A Tiny Town with a Large Cemetery
By Constance L. Lieber
April 15, 2023
April 15, 2023
Umatilla, Florida, is a very small town with a very large cemetery. There, the Spanish moss hangs from the trees to almost reach the ground. I know it is infested with red ants and I know it could kill the tree. Nonetheless, I love it. I have snipped pieces from the tree which shades the place where my great-grandmother rests and framed and hung them above my desk where I can always see them and never forget.
Florida State Road 19 wends its way from Palatka through Lake County and its 1,000 lakes south to Tavares, the county seat. Umatilla, the geographical center of Florida, has a population of about 4,000, which grows by half again as many in the winter, when fishing enthusiasts come to angle for Bass, Catfish, Blue Gill, and Crappie. The town is built around Lake Umatilla, and I always thought my great-grandmother’s backyard reached all the way down to the lake. We – my brothers and sister and cousin – played at fishing down there, but only caught imaginary catfish and all-too-real mosquito bites. Actually, her land stopped well short of the lake or so I’m told now. I don’t want to believe, preferring my childhood assumption.
The town seems stuck in time. In all the years I’ve known it (over a half century) it hasn’t changed except to add a Burger King at one end and a McDonald’s at the other. The homes are one or two bedrooms, usually stucco, and, sadly, not air conditioned. Or so we think today. I don’t remember ever being bothered by the heat and humidity back then. The weather was what it was and we accepted it, just so. If we ever felt too warm, we rubbed an ice cube over our face: problem solved!
State Road 19 where it runs through Umatilla (neatly bisecting it), hosts the old hotel, a small library, and the high school. My hazy memory seems to have recorded a hardware store (read: fishing supplies) and a drug store, but those played no part in my life. The residential streets are to the east and the west of 19, except where Lake Umatilla blocks development. The old hotel has had a varied career. I remember it mostly as the place my grandfather and I would eat breakfast. He was nearly blind and his hands roamed restlessly about the table and he couldn’t still them. His breakfast was always eggs and grits and sausage. The hostess knew him and called out a cheery “Hey, Mr. Charles” whenever we entered. The restaurant was dark with, I imagine, the original rickety chairs and tables that rocked. The décor was fishing nets. I doubt any of the visiting anglers ever use nets – they are a nod to deep sea fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, 49 miles away at Daytona Beach.
When the old hotel restaurant finally closed, grandfather and I switched to The Bell Jar, a bit north but still on State Road 19 where he gradually became just as well-known as he had been at the hotel. On Sundays, he was a fixture in the congregation at the Baptist Church in Umatilla. He always sat on the fourth row, slightly to the right of the pulpit. He couldn’t see, but had no trouble hearing the sermon as evidenced by his pronouncing a loud “Amen” every time he approved of something the minister proclaimed. As a child, I wanted to become invisible when he called out. Today, I’d give anything to be sitting next to him in the church. Maybe I’d even lend my voice to his heartfelt “Amens.”
A newspaper in Salt Lake City ran an article years ago about towns that had re-invented themselves by offering nightlife to local Millennials. Umatilla was one example. I can’t imagine where they got their information. In Umatilla, “nightlife” is the laundromat. I know; I’ve done my time there and the scene is indeed lively. But I don’t think many Millennials would choose it as a venue for socializing.
Umatilla, like many of the small towns in central Florida where the citrus industry was king, has had to re-invent itself (even if not to satisfy the Millennial longing for action) because the freezes in the 1890s and again in the 1980s decimated the rows of orange and grapefruit trees. Yet, even though the Golden Gem juice processing plant is long gone, when I drive into Umatilla, I can still smell the slightly sour odor of oranges in the process of being transformed into the ubiquitous breakfast drink and can hear the echo of Anita Bryant urging America to “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” because “a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
Nonetheless, we usually drank water. The water coming out of the taps in Umatilla is unique: it is slightly yellow and smells of sulphur. Ice cold, it is drinkable. The town used to be known as Sulphur City, but that was a long time ago and it was never a city. It was founded in 1856 and was named after the equally small town of Umatilla, Oregon. Apparently a Umatilla, Florida, resident had a friend in Umatilla, Oregon, and just liked the sound of the name. Me? I would have voted for Sulphur City.
