Interview with William Corpew O'Neal 16
February 22, 1996



C: You and your wife lived in Gainesville in several different places and then you moved
 out to Long Pond. You said your mother was from Melrose, or lived in Melrose for a
 while?

0: Yes.

C: Is that how you happened to get property out in that area? Tell me about that.

0: Yes. Shortly before the war between the states, the center of the citrus industry was
 located south of the St. Johns River. Along the St. Johns. It kept gradually moving into this area and they had a very, very debilitating freeze in 1884 and 1885, 1 believe it was.
 Of course, they knew nothing really about protection, about fertilization. The way they used to get around one of those lakes and plant citrus and fertilize it with fish. One large grove that survived was the old Maxwell grove over on the east bank of Lake Santa
 Fe.

C: Well now, your mother's family had property around there?

0: Yes, my mother's family. They were in the turpentine business and had a store. They
 also had several groves of citrus. I remember my favorite ancestor was Hiram Fickle in Melrose. Although he lived there, he was really a citizen of North Carolina, so when the war between the states came he went back up to North Carolina and raised a regiment.
 He lost his left arm, his left hand, in the war but he came back to Melrose and went back
 into producing citrus.

C: And this was back in Civil War time.

0: Yes. He's famous for having the best bird dogs in the area. He had a general store in
 Melrose, but he was a wonderful camper. One of the old men told me, "He could split more kindling with one arm than any man in camp could do." He didn't have a damned
 thing to do with running that store because he was a wounded war hero.

C: So your mother was born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, in Melrose. So that's
 how you got the property that you have still to this day, on Long Pond?

0: No, I bought the property about 1952 and was familiar with the property because of the
 Bishop family.

C: At first you just used it as a weekend retreat and summertimes, and you and Katie lived a
 lot of different places in Gainesville but I guess the last place was Kirkwood? And then
 you eventually built your permanent home out on the lake?

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