A Bird’s-Eye View of Mount Zion’s History
A surveyor surveys the record
by David Cohea
In January I contacted John Hoechst, a semi-retired surveyor and Mount Dora history buff. (John is also married to Cathy Hoechst, a former mayor of Mount Dora and presently serving in the at-large seat on council.) I asked John if he was willing to help by digging into online historical records he knew how to access that would tell more about Mount Zion’s moves over the decades. I included in my email links to the history I had written so far.
A few days later John emailed back, saying that having searched through a trove of old documents now found online — land transactions kept on file at the Orange County Comptroller’s Office, maps, aerial photos, Department of Transportation documents, etc. — he thought my history was inaccurate, and offered to show me how.
Over several Saturday meetings at Two Flights Up — coffee cups pushed to the side of laptops and notebooks — and ongoing conversations via email, we’ve established the following revised timeline of Mount Zion.
In the original 1896 deed for Mount Zion, Ellen Earle and husband WC Earle sign over one acre to Zion Primitive Baptist Church for church purposes only, stipulating that if the church went unused for 2 years, the property would revert back to original owners.
In March 1925, Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist purchases two acres to the east of the site of the original church for use as a cemetery. Mount Zion church isn’t specified in the deed, but then this would have been during the interim between the original Mount Zion church burning down and the second one being built in 1926. Relations between the two churches are unclear; Mount Carmel in Tangerine was built somewhat later than the original Mount Zion Church, in 1911. The two churches may have been more closely linked, both access on Terrell Road and for financial reasons of survival.
In the early 1940s Tangerine Heights is platted along the north and south sides of what is now called “old” US-441 for a mile or so west of the current juncture of of “old” and “new” 441. Back then the road was called SR-2, one of three “Dixie Highways” to intersect in Mount Dora (of the other two, one ran east-west along what is now SR-46 from Mount Dora to Sorrento, and one ran from south to north from Zellwood to Tangerine into Mount Dora and up to Eustis along what is now Clayton and Donnelly, Old Eustis Road and Old Mount Dora Road.) It was apparently for housing development which failed to come to pass (also in the 1940s, veterans returning from the Second World War would build the Mount Dora golf course out of one chunk, and much later the Chesterfield development was built from another southern chunk.
What’s important about this is that in the 1940s State Road 2 was moved a ways south and widened to its present contours along “old” 441. The State Department of Transportation bought the Mount Simpson-Carmel cemetery property and apparently remains its owner. (If you look past the northern border of the cemetery, you can still see relics of old highway.)
In 1944 — a deed is written for the cemetery property east of the Mount Zion church, selling all or part of it to a neighboring citrus grower. You can see in 1941 aerial photo how close Mount Zion was to the grove. The deed states that the property did not include any cemetery grounds, so we have to conclude that the deed was for eastern half of the cemetery grounds which were unused.
In 1953 the church makes its first move, 400 feet to the north and 200 feet west, coming to rest on what was then called Wood Road. “From the hill to the dale” is how Beaulah Babbs, Mount Zion’s remaining parishioner, remembers it.) Today that would be just to the north of the gas pumps at the convenience store across from the Stoneybrook Publix. Mount Zion elders take out a $225 deed to pay for the move. The reason for the move is unknown, as well as why the cemetery would be abandoned. There might have been a financial benefit for the church, or the church elders might have been forced to the will of surrounding grove owners. John also says that the building was set a bit to the west of its actual property lines, a surveying mistake he picks up again later.
In 1959 US-441 is relocated to a north-western avoiding downtown Mount Dora, and in October the DOT purchases the east side of the Mount Zion property for that purpose. By July 1960 Mount Zion has been moved to its third and present location. It is then and there that the office and bathrooms were added to the front of the building. Beaulah Babbs recalls “a lot of church fish fry’s” to help pay for that work. The 1966 community church painting, organized by Norma Williams and Tangerine and Leonard Phillips of Phillips Hardware in Mount Dora, was the final job of that update.
The church wasn’t moved again when the convenience store was built, but the land sold to the convenience store in 1970 did put Mount Zion in a pinch. A 1977 property deed for Mount Zion is a very odd bit of land for where the church sits, angling south and west so sharply that the front steps of the church is almost on convenience store property. According to John, the survey may still be off for the precise location of the church (it’s sitting a ways over the eastern property line.) This may be important as work begins transferring ownership of Mount Zion to a non-profit entity which will be charged with restoration of the old church and overseeing its future use.
For all the fascinating information John has been able to unearth, there are still lingering questions. How did Mount Zion emerge from its days as an arbor church? Why were there two cemeteries? How and when did the original church burn? How close were the relations between Mount Zion in Mount Dora and Mount Carmel in Tangerine? Why would Mount Zion elders have agreed to moving their church off their beloved hill, and why would they leave its cemetery behind? How to explain the surveying errors which have twice positioned Mount Zion somewhat akilter from its property?
Some of these questions were explored with past and present parishioners at the first History Day in in Mount Zion on Feb. 18. Many will probably never be fully answered, but each attempt to tell the Mount Zion story allows it to take on the substance apropos of an enduring historic landmark.
(Note: While we were working together on this project, John told me about some earlier research he had done on the origins of Mount Dora’s first post office which, according to previous histories, was named “Royellou” after John Tremain’s three children. In John’s research, the name was actually for a village just to the north of the downtown, trafficked by postal wagon before mail began shipping in to the Alexander and Rhodes store on the dock of Lake Dora. It’s a fascinating research into the origins of Mount Dora, and you can read it here.)
David Cohea is director of Live Oak Collective, a fundraising entity for perservation projects in the Mount Dora area. He is also project leader for Save Mount Zion.