My great grandmother, Lola Robinson, was born in Umatilla in 1889 and except for a few years in Jacksonville, never lived anywhere else. She is the link between me and the generations before her. She remembers them, and I remember her. By the time she died, she was almost 100 years old and she couldn’t recognize the present anymore. She had forgotten our names and faces, but I can never forget her. She has been gone nearly forty years, but to me, she is still present.
Well, I tell everyone her name was Robinson. In the 1880 census, her father is enumerated as “Tillman Robinson.” But her grandfather, in the 1870 census, is named “G. A. Robertson.” When asked, she said her surname was Robinson. I puzzled over that conundrum for years. Then, suddenly, I knew. It was obvious. In the local pronunciation, both Robertson and Robinson are pronounced “Rah ah b’sun.” I place the confusion squarely on the shoulders of the census enumerators. Did the census recorder in 1870 have a cousin with the surname “Robertson”? If so, that is what he heard and what he wrote down. But perhaps the person going door to door with the census questionnaire in 1880 had a cousin with the surname “Robinson.” If so, that is what he heard and what he wrote down. Lola’s family says her name is and always was “Robinson.” Yet I have cousins who are just as adamant that the family name is “Robertson.” On their family records she is identified in indelible ink as “Lola Robertson.”
Does it even matter? Perhaps not, but if I went to the cemetery in Umatilla in search of Lola Robertson, I would never find her.
When I go, I make the time to go to the rather large city cemetery and wander around the dirt paths. Before I find her grave, I always get lost, and fear I’ll never spot her memorial. I know the way: walk straight back into the oldest part of the cemetery until you reach a low stone wall. Sit on it and look in front of you to see where my family is buried. But no matter that I have visited her countless times before, I always get lost. When I am through meandering, I begin to notice the stones surrounding me. Stones with writing, stones with writing effaced, stones with unfamiliar names, stones with names of people I knew and loved. Charles Howard Jackson lies there, who came with the railroad to Umatilla from Jacksonville in 1880 and married Lola, but who had to be institutionalized in 1940 because he chased her around the kitchen with a large butcher knife. The stone for Lola’s second husband, Quinley Stewart, is also there. He began as a boarder at her boarding house and ended up accompanying her into old age – but not through it. She was a widow a second time for twenty-six years. Charles Lamar Jackson, my grandfather, who was married six times, twice to my own grandmother, lies next to his mother. When he was in the twilight of his life, my mother and I took him to a nursing home in Daytona Beach for military veterans. He cried and wanted to go back to his little house in Umatilla.
“Granddad,” I asked him (but he didn’t know who I was anymore) “Do you remember basic training?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Was it hard?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Granddad, this is basic training for the rest of your life. It will be hard. And then it will be better. But you must complete it. Will you do it?”
“Yes, sir!” And he was quieted.
I sit on the stone wall and dream and the stones seemingly continue to multiply. Small and large, tipped over and nearly buried. It is quiet here. Quiet for me and quiet for them.
If I look a long distance straight ahead, I can see the oldest stones: Jacob Fussell, Elizabeth Fussell, and Baby Fussell. They pre-date the War Between the States. They are my great-grandmother’s grandparents, so they also belong to me.
It is so hot, but I want to linger. Pine needles litter the paths, and the big trees with their festoons of Spanish moss shade me. I’ve stopped caring about the ants.
Every time I visit, it seems that nothing has changed. But that’s not true. My aunt lies there now, joining her husband, who died before I was born. Once or twice, I have seen other people. I think. In my memory, they gradually fade into the trees, into the stones, into their own families.
One day I want my own stone to stand among them. It won’t, though. I’ll be laid to rest elsewhere, nearly a continent away, next to my husband. Still, we will remain connected, my family and I – the past flowing into the future. I brought my oldest daughter here and gave her the charge to be the memory, when I am gone. The memory that will continue to bind me and them – and now her – together. I cried and she sat next to me on the wall and promised.
