Partin Heirs Work To Preserve Cemetery In Winter Park

LIFE IN OSCEOLA - Osceola's HISTORY
May 19, 2002|By Jim Robison, Sentinel Columnist

Seminole County's Partin Elementary School is named for educator Marguerite P. Partin, who taught three generations of Oviedo area families.
"When I started teaching the grandchildren," she joked in 1978, "I said, `Marguerite, it's time to retire.' "
She is just one of the many ties between Seminole County and one of Osceola County's premier families.
A native of Lakeland, Partin came to Oviedo in 1936 to teach first grade. She also coached girls basketball and cheerleading for older students. She married James A. Partin, a celery farmer and Oviedo native.
Her husband's father was John Enoch Partin, the fourth son of James Benjamin Partin, who was the fifth son of Hugh Gilmore Partin, patriarch of the extended family of Partins in Central Florida.

"Almost all the Partin families in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties can be traced back to Hugh G. and Nancy E. Partin, who are buried in our little pioneer cemetery," explained Sharon Lynch of Orlando, who with several cousins have traced the family heritage as part of their efforts to get the Partin Cemetery in Winter  Park designated as a historic site. "Their descendants have contributed much to the development of this area of Central Florida over the past 135-plus years, and they still are today."

The Partin heirs, aware that Florida law allows abandoned private cemeteries to disappear, are maintaining the property and have prepared land records to present to the state and Winter Park, which recently annexed the family cemetery and the surrounding neighborhood.

The gated cemetery where Modac Trail meets Rapidan Trail is surrounded by 1960s-era suburbia within the fourth addition of the Dommerich Hills neighborhood.

The story of how Hugh Gilmore Partin settled along Howell Branch is included in Alma Hetherington's The River of the Long Water, recently reprinted by the Osceola County Historical Society and on sale at the society's Pioneer Center. (The full story of the Partins is told in Vivian Smith's book The Partin Family, available in the family genealogy section of the downtown Orlando public library's reference section.)

"Hugh G. Partin in 1847 set out on foot from Tatnall County, Georgia, for a trip to Florida," Hetherington writes. "He came through Orlando and down to Kissimmee, both of which were small settlements known by other names at the time. He liked what he saw so well that he turned around -- again on foot -- and went back to Georgia where he sold out and moved his family south."

Elsewhere, Hetherington writes, "To Hugh G. Partin were born ten children, one of them Stephen Clay Partin in 1848. He was the father of Henry O. Partin, who through the years, with his four sons, became perhaps one of the most noted cattlemen in the Southwest."

The Jan. 7, 1956, issue of the Saturday Evening Post carried the story, "Mr. Henry's Empire" about Partin's 60,000-acre cattle dynasty founded in the Florida scrub and Partin's famed Braham bull, Emperor, who died that year.
"Any one of Emperor's blooded sons," the magazine reported, "may be worth the price of several hundred of the old range steers. As Mr. J.E. Lupfer, who owns the Osceola Hardware Store in Kissimmee says, `The odds are Mr. Henry's family is going to be running a ranch out here for some time yet.' "
The half-acre cemetery just north of Howell Creek is the last of the old homestead still owned by heirs of Hugh and Nancy Partin.

The waters of Howell Creek, identified as Howell Branch on some maps, flow from Lake Howell in Seminole County to Lake Maitland in Orange County.

The rolling land -- on both sides of Howell Branch Road from Lake Howell Lane west to Temple Trail and Temple Drive -- remained in the family for nearly a century. Groves set by the Partins and other early settlers covered the land until the 1960s, when the Dommerich and other neighborhoods were built where Seminole County's Howell Branch Road becomes Maitland's Horatio Avenue.

Family history says Partin lived on the land that today straddles the border between Seminole and Orange counties. He built his home in the general area of Temple Drive and Howell Branch Road.

One of his sons, James Benjamin Partin, built his house to the east along Howell Creek in what is Seminole County. Much of the rolling, hilly area would become grove land.

On April 9, 1878 -- the same year Partin died -- a deed approved by Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes granted Partin ownership of 160 acres at what then was called the community of Howell Creek.

Orange County school records show that the Howell Creek school opened in 1877, but an older school, which opened in 1875, was named for the Partins.

Hugh Partin died Sept. 12, 1878. His wife, the former Nancy Elizabeth Smith, died March 10, 1901. They are buried side by side under the hickory trees that shade the Partin Cemetery on a knoll a few hundred yards north of the creek.
Nearby are the graves of their daughter, Parmelia Temperance Partin Redditt, and her husband, John J. "Reb" Redditt.
Another daughter, Temperance Florida Partin Hull Smith, and her husband, William R. Smith, and a son, John Taylor Partin, and his wife, Ida Frances Beasley Partin McLamb, also are buried in the family cemetery.

After his father's death, James Benjamin Partin sold some of the estate's land, including the property surrounding, but excluding, the cemetery.

Hugh Gilmore Partin was great-great-great-grandfather of Mary W. Phillips of Orlando.
Phillips writes, "We have spent many hours the past few years cleaning and trying to save our Partin Family Cemetery."