Not every newcomer to Central Florida fell in love at first sight. When HELEN FREEMAN SPENCER arrived with her family at Blue Spring Landing on November 11, 1876 the wharf was white with frost. Their boat was four hours early and there was nobody (or conveyance) there to meet the party of 10, some too old and some too young to walk to Orange City, two and a half miles away. Not a good beginning.

Fortunately, a man getting wood for the boat offered the new arrivals his team of four oxen hitched to a wood cart. Mrs. Spencer wrote: “My husband was not used to driving oxen, but in due time we arrived.” And that arrival was a big event, she recalled: “I don’t think a circus would have excited any greater curiosity than did the Freeman family, as we were called, all nine of us. From every house and yard there stood someone to look. I often wondered what they expected.”

Although many new settlers could not adapt to the rugged land, the Freeman-Spencer family prospered. Mrs. Spencer’s parents, the Dennis Freemans, opened a boarding house, The Freeman House, on East Graves Avenue and quickly became part of the growing community. Mrs. Freeman helped start the library and her son, Howard, taught the first free school, located in Lake Helen. 

SOURCES: OUR STORY OF ORANGE CITY, FLORIDA, pps, 22-23, published by Village Improvement Association and Orange City Woman’s Club. The early 1900s photo of Blue Spring Landing is from the Dreggors Collection in the WVHS Archives.