Newsletter -- October/November, 2006.
THE LOST
Little remains today of the small settlement
of Carleton located on the eastern shore of
The colony’s beginnings date back to 1888
when Granville C. Smith purchased 20
acres in section 2 township 10 Range 23 for $200. Smith had served during the Civil War in both
In 1890, at the age of forty-seven Smith,
already a widower, was granted a pension for his
wartime service and retired to his 20 acre-tract in
In December 1904 a Post Office was established
at Carleton. In March of the following
year Smith subdivided the property into twenty-one lots generally ranging in
size from 90 ft by 140 ft up to 150 ft by 280 ft and began to sell them to
fellow pensioned veterans from the North.
To promote the colony a circular letter was
designed “for the benefit of the many veterans of the Civil War, and pensioned
widows of such veterans, who are seeking a mild, equable and salubrious
climate; whose advanced age, declining years, and in many cases, afflictions,
being such as to no longer be able to endure the rigors of a northern
latitude.”
Carleton was reported to be “on a beautiful
lake replete with fish such as black bass, 1/2 to 14lbs,” to have an abundance
of “quail, pigeon, duck, snipe, rail, o’possum, fox,
coon, etc,” to enjoy land that was “high, dry and rolling, with the purest
water.” Fruit trees included the orange, lemon, peach, pear, fig, plum, banana,
grapes, and Japanese persimmon.
Vegetables grew two gardens per year, Irish potatoes two crops, and
sweet potatoes one. Settlers were warned
that this “was no farming country, nor much of a place to make money,” but “it
is jut the place for us old vets to live easy, which you can do after once
settled on your pensions, your gardens, with your fish, game, etc.” Rail
service was available four miles to the southeast at the town of
In the 1910 census twenty-one households
(identified as living on Easy Street) comprised the pensioner portion of
Carleton Colony. The heads of those
households ranged in age from 62 to 73 years old, two were widows, nine were widowers.
Places of birth included
Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Carleton did not
survive the passing of the Civil War generation. By 1920, only eight households could be
identified as part of Carleton. The
colony’s founder Granville Smith died in 1919.
In 1907, Smith had married for a third
time. His wife was Minnie A. Saxon of
Today, no memories of the community
survive. No photographs and no memoirs
of any of its inhabitants are known. All
that remains today is a platted subdivision and the few grave markers that have
survived in Carleton’s cemetery.
Written
for the
Robert may not have known of
pictures at the time of writing, but I found the following photograph on the
Florida State Archives’ ‘Florida Memory Project’,
today, October 27, 2017.
Home of
G.C. Smith founder of Carleton-
Carleton, Florida
Last updated 10/27/2017