CENTERVILLE

SIDE ONE: To the east, on the large curve of the road, was once the community of Centerville. In the 1820s, German immigrants Conrad Houck and Jacob Horger, living in Orangeburg, South Carolina, purchased land northeast of the newly established Florida territorial capital, Tallahassee. Soon after, other German families from their community purchased neighboring property, leading the area to be known as “The Dutch Settlement.” These yeoman farmers had large families who typically owned fewer than 20 enslaved people and worked each other’s farms. With the help of circuit-riding Reverend John Slade, the Pisgah Methodist Episcopal Church was established in 1830, which served as the focal point of the community. When the Panic of 1837 weakened Tallahassee’s Union Bank, many yeoman farmers joined the Democratic Party, which opposed major banks. In 1839, Democrats won most of the territorial political offices. That year, ongoing hostilities in the Seminole Wars encouraged 77 local men to enroll in Company A, 7th Regiment, of the Florida Militia “at the Court House in the City of Centreville.” SIDE TWO: By 1854, the Centerville post office was served by a newly constructed “Post Road.” Mail left Tallahassee at six each Tuesday morning, stopping at Centerville and Mannington, Florida, before continuing to Duncansville and Thomasville, Georgia. The Tallahassee & Thomasville Stage Line used the same post road for commercial travel, stopping in Centerville. In 1861, at the onset of the Civil War, White men of the community formed Company K, 5th Florida Infantry Regiment, which adopted the name “Dixie Yeoman.” They soon joined the Florida Brigade of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. On May 10, 1865, 300 US troops under Brigadier General Edward M. McCook set up camp in downtown Centerville. Ten days later, McCook went into Tallahassee to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, while one of his lieutenants read the document in Centerville. During Reconstruction, the town had several stores, two churches, banking facilities, telegraph services, two doctors, schools for White and Black children, and a sawmill. However, in the 1900s, as roads improved for automobiles, fewer people stopped here. By the 1920s only one store and the Pisgah Church remained. Within ten years, the “City of Centreville” had disappeared.