A Scandalous Past

While the moss draped live oaks along Rockledge Drive evoke a pervasive sense of calm, in it's heyday little Rockledge was a bustling destination for travelers looking to escape winters in the frigid north. They packed into several rambling wooden hotels along the bank of the Indian River where they sat on the porch, went on boat tours, hunted and fished, checked out the alligators and were even entertained by trained bears! Many guests came year after year and some, who had the means to do so, eventually decided they wanted permanent places of their own. While most of these early snow birds were merely here for a change of climate it turns out some of them might have been escaping a little "heat" of their own. Such is the case with a man by the name of  Edward Newton Rowell who spent his winters in the charming cottage below at 1119 Rockledge Drive, that he purchased from the Van Deman family. His daughters went on to spend even more time there, although not without some scandals of their own, but that's a story for another time!! 

VanDeman-Rowell House 1119 Rockledge Drive
Drawing by Robert Kronowitt from the book At First Glance by Roy Laughlin

It turns out that in addition to being a wealthy New York industrialist, he made a fortune manufacturing boxes, Mr. Rowell was also an accused murderer! In a case that captivated the press of the day Mr. Rowell was accused and tried for having shot and killed his wife's lover. Apparently Mr. Rowell's success in business had been matched by his marriage to a younger, very attractive lady named Jennie. However, since Mr. Rowell was described as being "cold as an iceberg" this was bound to end in trouble, and boy did it! Mrs. Rowell began looking for comfort in other places and among several dalliances was Johnson Lynch, an attorney and friend of her husbands. Eventually Mr. Rowell came to suspect his wife was being unfaithful and so he hatched plan to catch her in the act. Telling her he was going out of town on business, he instead got a hotel room and waited. Sure enough Mrs. Rowell dropped off her daughters with a friend and met Mr. Lynch at the train station. On October 30, 1883 after a pleasant dinner in her home Mrs. Rowell and Mr. Lynch went upstairs to her bedroom. No sooner had they gotten in bed than Mr. Rowell burst through the door and without saying a word, fired two shots into the bed. Mrs. Rowell was grazed by one bullet and the other missed entirely. Mr. Lynch, wisely proceeded to bolt from the bed and to hightail it down the hall. Mr. Rowell followed in hot pursuit and fired two shots at him as he went down the stairs. One shot entered his shoulder and the other went right through his heart killing him instantly. Mrs. Rowell escaped and ran outside calling for the police who came and took her husband to jail.

E. N. Rowell Mansion at Batavia New York. Built 1923

Despite the fact that it was clearly a premeditated murder, Mr. Rowell was only charged with manslaughter. Since things like this didn't happen very often at that day in age, the trial was widely covered in the press. When it was all over on February 8, 1884 the jury acquitted Rowell on the grounds of self defense! And while it isn't known how the people of Rockledge felt about Mr. Rowell, the townspeople of Batavia celebrated his acquittal with cheers in the courtroom and fireworks that evening.

As you can probably guess, Mr. Rowell filed for divorce from his wife in April of 1884 and received full custody of his two daughters. While the former Mrs. Rowell is said to have lived out her remaining days in need, Mr. Rowell went on to find happiness in arms of, yes you can guess it, his former secretary for whom he built the lovely house pictured above, and who became President of his company upon his death.

St. Mary's Church Restoration

Thought you might enjoy seeing the latest on the restoration of the old St. Mary's Church Building in Rockledge. Check out the link to Jodi's blog for more info and pictures!

CCS Restoration returned to Rockledge, Florida this week to resume work on the restoration of the diamond pane windows of the Old St. Mary's Church.  Read more about what makes these windows so special in the CCS Restoration blog.  Share Forward Share Have a Restoration Project in Mind? I would love for you to call me to come out and take a look at your restoration project.  Estimates are always free! Check out our Facebook page and website and then give me a ring at the number below.

Remember to forward this email to your preservation-minded friends and ask them to add their address to our mailing list We are located in historic downtown Sanford at: 200 North Laurel Avenue Sanford, Florida 32771 Call Jodi: 407-928-8620 Copyright © 2015 CCS Restoration, LLC, All rights reserved. Our newsletter is sent roughly once each week. If you would prefer for us to send it to a different email address, please update it using the link below. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, safely unsubscribe below.