Florida State Road 19 wends its way from Palatka through Lake County and its 1,000 lakes south to Tavares, the county seat. Umatilla, the geographical center of Florida, has a population of about 4,000, which grows by half again as many in the winter, when fishing enthusiasts come to angle for Bass, Catfish, Blue Gill, and Crappie. The town is built around Lake Umatilla, and I always thought my great-grandmother’s backyard reached all the way down to the lake. We – my brothers and sister and cousin – played at fishing down there, but only caught imaginary catfish and all-too-real mosquito bites. Actually, her land stopped well short of the lake or so I’m told now. I don’t want to believe, preferring my childhood assumption.
The town seems stuck in time. In all the years I’ve known it (over a half century) it hasn’t changed except to add a Burger King at one end and a McDonald’s at the other. The homes are one or two bedrooms, usually stucco, and, sadly, not air conditioned. Or so we think today. I don’t remember ever being bothered by the heat and humidity back then. The weather was what it was and we accepted it, just so. If we ever felt too warm, we rubbed an ice cube over our face: problem solved!
State Road 19 where it runs through Umatilla (neatly bisecting it), hosts the old hotel, a small library, and the high school. My hazy memory seems to have recorded a hardware store (read: fishing supplies) and a drug store, but those played no part in my life. The residential streets are to the east and the west of 19, except where Lake Umatilla blocks development. The old hotel has had a varied career. I remember it mostly as the place my grandfather and I would eat breakfast. He was nearly blind and his hands roamed restlessly about the table and he couldn’t still them. His breakfast was always eggs and grits and sausage. The hostess knew him and called out a cheery “Hey, Mr. Charles” whenever we entered. The restaurant was dark with, I imagine, the original rickety chairs and tables that rocked. The décor was fishing nets. I doubt any of the visiting anglers ever use nets – they are a nod to deep sea fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, 49 miles away at Daytona Beach.
When the old hotel restaurant finally closed, grandfather and I switched to The Bell Jar, a bit north but still on State Road 19 where he gradually became just as well-known as he had been at the hotel. On Sundays, he was a fixture in the congregation at the Baptist Church in Umatilla. He always sat on the fourth row, slightly to the right of the pulpit. He couldn’t see, but had no trouble hearing the sermon as evidenced by his pronouncing a loud “Amen” every time he approved of something the minister proclaimed. As a child, I wanted to become invisible when he called out. Today, I’d give anything to be sitting next to him in the church. Maybe I’d even lend my voice to his heartfelt “Amens.”
A newspaper in Salt Lake City ran an article years ago about towns that had re-invented themselves by offering nightlife to local Millennials. Umatilla was one example. I can’t imagine where they got their information. In Umatilla, “nightlife” is the laundromat. I know; I’ve done my time there and the scene is indeed lively. But I don’t think many Millennials would choose it as a venue for socializing.
Umatilla, like many of the small towns in central Florida where the citrus industry was king, has had to re-invent itself (even if not to satisfy the Millennial longing for action) because the freezes in the 1890s and again in the 1980s decimated the rows of orange and grapefruit trees. Yet, even though the Golden Gem juice processing plant is long gone, when I drive into Umatilla, I can still smell the slightly sour odor of oranges in the process of being transformed into the ubiquitous breakfast drink and can hear the echo of Anita Bryant urging America to “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” because “a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
Nonetheless, we usually drank water. The water coming out of the taps in Umatilla is unique: it is slightly yellow and smells of sulphur. Ice cold, it is drinkable. The town used to be known as Sulphur City, but that was a long time ago and it was never a city. It was founded in 1856 and was named after the equally small town of Umatilla, Oregon. Apparently a Umatilla, Florida, resident had a friend in Umatilla, Oregon, and just liked the sound of the name. Me? I would have voted for Sulphur City.
My great grandmother, Lola Robinson, was born in Umatilla in 1889 and except for a few years in Jacksonville, never lived anywhere else. She is the link between me and the generations before her. She remembers them, and I remember her. By the time she died, she was almost 100 years old and she couldn’t recognize the present anymore. She had forgotten our names and faces, but I can never forget her. She has been gone nearly forty years, but to me, she is still present.
