Month: February 2017

Zion Lutheran Church Cemetery in Gotha, Florida

The Carey Hand funeral records called this plot of land the Gotha Cemetery back in 1928. It’s a large chunk of land for 18 burials, and when we were sitting in the car in front of it arguing about  whether or not it was actually there, the thing was staring us right in the face. The whole plot is fenced with a handsome, high black fence, but don’t let that put you off. There’s a gate on 2 sides to enter. There is no sign indicating that this is a cemetery or that it’s owned by the church, but it is there. If you look carefully you can see spots of color standing out through the verdant green of the overgrown lot, and these are flowers that someone has brought for one of the graves. While the land is not tended, the graves are. Most of them were clean and cared for, at least minimally, and what headstones we could see were in good repair. Hats off to whoever is working to keep this cemetery respectable. The most recent burial was in 2013, so it’s possibly still in use.

The land itself is a tangle of branches, vines, and downed trees so if you do visit use caution. There are also miscellaneous pieces of rusting equipment on the property that you’ll want to look out for. The cemetery is in the middle of the property and has several fenced family plots.

You’ll find the Nehrlings buried here, the family that started the botanical gardens literally right around the corner. Their home is still there along with 6 acres of their land and it is open for tours. It’s on my list of places to visit, I love the idea that something that Dr. Nehrling started in 1885 is still left.

Nearby you will find a small grave for Ferdinand Runge who died at 2 years old and is the first marked burial at this site (death date 1898). He has a beautiful grave that is tended and completely fenced with natural wood fencing. The next marked grave wasn’t until 1900 and it made me feel sad to think of him there all alone for 2 years.

Also here is the Hartmann family, Ludwig and his younger wife Antoine. The Hartmann’s came over from Germany; Ludwig’s immigration was in 1883. All of their children were born here in Florida, and by 1900 they already had six daughters. Ludwig was an orange farmer and the census records show them surrounded by other farmers and fruit merchants. The farm that they owned was mortgage free so it seems that they were prosperous.

When Ludwig died his funeral was handled by Carey Hand funeral home, the oldest funeral home in Orange county. He died of uremia, and it seems like so many of the funeral records that I’ve come across include deaths from kidney-related diseases. I’m going to have to research that some day, it’s easy to speculate but I’d be curious to read more about that. His funeral record was apparently filled out by the laziest person (or the busiest) in that funeral home on that day in 1940 because it literally says almost nothing. The person who filled out his wife’s record included her maiden name, Krause, as well as all other pertinent information. Their records can be viewed on Central Florida Memory.

Gotha was originally a German colony started by Henry Hempel and is near Windermere. This cemetery is worth a look because it’s so unusual and it’s full of our German pioneers that made Florida their home.

Osteen Cemetery in Osteen, Florida

Osteen is a small town in Volusia county near Enterprise. Well, it feels small, but apparently has undergone a lot of growth in the last 2 years. It has a small town feel to it though, like you’d expect Andy Griffith to walk out at any moment wearing his sheriff’s uniform and saying “Howdy!”. (I would love that. It’s still one of my goals to visit his grave and I was really sad when he died.)

Don’t judge me…much.

This cemetery is really private, which is a good thing because you can wander freely without cars passing by or people walking through with you. It’s a bad thing because in terms of Florida history, this place is a treasure trove and needs all the protection it can get. Speaking of protection, the sand parking area in front of the gate (a cattle gate, by the way) was littered with condom wrappers. I seem to see more and more of that lately and it always baffles me. I bet if your grandma was buried here you’d think twice about bringing a date here for ‘romance’.

This is considered an active cemetery and it appears to have a lot of space on the right, but I didn’t really notice and new burials the day we were there. The left side was drawing so much of my attention anyway with it’s beautiful old headstones. Lots of Sauls and Osteens here, and they had good taste in funerary art because some of the headstones are just beautiful. The Saul family built a home near here and raised their family with the Osteens. They started a whole community called Saulsville, but as these things always go in Florida, this happened and that happened, and people died, and the house burned to the ground. This is the part of history that I don’t like, hearing about all of the amazing places that have burned down, usually while they were stuffed full of old papers that some genealogist or writer needs in 2017.

