they thought that you couldn’t grow celery on muck. It had to be grown on sand, which that side of Lake Monroe there where Sanford is was ideally suited to that. And then the King Brothers decided they were gonna try it in Oviedo. And we had some sand land, but we had more muck than we did sand. And so when they found out they could grow it on the muck, then—it expanded rapidly then.
And celery was high dollar crop. Number one: it was considered kind of exotic [sniffs]. And number two: once the [Great] Depression hit, there was a tremendous dis—demand for celery because they used it in soup kitchens. It was, you know—it’ll stretch anything that you put it with [sniffs].
Then, about the time the Depression was over, World War II came along. And for reasons that I never understood, celery was not considered, um, necessary for the war effort. And so they didn’t impose any price ceilings on it. And the price of celery just went through the roof during those war years. And people made money just like going to town on a Saturday. Um, in 1929, Seminole County’s celery crop was worth about $15 million. Just the celery crop.
Horner
Well, I’d heard we’d been called the C—Celery Capital of the World for—[laughs].
Wheeler
Well, we were. They didn’t—there was no, uh, Zellwood. There was no everglades. The celery came from Seminole County.
Horner
Well, when you’re growing celery—it sounds like celery is a rather delicate…
Wheeler
It is.
Horner
…crop to grow.
Wheeler
And it takes a lot of water to grow it. And we had ample water supplies. We had the flowing wells, uh, to keep the fields wet. And it did well here.
Horner
And there were plenty of celery fields around Oviedo.
Wheeler
Oh, yeah.
Horner
[laughs]. Well, when you, uh—when you laid—put the celery out—I’ve heard that you have to put the celery out first in small plots. Then you pick ‘em up and replant them.
Wheeler
Yes. You plant seed beds and raise the plants up until they’re big enough to set out. And then you transplant ‘em to a—to the field.
Horner
And let ‘em grow.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
Well, how did they get enough water to handle?
Wheeler
They developed a system of subsurface irrigation, which simply put was r—r—rows of tile under the ground. And the tile was not cemented together. It was just joint to joint. And you’d turn those wells on. And anywhere that there was a joint, water would seep out.
Horner
Sort of like a drip line…
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
…only large and…
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
underground.
Wheeler
And you could raise and lower the water level by, um, a system of stops. At the end of each row you had a—a concrete pocket and holes every so often. And however high you wanted the water to go, you stopped off the holes. And, of course, it would seek its own level.
Horner
Um, [inaudible]. [laughs]. Well, once your celery is grown in this muck land and you decide to harvest it, then what do you do with it?
Wheeler
You harvest it.
Horner
[laughs]. Yep. You’re gonna harvest it. What—but you gotta get it up north. How you gonna do it?
Wheeler
Well, [clears throat]…
Horner
Get to market [laughs].
Wheeler
…for many years, it was cut by hand, uh, and put in boxes. And then it went to this celery washhouse, where it was washed and packed. And, again, there were sizes for it. And then they would put it through a precooler bath to get it cold. And pack it into boxcars [sniffs]. And those boxcars had bunkers. One at each end. And they’d load it down with ice. And then they had a chipper there. And they would blow chipped ice all, eh—all over the top of the celery. They didn’t—they didn’t—a car wouldn’t hold it to the ceiling. There was about three feet from the top tier to the ceiling. And they’d blow that full of that chipped ice. And the cars had fans on ‘em that ran by a belt drive. And that circulated the cool and kept ‘em cool until they could get where they were going [sniffs].
Horner
So the celery was crisp when it got there.
Wheeler
Yeah. It had to be.
Horner
Otherwise, it would be all wilted. If you take it out of the field and you stuff it in a crate and haul it north, it’s gonna be all wilted [inaudible].
Wheeler
Oh, no. No. They didn’t do that.
Horner
[laughs]. You mentioned that there was a, um—a celery packing house out at Lake Charm. And then there was another celery packing house in Oviedo.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
So you had two of them operating at the same time. Is that because there was so much celery?
Wheeler
Yeah. And there was[sic] more than two. Um, there were at least two more in Black Hammock. I’m not sure exactly—there might have been three. But, yes. There was a—well, how many pre-coolers would it take to make a trainload of celery [inaudible] every day?
Horner
I don’t know.
Wheeler
Well…
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
…just imagine.
Horner
How many cars would there be in a train? I mean, do they haul a hundred cars? Or…
Wheeler
It’d depend on the time of the year. But the trains weren’t near as big as they are now. There’d probably be ten or twelve.
Horner
Y—you told me that you used to go over to the packing house yourself when you were a young man.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
What did it—what was it like? And what were the trains like?
Wheeler
Well, the packing house was just about the nerve center of town. If you were looking for somebody, you’d meet ‘em at the packing house. ‘Cause there was always somebody there. And we didn’t have, you know, City Hall and police department. And fire department. And Town House Restaurant. And all of that. You went to the packing house. You’d buy you a soda and sit down and sit down there with a package of Lance crackers and wait for ‘em to come if they wasn’t[sic] already there.
Horner
[laughs]. And the—and so they’d come and load the train. The packers would load the train. Everybody else is sort of sitting and, uh—or—and coming and going. And socializing.
Wheeler
But it was the same when the packing house wasn’t running. It was a meeting place.
Horner
Ah. Well, what about the trains themselves? Were they modern and useful?
Wheeler
Well, they weren’t modern like what we have now. Um, like I said, they had fans and belt drives for refrigeration [sniffs]. The…
Horner
You—you told me that the—the trains were—uh, the t—the tracks on the trains weren’t that good.
Wheeler
They weren’t. One of the big obstacles to settling this area was, um, wet, low ground. And the tracks—if you see the route of either one of those railroads, they snake like this. Because they go from one high spot to the next to stay out of that muck. And they put the ties down on the bare sand. They didn’t have any ballast or anything. And, uh, the rail was light [sniffs]. So the trains were slow. They did often times get off the ground—get on the ground. But that’s all there was.
Horner
Well, when the trains would get on the ground or derail like that, what do you do? I mean, everything stops [laughs]?
Wheeler
Until they get it back on the rail. Back then, they didn’t have cranes. And, uh, that’s—railroad had some wreckers, but they were too heavy to come out there on that light track. So it was a matter of a gang of big, strong men. And jacks. And wooden blocks to jack that wheel up. And then the locomotive would pull it just enough to get it guided back over on the track [sniffs].
Horner
So the boxcars had to be lifted up, so to speak.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
And then placed back on the track.
Wheeler
Yeah. And oftentimes there would be, um, places that were missing spikes and things like that. They’d have to nail it back down so it wouldn’t roll again. It wasn’t—it was a case of the rails rolling over—is what derailed ‘em.
Horner
No wonder the trains stopped coming [laughs].
Wheeler
Well, that’s a—that is an ironic story. From the time the rails were laid in the 1880s until about 1980, those rails were the same rails that they put down originally. And rail is measured by the weight of a three-foot section. And those light rails were—some of ‘em were sixty pounds and some of ‘em were seventy pounds for three feet. And after all that time, they decided to re-lay the rails. And they put hundred-pound rail all the way from Sanford to Oviedo.
Now, the Seaboard had done theirs earlier. But this was the—the Atlantic Coast Line. And we found out later the government gave ‘em a grant to upgrade this line. And then like two or three years later, they got approval to abandon it. And they took all that up. And took it and moved it. Used it somewhere else [laughs].
Horner
[laughs]. So the whole tra—the whole tra—rail line from Oviedo to Sanford…
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
…was torn up.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
[inaudible]. Um, when we talk about Oviedo and we talk about Seminole County, neither of them used to exist. You were mentioning, uh, that your—was it your grandfather who helped get Oviedo…
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
…incorporated as a town?
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
Where did Seminole County come from? ‘Cause it wasn’t originally Seminole County.
Wheeler
Well, you have to understand that because of the citrus and the celery and the other farming, Sanford swung a pretty big stick at that time. And they had tried [clears throat] two different times with a referendum to move the county seat from Orlando to Sanford. And failed. And Sanford—the people in Sanford thought that world emanated from Sanford. They were conceited and, um—I don’t know what else to call it. They…
Horner
Arro…
Wheeler
…thought…
Horner
… —arrogant.
Wheeler
They thought—yeah. Arrogant. And Sanford was supposed to be it. And it was it, as long as the things were coming by the steamboat. ‘Cause that was as far as they could come. But when the railroads came, that changed. And then along came Colonel Henry Sanford . And he was determined he was gonna make Sanford something.
And in 18—about 1875, there was an infamous murder trial in Orange County that was coming up between the carpet baggers and the locals. The carpet baggers had imposed a head tax on cattle. And this is right after the Civil War, now. And [clears throat], of course, a carpet bagger was in power. They had—they were the sheriff and done all of that. And he sent out some men to the outlying areas to collect that cattle tax. Well, they took the sheriff, tied him to an old bottom plow and dropped him in Lake, uh, Kissimmee.
Horner
So the sheriff’s now dead [inaudible].
Wheeler
Sheriff’s dead. And there’s this murder trial coming up of who supposedly did that. And all of a sudden, the courthouse burned down.
Horner
Now is this the courthouse in Sanford or the courthouse in…
Wheeler
No. It was…
Horner
…Orlando?
Wheeler
…Orlando. There was no courthouse in Sanford.
Horner
Oh. But now it’s burned down.
Wheeler
And it burned down on the eve of this trial. Well, whatever evidence they had, of course, was gone with it.
So the question arose as to building a new courthouse. And Henry Sanford went to Orlando to the Board of County Commissioners and proposed that, uh, the courthouse be built in Sanford, inferring that that’s where it should have been all the time. And he would give the land for the courthouse. Provided, of course, it was built in Sanford. Well, Mr. Jacob Summerlin , who was a leading citizen there, stood up and said, “Well, people are used to doing business in Orlando. And I think they ought to continue to do business in Orlando. And I’m gonna loan the county $10,000 to build a courthouse. And they can pay me back or not.” Well, of course, that dashed the hopes of—who wouldn’t turn—who wouldn’t, in that day and time, turn down that kind of money for a courthouse?
Well, that was the second time—no. That was the third time they had been thwarted. There were two referendums before that that didn’t garner enough support. So the courthouse was built in Orlando. And, not to be outdone, they formed—Sanford formed a Divide the County committee. And there were six or eight of the real prominent citizens in Sanford that spearheaded it. And they elected Forrest Lake as the, um, Representative for Orange County.
Horner
To the State Legislature.
Wheeler
To the State Legislature. And in 1913, he had gathered enough support that he put a bill through to create Seminole County. And according to the f—r—record, it passed way in the middle of the night on a—almost the last day of the session.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
And [clears throat] he rushed it over to the governor for f—signature before anybody could catch on to what was happening. And, uh, that became Seminole County.
Well, Orange County was fit to be tied because it—he was their representative, too. But he didn’t let any of them know [laughs] what he was doing. So that’s how Seminole County got here.
Horner
So we became our own county because we were a piece of Orange [County]. And then we tricked ‘em into letting us have our—into having our own county.
Wheeler
And in the effort to get that done, uh, there was a group of citizens in Oviedo, including a former c—Orange County commissioner, who did not think it was a good idea. And didn’t support it. And when [clears throat] the thing passed, the new commissioner set out to exact retribution from all the outlying areas that didn’t support it.
Horner
Uh, oh.
Wheeler
And…
Horner
[inaudible].
Wheeler
… that’s why we had the kind of roads and schools we had. Because they didn’t get any money.
Horner
So they—they strangled Oviedo…
Wheeler
Yep.
Horner
…in effect…
Wheeler
Yep.
Horner
… from all the county money…
Wheeler
Yep.
Horner
…for improvements.
Wheeler
Oviedo. Chuluota. Geneva.
Horner
They didn’t get any road money.
Wheeler
No.
Horner
No school money.
Wheeler
And that did not change until the Supreme Court got into the segregation issue. And took the funding authority away from the—from the county commission and the school board. And mandated that they had to make a level playing field. And that was in the late sixties.
Horner
Well, Oviedo was a pretty small town well into the seven—the…
Wheeler
Yep.
Horner
… seventies. I mean, 800 people. Maybe 1,000.
Wheeler
Oh.
Horner
Small town.
Wheeler
It was about 2,500.
Horner
By the time we get to late-seventies.
Wheeler
Right. It was one square mile on the map. Um.
Horner
We didn’t even have a police department. Or a fire department.
Wheeler
We had a volunteer fire department. And we had one policeman. And he was also the constable for the unincorporated areas. He was empowered to enforce the law.
Horner
So what we called today a sheriff. He would have been a deputy sheriff for this area.
