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Saturday, October 25, 2003
Saulsville history found in cemetery
By Ronald Williamson | News-Journal Staff Writer
Weathered chimes hang from a turkey oak above a boulder in the Osteen Cemetery. Gentle breezes coax soft tingling notes from them and carry the sound across uneven rows of gravestones.
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Sauls House Site |
The largest stone in the Osteen Cemetery doesn’t really belong there. It’s a rough chunk of coquina as big as a desk, set firmly in the sand underneath the oak.
Embedded in it is a heavy bronze marker that says: “Sauls House Site.” But it doesn’t mark the site of the Sauls house. Nothing marks that site anymore, and it bothers descendants of George and Ardelia Sauls, whose graves are nearby.
The Sauls house was more than a mile away, near Howland and Fort Smith boulevards just north of Lake Butler. The Sauls settled there about 1850, before Volusia County was created, and raised nine children in the wilderness home. The home was a stagecoach stop on the sandy track from Enterprise to the coast, and the area was called Saulsville.
George and Ardelia died in the early 20th century, and by the time the house was 100 years old, it had been sold to others. In 1962, the house and all of Saulsville were part of 15,000 acres bought by the Deltona Corp. for a new city. Streets were cleared and paved around the empty and unpainted house. Old groves and pastures were platted into lots.
Deltona's developers had no use for the house, but because it was the oldest home in the county, it was given in 1971 to the Volusia County Fair Association to be moved to the fairgrounds.
It was never moved. On New Year's Day 1972, the house burned to the ground.
"Groups of roving hippies" had been staying in the house, according to a News-Journal story, and many people blamed the blaze on them. No one was arrested or charged.
On Sunday, April 4, 1976, about 100 people, including county officials, members of the county's historical commission, and many Sauls descendants, gathered by the burned rubble to dedicate the historic site. Historian Eileen Butts spoke, as did Judge Uriel Blount who said the past should be respected as civilization progresses.
The coquina boulder and historic marker, owned by the state and county, was placed there and many believed it would be forever protected.
It wasn't.
In 1981, the Deltona Corp. sold the land. In 1996, owners sold it to a builder, and soon a house stood on the lot with the old stone in the front yard. In 2000, the homeowner approached the new city of Deltona to do something about the boulder which drew curious strangers into his yard to read the marker.
The City Commission discussed various options, but finally, to make the homeowner happy, the dedicated stone was loaded without fanfare onto a city truck and hauled away with the idea it would be placed in a park someday.
"We felt like it was the only thing in the whole city that had historical significance and we wanted to protect it," said Mayor John Masiarczyk, even though "we didn't own it or have anything to do with it." He said he checked with county government, but found no one to take responsibility.
Not long afterward, Virginia Stowell, a great-granddaughter of George and Adelia, noticed the marker was missing.
"It just about broke my heart when I saw it was gone," she said. Her cousin, Pam LeFils, shared her dismay. When they tracked it to a maintenance barn, the women, both of Osteen, pressured the city to put it in a more fitting place. It was trucked outside the city to the Osteen Cemetery, donated by the Sauls in the 1870s.
In 2002, LeFils and Stowell asked the county Historic Preservation Board to put a marker beside the stone to explain how growth and development pushed it out of Saulsville. The board was supportive, but nothing has been done.
Both women, and others, say the land dedicated in 1976 shouldn't have been sold, nor the marker moved. "I didn't like it being pushed out of the old homeplace by newcomers," said LeFils. "We have to protect the past as we grow."
Despite good intentions of many over the years, that didn't happen in Saulsville.
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