Pumpkin Center - Neuharth Estate Burns

On Tuesday night Brevard County history suffered a great loss when the ocean front estate of the late Al Neuharth, the founder of Florida Today and USA Today newspaper burned. The home, known as Pumpkin Center, is considered to be a total loss and had been recently sold by the Neuharth family to Jeffery Wells for nearly $5 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a home in Brevard County. The sprawling house had over 10,000 of living space with 11 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. The home is commonly said to have been built in 1975, but a few old timers know that its core was a much earlier structure built as the ocean front get away of another early Brevard County tycoon, Eugene Wuesthoff. 

Eugene Wuesthoff
From the collections of the Brevard County Historical Commission

Mr. Wuesthoff was one of the early visitors who came to Brevard County to enjoy the weather and recreation opportunities. Mr. Wuesthoff had been the general manager of the Slitz Breweries in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and later one of two owners of the Union Refrigerated and Transit Company, from which business he retired in 1922. He spent the majority of his time in Rockledge, a well known winter resort at the time, where he immersed himself in local community activities. He contributed his financial support to many projects and groups, and left a generous legacy to found the hospital in Rockledge which still bears his name. He was also a major investor in local real estate, particularly during the land boom. In 1925 he purchased a custom built house on Valencia Road in Rockledge where he spent his winters until he passed away in 1940. This house, pictured below, featured the first swimming pool in the area and a cabana with separate changing rooms for men and women. The pool is still has been restored and is still in use today!

Wuesthoff House, 25 Valencia Road, Rockledge, FL

In 1927 it was Mr. Wuesthoff who began construction on what was to become Pumpkin Center. In December of that year the Cocoa Tribune reported that he had let contracts for the construction of a "lodge" on Cocoa Beach to cost approximately $8,000. The lodge, known as Pelican Dunes and described below, was of an usual design, giving the appearance of a log cabin, and set the tone for the rambling structure that it was to become. 

Wuesthoff's lodge is familiar to some of our early Space Race residents as "the house on the beach," where it was the site of many parties thrown by the renters living there.  A great description of this part of the home's history and a rare photograph of the house may been seen in Melba McCaslin's recently published book Young and Single on the Space Coast 1953 to 1969. 

In a strange coincidence the house immediately south of Pumpkin Center and known as "The Folly," was destroyed by fire as it was nearing completion in 1937. For my previous blog post on this interesting story click here. 

When Rockledge WASN'T Called Peru

While the internet has allowed us to make great strides in historical research it certainly has its downside in that it also allows false infomation to spread like wildfire. Such is the case with several websites that claim that Rockledge, Brevard's oldest city, incorporated on 7 Aug. 1887, was once called Peru, "after the Peruvian Mining Company" which supposedly had interests in the area and built a small group of houses for its workers in the 1860's. This statement has been picked up and now appears in several places online. While I had seen and heard this myself it wasn't until local historian and Rockledge resident Carole Pope called me this week and asked me if there was proof for this statement that I really thought about it.




Old Postcard of the Rockledge River Bank
Courtsey of Brevard Historial Commission

The source of the misinformation appears to be a travel article, which Carole forwarded to me, published online at  USA Today. This article correctly states that Rockledge got its name from the rock ledges to be found along the banks of the Indian River, but then goes on to mention the Peruvian Mining Company, a Peru Baptist church and some of the names of the early settlers of the area, none of which matches with what we know about the early history of Rockledge, and we know a lot! The article also states that some residents called the town Peru until the 1940s, which was another red flag as the only way Rockledge would ever have been called Peru was if it was long out of the memory of any living residents, as no one alive has ever heard it called by that name.

Some of the early settlers of Rockledge like the Hardees, Williams, and Macgruder families arrived in the 1870's and purchased or homesteaded their land from the government which shows there were no earlier owners. Eric Caron's Centennial history of Rockledge makes no mention of another name for Rockledge nor does the three volume history of the county published by our very own Historical Commission. A review of the Grantor and Grantee indexes for Brevard County land records, which go back to the County's founding days, show that no Peruvian Mining Company ever owned any land in the area.

An online search for the Peruvian Mining Company also turned up the following Wikipedia article which gives a description of an area called Riverview on the Alafia river in Hillsborough County which has almost the exact same history as that attributed to Rockledge. Since wikipeida is not always a reliable source, Carole found historical documentation in the form of a Historic Resources Survey published by Hillsborough County, which clearly shows the Peruvian Mining company's operations were in fact in Hillsborough County not Brevard County.

So, while it remains a mystery how the writer could confuse two towns on opposite sides of the Florida Coast it can now be clearly shown that the Peruvian Mining Company had nothing to do with the history of Rockledge and we can rest content that there is not some important part of our history floating out there that we had somehow misplaced!