Wheeler
Probably. Yes.
Horner
But now we don’t use the term co—constable.
Wheeler
No. They’ve outlawed that office.
Horner
Who was the constable? Who was this…
Wheeler
George Kelsey .
Horner
Ah. He’s pretty much of a, uh—a legend in Oviedo.
Wheeler
Yeah. He—he served for a long time. Uh, and he was also the city police.
Horner
And did he do a good job?
Wheeler
He knew what was going on.
Horner
He knew what was happening.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
And everybody’s family. And everybody’s [inaudible]…
Wheeler
Yeah. He had eyes and ears everywhere.
Horner
[laughs]. Um, he was a character. Are there any other important people in Oviedo that ought to be mentioned? Any other eccentric characters?
Wheeler
[sniffs]. Well, there was a few of ‘em that were kind of humorous. But n—none to the extent that George was. Mr. T.L. Lingo had an insurance agency in the back of that, uh, building that they just tore down on Broadway Street. What used to be the drug store. And he would send his bird dog across the street to the post office to get his mail. And they’d tie it up and put it in the dog’s mouth. And he’d bring it back over there to him. And, uh, he’d send a note down to the grocery store in the middle of the block for a pound of steak. Or for hamburger or whatever. And they’d wrap it up and give it to the dog. The dog would bring it right on back there to him.
Horner
Didn’t eat the steak?
Wheeler
No. No.
Horner
Well, you’re a Lawton way back along. What about the Lawton family? You’re related to them. A couple of generations ago.
Wheeler
Yeah. Well, Professor Lawton—T.W. Lawton , for whom the school is named, uh, was the—probably the first person to get a college education in, uh, Oviedo. And he rode the Dinky [Line] back and forth every day to get to school at Rollins [College] [sniffs]. Now, I don’t know whether he bummed or if he bought a ticket but…
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
…that’s how he got there. He became, I think, the second superintendent of schools for the county. And he…
Horner
Yeah. The first elected one. The first one was appointed by the governor…
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
…when we finally became the…
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
…the county. But…
Wheeler
And, uh, he served until about 1953. So it was thirty-some years. When he got ready to retire, somebody figured out that if each child in the county would give a penny, they’d have enough to buy him a new car. And so they all put their pennies in and bought him a brand new Chevrolet sedan when he retired.
Horner
Appreciated gift.
Wheeler
I’m sure.
Horner
Where’d—where did the people in town go to church? ‘Cause I’ve always heard that the churches were very important in Oviedo.
Wheeler
If the churches were behind it, it would happen. Well, [clear throat] there’s two things that a—any little small town has a plethora of. And that’s churches and gas stations. They might not have a grocery store. And they might not have doctor. But they’d have churches and gas stations.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
There was the First Baptist of Oviedo, the First Methodist of Oviedo [sniffs]. And then there was, um [clears throat], Church of God, um…
Horner
And, of course, the black churches [inaudible].
Wheeler
I’m trying to think of the name of the one—oh. Mission Road Baptist Church. Antioch. Fountain Head. Um, there were two more down in Lawtonville, but I can’t think of the names of either one of ‘em. One of ‘em’s still operating. But church was a—a big, uh, factor in what went on in town.
Horner
D—did the Methodists and Baptists cooperate? I mean, they lived—they were…
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
…fairly close together.
Wheeler
Yeah. The early days, they had service every other Sunday. And whatever Sunday it was—that the Methodist Church, everybody went there. Then the next week, they’d go to the Baptist Church.
Horner
[laughs]. [clears throat]. Well, to get on a bit of a lighter side, uh, when it comes around Halloween, we always hear talk about the spooky Oviedo lights.
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
We’re famous for having the spooky Oviedo lights. What were they? Or are they, if they still exist?
Wheeler
There are [clears throat]—they still exist. But the reality of ‘em has been blown way out of proportion. Back then, if you went down there to the bridge on a bright moonlit night, you could see a sparkle in the water. And it was phosphorous. And that became i—i—it was just a curiosity to go and see. And, of course, that bridge is way out beyond anywhere. And the kids’d like to go there.
Um, but then it got to be the Oviedo lights. And if we went to Winter Park or Sanford, we’d hear the kids talking about the Oviedo lights. And, oh, there was this ball of fire coming down the road. And, um, there was somebody hung in the water tower. Um…
Horner
Was that true? Somebody hung in the water tower?
Wheeler
No.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
None of that was…
Horner
None of…
Wheeler
… true.
Horner
…that.
Wheeler
None of that was true. But you couldn’t convince anybody that i—I’d say there was more chemical enhancement…
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
… that went on than anything else.
Horner
[laughs]. Oo. Okay. S—Since you are so knowledgeable—mm—uh, lived in Oviedo and your family lived there, is there anything else that’s unique or special about Oviedo that you remember?
Wheeler
[sniffs] Well, it’s kind of lost this now, since we’re not a bedroom community any more, but there was a community that engulfed everybody. And there were any number of things that were citizen-initiated that we would’ve never had otherwise. The swimming pool for one. The Memorial Building for another. The doctor’s clinic for another. The Woman’s Club started the first garbage collection. The Woman’s Club funded the first, um—I don’t know what you’d call it now. We called it a rescue wagon. You know, a van with oxygen and sh—
Horner
Ah.
Wheeler
First responder kind of thing.
Horner
‘Cause there was[sic] no EMTs…
Wheeler
No.
Horner
…so…
Wheeler
The firemen manned it. Um, you were asking me a while ago about how did you reported[sic] a fire. Well, there was a big whistle up on pole by the firehouse. And you went there and pushed the button. And you could hear it all over town [sniffs]. And, uh, people would come. The men would come and they’d tell ‘em where the fire was. And—and they’d go to it. It usually amounted to saving the house next to the house that was on fire.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
Because a lot of those houses were tarpaper and wood and all. And they just went up like a box of matches.
Horner
Mm. So do you just come up—the old fashioned thing. Do you come up and pump the pump? And spray the water on the house next door?
Wheeler
Well, not quite that primitive.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
Um, in 1947, the City bought a Ford truck. It was the first one they could get after the war. And the young returning veterans built a tank—a water tank on it. And put a pump on it. And that was the first firetruck.
And then, in 1957, the City bought another, uh, commercial-grade firetruck. So we had two. But it wasn’t uncommon at all for a fire whistle to blow and somebody to rush down there who didn’t know where the fire was. And didn’t know how to operate the pump. And they’d get in the firetruck and go dashing off somewhere. Somebody’d have to catch ‘em and bring ‘em back [laughs].
Horner
[laughs]. Eh, they c—they couldn’t pick up the microphone and say…
Wheeler
No.
Horner
…“Dispatch. Where you going?”
Wheeler
No. There wasn’t any of that. Now, George Kelsey did have a radio connected to the sheriff’s department. But that was it.
Horner
[laughs]. Well, I was trying to think if there was anything else I didn’t—it is interesting that Oviedo was so close-knit that they did sw—the swimming pool, the Memorial Building in f—in memoriam to the Second y—World War people. And, uh, the canning m—m—
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
…kitchen.
Wheeler
That was a…
Horner
The community canning kitchen.
Wheeler
…a thing for the war effort. But that Memorial Building and the clinic—both were built with as much donated labor and materials as there was p—probably more than what was purchased [sniffs]. Dudas gave the lumber. Um, Bob Ash was a brick mason. He laid all the block. Joe Leinhart had lumber that he had cut in Black Hammock years ago. He furnished all the w—trim and the woodwork for the inside of the building. He probably put it up, knowing him.
Um, it was a—it was a concerted effort because Dr. Martin had retired. And he had to move to Orlando in order to retire because people wouldn’t quit coming.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
His office was right beside his house up there where the Baptist church is now. And people just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And so finally, he moved. And that was another thing my grandfather was a[sic] instigator in. He called together the leading businessmen in town. And they said, “The only way we’re ever gonna get a doctor is to build a place for him to practice.” And so, the major—mostly the major farmers in the area went together and raised some money. And then set the volunteers to work.
Horner
And they built the clinic.
Wheeler
And they built the clinic.
Horner
You know? ‘Cause the—the farmers at that time would have been the leading lights…
Wheeler
Yeah.
Horner
…of the community.
Wheeler
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Horner
‘Cause they were the ones bringing in the income.
Wheeler
Mhmm.
Horner
How did the African-American community and the white community get along with each other?
Wheeler
[sniffs] I don’t ever remember any—any discord of any kind except for that one incident in high school. And that was quickly put to rest. And we all just got along.
Horner
I heard a story once from a—a man who said that, uh, Benjamin Wheeler bought him a car. ‘Cause he was—he didn’t have the money. And he needed it because he was the crew chief. And he needed to get the guys to work. Do you remember that story?
Wheeler
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was Buster Garrison. And he—he was an entrepreneur. He hauled his crew to the grove. And then he’d put sides on his truck and load it with oranges. And haul ‘em to the juice plant. And, of course, old trucks were always…
Horner
Breaking.
Wheeler
… something wrong with ‘em. And he finally went to my dad and said, “Mr. Frank. I mean I need me a new truck. And I ain’t got no money. And I don’t want you to tell me no [laughs].”
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
And what did—what did Frank Wheeler say?
Horner
He got him a truck.
Wheeler
[laughs].
Horner
I don’t know what their arrangements were. I’m sure he paid some on it. But Buster was a, um, hugely industrious person. To work night and day. Do anything you want him to do. Gladly. And my dad just saw the worth of it. He sent him over to Holler Chevrolet. And I’m sure he called Mr. Holler and said, “Get this man a truck.” That’s the way things worked back then.
Um, years later—years later, I had a mirror get knocked off of my Chevrolet truck. One of the outside mirrors. And I went to the place to get it seen about. And I was in my work clothes. And I had my little dog with me. And the only thing I had for a leash was a piece of hay bailing twine about so long. So I made a leash out of that. And me and her were walking around outside. And the—the service writer said, “Well, I don’t know if we’ve got the part. And I don’t know if we’ve got time to put it on.” And all this, that and the other. I said, "I’ll wait.” ‘Cause this was in Winter Park, now. And there was—I’ll never forget this. There was a salesman. He had rose-colored glasses and a pink ultra-suede coat on.
Wheeler
[laughs].
Horner
And he came out there to smoke a cigarette and took one look at me and my dog and wheeled around and went back inside [laughs].
Wheeler
[laughs].
Horner
And so help me, it wasn’t a minute or two, Mr. Holler came out. And he walked over there to me. And we shook hands and started talking. You know, just passing the time. And all of a sudden, that service writer came out there and said, “Mr. Wheeler, we gon’ get you taken care of [laughs].”
Wheeler
[laughs].
Horner
You looked like you didn’t have two nickels to rub together.
Wheeler
That’s…
Horner
He didn’t…
Wheeler
That’s…
Horner
He didn’t know who he was dealing with.
Wheeler
That’s what they thought.
Horner
[laughs]. And you’re one…
Wheeler
I…
Horner
… one of the most important families in town [laughs].
Wheeler
Can’t judge a book by its cover.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
I guess the one story I would tell again, because it’s so funny to me.
Horner
[clears throat].
Wheeler
Our county commissioner in this district was B.C. Dodd . He lived out there in Goldenrod. And at that time, the commissioner got to say where the road money was spent in his district. Well, I want so and so fixed. Or it’s—you know, whatever. So Mr. Dodd stood up and he said, “I wanna pave that road from the city limits of Oviedo to the county line.” Which is now Alafaya Trail. It was just dirt before that. And the commissioner from Sanford jumped up and says, “I don’t know why you wanna do that.” Said, “Ain’t nobody ever gonna use it.” [laughs].
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
And he says, “You hush, Pope. I didn’t say anything about what you did in your district. And this is what I wanna do.” And how prophetic that decision turned out to be. Because where Mitchell Hammock Road crosses Alafaya was the city limits. And from there on out this way was dirt. Clay.
Horner
And he was the only one that was farsighted enough to see you’re gonna need her. Hm.
Wheeler
That was—that was in the early sixties. We had heard about what was gonna be the new space university, but nothing had actually happened.
Horner
Ah. Yeah. ‘Cause they hadn’t chosen the site yet.
Wheeler
Right.
Horner
Boy. He was taking a gamble.
Wheeler
Yeah. He was.
Horner
Maybe that’s why Dodd Road is named after him.
Wheeler
Well, he was a—he was a prominent figure. And he was huge. He was, uh, like 7 foot something tall. And he wore—they’ve got one of his shoes in the Goldenrod Museum. And it’s—I’m not kidding. It’s like that.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
He was a giant. And, of course, that went along with his demeanor.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
At that time, they were trying to decide where to put FTU . And one of the sites they looked at is where Seminole Community College is. And another site they looked at was there at—across from Lockwood Road and [County Road] 419. And Mr. C.S. Lee offered to give ‘em the land if they’d put it there.
