History of Mount Dora
A Mount Dora Timeline
The 1840s to 1860s
The 1870s
1842 - The foundation for encouraging settlement in Florida is strengthened with the passage of the Florida Armed Occupation Act in 1842. The “head of the family” would receive 160 acres in return for protection against renewed hostilities with the Indians, enclosure of at least five acres of land, and a commitment to live on that land for five years.
1845 - Florida achieved statehood as the nation’s 27th state. The federal government took note that the region south of the Florida panhandle was a wilderness ready to be tamed.
1846 - Lake Dora may have received its name in this year, perhaps from surveyor C.C. Tracy.
1850s - The Drawdy family, including Dora, her second husband William, a grandmother, and their children moved from Irwin County, Georgia, close to the area that would become Mount Dora.
1866 - The passage of the Southern Homestead Act of 1866 gave thousands of veterans, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and former slaves the opportunity for fresh starts. Settlers were required to live on the land and improve it for five years, then they would acquire full ownership of 160 acres.
1870s - James Simpson was the first white child to be born in the area, one of David and Mary’s brood of ten children. Nancy Page settled in the Mount Dora area, having been enslaved three times. She was able to acquire property in the 1880s, 1894 in the downtown area, and 1901.
1874 - David M. Simpson and his wife Mary Vann Simpson and their children became the first homesteaders in the Mount Dora area.
1875 - Clark and Helen McDonald moved to the Mount Dora area from Toledo, Ohio. With them was their daughter Annie, her husband William Stone, and their daughter.
1879 - John P. (J.P.) Donnelly arrived from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just as Annie McDonald Stone was in the process of divorcing William Stone, who had left her in 1877. Former slave Nelson Williams and his wife Cynthia arrived from Island Pond, Florida and welcomed seven children into their family