Solitude walked with pioneers

Webb farmhouse in Mandarin

Family bubbles, social distancing, and online opportunities to connect eased my solitude during the height of our never-ending pandemic. A recent discovery of a small historical park made me realize that solitude walked beside every pioneer in frontier Florida, all the time. 

I realized that during a stroll through a historical site new to me. My husband and I were traveling side streets in the Mandarin neighborhood of Jacksonville when we arrived in town earlier than expected for a funeral. We found a hidden gem: the Walter Jones Historical Park, perched on the banks of the St. Johns River.

This being a pandemic, the site's historical buildings were closed to visitors but the park was open for walking. And it was during my walk along the nature trail, toward the river, that the solitude thought struck me. Everything was so quiet. Few people were out and about that day. It was easy to imagine that a hundred or more years had just been lopped off the calendar. Easy to realize that every day back then, the people on this and other homesteads were far removed from each other.

Mandarin is one of the older neighborhoods of Jacksonville, best known today as the place where writer Harriet Beecher Stowe wintered in the late 1800s. At first I wondered if the historical park contained her house. It doesn't. A historical sign marking the site where her home once stood is about a mile away.

The park features a collection of period buildings, one of which contains the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society. Others are the St. Joseph's Mission Schoolhouse for African-American Children, an old barn, a sawmill, barnlike winery and the 1875 Webb farmhouse.

The Webb farmhouse fronts the river. In its time, it was surrounded by 30 acres of farmland. The river, not the land behind the house, was the major highway of its day. It was a lifeline for people who lived in isolated pockets before rail lines reached them in succeeding years.

The quietness and isolation of those early lives seemed so real during my walk. My husband was on another section of the trail and I was alone. There was peace and beauty in the land and water around me. But the beauty of the human connection was made clear by its absence. I never noticed such a feeling quite like I did that day, in that place.

I like to spend a lot of time alone. But too much of even that good thing is unhealthful. We're made to love and help ease each other's journey through life. Much as pioneers did when they were able to bridge the miles between them. Much as we should still do today, even though the miles aren't always physical anymore. They're metaphorical. And it's crucial that we bridge them.

Manhattan in Florida

Floridamemory.com labels this photo as a view from the depot
of two hotels in Astor in the late 1800s.

Drive through the hamlet of Astor today. You certainly won't think about big city life. The rural community hugs the Ocala National Forest on one side and the St. Johns River on the other. About 1,500 people call Astor home.

Yet the settlement was once called Manhattan by one who knew what he was talking about - William Backhouse Astor. In 1874, the wealthy New Yorker bought some 12,000 acres in what is today Astor. He and two partners laid out a settlement that he named Manhattan. Astor poured energy, imagination, and funding into the community, but it never came near resembling its northern namesake. In fact, even in the early days, many people called the settlement Astor.

The region's settlement is explained in a 40-page local history published as a project of the Astor Kiwanis Club in 1982.  The History of Astor on the St. Johns, Astor Park, and the Surrounding Area was compiled by A. Wass de Czege. (There's an enlarged third edition with 64 pages, but I've never seen it.) I like the one I have because it includes some reminiscences of then-elderly people who'd been around Astor in much earlier days. I'll write about them next month.

As was usual in the late 1800s, the land and climate in Astor were extolled to northerners as abounding in healthful qualities. William Astor built a church, school and general store, set aside land for a cemetery, planted orange groves, and created a botanical garden. He built two hotels - one named the Astor House - but never stayed in either of them. He preferred to stay on his yacht (25). That gives you some indication of his standard milieu. He wasn't just any rich Yankee. His family was the famous - and famously rich - Astor clan. His wife ruled New York society during the Gilded Age.

Astor even built a railroad in his southern Manhattan. The Kiwanis Club's booklet says the settlement thrived for a while. Visitors reported finding no vacancies at the hotels. Astor's wealthy friends built winter cottages. Many new settlers invested in and grew citrus and bananas.

Then two things happened: Astor died in 1894, and a severe freeze in 1894-95 devastated the area's citrus industry and banana growth. Astor's son, John Jacob Astor IV, did what he could to reinvigorate the community, in part by turning to forestry industries.

But John Jacob Astor IV went down on the Titanic in 1912.  His son cared little for the town, and "the 'Astor dream' was over," (28) reports the Kiwanis booklet.

But the town survived. Astor heirs sold what was legally known as the Manhattan Grant to the Duluth Land Company (29), which marketed land to immigrants in Minnesota who'd come primarily from Finland. Periods of growth and recession followed, until the town settled into its current configuration. Today, small homes and fish camps nestle in a riverfront setting surrounded by the majesty of a national forest, and life unfolds in the way of small towns everywhere.

In some ways, better than Manhattan.