Trivia Advent Calendar

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-16-2015 06:08 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(12-15-2015 06:37 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Mary Lincoln was in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1875. Is this the historic house where she stayed?

I've more than once tried to find a photo from the place she stayed to no avail. All I could find is the following:

Mary Todd Lincoln visited St. Augustine in the winter of 1875 and stayed on Whitney's Island in the San Sebastian River in West Augustine. Her host was the developer of that area, John Whitney. As a newspaper publisher, Whitney had also crusaded to get Congress to provide a pension for Mary.

I couldn't find his 1875 house (maybe Donna can help?), but maybe it was similar to Ortega-MacMillan House on 224 Saint George Street, Saint Augustine, which he owned from
1870-1873:

During her Florida stay, Mary (like Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Edison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other VIPs) did a popular steamaboat trip on the Ocklawaha River to Silver Springs. Here are some fascinating photos of the past:
http://studiohourglass.blogspot.de/2012/...a.html?m=1

John Hay BTW owned an orange grove in St. Augustine in the 1860s. It was in the northwest part of Lincolnville in the area of Sanford, Weeden, Bravo and Bridge streets. Hay later sold the grove to Gen. Henry Shelton Sanford, who had been Lincoln's chief diplomat in Europe and US Ambassador to Belgium from 1861-1869, and founded the city of Sanford, FL (which looks gorgeous to me, as does St. Augustine - if you Google pictures...).

I found this photo online, taken during the CW:
   
To my regret not I, just my camera took these photos of the historic district in St Augustine, precisely St. George Street - built sometime after 1702 when the British burned the city. There's also the oldest wooden school building in the United States, which first appears on tax records in 1716 - Mary certainly saw it:
       
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement within the borders of the US. It was founded on September 8, 1565, by Spanish admiral and Florida's first governor, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. He named the settlement "San Agustín", as his ships bearing settlers, troops, and supplies from Spain had first sighted land in Florida on August 28, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, the patron saint of his home town of Aviles.