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I say "former," because Taft is no longer officially incorporated, though the name persists along with a sense of identity amongst residents.
The town was formerly known both as Newellton and Smithville until 1909, when entrepreneurs from Orlando and Kissimmee got together to buy-up 6,000 acres in this little corner of heaven to establish "Prosper Colony."
They subdivided the land and advertized extensively in the Saturday Evening Post. More than a thousand folks eventually bought farmsteads here, though they chose to rename their "colony" for President William Howard Taft.
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Among the earliest stones here belongs to a little girl named Alice Hayes (19 Dec 1917 - 23 Nov 1922). It caught my attention for two reasons. First, it has a really interesting carving of a dove on the top face. Second, it has a nasty crack obscuring the poor little girl's vital dates.
I checked some of the local census records, so can tell you Little Alice was the daughter of a fellow named Sydney Hayes (1871-1932), who is buried nearby. Mr. Hayes was a black teamster who came to Florida from his native South Carolina in the early 1900s, and evidently worked in the region's thriving turpentine industry.
References:
*1910 Census, Pine Castle, Orange County, Florida, page 191a.
*1920 Census, Taft, Orange County, Florida, page 193a.
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