Wood Fences in Eatonville, FL

Ten years after the Emancipation Proclamation, former slaves migrated to rural central Florida, finding work in the citrus groves. J.E. Clark and several friends attempted to purchase a block of land to establish a “colony for colored people, but so great was the prejudice then existing against the Negro that no one would sell them land for such a purpose” according to Clark. Lewis Lawrence, originally from Utica, New York, agreed to help them in 1881. Lawrence convinced Captain Josiah Eaton, a neighbor and friend, to sell him 22 acres, which Lawrence subdivided. Upon each lot he had a small house constructed and instructed an agent to sell them. An article in the Tallahassee Weekly Floridian newspaper titled, “A Negro Colony in Florida” stated,

“A negro settlement has been established at Maitland…which is divided into forty-eight lots, 50×50 feet, to be sold to negroes at from $19 to $30 per lot. Mr. Lawrence has erected on this land a framed church 30×20 feet, a bell for which has been presented by the Congregational Sabbath School of Chelsea, Connecticut. No liquor is ever to be sold or given away on the ground; no gambling or disreputable house of any kind will ever be allowed, under a forfeiture of the purchase.”

In 1884 the Orange County Reporter wrote about the “colored village at Maitland, sometimes known as Lawrence, the name of its worthy founder”. Mr Lawrence requested that the settlement use the name Eatonville. The following year Maitland incorporated using votes from blacks and at least one black man was elected as a town officer. A year after incorporation, there were “discussions of separation as a peaceful, progressive-minded, mutually beneficial solution to the so-called ‘race problem’.” While sources seem to disagree on the exact date and year of the town’s incorporation, the town’s official site provides a detailed account of the process and the dates.