Horner
[laughs].
Wheeler
But Mr. Billy Dial in Orlando, and a few more like that, th—they wasn’t gonna have that. So FTU got put where it is. And as a conciliation prize, we got the Iron Bridge sewer plant and Seminole [State] College. And where they are is no accident.
Horner
Uh huh.
Wheeler
There is still some animosity there.
Horner
So we’re here at UCF. And it’s out of the farsightedness of Mr. Dodd. And…
Wheeler
Well, he…
Horner
…we got a way to get here.
Wheeler
…he played a role in it [sniffs].
Horner
Well, is there anything else that you would like to add about Oviedo? Something that you really appreciate about living in that town. Growing up in that town.
Wheeler
The people. I had so many good friends. And—and a lot of people worked for my dad. And, of course, I got to know them. And, uh, I miss ‘em tremendously. And I miss that sense of community.
Horner
The whole downtown is gone now.
Wheeler
The whole downtown is gone. But what’s really gone is that fellowship. If you needed something that somebody in the community was—that was their forte, you just went to ‘em and said, “You know, I need a well put down.” “I need a survey made.” “I need, you know, whatever it was.” And, uh, they all worked together [sniffs].
I wrote a column for The [Seminole] Voice one time about they all worked together. And I can’t find it anymore. But I named a couple of dozen things that happened that way in Oviedo.
Horner
Somebody needed their fellow man.
Wheeler
Well, we need a clinic. We need a city hall. We need a swimming pool. We need garbage service. There was just a—a lot of things that—and they would have never happened any other way. Because we weren’t going to get any support from the county. And the city didn’t have any money.
Horner
Hm. Yeah. Well, thank you, Ben, for talking to us. And letting us…
Wheeler
My…
Horner
…know…
Wheeler
…pleasure.
Horner
…about Oviedo. And you’re—you’re a fount of knowledge.
Wheeler
I’ll probably go home and say, “Dang. Why didn’t I tell ‘em that?”
Horner
[laughs]. I’m sure you will.
Alafaya Trail
Andrew George Alexander Kelsey
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
Basil Corbett “B.C.” Dodd
bedroom community
Benjamin "Ben" Franklin Wheeler III
Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Wheeler, Jr.
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler
Black Hammock
Buster Garrison
Charles Simeon Lee
citrus industry
Clara Isabelle Lawton
Desta Lee Horner
Dinky Line
Five Points Operations Complex
Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad
Florida Technological University
Forrest Lake
Henry Shelton Sanford
Holler Chevrolet
Iron Bridge Water Pollution Control Facility
Jacob Summerlin
John Thomas Wheeler
King Brothers
Memorial Building
Narcissa Melissa
Nelson and Company Packing Plant
Nelson Brothers Packing House
orlando
Oviedo
Oviedo Depot
Oviedo Drug and Meat World
Oviedo Lights
packing houses
pine timber
Sanford
Seaboard Air Line Railroad
Seminole County
Steen Nelson
T.L. Lingo
Theodore “Judge” Aulin, Sr.
Thomas Willingham Lawton
turpentine
University of Central Florida
Wheeler-Evans House
William Henry “Billy” Dial
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/68de2783eb584748a93b583d1e213e1a.pdf
6bb211a768d0527e7d8fe33ef8bc5857
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oviedo Historical Society Collection
Alternative Title
Oviedo Historical Society Collection
Subject
Oviedo (Fla).
Description
The Oviedo Historical Society Collection encompasses historical artifacts donated for digitization at the Oviedo Historical Society's History Harvest in the Spring semester of 2015.
The Oviedo Historical Society was organized in November 1973 by a group of citizens. The society is a 501(3) non-profit organization. Its purpose is to help preserve the community identity of Oviedo by collecting and disseminating knowledge about local history, serve as a repository for documents and artifacts relating to Oviedo history, promote the preservation and marking of historic sites and buildings in the Oviedo area and foster interest in local, state, national, and world history.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/128" target="_blank">Oviedo Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Oviedo, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>
<a href="http://history.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=304" target="_blank">Dr. Connie L. Lester</a>'s Introduction to Public History course, Spring 2015
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>." Oviedo Historical Society, Inc. http://oviedohs.com/.
Adicks, Richard, and Donna M. Neely. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5890131" target="_blank"><em>Oviedo, Biography of a Town</em></a>. S.l: s.n.], 1979.
Robison, Jim. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/796757419" target="_blank"><em>Around Oviedo</em></a>. 2012.
"<a href="http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68" target="_blank">History</a>." City of Oviedo, Florida. http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68.
"<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/audio/Ep41-Oviedo.mp3" target="_blank">RICHES Podcast Documentaries, Episode 41: Oviedo, with Dr. Richard Adicks</a>." RICHES of Central Florida. http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/audio/Ep41-Oviedo.mp3.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan
Alternative Title
Oral History, Reagan
Subject
Oviedo (Fla.)
Education--Florida
Description
An oral history interview of Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan, conducted by Rebecca Schwandt on April 2, 2015. Born January 27, 1934, Reagan is the granddaughter of Andrew Aulin, Sr. (1843-1918), who is credited with naming Oviedo, Florida. In this oral history, Reagan discusses growing up in Oviedo, attending school at Oviedo High School, the great technological advances that have occurred during her life, segregation and integration, her hopes and aspirations, and her family life. She also tells stories about her grandfather and talks about the history of the Aulin family, as well as the Lawtons and the Wheelers. Finally, Reagan discusses her career as an artist.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction <br />0:00:37 Childhood memories <br />0:03:46 Childhood games and entertainment <br />0:07:29 Friends and pets <br />0:11:46 Siblings and childhood aspirations <br />0:14:27 Favorite books <br />0:17:18 Mary Alice Powell Aulin and sewing <br />0:22:17 Childhood homes <br />0:24:56 RECORDING CUTS OFF <br />0:24:59 Community events <br />0:29:36 Car accident and the local doctor <br />0:35:02 Teachers and discipline <br />0:39:19 School pranks and memories <br />0:42:05 Integration and race relations <br />0:47:30 Graduation <br />0:49:41 College education and first job <br />0:53:26 Husbands and children <br />1:02:35 History of the Aulin family <br />1:09:08 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan. Interview conducted by Rebecca Schwandt at Reagan's home in Lake Mary, Florida, on April 2, 2015.
Type
Moving Image
Source
Reagan, Bettye Jean Aulin. Interviewed by Rebecca Schwandt, April 2, 2015. Audio/video record available. Oviedo History Harvest, <a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
Requires
<a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank"> Adobe Flash Player</a>
<a href="http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp" target="_blank"> Java</a>
<a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/147" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society Collection</a>, Oviedo Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Format
28-page digital transcript of original 1-hour, 14-minute and 19-second oral history: Reagan, Bettye Jean Aulin. Interviewed by Rebecca Schwandt, April 2, 2015. Audio/video record available. Oviedo History Harvest, <a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
Coverage
Oviedo, Florida
Sanford, Florida
Lake Mary, Florida
Creator
Reagan, Bettye Jean Aulin
Schwandt, Rebecca
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Date Created
2015-04-02
Date Modified
2016-01-20
Date Copyrighted
2015-04-02
Format
video/mp4
application/pdf
Extent
482 MB
270 KB
Medium
1-hour, 14-minute and 19-second audio/video recording
28-page digital transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Julia Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan and Rebecca Schwandt, and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Rights Holder
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
External Reference
"<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/6207" target="_blank">Joseph Lawton, October 18, 1753 - March 1815</a>." RICHES of Central Florida. https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/6207.
"<a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=69149825" target="_blank">Andrew Aulin</a>." Find A Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=69149825.
"<a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1993-01-13/news/9301130107_1_oviedo-sanford-grandchildren" target="_blank">MARY ALICE AULIN, 83, Myrtle Avenue, Oviedo, died Tuesday...</a>" <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, January 13, 1993. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1993-01-13/news/9301130107_1_oviedo-sanford-grandchildren.
Adicks, Richard, and Donna M. Neely. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5890131" target="_blank"><em>Oviedo, Biography of a Town</em></a>. S.l: s.n.], 1979.
Click to View (Movie, Podcast, or Website)
<a href="https://youtu.be/6kRa494ENww" target="_blank">Oral History of Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan</a>
Transcript
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>This is an oral history of Bettye [Jean Aulin] Reagan. The interview is conducted by Rebecca Schwandt at Bettye Reagan’s home in Oviedo, er—Lake Mary, Florida…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>On April 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2015. Could you please state your full name and birth date for the record?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Okay, Bettye Jean Reagan. Uh, January 27<sup>th</sup>, 1934. Uh, born actually in Sanford in the hospital, which I was the first one in my family to be born in the hospital. Everybody else had been born at home, [<em>laughs</em>] which was in Oviedo, and, um, that’s where I was raised.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And what is one of your earliest childhood memories?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>My earliest childhood memories was[sic]—we lived, uh—I don’t know the name of the road. It goes, uh—it goes beside the Lawton House—where the Lawton House, uh—there’s one that goes towards Winter Park and the other one that comes beside it. We lived down that road, across from where the [Oviedo High] School was. That was in a big ol’ two story house there, and one—I guess I’ll never forget this. When I was—we moved out of that house when I was six years old, but, uh, one day my little brother<a title="">[1]</a> and I decided to go for a walk out—and you went through the back—we had a—a garden and we had an orange grove. If you kep’ on goin’, there was a great big ditch there, you walked over, which was scary. We could go all the way to where the cemetery is today. It was there then, through the woods, and we decided we just go for—and we went, which we—unheard of. Today, it would be terrible they would have called the police [<em>laughs</em>], but—and we’re out there wandering around in—in the cemetery, and this lady, who knew who we were, came and got us and took us back home, and another time, we went down there, and—and I was gonna fix it so my brother, who’s two years younger than I am—he had to be—if I was six he had to be four—and I made him a fishing pole out of a stick, a piece of string, and I don’t know how I did it, but I took a straight pin and bent it. We got some bread and we tied that string on there, and we went down there to that ditch that we had to cross over, which is really what it was, but it had water in it—to fish, and my little brother fell in head first, and his—there—and his feet are sticking up and I pulled him out [<em>laughs</em>]. He’s covered with mud [<em>laughs</em>], but that was a sca—I used to have nightmares after that about that incident.</p>
<p>It scared me so bad, and another time, at that same area, where my daddy<a title="">[2]</a> had planted all the strawberries, I took the bucket one day and I picked every strawberry in the patch, and they were all green, so we didn’t have strawberries that year [<em>laughs</em>]. That’s[sic] my first memories [<em>laughs</em>], but then, I swear I started school in first grade, and I got to go to school a year early. I went when I was five. My birthday was in January, but you were—but—and you weren’t supposed to go to school, but, uh, a man from Oviedo, Mr.—Mr. Gore, was a—on the school board, and, uh, his son was Frank—Frankie D. Gore, and he’s a school—well, I guess he’s not now, but he was a school teacher—grew up to be a school teacher. He got to go—his birthday was the same as mine was. So my Mama<a title="">[3]</a> said, “Well, if you[sic] can go to school—well, if he can go, you can go.” So they had to let me go. So I got to go to school when I was five and get out early, and those are some of the first things I remember [<em>sniffs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And what kind of games did you play as a young child?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>We, you know—we made up our games. We did things—I guess we couldn’t say we—we, uh—I remember that, uh, we took the—we—We lived in another—we moved two more times, and we lived up where the—we were surrounded by orange groves, and every year, when they got ready to pick the oranges, they would come out and they would dump all the orange crates. If you know what an orange—old-fashioned orange box looks—it’s got a division in the middle and they would stack them, and we would make a great fort. Me and my brother would get out there and make this great big fort and, uh, play in that.</p>
<p>Then, we would also fix a, uh—a little thing in the back yard and play storekeeper, and in those days, you—what you did with you garbage—you didn’t have garbage collection. You dug a great big hole in your backyard somewhere. you put all the—your trash that you had and we put it in the hole and then—and you tried to burn it, if you could, and then you’d fill the hole in, and then you dig another hole, but we would get anything that came in a carton, a box, and we would save all those and we would put them up on the table, and we would play like we had a store, and y—anybody came to the store, and we would pull the—we got in trouble for this—we pulled the leaves off the orange tree. That was our money. We made out like that was dollars, and we would do that, and we would, uh, play cops and robbers, and we—we would get a little saw, which my daddy had—we weren’t s’posed to use, and saw out little—just a little thing that look like a—a pistol, but of course, it wasn’t. It was just a little thing, and we would run around and chase each other, and then another time, we decided we would go find Indian mound[sic]. We had a wild imagination, I guess, and we went out with a shovel, and we found a little mound way away from the house. I don’t know how we got away with all that, and we would dig and dig. ‘Course, we never found anything [<em>laughs</em>], but we—but we spent a lot of time doing that sort of thing.</p>
