Page 34 - Our Place in History

Ormond Beach, Florida

during that winter which destroyed their sugarcane crop,
banana trees, and orange tree plantings. Later in 1869,
Andrew and Charles built their second house and continued to
expand this early plantation. By 1871, the house had been
expanded to the point that Andrew and Charles solicited the
help of their two sisters, Mary and Helen, from Sweden. The
Bostrom family turned their home into a boarding house and
was instrumental in boarding many early settlers in this area.
In fact, Matthias Day, the founder of Daytona Beach was a
boarder at the Bostrom house in 1870.

Matthias Day finally decided to purchase land about 5-
miles south of the Bostrom’s on the West side of the Halifax
River. This land was part of the Samuel Williams and Frances
Kerr grant, and it was on these grants that Daytona Beach was
founded.

In 1873, three men from the Corbin Lock Company in New
Britain, Connecticut stayed with the Bostrom’s while looking for
a retirement settlement property in Florida. The hospitable
Bostrom family took the men in and helped them locate suitable
land for their proposed settlement.

The Corbin Lock Company purchased the Henry Yonge
grant (810-acres) and some additional government property
(by 1874) on the west side of the Halifax River, just across from
the Bostrom properties. The New Britain Colony was born and
the Corbin Lock Company retirement community was in full
swing with Andrew Bostrom providing temporary boarding and
construction expertise. Soon a Colony house was constructed.
Community structures and individual housing was planned.

Andrew Bostrom was one of the most outstanding and
respected citizens in the early New Britain settlement, and when
it became Ormond in 1880, he was a supervisor of the Ormond
School, President of the Ormond Hotel Company and owned the
beachside Coquina Hotel.

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