YOU’RE REALLY LIVING IN THE LAND OF JERNIGAN

Remember those unrelenting movie ads a few years ago in which Jack Nicholson kept barking at Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth”?

Perhaps our county seat is named Orlando because some of our pioneer folks couldn’t do just that.

Orlando’s a fine name — and it looks great, with those matching O’s at start and finish. But perhaps, just perhaps, we should be living in Jernigan.

That’s the name that appears on an 1855 map of Florida, joined by only a few other Central Florida place names, such as the big lakes — Apopka, Tohopekaliga, Harney and Jesup.

The Eighth Florida Jernigan Family Reunion took place Saturday in Kissimmee. The annual gathering aims to bring together descendants of all branches of a family that traces its roots in this country to a fellow who landed in the colonies in 1637, Kay Stone of Lakeland said last week.

“I do research on all Jernigans,” Stone said of the family whose name has been spelled Jarnigan, Jurnigan, Journigan and, what she says was the original spelling, Jernegan.

Stone’s grandmother on her father’s side was one of the clan, and she started “years and years ago” to find out more about them.

“It became a passion,” she said, and now she has tens of thousands of documents and is “collecting more all the time.”

TALES OF WHALES AND JAILS

Stone knows about Jernigans of all sorts. For example, the first woman of European descent “to set foot on Japanese soil” was a Jernigan, she said. The woman was married to a whaler and accompanied him on a long voyage.

There have been Jernigans of honor and esteem and — as in any family through the years — there have been a few like the fellow Stone discovered who was found guilty of a scam to turn salt water into gold in Massachusetts in the 1700s.

With Aaron Jernigan, the family member who is the Orlando area’s senior founding father, we have an interesting mix. The true Jernigan may help explain why early Orlandoans grabbed up the legendary Orlando Reeves with such relish.

Reeves was said to be a heroic young soldier who lost his life in a Seminole attack near Lake Eola. Tom Cruise might be cast in the part, but not old barking Jack; he’d be better cast as our Aaron.

Soldier, homesteader, cattleman and the first representative of Orange County in the state Legislature, Jernigan was also accused of murder in 1859, along with other family members, after a brawl at Orlando’s post office that left a man dead.

Because Orlando had no jail, Aaron and some of his sons were transported to Ocala, where they soon busted out.

OFF TO TEXAS

The father was recaptured and spent about a year in jail in Ocala, at which time the Ocala newspaper reported, he “again became weary of confinement . . . and very unceremoniously left.”

Aaron Jernigan went to Texas and stayed for 25 years, but ultimately returned to the area his name had once put on the map. He died in Orange County in 1891, and is buried in the old Lake Hill Cemetery in the Orlo Vista community nestled around the old Winter Garden Road, west of Orlando.

The fatal post office fight wasn’t altogether inconsistent with other mentions of Jernigan in the historical record. His record in the militia “was reported to have been disgraceful,” Seminole war historian James Covington notes.

“During the past three months, he has been either drunk or sick (hangover),” one lieutenant recorded in 1856.

But, still, the truth is complicated, and if that lieutenant had been in the Seminole War attacks Jernigan had experienced in Georgia, before his move to Florida, he might have hit the bottle, too. The Florida frontier in the mid-19th century was no picnic.

Thanks to the memoirs of Jernigan’s daughter, Martha Jernigan Tyler, recorded early in the 20th century, we know that without the gumption of Aaron Jernigan and others in his family, Orlando as we know it might not even be here at all.

THIS AND THAT

There’s much information about Orlo Vista including material about the Jernigan founders and Lake Hill Cemetery, in the recently published History of Orlo Vista, Florida by Central Floridian J. Opal Flynn.

Lake Hill contains a memorial stone dedicated to Jernigan as “Orlando’s First Settler,” as well as his grave and those of other family members.

Fans of vintage travel trailers will want to caravan to the Orange County Regional History Center on Monday from 2 to 4 p.m. for a program on the history of the Tin Can Tourists in Florida with visiting guests Forrest and Jeri-Ann Bone of Bradenton.

In 1998, the Bones revived the Tin Can Tourist group, which had a long history in Sunshine State travel annals.

The program is included with History Center admission. For more information and to RSVP, call Pat Birkhead at 407-836-8583 or e-mail her at Pat.Birkhead@ocfl.net.

The annual Bluegrass Festival is coming up at Fort Christmas Historical Park.

The free event will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and March 20 at the Orange County park off Fort Christmas Road in east Orange County.

In addition to music by Moonlite Express, County Line Bluegrass and The Dowden Sisters, visitors can dine on barbecue and check out arts-and-crafts displays.

Historic buildings at the park will also be open for visitors.

For details, call 407-568-4149.

Originally Published: March 13, 2005 at 12:00 AM EST