<p>We—you just came up with your own ideas, you know, but as far as havin’ a lot of toys, we didn’t, but we—we made, uh, treehouses. We’d climb a tree, and put boards up on it and climb up, and we didn’t really have a house, but we would put a couple boards up there—make out like we did. Or we would do another thing. We would cut off palmetto[sic]—big, uh, palmetto[sic] palms, you know, and we would put them around some trees, and we would have a little house, and that’s the kinda thing we did growin’ up, but as far as havin’ a lot of toys or anything, we didn’t. We didn’t do that. Not like today, and of course, there was no TV, of course, and you listened to the radio at night. That’s the only time you listen to it.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Do you remember any radio shows?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yes, uh, <em>The Lone Ranger</em>. Every—we always listened to <em>The Lone Ranger</em>, and, uh, something else came on. Um, cowboy show came on—another one. I can’t think of the name of that one. Trigger—who was<a title="">[4]</a>—he had the horse named Trigger? Uh, anyway, we—we did listen to those kind of sh—and then, uh, <em>Grand Ole Opry </em>came on Every Saturday night. We listened to that, uh, but—and everybody just sat around the radio.it was quiet and you listened to it.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Who were your childhood friends?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, some of the—the same people that I started out with in the first grade. I—they were still with me when I graduated [<em>laughs</em>], and I don’t know how many people were in the first grade, becau—but probably 20 or so, and, uh, when I graduated there were nine, but most of ‘em, I had started out with in the first grade, and, uh, some—a couple of ‘em lived close to me, and we would go to each other’s house n’ play, but—or, actually, a lot of times, we went to the school ground and play. They have swing sets there, and, uh, they had a field to play baseball and all that, and—and then, another thing, we had a cow, and—to get—for milk—and every day, my daddy would take that cow with a chain on it and go across the road to the school grounds [<em>laughs</em>], which had some woods on it—a little bit of woods, and he would stake the cow out there on—and the cow would eat the grass on the school ground, and then we’d bring it in every night, and that was—nobody thought there was anything wrong with that. That was just what you did, and it’s crazy. Things change so much, but today, you couldn’t think of doin’ something like that [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p>Another thing that we would do when we got a little bit older, um—where the school is, the railroad track ran right behind the school, and we would be watchin’ the ball game on Sunday afternoon, which everybody in town went, and there would be s—just a bunch of people get up a game—you know, choose up, and then they would play baseball, and everybody would be there to watch it, and these boys would figure out how to let…</p>
<p>[<em>clock chimes</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Some of the air out of the tires on the car and get it on the railroad track, and they would—we would be sitting her watching the ball game and way out there past the field, there goes the car down the railroad track, and that was the highlight of the thing [<em>laughs</em>]—of the day. I don’t know how they did that. Sometimes, they’d get off and it’d go, “Bump, bump, bump, bump” down there too [<em>laughs</em>]. Oh.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Did you have any other animals besides the milk cow?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh, yeah. Well, we had, uh—we had a dog. I had two dogs I’ll never forget. Uh, the first one we got—well[?], we—we got this white Spitz, and we had that dog for 14 years. His name was Troubles, and, uh, he—he was, uh, just a lifelong pet, and, uh, then one time, my daddy brought home a little, black puppy. Uh, when he was workin’ with—for Nelson and Company, which was Wheeler’s.<a title="">[5]</a> Uh, he was, uh, a man who checked the fruit. He was a fruit tester, and when they would go to pick oranges in the groves, he had all this equipment and he would, uh—slice the fruit and put the juice in, and he knew how to measure to see how much solid it had, how much sugar it had. They had to do that when they picked the oranges to know what kind of thing it was. Anyway, while he was—was gone one day, somebody gave him a little puppy. He brought it home, and we already had that other dog, and my mother said—and I thought it was my dog. It was my dog. Uh, I called her Black Beauty, ‘cause I had just read that book, <em>Black Beauty</em>, and I had that that dog for a couple weeks. My mother kept sayin’ all the time, “You can’t keep that dog. You can’t keep that dog.” Well, I kept it three or four months, and one day, I came home from school and the dog wasn’t there, and my mother had given it to somebody who was walkin’ by and saw it, and she asked if they wanted that dog. She—we couldn’t have two dogs. She gave my dog away, and I was very, very heartbroken [<em>laughs</em>] about that, but, uh, Anyway, we knew who had it and we used to go down and see the dog all the time, bum, but that was—that was the only pets we ever had was those two dogs and the cow, of course. [inaudible]. That was it.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>How many siblings do you have?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>I had, uh—I had two sisters and two brothers, and I still have one sister and one brother. The others are all passed away.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And how did you get along with your siblings?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /> </strong>Good. Well, there was a big, uh—there was seven years difference between my older—my older sister, <a title="">[6]</a> who’s here, and, uh, I had a—my older sister was 10 years older than me, and then [Alice] Kathryn [Aulin Bunch] was next to her, and then I had a brother<a title="">[7]</a>—was seven years older, and then there was me and my younger brother, who’s two years younger, who still lives in Oviedo, and, uh, so, we were, uh—my sister will be the first to tell you that me and my brother were spoiled, because we were younger, then there was seven years difference, and by the time we came along, we—we didn’t have to do all the work that they had to do, and she says we got by with a lot of stuff, which not true [<em>laughs</em>], but, uh, ‘cause they grew up and they left home. We were still at home, you know, for seven more years, but, uh—and[?] today she lives in so[?] close to me now. She used to live in Orlando most all her life and now she lives here.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What did you want to be when you grew up?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh, I wanted to be, uh, a teacher, and I wanted to teach English and literature, which I loved, and, uh, P.E.,<a title="">[8]</a> and the reason I wanted to teach P.E.—one reason—cause I loved sports and all that. We used to have these girls in our P.E. class, which we would go, eh—different times of the year, you did different things. We had basketball. We actually didn’t have a lot of sports, but we played basketball and softball. That was the only two sports that girls played, and, uh—but those girls—so many of them were la—lazy, and they would just say, “Oh, um, you know, I’m havin’ my period and I can’t play,” and so they’d sit in the gym, you know, and just sit there and not do anything, and that wasn’t true. They[?] just lazy, and I always said, “One day I’ma be a P.E. teacher and nobody’s gonna be sitting in there on the bench, ‘cause I’m gonna give them a trashcan and they’re gonna walk around the school yard and pick up the trash, if they can’t do anything else.” That was my goal, but I didn’t get to do any of those things [<em>laughs</em>], ‘cause I didn’t get to go to college, as much as I wanted to, Uh, but, uh, it all turned out okay anyway, but that’s…</p>
<p>I loved school. I loved school. I would go to school—as soon as I was old enough to be able to do this—the teachers always came to school in those days—two weeks before school, the teachers would be at school gettin’ their classrooms ready, and they always stayed for two weeks after school was out, and I would go to school and find my teacher that I was gonna have, and I would ask her what I would do to help her, and I would stay there, because I just loved going to school, and I was always not happy when school was out every year. I loved school.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What—you mentioned you wanted to be a—a[sic] English teacher. What were some of your favorite books?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh, gee [<em>laughs</em>]. Uh, I remember <em>Heidi</em>, when I was little. <em>Heidi</em>, you know? if you ever read that book, and, uh, then, um—oh, after I got older, I remember books I read, but I can’t think of any right off the—oh, I’ll never forget, I’ma tell you a funny story about this book. We had this little book that somebody gave us on the life of Abraham Lincoln, and it was a child’s book. You know it had pictures of Lincoln and it was written so a child could understand. Well, you know when you get up in the high school, you got to write a book report. You gotta read a book every six weeks—well, we did then—and you gotta bi—write a book report on it and turn it in. Well, we had this book. I didn’t do this, but my brothers did. They got the Abraham Lincoln book, which you could read in 15 minutes if you were an adult, you know, and they would almost copy it word for word and turn that thing in for a book report, and got by with it, but I [<em>laughs</em>]—I always remembered that, but I used to, uh, uh—we had—in Oviedo, actually, they had, uh—we had a drugstore, which was the place. The number one place in Oviedo was the drugstore. They also had a section down there where they had like library books—new books that were written today, you know—modern books, and you could go check ‘em out, and, uh, I would go down there and check books out there, and I had a teacher, um, uh, her name was Miss Walker, and, uh, she got married later her name was Ms. Anderson, but she told me about these books and she would recommend a book for me to read, and I would go down to the drugstore and check it out and read those books, and then after I got married and had kids, eh, hardly had time to read, but every day when they took a nap after lunch, I would—I was a member of a book club and I would my—I’m still reading today.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Uh, in an earlier conversation you mentioned your mother was a seamstress.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Can you elaborate on some of the things she did[?]?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yes. Um, my mother, uh, was—oh, she—she packed oranges for 25 years for Nelson and Company. I remember that well, ‘cause we would go down there sometimes after s—we’d have to go down there and see her about something, but, um—but she also was a seamstress, and she learned to do this on her own. My mother came to Oviedo on the train from Sanford. She only got to go to school to the eighth grade, and she loved school. That was another thing. She lived over here in Sanford and she came out there to operate the telephone service—the—be the telephone operator, and, uh, that’s where she met my father, but, um, I don’t know when or how she learned to sew, because I know that she was young, uh—maybe 16, 17 years old then, when she came out there, and, uh, I never heard about her mother sewing so I—I—I didn’t ever know how she ever learned, but she was very good. She made all our clothes. Never had a bought dress. Never had anything bought, until one day she did get me a big coat. I have a picture. It’s in one of my books. That—it was a—really a store-bought coat. It looked like fur. It wasn’t, but it was—I—I—there’s a picture of me in that book in school, standing there in that big old coat [<em>laughs</em>], but she made, uh—she made all my clothes, and, uh—and my—my sister’s too, and she made—she sewed for other people. They would come to the house, uh, she made clothes for them too, but she made me a—something I’ll never forget—she made me a red coat. It was like a red, wool coat—bright red—and in the inside was satin lines. It was full-length, you know, like a—I was only about 10 years old, and I thought that was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I wanted to wear it to school, but she said, “No, that was to wear to church,” you know, that was special. I finally remember I got to wear it to school, but I never forgot that, and to this day, not too long ago, I learned a song that Dolly Parton wrote, my—<em>Coat of Many Colors</em>. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard—are familiar with that. Anyway, that always made me—we weren’t that hard up. It wasn’t made out of rags, like her coat was, but every time I heard that song, I think about my red coat that my mother made me.</p>
<p>So that, uh, and she sewed everything, and then what happened years later—I always said—every night my mother would sit there by the sewing machine and sew, and we’d be sittin’ listenin’ to the radio, and she would sew ‘til late, and I said, “There’s one thing I’m never gonna to do. I am never gonna sew,” ‘cause I thought it was just too much work. Well, got married. my husband gives me a sewing machine for Christmas, plus lessons over in Orlando, so I’d go take lessons, and so I did that, and low ‘n’ behold, I—liked it, and I can—I made my kid’s clothes, and I have pictures—Easter pictures where everybody’s—even my little boys’ coats. we all had dresses that—just alike, and we all had hats and gloves, and we would go to church, and—I mean, some of them are little kids, and we got movies of all this, and we would go to church, and then—especially on Easter and Mother’s Day, we went to Morrison’s Cafeteria after church, the only time we ever went out to eat, and we would go there, and then we would go to Lake Eola in Orlando to the Easter parade, and go up on the platform at—at Lake Eola, and walk across there with our Easter outfits on, and the last thing I made was, uh,—my daughter—one of my daughters got married, and I made her, uh, all the dresses for that, and it was like a Southern Belle-type thing, and the wedding was here at our yard, and, uh, I made all the dresses for that, but I haven’t made—and I made all my kids little—they had a band, uh, that they played. They had guitars and all that, and we had—all of them played, but the—the four younger ones were playing in a little group that started out doin’ it for school, and it got—they got good, and we played it, eh, for Doctor’s Day, for Fourth of July. So I made them outfits alike, you know, vest-like things to wear for that, and that—I really enjoyed being able to do all that. It was neat [<em>taps on table</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Um, in an earlier conversation, you mention several different houses you moved to…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Throughout the years. Uh, could you describe them?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yes, the first house we lived in, it was called “The West House,” ‘cause Mrs. West owned it—was the one—was across from the school, and then we moved—I’ll never forget that, because we didn’t have electricity at that house. We had lanterns, like oil lanterns, and, uh, Then I remember when we moved, and my mother was so excited, because that—the house we moved in is still there, and, uh, it’s—you go by the Lawton House and go on down, through that red light, up the hill, and it—it’s on the left. It sits up on top that hill there still. It’s funny—it doesn’t look near as big as it did, when I was growin’ up. Everything looks smaller, but, uh, we moved in that house, and—electricity, running water. We had—the house we lived in had a pump outside. You pumped the water and brought it in—before. Now, we had water. You turned the faucet on. You could take a bath in the bathtub. That was a big thing for us. That was our first time to do that, and, uh, so that was—we really liked that house, and my mother wanted to buy it. We didn’t—we were renting, and, uh, the lady sold it to somebody else, so we didn’t get to buy it. So we—we had to move.</p>
