SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – Living here in Central Florida, we see all the signs of modern growth every day, but most of us have no idea about the history that is sometimes right under our feet.
One of our News 6 viewers reached out to us about a part of Seminole County that has disappeared through the decades. He recently discovered apparent gravestones just beyond his property near Markham Woods Road, a site which appears to be part of what was once known as Pinnie Ridge Cemetery.
“I’ve been here since 2008 and didn’t even know it was here,” said Bill Klatt.
Klatt explored the woods with our News 6 crew, where he found several markers hidden in the trees away from a clearing where a small cemetery is located.
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“We don’t know if more people are buried here or not,” said Klatt. “It’s like trying to erase history.”
Bennett Lloyd, the coordinator of the Museum of Seminole County History, said the property has had many names through the years; Oak Grove Cemetery or Oak Island Cemetery, and also Pinnie Grove or Pinnie Ridge. It was part of the town of Markham, which existed in the early 20th century.
“This is one of the many small cemeteries that dot our landscape,” said Lloyd. “There were a lot of cemeteries that were established around small communities, and ghost towns essentially, that don’t really exist anymore.”
Markham was founded in 1875, and was a center for agriculture, according to Lloyd. It was named after William Markham.
“William Markham was originally from Atlanta,” said Lloyd. “He was a rare Union sympathizer in Atlanta, and after the Civil War he tried to run for mayor. He failed, and he moved down here.”
Lloyd said this area in Central Florida became a focus for northern businessmen who came down and started to develop it.
“He started an orange grove, Markham’s grove, which we have on maps up to 1896 when he died,” said Lloyd. “He had African American labor working his orange groves. He was trying to make money here. He also owned land near Mellonville and Ft. Reed, which was east of what is now Sanford.”
Lloyd said the town of Markham had a vibrant Black community and a sizeable group of laborers who developed the lumber and turpentine in the area.
A historical marker off of Markham Road today reads, in part, “The Markham people built railroads, produced lumber and turpentine, grew citrus and worked the land. Markham and its surrounding area attracted not only a labor pool, but also permanent settlers who bought their own land, built homes and farmed. They worked hard, educated their children, and survived many hardships with dignity.”
“First, you would be scoring the turpentine trees and putting Herty cups down to collect the resin,” said Lloyd. “And then you would boil it and distill it into turpentine spirits, and then they would build stills, brick stills. You can actually see a good example of one of those preserved in Barberville, which is actually just north of here.”
The primary landowners throughout Seminole county at this time were the Overstreet Turpentine Company, Wilson Cypress, and T.E. Wilson, according to records. Markham was a thriving town in the 1880s and early 1900s because of its location near the river and Lake Eustis Railway.
Lloyd said the community buried at Pinnie Ridge was close to the Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church, which would have been the local community center for the working population.
“That was here until 1928 when it burned down,” said Lloyd.
After the longleaf pine trees were harvested in the area, Lloyd said it was commonplace for people to move to the next field, and so towns like Markham were left behind.
“They would move the whole town, and they would drop it on another plot of land nearby and they would do the same thing to that land, and it would just migrate around the county,” said Lloyd. “This whole area became a system of mobile communities that were working in those turpentine industries.”
Today, if you visit the woods where the Pinnie Ridge cemetery was, you will see mostly pine trees. The only peek into the past are metal markers, some of which are rusted and unreadable. Lloyd says many of the wooden crosses that once marked burial sites disintegrated through the decades.
“A 1996 study of this site and the community of Markham noted that a lot of the grave markers that were original to this site were made of wood,” said Lloyd. “Florida is not kind to those kinds of organic materials.”
By the 1940s and ‘50s, the town of Markham existed only on paper, said Lloyd. Many of these Central Florida ghost towns were subsumed into incorporations and annexations as the central cities of Seminole County developed.
“There are dozens of these cemeteries scattered around the county, some of which have been lost to development already,” said Lloyd. “We’re working on trying to figure out what parking lots they’re under.”
Since much of Pinnie Ridge has disappeared, Lloyd said it is impossible to know how many people are buried there and how big the burial ground could be. He told our News 6 crew there is some evidence that the cemetery has overflowed its allotment and spilled out into neighboring lots. There are estimates that anywhere from 25 to 75 people are buried at Pinnie Ridge.
“But those estimates are also older,” said Lloyd. “These cemeteries are still in use. A lot of families still have plots here. We see graves that are from the early 2000s, so we’re only as good as the records that we receive.”
Online records from Seminole County show the property is currently known as the New Island Lake Cemetery, and it can still be accessed off Markham Woods Road, across from Markham Woods Middle School.
Lloyd said it is possible that the gravesite markers Klatt showed us beyond the clearing could be individuals whose families couldn’t afford to bury them at the actual cemetery.
“It could be that there were poorer individuals who still wanted to be close to the cemetery, but didn’t really have the money to purchase plots. There’s really no way of knowing who’s buried here and where unless there’s some kind of archaeology done.”
Klatt said he received a letter from a law firm who represents the owners of a nearby property who wish to build one to two homes on their land. Documents show they paid for a ground penetrating radar report, which was limited by the terrain, but showed no evidence of any graves on the adjacent parcel. Seminole County’s Planning and Development team is currently reviewing a Future Land Use Map amendment, which does not guarantee any development activity on the site.
Klatt says the site where the Pinnie Ridge Cemetery was located captures the “essence” of Markham Woods and is essential to its history. He believes the land where there are graves should be preserved.
“If it wasn’t for them, we probably wouldn’t be enjoying our community as we enjoy today,” said Klatt. “It would be very important to restore this cemetery and also make it a historic site.”