Well, I tell everyone her name was Robinson. In the 1880 census, her father is enumerated as “Tillman Robinson.” But her grandfather, in the 1870 census, is named “G. A. Robertson.” When asked, she said her surname was Robinson. I puzzled over that conundrum for years. Then, suddenly, I knew. It was obvious. In the local pronunciation, both Robertson and Robinson are pronounced “Rah ah b’sun.” I place the confusion squarely on the shoulders of the census enumerators. Did the census recorder in 1870 have a cousin with the surname “Robertson”? If so, that is what he heard and what he wrote down. But perhaps the person going door to door with the census questionnaire in 1880 had a cousin with the surname “Robinson.” If so, that is what he heard and what he wrote down. Lola’s family says her name is and always was “Robinson.” Yet I have cousins who are just as adamant that the family name is “Robertson.” On their family records she is identified in indelible ink as “Lola Robertson.”
Does it even matter? Perhaps not, but if I went to the cemetery in Umatilla in search of Lola Robertson, I would never find her.
When I go, I make the time to go to the rather large city cemetery and wander around the dirt paths. Before I find her grave, I always get lost, and fear I’ll never spot her memorial. I know the way: walk straight back into the oldest part of the cemetery until you reach a low stone wall. Sit on it and look in front of you to see where my family is buried. But no matter that I have visited her countless times before, I always get lost. When I am through meandering, I begin to notice the stones surrounding me. Stones with writing, stones with writing effaced, stones with unfamiliar names, stones with names of people I knew and loved. Charles Howard Jackson lies there, who came with the railroad to Umatilla from Jacksonville in 1880 and married Lola, but who had to be institutionalized in 1940 because he chased her around the kitchen with a large butcher knife. The stone for Lola’s second husband, Quinley Stewart, is also there. He began as a boarder at her boarding house and ended up accompanying her into old age – but not through it. She was a widow a second time for twenty-six years. Charles Lamar Jackson, my grandfather, who was married six times, twice to my own grandmother, lies next to his mother. When he was in the twilight of his life, my mother and I took him to a nursing home in Daytona Beach for military veterans. He cried and wanted to go back to his little house in Umatilla.
“Granddad,” I asked him (but he didn’t know who I was anymore) “Do you remember basic training?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Was it hard?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Granddad, this is basic training for the rest of your life. It will be hard. And then it will be better. But you must complete it. Will you do it?”
“Yes, sir!” And he was quieted.
I sit on the stone wall and dream and the stones seemingly continue to multiply. Small and large, tipped over and nearly buried. It is quiet here. Quiet for me and quiet for them.
If I look a long distance straight ahead, I can see the oldest stones: Jacob Fussell, Elizabeth Fussell, and Baby Fussell. They pre-date the War Between the States. They are my great-grandmother’s grandparents, so they also belong to me.
It is so hot, but I want to linger. Pine needles litter the paths, and the big trees with their festoons of Spanish moss shade me. I’ve stopped caring about the ants.
Every time I visit, it seems that nothing has changed. But that’s not true. My aunt lies there now, joining her husband, who died before I was born. Once or twice, I have seen other people. I think. In my memory, they gradually fade into the trees, into the stones, into their own families.
One day I want my own stone to stand among them. It won’t, though. I’ll be laid to rest elsewhere, nearly a continent away, next to my husband. Still, we will remain connected, my family and I – the past flowing into the future. I brought my oldest daughter here and gave her the charge to be the memory, when I am gone. The memory that will continue to bind me and them – and now her – together. I cried and she sat next to me on the wall and promised.
Constance L. Lieber has published journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and books on Martha Hughes Cannon, the first female state senator (Utah 1896).. Her biography of Cannon, Dr, Martha Hughes Cannon: Suffragist, Senator, Plural Wife (October 2022) is in bookstores. Constance has lived in eight states and four countries (the U.S.A., Germany, China, and Switzerland). She has a Ph.D. in Languages and Literature and is fluent in English and German, speaks French, and can make herself understood in Mandarin, and Polish. Her working history includes stints as a newspaper carrier, travel agent, ballet teacher, and bassoonist in the Soloturn City Orchestra (Switzerland). More recently, she has taught German at the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. Currently, she is the house editor for documents at IDFL, a international company specializing in quality control and factory audits. She reads social history and murder mysteries, avoids going on walks, and loves to take her credit card shopping. She adores her husband, 5 children and 11 grandchildren. Lieber will receive her MFA in writing and publishing from Long Island University (Brooklyn) in Spring 2023.