<p>So we moved down back into town into an area that—the house is not there today, because it’s the parking lot of First Baptist Church [of Oviedo]—where the house was. It was real small, but then there were only—all my brothers and sisters—the older ones—Just me and my little brother were still home, so it was okay, ‘cause we just needed—and we actually slept on this sleeping porch—bunk beds. I slept on top and he slept on bottom, and then a lil’ later, when I got a little older, they moved me into the dining room, and they opened the couch up every night and slept on it [<em>laughs</em>], but, uh, that’s where we lived, until I left home, and—and then after my mother got sick, uh—she had a, um, Parkinson’s [Disease].</p>
<p>[<em>clock chimes</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>And she stayed there as long as she could, and, uh—very independent person—very. Always wanted to take care of everything herself. Never wanted any charity from anybody—very independent, and, uh, so, um, she was nur—in the nursing home in Orlando—in Winter Park, and—and then eventually, she ran out of money, and she had to stay there, ‘cause she cou—and she still had her house, and, uh, she—she took the money, and sold the house, and used it to pay her hospital bill until.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Were there any community events that you would attend regularly?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, actually, very few, um, community events. Most everything centered around either school or church, and, uh, that[sic] was[sic] the activities for—and the other thing though, in the summertime—very important—the swimming pool. Oviedo had a pool. No—Sanford didn’t have one, Longwood didn’t have one, and there weren’t any in people’s homes, in those days. They didn’t do that, but there—Oviedo had a swimming pool—a good, big, record[?]-sized pool, and then they had a baby pool next to it. Everybody came from Sanford and everything out there. My daddy ran the pool, and so, every day in the summertime, we’d go to the pool. Every day, after lunch, you’d go to the pool, and then, also, they had a dance floor and an old juke—juke organ, you know, and, uh, so that was a very popular place people went, in the summertime. You’d go all the time, and, uh, that was very important part of our life in those days. That and—actually, we didn’t do much else.</p>
<p>We rode our bikes a lot. That, we did. Uh, walked everywhere. We didn’t have a car. In fact, most—a lot of people didn’t, uh, and at—at school, there would be three—maybe—kids that drove a car to school, when they got in high school. The other cars belonged to the teachers, and these boys usually were from Slavia, and the reason they got to do that was—as soon as school was out they could go home and start workin’ out in the farms there, but, uh—and you walked everywhere. We walked all the way from my[?] house down to the pool, and the crazy part was, eh, we’d do it at night. I would be 15 years old, and I’d be walkin’ home with another friend, and she lived somewhere else, and she’s goin’ to her house and I’d wa—we’d walk all the way home in the dark at 10 o’clock at night. Nobody thought anything about it.</p>
<p>Today, you wouldn’t do that at all. I wouldn’t think of letting my kids to do that, but in those days, it was not a problem, ’n you didn’t lock your door at our house. If you—Mama did decide to lock the door. The windows that went from the porch into the hou—[<em>laughs</em>] to the living room—all you had to do was raise it up and go in. I mean, anybody could com—there was—no one broke into houses. There was not any of that. You hardly ever heard of anybody stealing anything. That didn’t happen, in those days. You just didn’t have like we have today. Uh, it is so different. Everybody took care of everybody else, uh, but as far as, uh, entertainment and all, we rode our bikes to Lake Charm. That was a big thing. Get on your bike and ride out from Oviedo to Lake Charm—you know where that is—and ride around the lake. That was what we did. My brother would catch fish, and he’d sell it to the people that he went by there homes on his way home, and he stopped and sell his fish stock[?]. Yeah [<em>taps on table</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>As I understand, you attended the First Baptist Church of Oviedo?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan</strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Uh, what’re some memories of services or events?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, they had, uh, uh—like when you were real little, they had what they called Sunbeam Band, When you were little. I remember going to that, Sittin’ in the little red chairs, and learnin’, uh, little songs that I’ve never forgot. I could sing them for you to this day, and they learned them in Sunbeam Band, and then, as you got older, they had a girls’ organizin—organization called GAs—Girls’ Auxiliaries somethin’—and—and that was extra that you—so it gave you something else to go to, and you learned all kinds of scripture verses, and you learned so much, and then you got promoted up to another level, and all of that, and the boys had something called RAs—Royal Ambassadors—and they did that, and, uh, you had, uh, the Christmas program, and, uh, that was always a big thing every year—the Christmas program in our Church, And, you went to Church, uh, every Sunday morning and at—Sunday night, and that was what all the teenagers did.</p>
<p>And then, uh, I’ll never forget this, uh—when—my mother would always say, “Come straight home from church.” This was where we lived, right—we lived next to the church almo—within a block of the church, and this was—I was a senior in high school, and, uh, this particular night, [inaudible] my friend—girlfriend lived right down the street from me, and these two boys ask us if we wanted to go for a ride, and, uh, I didn’t particularly want to go with this guy, but I knew she did, so I was going to help her out, and, um, we said, “Okay,” and I knew I was supposed to go home, but I didn’t. So we got in the car with them and we went from Oviedo out to Slavia. You know where that is? Turned down a little dirt road that’s now right where the, um, nursing home is out there. Now, there’s a dirt road that went down there, and got down there, and this guy’s gonna park, and I said, “Nope.” I said, “I want to go home.” So he was not happy. Meanwhile[?], this other couple’s in the back seat.</p>
<p>So he takes off and tears down the road, and we get to the hard road—the road that goes to Winter Park today, and he instead—he goin’ too fast, and he turns and rolls the car. Rolled it over two or three times. I went through the windshield, landed on the—on the railroad track. The railroad track went by there, and the car—I looked and I was alright. The car is upside down, the wheels are still goin’ around [<em>laughs</em>], the lights are on. We had a friend that lived right down the road from there. They heard it, and they came up, and, uh—but in the meantime, a car with a lady in it from Oviedo came drivin' by. She saw the accident, and anyway, it scared them, because they didn’t know where—I wasn’t in the car. They thought maybe I was under the car, but I wasn’t, but the—I di—I lost my shoe—one of my shoes. Couldn’t find it, but anyway, this lady knew me, knew my parents, and she said, “I’ll take you home,” and this was about 10 ‘o clock at night.</p>
<p>So I had to go home, and go in there and wake up my parents. They were already sleepin’—with one—the whole thing that was bothering me was the fact that I lost my shoe—couldn’t find it [<em>laughs</em>], ‘cause I didn’t have but one pair of loafers, you know, and I had to wear ‘em to school the next day. <em>What am I gonna wear to school? </em>Anyway, I had to tell her we—that had[?]—that happened, and I’ll never forget. It Totaled the car. Totaled it—messed it all up, and the—the guy who was driving—his—nobody got hurt really, luckily. I did have to go in a cou—I got dizzy in a couple days and I had to go over and get x-rayed, and I had a slight concussion, but that was never any more to that, and, uh—but anyway, I felt sorry for the boy that was driving the car, because his mother was pregnant, and they were—she had to have that car to go to the doctor in Sanford. So he was in big trouble. That was a memory I remember[?] [<em>laughs</em>] well. Anyway…</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>In a prior conversation, you mentioned the town’s doctor. Could you tell me any stories you have of him?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>The town doctor? Dr. Martin, yes. Dr. Martin was the town—and he did everything. He pulled teeth, and, you know, anybody got anything wrong with them. What you hardly ever—I—I don’t remember going to him, uh, eh, but just one time. um, my mother—I came—came in from somewhere, one time, and my daddy was washing dishes, and that was unheard of, ‘cause I had never seen him wash a dish in my life, or do anything in the kitchen, and he was washing dishes, and I said, “What is goin’ on?” I was a teenager, and, uh, he—my—my mother had been doin’ it, and there was a knife in the water and she had cut her hand real bad, and he had to take her over to Dr. Martin and get it sewed up, and I remember that, and then, another thing that happened, um—Dr. Martin and his wife, Miss—Mrs. Martin, were very active in our church. Mrs. Martin…</p>
<p>[<em>clock chimes</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Taught Sunday school and all that. They—the—this doctor’s office was right next to the church, a little bit behind it—right next to it, and they had a bell out there by the office—doctor’s. The office was right by the home, and if somebody came while the doctor was in church, they would ring the bell and he would hear it, get up and go out of church, and One Sunday that happened. Somebody had done something to their leg, was layin’ on the back of a truck, with no sides on it—just a wooden back—and he goes over to take care of it, and he took that guy’s leg off—the rest of it, while everybody—Of course, as soon as we could get out of church, we all went runnin’ over to see what’s goin on, and we’re all standin’ around watchin’ Dr. Martin take a—saw this guy’s leg off, while he’s layin’ on the back of the truck [<em>laughs</em>]. Yeah, he was a character. Yup.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And also, um, in an earlier conversation a—about school, you mentioned, uh, the disciplinary actions of certain teachers.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What are some experiences that stuck out to you?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, well, I’m not gonna tell you that story I told you last time, ‘cause I don’t want to get in trouble about that one, but, uh, uh, most of my teachers, uh—it—I’ve always said this, and I’ve probably—you probably know this. Everybody does. You always have certain teachers that are really good teachers and you’ll never forget ‘em. I mean, they—I have—I can remember certain teachers that were just good, and then there were some that, you wonder why they’re doing this, you know, uh, but um, I—we had this one teacher and [<em>clears throat</em>] she was hard to get along with, and she wa—she never had a smile on her face. She was just real sharp, and is always getting on everybody for every little thing, and she taught the fourth grade, and I was getting older by then, you know, ‘cause all the grades, one through 12, went to same school. You walked down the hall and—and this was something that I—I was bad sometimes at—I must have been seventh grade, ‘cause junior high is really the bad time [<em>laughs</em>]. I—if you look at my—I have every report card, and I can—you could pick out the ones I had when I was in seventh and eighth grade, uh, and anyway, she was just always mean to the kids, I thought, and so, she left her door open. She’d be in there talkin’ and you can walk down the hall and you’d hear her or see her in there.</p>
<p>So one day, when we were ki—talking out there on the—before you walk into the main building—on the porch, and, uh, so I said—there was a box—an old cardboard box out there, and I said, “I’ma walk down the hall. I’ma throw it in her room. See what happens.” So they bet me I wouldn’t do it, so I did it. I walked in, threw it in there, and ran on down the hall. She caught me, and she took me up to the office, and the principal there knew me, of course, and he knew that she—also that she was a little bit difficult to get along with, and all he did to me was—after she left, he said he’d take care of it, and, uh, he gave me a poem to learn. He says, “Now, just sit here and learn this poem, but don’t do that anymore,” [<em>laughs</em>] but we had some, uh—we had another teacher, who had been there for many years and taught my older si—you know, that was another thing. The teachers you got—they had already had your older sister, who was a brain.</p>
<p>You know, you’re supposed to know as much as she did, and, uh, they always compared you, as you went down the kids, but, uh, we had this teacher, and she could be—she was a good teacher, but she—she didn’t really—I don’t think she had children of her own. I don’t think she ever had children, but she would do things that, uh, would hurt people. Like we had this one girl that lived across the railroad track—her home was right over there—and she’d walk to school across the railroad track every day. Nicest person in the world, and one day she did something, and this—this teacher criticized her so badly in front of the whole class, and the girl did not deserve it. She didn’t do anything. Oh, she was a little bit late, I think, and I think she was late, because the train was across the track, and she got all over her or bein’ late to class and made the girl cry, and she did that to another girl in my class, and I just—it just really—I never, ever forgot it. Even though she was a good teacher, she—she would ridicule students sometimes, and, uh, I thought that—and—and it was embarrassing for that student, in front of the other kids, uh, and so you just remember certain people for certain things, but most of my teachers were good.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh, and I gotta tell you one more school story. Right next to the school, lived—there was some houses, and one of these houses was Mr. McCulley’s[sp] house. Charlie McCulley was my—I went to school, first grade through 12. I wish I knew if he was still livin’ today. I would love to see him. uh, but anyway, they had chickens—chicken yard, and one night, uh, some of the high school boys got Mr. McCulley’s chickens—three or four—and brought them over, and—and for some reason, we were able to get in and out of the school. I don’t know what it was, but they knew how to open—pick the lock or something, then go in there, and so, they got these chickens and they had this teacher that was a retired military. His name was Mr. Bayton[sp], and Mr. Bayton was vague. He shouldn’t have been teaching history. I mean, he was like—he didn’t even know the subject, you know, and he didn’t—nobody cared for him, but he was just kinda dumb, and so they put these chickens in his room and shut the door and left them in there [<em>laughs</em>] all night. The next day, he came to school and had all those chickens in there, and another time, they took somebody’s old “Model T,” and put it in the hall—put it in the hall, and every Halloween, they put a metal trashcan on top of the flagpole, upside down. Nobody ever figured out how they did it, but they—that was—you knew it would be there the next mornin’ [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p>Another thing though, when I went to school, what we did every day—they—they had the [American] flag, it stayed in the office, and they had certain people that did this, and they would take the flag out, unfold it, put it on the flagpole, and put the flag up, and that was—and if it rained, you ran out there and took the flag down. You never let the flag stay up there in the rain. You never let it stay up overnight. That was the way it was always. The whole time I was at school, it was that way.</p>
