Page 123 - John Anderson

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Chapter 6
The Railroads Arrive in Ormond

The earliest local transportation
in the New Britain settlement
had been John Andrew
Bostrom’s sailboat, The ARK;
Samuel Dow's sailboat, The Old
Tom Cat; and Daniel Wilson's
temperamental mule, Old Bill.
Wilson had bought the mule
from a Mr. Philip in New Britain,
Connecticut, for whom he was
having several acres of orange
grove set out. “Old Bill," Loomis
Day once remarked, "knew
where he wanted to put all of his feet upon every occasion, and he
had four of them. It was well to keep that fact in mind before trying
any monkeyshines with him or you might carry a vivid memory of
them for some time afterward, and possibly his trade mark also.
However, Old Bill could be depended on to use good sense in case of
an accident, and had never been known to trample anyone.”
Most of the early New Britain settlers came by steamer from the north
to Jacksonville and Palatka on the St. Johns River where they would
go on board a steamboat for the journey to Volusia Landing, on the
west side of the county. From the steamboat landing at Volusia it was
a long, hard day's ride in a wagon or stage coach to Ormond or
Daytona. There were also a few small schooners such as the Rover,
Eliza Bennett, Victor, and Jeannette, which sailed down the east
coast between Jacksonville and New Smyrna, and brought in
passengers and supplies. If these early schooners were delayed for
some time by bad weather, the families along the Halifax River were
reduced to almost a state of starvation. When supplies were delayed;
then began a frantic borrowing and lending of flour, hominy, bacon,
and sugar. Actually, no one could starve because the river teemed

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