Some stories are written in headlines. Others are written quietly into the land itself: in a family name handed down, a grove of citrus trees, a small cemetery resting on the shore of a lake.
This Friday, June 19, our nation observes Juneteenth, the day in 1865 that marks the end of slavery in the United States. At WGHF, we believe the truest way to honor it is close to home, by remembering the families whose lives are woven into the history of our own community.
This week, we are telling the story of one of them. You may have driven past their land a hundred times without ever knowing it was there.
It began in 1882, when a man named Eli Williamson arrived in Oakland looking for a place to put down roots. He found it on the south shore of John’s Lake, where he received a homestead title to 123 acres of his own. Neighbors took to calling the property “Williamson Island,” though anyone who walked it knew the truth: it was a peninsula, reaching out into the water. By the standards of his day, Eli had done something remarkable. He had become one of the most prominent African American landowners in the entire region.
He did not stop at owning the land. He worked it, cleared it, built a home on it, and planted citrus that would root his family to the place for years to come.
In 1888, Eli married Lizzie, and together they began to fill that home.
Over the next eighteen years, the couple raised eleven children: George, Horace, James, Inex, Marcia, Will, Ethel, Marian, Marcus, Helen, and Vernon. Eli built a name for himself as a respected citrus grower and joined the South Lake Apopka Citrus Growers Association, taking his place among the families who shaped the industry that defined West Orange County.
And when their country went to war, two of the Williamson sons, George and Horace, answered the call and served in World War I. It is worth pausing on what that meant. In an era defined by deep and painful racial barriers, the Williamsons earned something that no hardship could take from them: the lasting respect of the Oakland community.
While the citrus groves have long since disappeared, historic photographs show the Williamson family home, pictured below, that once stood on the property overlooking Johns Lake. The house served as the center of family life for Eli and Lizzie Williamson and their eleven children, preserving a visible reminder of one of Oakland’s earliest African American homesteads.
There are no heirs left to tell this story. None of the eleven children had children of their own, and so there are no Williamson descendants today. All thirteen members of the family rest together in the family graveyard, still standing on the land Eli claimed back in 1882.
But a family without heirs is not a family without a legacy. The grove is quiet now and the home is gone, yet the Williamsons remain woven into the story of this place. This Juneteenth, we are honored to remember them, and to help carry their story forward to the generations still to come.
This story and photos are courtesy of Orange County Government through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program.