<p>We always had what we called chapel every S—every Friday morning, everybody in the school went to the auditorium and there was a program. A lot of—once a month, you had a pastor of one of the churches came and talked, and it’d be a different one each time, and today, that could never happen. You always had the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before class, and you always said the Lord’s Prayer. You did those two the whole time I was in school. Now, things have changed.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>I have read that, uh, Oviedo High did not become integrated until the 1960s. Growing up during segregation, do you recall any incidences where you recognized the separation of races?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh, when I was growing up—I remember when integration started, ‘cause we were livin’ here, and I had kids in school, and I remember the first day, uh, that it—that the schools were integrated, and my kids were in high school, at that time, but back when—when I was growin’ up, it—everything was segregated. Blacks were—rode—if they got on the bus, they had to ride in, uh, like the—we had a bus that came from Orlando to Oviedo. It was called Orlando Transit, and if you got on the bus, all the black people had to sit in the back. They loaded back to front, but this was another thing. They did have buses that went—went out to get kids to go to my school, but blacks didn’t have a bus. They—they had to walk to school, and they lived past where I lived up on the hill that—what we called “The Negro Quarters.” they were called “The Quarters.” They lived—a lot of ‘em—there were different places, but there was a group down there. They walks by our house, and they had to walk all the way across town to the black school, and of course, there was—it was no—no integration at all, and, uh, it even, uh—it was just unheard of for, uh—for people to mix up, or—or even—they was[sic] just two separate entities, and, uh, it—gradually, it got better.</p>
<p>I remember like when my daughter, who, uh, just passed away this last summer—when she was a senior in high school, she was yearbook editor, just like I was yearbook editor when I was in school, and, uh—but, uh—and the two years before that, we had integration. it started when my oldest son<a title="">[9]</a> was still in sch—still in school, and, um, so there were some black[sic] on her, uh, editor—on her, uh, staff to do the yearbook, and when they got ready to have the ye—the party, there was a big discussion about whose house they could have it at, because that meant black people—kids were gonna come.</p>
<p>The same way with my daughter, uh—my younger daughter, Julie [Karin Reagan], who‘s a nurse, uh, now. Uh, when she was a cheerleader, uh, we had some black girls that were cheerleaders with her, and, uh, lot of people—it was hard for a lot of people to get used to that. They didn’t like it, and—but I remember I took ‘em, um, ‘cause the parents—the white girls’ parents worked too. I was a stay-at-home mom, and, uh, all the other parents of the cheerleaders worked, and so they never went to anything, and then every—the cheerleaders needed to go to cheerleading camp. I drove ‘em over there, picked ‘em up. I made their uniforms, and—and I took the black girls too, you know, and somebody would say, “Are[?]—are you gonna do that?” I’d say, “Yes,” and I can remember that, and then I remember when my oldest daughter—the one that was a yearbook editor—went to Miami, she trained at, uh, Jackson Borough School for Nursing, and she had to watch a[sic], uh, autopsy. They had this group[?]. they watched up looking down from this glass to watch it, and that was part of her nurses training, and it was a black girl they were an autopsy on, and she said, “You know, Mom, when you open up somebody, they’re the same on the inside as you are,” and she said, “A lot of people need to think about that,” and, you know—and that was just wha—what she figured out on her own, and I said, “That’s[?]—that’s right,” and right now, two or three doors down here, my best friend is a black girl who’s 50 years old, who was married to a white man, who just passed away, and she and I walk every—two days a week, and we have a ball. She is more fun than—anyway, uh, that is certainly not a problem today, but I remember when it was a very big problem.</p>
<p>I can remember when the guy who was the—the de—the she—the, uh, constable or the police chief of Oviedo—the only—only one policeman—I can remember how he mistreated black people that he put in jail. He hit ‘em. He had a billy stick and I remember hearing how he hit ‘em in the head with that, and, you know—I mean, they were mistreated. They were bad. It was bad. I can remember some bad things that happened. I’m certainly glad that part is over. Uh, hopefully, it’s over.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What year did you graduate at Oviedo High School, and what was the graduation ceremony like?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, I—1951. Nine people in my graduatin’ class. In those days, you always had a—a baccalaureate service. I don’t know if they still—don’t still do that, but they always had a, uh—a, uh—and they had it at the school. It was just like a graduation thing, but They had it like a—on a—two or three days before graduation, you had baccalaureate, and they would, like, preach a sermon, or they would do a—it would be a talk on how you—to live your life and all that sort of thing, but it was a different, and every year, they’d have a different pa—we had a Methodist and a Baptist and a Lutheran ch—church. Those were the three main churches, and they would take turns, uh, doin’ the baccalaureate service.</p>
<p>So you always had that first, and then you had graduation, and at the same time as grad—graduation night, you also—they gave out any awards that—now—now today, my kids—they have an award night for different things, but in the—they did all the awards the night of graduation, and, uh, I got—I’ll never forget this, because my older sister got a bunch. S when I came along, I did too, except…</p>
<p>[<em>clock chimes</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>One. She got one that I didn’t get, and my mother said—as soon as she walked out of that thing, the first thing she said was, “How come you didn’t the”—I forgot what it was—“American Legion Award” or somethin’. I said, “That’s alright. I got best all-around athlete award. My sister didn’t that,” [<em>laughs</em>] but I got the history award and, uh—and the, uh, leadership award. I forgot what—it’s another name for it, but, uh, I’ll never forget that. She didn’t know how come I didn’t get that one, so—but that—we had award’s night the same night, as we did that [<em>taps on table</em>]. That was about it.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And where did your life take you after high school?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, not very far. My whole thing was to leave Oviedo. Both of my sisters had left and went to work at a bank in Orlando. uh, my older sister went first and she got—she worked at Florida State—it was called Florida State Bank in Downtown Orlando, right down the middle of town, and then when my sister graduated, my ol—other sister had talked to ‘em and got her in the[?]—she worked in the bookkeeping department. So they both went to Orlando to work in the bank.</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t want to work in the bank. What I wanted to do was to go to college, and I did not get to go, and Mr. [Thomas Willington] Lawton—T.W. Lawton—you’ve heard of the Lawtons? Uh, he was a cousin of ours, and, uh, he knew how much I wanted to go, and[?], uh, so I was supposed to go over to—with him, right? ‘Cause he—he drove to Sanford every, uh, day to work at the—down at the courthouse—was where his office was, and, uh, they were gonna have a test for scholarships. You could take these tests to try to get a scholarship to go to co—FSU.<a title="">[10]</a> In those days it was a women’s college,<a title="">[11]</a> and, uh, so I was all set to go. My principal had fixed it for me to go, ‘cause—‘cause I was valedictorian, and—and I was kinda’ smart, and I[?] thought I could pass—get maybe—maybe get a scholarship, and I was gonna go, and Mr. Lawton—and I was—and I already made arrangements with him. I didn’t tell my mother anything about it, ‘cause she had said, “We can’t afford to send you to college,” you know, “We don’t have the money,” uh, and—but so I thought, <em>If I can get a scholarship, you know I can do this</em>, and, uh, so doggonnit, if, uh, Mr.—somebody from sch—one of the teachers called and my mother answered the phone, and she said, “Well, tell Bettye when she goes tomorrow to take the scholarship test” —she didn’t know I was goin’. I didn’t tell her, and, uh—but Mr. Lawton knew, ‘cause I had already contacted him. He was goin’ take me, and so she says, “What is this all about?” And I told her. She said, “We can’t do that.” So she called Mr. Lawton and told him not to come—not to pick me up, ‘cause I couldn’t—even if I got it, it was just—they couldn’t afford all the stuff they still have to do for me to go, and he called back, and he said, “Listen. I will help her go. I will help her financially [inaudible],” but my mother would never take any money from anybody.</p>
<p>So that, I did not get to do, but—so then, I get on the bus, after I get out of school and I [inaudible]—my senior year, I worked for—Mr. Teague, who was the principal, I worked in the office half a day every day, ‘cause I had all the subjects they had. I took [inaudible] instead of st—study hall, I took a subject. So there wasn’t[sic] any subjects left for me to take. So he asked me to be the school secretary, work in the office half—half a day, and I did that all that senior year, and tough—and then after I graduate, I’m—I’m goin’ to Orlando riding the bus, trying to walk around, find a job, which I hadn’t found. I come home one day, and my mother says, “Well, you got a job. I got you a job. Mr. Teague called and wanted to know if you wanted a full-time job being a school secretary.” <em>Oh, jeeze.</em> I wanted to leave. I wanted to get out of Oviedo, and go do somethin’ different.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>So I was home for a year, and then I got married and moved to Sanford, and then, uh, I was married for three years. I had—we built a house. City of Sanford would give you a lot—give you a lot, but you had to build a house within a year. We built the house. We cleared the lot. I can show you that house today. We built the house—I mean, laid the blocks, poured the floor, did the whole thing in one year. He<a title="">[12]</a> worked for the railroad and we did this when he wasn’t working. We built the house. We laid blocks—all that stuff—and we were able to move in within a year. it wasn’t finished, but we moved in, and, uh, anyway, he was, uh—I had two kids, and when I had a year-old baby<a title="">[13]</a> and a three-year-old son, <a title="">[14]</a> and he was killed, uh, in a train accident, working—he was a railroader—train accident, uh, and then, I met my husband<a title="">[15]</a>—I have today, uh—eight months later, which everybody thought was too soon [<em>laughs</em>], at church, and, uh, we’ve been married—we—we just celebrated, uh, Monday, our 58<sup>th</sup> wedding anniversary. So [<em>taps on table</em>] it worked [<em>laughs</em>], and we had four more kids.<a title="">[16]</a> That’s six.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>After your first husband died, for those eight months, before you met your—how did you survive?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, well, uh, Social Security [Insurance], uh, and he had some insurance and, uh—the other thing though we had done—we had bought—borrowed money and bought, uh, I think it was 4,000 dollars—bought 80 acres—now, 80 acres in Osteen, uh, found a road that if you took it—took you all the way to Oak Hill. It was a back road. It goes through there. We bought 80 acres, and we got these cows from the dairy, and we were—we were raising cows out there. We were doin’ that too. So when he died, I had that 80 acres and about seven or eight cow, uh—calves. I had to go feed ‘em on a nipple bucket, and I was goin’ out there every day doing—in fact, that’s where I was when they came out and found me to tell me what had happened, and, uh, so anyway, uh, I had that when I married Don—he was in, uh, TV business—and, uh, so we—he went out there and got some more cows and played cowboy [<em>laughs</em>], and we had that, and we were eventually able to sell it for [$]16,000, which when—in those—that was a long time ago, back in the—we’re talkin’ about the [19]60s, and, uh—and we bought another five—bought 10 acres out here near the airport, and put our cows out there and we had that.</p>
<p>Then we had a chance to buy this place, and, uh—we lived in town, and he had a really nice, big house. I mov—sold my house out there and moved into his house, and, uh—but we had a pool we added on to the house by the time we had a bunch of kids. We had to keep addin’ onto the house, and we had a pool, which was—new at those time[sic]. Not too many people had ‘em. So every day, I had not just my kids. I had everybody’s in the neighborhood’s kids at my house, and it got to be a zoo. I said, “We gotta move.” So he was out here fixin’ these people’s tel—television set, and he saw this place. He said—and they wanted—there was an old couple—they wanted to move into town. Well, we owned another house across the street that was a rental, and, uh, so they—we almost swapped ‘em, and Of course, we had to work on this one for a year to make it so we could—this—this, uh—this was outside the house. This wall was the outside, and that brick in that fireplace—there was a—fireplace right here. We chipped all the brick out of that. that’s the same brick that were[sic] in the fireplace, and we added this room, and we added another bathroom and put—what was a porch, we made that into bigger bedrooms, and we moved out here with six kids, and, uh, it’s been a great, great place to live, and then we got a lot o—I’ll show you my studio, before you go. It’s outside.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>And how did you meet your—how did you meet Don, your second husband?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>My husband now? At, uh—it was a put-up job [<em>laughs</em>]. It really was. Um, he—he came here in the Navy, and, uh, he was—he got married and he was married. He was divorced, when I met him, um, and he was at the church. Anyway, One day, after my husband had passed away, I called. I had the two little kids, and I was still—I was going to church down there, but—and I had gone to church all my life, but I was so, you know—I was totally—I was just kinda’ down, and I called the—the church, and they said—the assistant pastor came out, and I told him—I said, “I’m goin’ to church, but I’m not gettin’ anything out of it.” I said, “I’m just not”—I was miserable, and he said, “You know what? You need to be—you don’t need to be sittin’ in a class, uh, with you kids anymore[?]. You need to be teaching class,” So he said, “We have seven year olds. We need a teacher for seven year olds. Would you”—and so I said, “Okay.” So I go—first Sunday, I go in this—we had 30-somethin’ seven year olds and there were four or five teachers. He was a teacher, and I was a teacher of Sunday school of seven year olds. They put us both in the same room with a little thing in between, and it didn’t take very long, and, uh, so we got—that’s where I met him—was there. We been together ever since [<em>taps on table</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What are some fond memories you have raising your children?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Oh [<em>taps on table</em>], great memories, and the good part about it was we had a movie camera. Took movies of everything we did—every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, every birthday, all events. Oh, you should see our kids, going to Lake Eola, lined up where the flowers are, where all the little kids with—all the little girls had white gloves on, hats, frilly dresses. Boys had on ties and coats and—and, uh—gettin’ out of the car, going to church, [inaudible] watchin’ ‘em tryin’ to get in and out of the cars and all that, and, uh—and then going on vacations, camping. That was the only way you could go—take that many kids on vacation is to go camping, and that’s what we did. We went camping. We started up[?] in Florida, ended up in the mountains, and they still go camping to this day, but, uh—and then, I—I enjoyed my kids.</p>
