Page 33 - Our Place in History

Our Place in History

A Colony is Born

During the Second Seminole war period (1835 – 1842)
there was a massive evacuation of plantation owners and
settlers back to St. Augustine. The plantations fell victim to fiery
Seminole Indian raids.

The first white settlers of Ormond Beach after the Second
Seminole war were the Bostrom brothers, John Andrew and
Charles Bostrom. Andrew Bostrom, born on the Swedish Island
of Gottland, in the Baltic Sea, led an adventurous life beginning
as a seaman on the Baltic Sea. Finding the Baltic Sea too
confining, Andrew moved on to numerous other adventures
(including several shipwrecks) to eventually quit the sea and
land a job in Hilton Head, S.C., becoming a store clerk. Working
as a teamster and clerk during the Civil War, Andrew finally
managed a vacation trip to St. Augustine, Florida where he was
introduced to the citrus industry and another dream was born.

Andrew Bostrom followed his dream, becoming a citrus
plantation owner, and made his way to Jupiter Inlet, through
St. Augustine. Along the way Andrew and his hired guide Israel
(a former slave from the Orange Grove Plantation in Daytona
Beach) visited several former Florida plantations reduced to
single cabins and shanties. In 1866, Andrew settled on a site
just north of Jupiter Inlet and had his brother Charles join him
3-months later. Their partnership with Charles E. Molleson
didn’t work out and two years later the Bostrom brothers
retraced their route northward along the Halifax River to what is
now Riverside Drive in Ormond Beach. Here, in 1868, they
homesteaded government land (extending from the Halifax
River to the Atlantic Ocean), which according to the deed cost
them $2.00 an acre.

In 1868, Andrew Bostrom was elected to the Volusia
County Board of Commissioners that met in Enterprise, along
the St John’s River. The first dwelling the Bostrom brothers
built was a palmetto shack and they nearly froze to death

19