The 1879 Earthquake centered near St. Augustine, Florida.

1879 On January 12, about 11:40 in the evening, West Volusia residents were awakened by something very unusual: Their houses were shaking. In a letter January 22 to her son, Walter, Lucy Mead Parce, sister-in-law of Henry DeLand, wrote, “I can’t describe it, but it seemed as though the foundations of the earth were being broken up and everything was going to pieces… The bed and house shook, the timber creaked and windows rattled and it seemed as though everything…had come to life and was jumping around.” She feared it was a tornado, but when she looked out the window of the Parceland Hotel in DeLand and saw “a beautiful still moonlight night, not a breath of air stirring,” she decided it was an earthquake. Centered near St. Augustine, the 1879 earthquake was one of the two largest reported in Florida before the development of seismography; the other was in northwest Florida in 1780. Mrs. Parce, wife of Mrs. Sarah Parce DeLand’s brother, J.Y. Parce, reported three shocks but no damage except “that hole in the ground.” There were reports, she wrote, “that DeLand had sunk, but I guess they will find out it’s a mistake…though I presume some would be glad to have it so.” 

Florida lies between, but safely distant from two major tectonic plates, the North American and the Caribbean. 

–The photo, from the Dreggors Collection in the WVHS Archives, shows what is believed to be the Parce family about 1880, in front of the Parceland Hotel. The woman in the center, holding a child, may be Mrs. Lucy Parce, with Sarah DeLand at the far right.

SOURCES: The quotations are from THE PARCE LETTERS, VOICES FROM THE PAST, transcribed by Gerri Giovanelli Bauer and published by the WVHS in 2004.