<p>Uh, I never missed a—any program that they were in, and, uh, of course when you got that many, they’re in different things, you know, uh, and that—and this one daughter—she tickled me, because if I was gonna have to go to school for, uh—drive a car for, uh, you know—take the kids somewhere—trip, or something—she would tell me—pick out what she wanted me to wear. She wanted you to look good, you know? [<em>laughs</em>] She would come in there and say, “Mom, this is what I want you to wear,” but, um, I really—and I never missed a PTA<a title="">[17]</a> meeting, and I remember going, and I have two or three kids in one school, and you went to each one of ‘em’s class, and I’m trying to go to all of ‘em’s class, and change classes and do this, but I always did—kept up with what was going on, and, uh—and they all did good in school—pretty good in school, and never really had any major problems with ‘em. Uh, all did school, all—all graduated good[sic], and, uh, have great memories, and then I have all these—and used to be the movies were on film, and then—‘till now. You know, now, it’s entirely different, but my daughter that—the one that you went to her house—she took those, and I dunno how long it took her, she’s finally—still got something to do, and put ‘em all on DVDs, and, uh—and we have ‘em all today. A lot of nice ones. We don’t have anything on TV we want to watch, we sit and watch the kids all growin’, when they were little all the way up. So that—we have those, and I—I tell ‘em today—I said, “Y’all have all these things on camera”</p>
<p>[<em>phone rings</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>“Now you need to be makin’ sure you—you have these things. Don’t just let it get taken off of there, ‘cause we have a record of everything. Y’all aren’t going to have that.” I’m just gonna let that go.</p>
<p>[<em>answering machine</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>I understand that your great-grandfather Andrew Aulin[, Sr.] founded Oviedo.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>What are some stories about him or other founding families, like the Lawtons or Wheelers that you…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh…</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Remember being told?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Well, he passed away before I was—was born, and, uh, the, uh—the way that, uh—he came down here—a lot of those people who were Swe—he was Swedish—came over here from Sweden, and he didn’t come the way so many people in this area did. The Sanford area is all—a lot of Swedes over here, and they came over, uh, to work the citrus groves, and the—and the people who owned the groves here would pay their way on the ship, if they’d come and work a year. That’s how a lot of them came, but he didn’t come that way. He came up at, um—on the East Coast in New York or somewhere like that, and he came down through Georgia, and then eventually, into down here, and, um, he, uh, uh—at first, Oviedo—the settlement was out on, uh, Lake Jessup, and they called it White’s Warf—was the name of it—little settlement, and then they sor—sort of moved into O—into what is Oviedo today, and, uh, he was one of ‘em that moved in there, and he became—he was the first postmaster, and they had to come up with a name, and, uh, he was—when they named it, and he was also a schoolteacher…</p>
<p>[<em>clock chimes</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>And he spoke ‘bout four or five languages. He was very smart, and the reason he named it O—it should be pronounced <em>Oh-vee-ay-do</em>—was he traveled, uh, before he came over here, and then he even went back over to Europe several times, and he had been to Oviedo, Spain, and he thought since Florida was a Spanish word, he thought we’d name it Oviedo, and he called it <em>Oh-vee-ay-do</em>, and at, uh, one time, it—it was—it was in Orange County. You know, that used to be all Orange County all this part of it, plus this was too, and—and it was, uh, uh…</p>
<p>[<em>train whistles</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>So then, he—and he opened a store. He had a store there also, and they—and I heard a, uh—different things people have written about him and said that they’d go in their store, and he’d be so intent on reading something. he was very intellectual, and he liked to read all the time—that they’d have to ma—make him quit reading to wait on him, ‘cause he was into that, and [inaudible] when he passed away, he didn’t have a lot of money, but what he had, he game to Rollins College. It was just starting, and he was one of the people that gave what he had to Rollins College, because he wanted to see that college be there. So he was—I wish I had known him. He was—I was—he gone before I came along, and his wife<a title="">[18]</a> was a Lawton.</p>
<p>So that’s how we got involved with that, and, uh, then, it’s—it’s crazy, because when we started going through different history things, I found out that [inaudible] the Lees in Oviedo, which are—that’s all involved—the Lawtons, Lees, and the Wheelers—all [Lee] sisters all married those people. They were sisters and one married a Lawton,<a title="">[19]</a> one married a Lee[sic], and a Wheeler,<a title="">[20]</a> and all that, and, uh, so when—my—on my mother’s side, who came from Sanford, there were some Lees. Her sisters married the Lees, and—and I al—al—I asked a couple times—I said, “Ya’ll kin to the[?] Lees in Oviedo?” Said, “No, no.” Well, they are, uh—they got this book on the Jacobs family and I started reading it, and the Jacobs family, involved with both Lees there, Lee’s here. So way back, if you wanted to go by marriage things, my mother was actually—her people were ancestors with my father’s people, way back and by marriage, and I thought—I just found that out not too long ago, and I bet that they—I’ll tell ‘em. They don’t know it [<em>laughs</em>], but that was, uh—and, uh, another thing—when—when my husband—my first husband—he was Catholic, and, uh, when we—when he went and talked to my daddy about us getting married, and he said, “Well, there’s one thing I want you to do. I don’t care which church you go to, but both of you go to the same one,” because—and Oviedo’s known for that. The Lawtons and the Wheelers and the Lees—the Whe—Frank Wheeler—big in the Baptist church—his wife was big in the Methodist church. Same things with the Lawtons. One went—husband went to one church and the wife we—and my daddy said, “I don’t want to see any more of that.” You—but that was—was one of the things that they did out there too, but they were all related. Yup.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Do you have any family heirlooms that were passed down that you held on to?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, no, uh, I don’t. I have some pictures, but I don’t have any—anything else that—I wish I did, and that is why I[sic] makin’ a point to save everything that I have [<em>laughs</em>], and—Like that bell that’s—there’s a big bell hanging outside. That’s my husband’s family. His father had that bell on the farm in Mississippi, and we were able to get that, and he re—redid it and painted it and all and put it up there, but—but that’s one of the few things we have from his family, and, um, we—so our kids are—that’s the one thing—you don’t get rid of that. that stays in the family, you know, and it’s very, very—it’s made in 1800-somethin’ is what—the date is in it, but, um, no, uh, I don’t think there’s—there’s much left, uh, physical things, you know, um, just some pictures, which I try to keep up with, and I have pictures of my father and his father together, and, uh, things like that, but, uh, no, uh, I don’t—can’t think of any—any artifacts, really, that I have.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Is there anything you like—you’d like to cover that we haven’t addressed?</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>No, uh, well, one thing I want to say about Oviedo today, is, uh—it must be a great place to live, because here a few years ago—well, quite a few years ago, when I was starting, uh—doing a lot of painting, and, uh, I—I did a whole thing—a lot of pic—paintings, uh, about Oviedo, and, uh, I went out there and just drove around, went down to where the pool used to be, which they covered it up. it’s not there anymore, but there’s a park down there—children’s park and things, and, uh—and I went down there to—just to take some pictures and look around, and there was[sic] some women down there playing with their kids, and, uh, I—I told them— I said, “Do you mind if I take some pictures?” ‘Cause I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to do some series of paintings on Oviedo, and they said, “Yes.” it was okay, and—and I said, “Would you mind telling me”—‘cause they—they weren’t from there, and I said, “Why did you move here?” And they said, “Well, we researched before we moved”—they came from out of state—”And this just was the best place to move to raise your kids.” They checked it out. They said, “This is a very family-oriented town. They have a lot of things for kids, and it’s—it’s, you know—it’s just a very—it’s the ideal place to raise a family.” I thought, <em>Well, that’s great. </em>So then, I go to another place in Oviedo, another place like that. There’s some more families there. I asked the same question, got the same answer. I said, “Now, isn’t that amazing?” That—that’s sayin’ a lot for Oviedo. It is, and another thing—the Townhouse Restaurant—are you familiar with that? Which they’re fixin’ to move, you know?</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>But, uh, we go out there every now and then just to eat there, but, uh, I remember when it wasn’t the Townhouse, and up above it, there used to be a doctor’s office above that place, but, uh, that corner there—the—the red light—the whole time I was re—growin’ up, that was the red light. the only one in town for many, many years, and I kinda hate to see ‘em do what they’re gonna do there, but that’s progress, and, uh—but, uh, I have very fond memories of Oviedo, but, you know, when you’re growing up, you always think somethin’s gonna be better somewhere else, but, uh, my daughter lives out there, and right down the road, you know, comin’ from—back to Oviedo from her house, there’s a new subdivision that’s called Aulin[‘s] Landin<em>g</em> or something they’re building. That’s got the Aulin name in it. There’s just—new. They just started building it. So that’s something too, and of course, they got Aulin Avenue, you know, out there by the cemetery. So yeah, it’s a—good memories from Oviedo, and I need to get back out there, ‘cause I have—still have people out there that I know. Um, how are you—how—how much more are y’all doing? Do you have more people you’re going to interview? ‘Cause I know somebody would be good to interview [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Oh, I’m sure other classes…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Like I said, you know, which—which—every new semester, because we’re just…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh huh.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>To get as much…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Of Central Florida’s history as possible. So…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>If you wanna…</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Uh, the Wards, uh—there’s a, uh—Bob Ward. Uh, his brothers passed away, but Bob Ward—Bob and Joanne Ward. I would recommend, uh, talking to—to them. Uh, they live out there close to where I lived, right across the street from the Wheeler House. The—we used to call Mrs. Wheeler—Mrs. B. F. —Frank Wheeler “The Queen,” and, uh—and she was like a queen, you know? She didn’t speak to you. You speak to—I’ll never forget. One time, since I’ve been—when—after I moved to—to, uh, Sanford, we had a drug store downtown called Tusta’s[?] Drugstore. In those days, it had a soda fountain. just like Oviedo had a soda fountain. Had a soda fountain in it, and I was down there one day, sittin’ in a booth, and, uh, Ms. Wheeler came by, and I recognized her and she recognized me, you know, and she walk right on by and didn’t speak, and goes on down and doggone, if every booth wasn’t full, of course, and so she comes back and then all of the sudden, she remembered who I was, ‘cause she needed a place to sit [<em>laughs</em>]. I thought that was—that was—that was pretty good. That was the way it was. They were a little bit—little bit that way—a little bit that way. Uh…</p>
<p><strong>Schwandt<br /></strong>Well, thank you so much for your time.</p>
<p><strong>Reagan<br /></strong>Mmhmm, you’re welcome. I enjoyed it.</p>
<div><br /><div>
<p><a title="">[1]</a> Andrew “Andy” Aulin III.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[2]</a> Andrew Aulin, Jr.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[3]</a> Mary Alice Powell Aulin.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[4]</a> Roy Rogers (born Leonard Franklin Slye) in <em>The Roy Rogers Show</em>.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[5]</a> Wheeler Fertilizer Company.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[6]</a> Mary Leonora Aulin Bartlett.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[7]</a> Charles Warren Aulin.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[8]</a> Physical Education.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[9]</a> Daniel Lee Reagan, formerly Daniel Lee McGill.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[10]</a> Florida State University</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[11]</a> Florida Female College, later Florida State College for Women.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[12]</a> Joel Edwin McGill.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[13]</a> Kathleen Ann McGill, now Kathleen Ann Reagan.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[14]</a> Daniel Lee McGill, now Daniel Lee Reagan.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[15]</a> Donald Thomas Reagan.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[16]</a> Debbie Lynn Reagan, Julie Karin Reagan, Andrew Schott Reagan, and Patrick Kelley Reagan.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[17]</a> Parent-Teacher Association.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[18]</a> Emma “Lona” Leonora Lawton Aulin.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[19]</a> Charlotte "Lottie" Lee Lawton married Thomas Willington Lawton and Lillian Della Lee Lawton married Winborn Joseph Lawton, Sr.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[20]</a> George Lee Wheeler married Benjamin Franklin Wheeler.</p>
</div>
</div>
Abraham Lincoln
Alice Kathryn Aulin Bunch
American flags
Anderson
Andrew Aulin III
Andrew Aulin, Jr.