I read that this cemetery is near an African American burial ground, but I wasn’t able to find it, or I wasn’t able to tell if it was actually incorporated into this cemetery. We walked the perimeter which is heavily wooded and in one corner I looked down and saw a number on a round piece of concrete. The numbers were in rows, and took up a considerable part of that corner of the cemetery. I saw nothing that would indicate who was buried here, but I always feel sad when I just see numbers instead of names. There are also a lot of children buried here, and their stones were, to me, the prettiest I’d seen. The lambs were beautifully carved on many of them and retained a lot of detail.

Toward the back of the cemetery on the left you’ll see a small section that is fenced off and has the weirdest headstones inside. They’re all damaged and aren’t readable in the slightest, and the stone has turned almost black with age and is pitted. I’ve never seen any like them. It looks almost like they’ve started to melt. This section is also home to a sizable gopher tortoise, which has built a mansion near one of these headstones.

The cemetery was established in 1884 and is certainly one that I will visit again. And since we were talking about illicit cemetery visits at the beginning of this post, in 2012 a mother of 2 stabbed a man with an ice pick, strangled him to death with a cord, and then mutilated his body… in self-defense, she said. Where did she do this? In the parking area of this cemetery.

You can view the news story here.

Enterprise Cemetery in Enterprise, Florida

Enterprise Cemetery was established in 1841, and I have a picture of the sign to prove it. It was a gloomy day with a heavy sky, and all of my photos that day looked gloomy and colorless so I switched them all to black and white for this post. It adds drama. That’s what I’m telling myself.

This cemetery is pretty bleak with lots of open space and dead grass, but it had some unique things that made it an interesting one to visit. First, I was freezing to death that day because I’m a Florida native and the surprising high last Sunday was about 48 degrees. I don’t really understand how to bundle up because I never really have to, so I was not dressed warmly enough for a trek outdoors- but I got out of the car anyway and Shawn and I walked in through the side gate. One side of the cemetery is clearly active, and one side is the more historic side, though you can see a small, older plot over to the far left which is all the way in the back. We started there, and I began to realize what made this cemetery different from the others I’ve visited.

Most people place statues of angels on graves. It’s what they do. It’s nice to imagine an angel watching over your loved one in the hereafter, but I don’t think this notion really caught on with the people of Enterprise (population just over 43,000 in 2012), and that is what made me love this cemetery. These people got creative with their grave tributes- no angels for them! Here is a short list of some of the things we saw on the graves there:

-A statue of a green bullfrog wearing a top hat.

-A bigmouth bass statue.

-A larger than life statue of a blue macaw.

-2 tee shirts rolled up on graves.

-2 guitars on one grave- an acoustic one that had been beaten to death and an electric one parked against the tree alongside the grave.

While these gifts are festive and make for an interesting walk through the cemetery, this cemetery is actually the final resting place for some of the victims of the 1888 Yellow Fever outbreak in Volusia County. (Many other nearby counties were affected as well including Orange and Duval.) I found one chilling telegram dated October 26, 1888 saying that there were 2 deaths and 12 cases so far, and that armed men were surrounding infected areas to prevent further transmission of the disease, which is actually spread by mosquitoes. While digging around I also found a letter from September of the same year to the Governor of Florida from several different county health boards begging for help. There is a lot of desperation in that letter, found on floridamemory.com.

The grave of Annie Bradley is dated from the same date of the telegram, which means she was most likely one of the two deaths referenced. The older section has a large fenced area with a grand monument for W.H. Cavin, with a death date of October 27, 1888, so it seems that they could possibly be a victim as well. (I wasn’t able to find out if Cavin was male or female, but I’m thinking they were male.)

Near Annie Bradley’s headstone is the resting place of W.D. Moore, who is said to be the first marked burial in the cemetery with a death date of January 15, 1882.

In the same section of the cemetery you will also see a small plot for children of the Florida United Methodist Children’s home which began in 1908, and a few sad burials. The home was renamed in 1971, so the main stone marking the plot pre-dates that as it simply says Florida Methodist Children’s Home. This children’s home is still operating today and has a fascinating history.

There were also a lot of Osteens here- and so we decided to head to that cemetery next. See you next week!