Andrew Aulin, Sr.
Andrew Schott Reagan
Andy Aulin
art
artists
Aulin Avenue
Aulin's Landing
awards
B. F. Wheeler
baccalaureate services
Baptists
Bayton
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler
Bettye Jean Aulin Reagan
Bettye Reagan
bicycles
bike riding
bikes
Black Beauty
Bob Ward
book reports
books
bovines
busing
camping
canines
car accidents
cattle
chapels
Charles Warren Aulin
Charlie McCulley
Charlotte Lee Lawton
church
churches
clothes
clothing
Coat of Many Colors
coats
cops and robbers
cows
cycling
Daniel Lee McGill
Daniel Lee Reagan
Debbie Lynn Reagan
desegregation
discipline
doctors
dogs
Don Reagan
Donald Thomas Reagan
dressmakers
dressmaking
drugstores
Easter
education
educators
Emma Leonora Lawton Aulin
First Baptist Church of Oviedo
flags
Florida State Bank
forts
Frankie D. Gore
fruit testers
GA
games
George Lee Wheeler
Girls’ Auxiliaries
graduations
Grand Ole Opry
gym
Heidi
high schools
immigrants
immigration
integration
Jackson Borough School for Nursing
Jacobs
Joanne Ward
Joel Edwin McGill
Joel McGill
Julie Karin Reagan
Kathleen An Reagan
Kathleen Ann McGill
Lake Charms
Lake Mary
Lee
Leonard Franklin Slye
Lillian Della Lee Lawton
Lona Lawton Aulin
Lottie Lee Lawton
Martin
Mary Alice Powell Aulin
Mary Leonora Aulin Bartlett
milk
milking
Morrison’s Cafeteria
Nelson and Company
novels
oranges
orlando
Orlando Transit
Osteen
Oviedo
Oviedo High School
Oviedo School
Oviedo, Spain
P.E.
painters
painting
Patrick Kelley Reagan
pets
physical education
physicians
postmasters
pranks
RA
race relations
radios
Rebecca Schwandt
Rollins College
Roy Rogers
Royal Ambassadors
Sanford
school bus
school buses
schools
seamstress
seamstresses
segregation
sewing
Slavia
spitz
spitzen
storekeepers
strawberries
strawberry
Sunbeam Band
Swedes
Swedish
swimming pools
T. W. Lawton
teachers
telephone operators
The Roy Rogers Show
Thomas Willington Lawton
Trigger
Troubles
Tusta's Drugstore
W. J. Lawton
Walker
weddings
West
West House
Wheeler
Wheeler Fertilizer Company
White's Wharf
Winborn Joseph Lawton, Sr.
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/393a192d620af18ac8346be365311046.pdf
2c64394e32e99ac070bc36e6cb76bcd8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oviedo Historical Society Collection
Alternative Title
Oviedo Historical Society Collection
Subject
Oviedo (Fla).
Description
The Oviedo Historical Society Collection encompasses historical artifacts donated for digitization at the Oviedo Historical Society's History Harvest in the Spring semester of 2015.
The Oviedo Historical Society was organized in November 1973 by a group of citizens. The society is a 501(3) non-profit organization. Its purpose is to help preserve the community identity of Oviedo by collecting and disseminating knowledge about local history, serve as a repository for documents and artifacts relating to Oviedo history, promote the preservation and marking of historic sites and buildings in the Oviedo area and foster interest in local, state, national, and world history.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/128" target="_blank">Oviedo Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Oviedo, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>
<a href="http://history.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=304" target="_blank">Dr. Connie L. Lester</a>'s Introduction to Public History course, Spring 2015
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>." Oviedo Historical Society, Inc. http://oviedohs.com/.
Adicks, Richard, and Donna M. Neely. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5890131" target="_blank"><em>Oviedo, Biography of a Town</em></a>. S.l: s.n.], 1979.
Robison, Jim. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/796757419" target="_blank"><em>Around Oviedo</em></a>. 2012.
"<a href="http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68" target="_blank">History</a>." City of Oviedo, Florida. http://www.cityofoviedo.net/node/68.
"<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/audio/Ep41-Oviedo.mp3" target="_blank">RICHES Podcast Documentaries, Episode 41: Oviedo, with Dr. Richard Adicks</a>." RICHES of Central Florida. http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/audio/Ep41-Oviedo.mp3.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Original Format
32-page booklet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
History of the First Baptist Church, Oviedo, Florida: First 100 Years, 1869-1969
Alternative Title
First Baptist Church: First 100 Years
Subject
Oviedo (Fla.)
Churches--Florida
Baptists--Florida
Description
A history of the First Baptist Church of Oviedo from its founding in 1869 to its centennial celebration in 1969. The book begins with a brief history of the Central Florida area, followed by a history of Oviedo. The first service for the First Baptist Church was led by Reverend W. G. Powell on the property of W. H. Luther, located along Lake Jessup Avenue. The first church building was made of wood and was located on what was the property of Lois Ruddell at the time that this book was written. The old building served the church until 1887, later became the house of the Beasley family, and was finally torn down. A new wooden church building was erected in 1887 and remained in use until 1926. The brick church building constructed later on is still in use by CrossLife Church.
Type
Text
Source
Original 32-page booklet: <em>History of the First Baptist Church, Oviedo, Florida: First 100 Years, 1869-1969</em>, 1969: <a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
Requires
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/147" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society Collection</a>, Oviedo Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Is Format Of
Digital reproduction of original 32-page booklet: <em>History of the First Baptist Church, Oviedo, Florida: First 100 Years, 1869-1969</em>, 1969.
Coverage
First Baptist Church of Oviedo, Oviedo, Florida
Date Created
1969
Date Copyrighted
1969
Format
application/pdf
Extent
2.7 MB
Medium
32-page booklet
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Rights Holder
Copyright to this resource is held by the <a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Donation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>
External Reference
First Baptist Church, Oviedo, Fla. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4930435" target="_blank"><em>History of the First Baptist Church, Oviedo, Florida: First 100 Years, 1869-1969</em></a>. 1969.
A. A. Daniel
A. A. Myers
A. B. Tedford
A. C. Hart
A. C. Turner
A. Flourny Jernigan
A. J. Metcalf
A. P. Farnell
A. R. Metcalf, Jr.
A. Solaria
Alex Lawton
American Civil War
Amerindian
Andrew Aulin
Andrew Aulin, Sr.
Andrew Lawton
anniversary
Apopka
Argo's Store
Arthur Scott
B. F. Ward, Jr.
B. F. Ward, Sr. R. F. Cooper
B. F. Wheeler
B. F. Wheeler, Jr.
B. F. Wheeler, Sr.
B. Z. Hunter
Baptists
Basil Mays
Beasley
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Jr.
Benjamin Franklin Wheeler, Sr.
Billie Buster
Brewster
Broadway Street
Brush Arbor
C. A. Love
C. D. Weaver
C. F. Rolquist
C. J. Broome
C. K. Buckelew
C. W. Holder
Caloosa
centennial
Charles Simeon Lee, Jr.
Christian
Christianity
Chuluota
Chuluota Baptist Church
churches
citrus
Civil War
clergy
Clermont
Clifton Springs
colonization
colony
Creek
D. D. Gammage
Dan F. Thomas
deacon
Delco Light Plant. Goldenrod
Diane Aulin
Diane Aulin Keller
Donald L. Orman
E. A. Farnell
E. Lee Smith
education
enterprise
F. A. Peirson
F. C. Edwards
F. C. Morgan
FBC
First Baptist Church of Oviedo
Florida Mosquito Territory
Fort Christmas
Fort Drum
Fort Gatlin
Freeze of 1894
freezes
G. W. Alford
Goldenrod Baptist churches
Groveland
groves
growers
H. B. McCall
H. H. Link
Hammond organ
Henry Walcott
Homecoming Day
Howard S. Gott
Indian
Iniah Honchin
Ira Rouse
Isaacs
J. A. Richardson
J. B. Rogers
J. C. Hatlzelow
J. E. Okerlund
J. F. Mitchell
J. G. Black
J. H. King
J. H. Lee, Sr.
J. I.
J. I. Beasley
J. M. Jones
J. M. Kones
J. Max Cook
J. N. Thompson
J. O. Fries
J. O. Jelks
J. P. Jacobs
J. S. Day
J. T. Bryant
J. T. Wheeler
J. W. Martin
Jack T. Bryant
James G. Speer
Jelks
Joe Fox
Joe Leinhart
John Hiram Lee, Sr.
John M. Camp
John S. Womble
Joseph Leinhart
Joshua P. Jacobs
Julia Golden
K. Swonson
L. A. Hardy
L. L. Day
Ladies Aid Society
Lake Charm
Lake Jessup Avenue
Lake Jessup Community
Lake Jessup Settlement
Lake Jesup
Lawton
Lois Ruddell
Lord
Lund
M. E. Brock
Magazine Club of Oviedo
Maitland
Mary Gwynn
Mary Jacobs
Mary Walker
Milton Gore
Missionary Baptist churches
Mosquito County
Muskogan
Native American
Needham Jelks
Nelson
Nelson Brothers
Nettie Aulin
Nettie Jacobs
Nettie Jacobs Aulin
O. M.
orange county
Orange Grove Baptist Church
oranges
organ
orlando
Oviedo
Oviedo Baptist churches
P. H. Brown
pastor
Pearl G. Martin
Pride of Oviedo
R. L. Ward
R. L. Wheeler
R. M. Hickman
R. W. Dickert
R. W. Lawton
religious education
Reminiscence Fair
reverend
Robert Lawton
S. C. Dorsey
S. W. Sheffield
schools
Seminole
Seminole County
Sexton
shipping
slave
slavery
Solaria's Wharf
St. Johns River
St. Volusia
Statson University
Sunday schools
T. H. Daniell, Sr.
T. J. Bell
T. W. Lawton
Ted Aulin
The Lodge
Theodore Aulin
Theodore Aulin, Jr.
Theodore Aulin, Sr.
Thomas Willington Lawton
Tom Lawton
Tom Wheeler
Tomokan
Tucker
Tuscovilla
W. A. Jelks
W. A. Ward, Jr.
W. E. Alexander
W. G. Powell
W. H. Luther
W. H. Martin
W. J. Lawton, Sr.
W. P. Carter
W. P. Rogers
W. S. Sommerville
W. T. Walker
W. W. Townson
Walter Gwynn
Whitney-Wolcott House
Will Alexander
William Clevor
William H. Martin
Williams Stones
Winborn Joseph Lawton, Sr.