Dr. Arthur Stivender House

Arthur A. Stivender

Arthur Abrehart Stivender was born on June 8, 1842, in Barbour County, Alabama, to Duncan Wright Stivender and Margaret Gillie Ann Lee. After her husband died in 1860, Margaret and her children moved to Lake County, Florida. Her brother, Evander McIver Lee, settled in what would be known as Leesburg in 1857, where he opened a dry goods store.

The story goes that when goods were ordered, without a township to ship to, he told them to send them to “Leesburg.” Margaret operated the Leesburg Hotel, a two-story wooden boarding house with about ten or twelve rooms, which was incorporated into the construction of the Lakeview Hotel in the 1880s. Margaret’s son, Akin Stivender, was Leesburg’s first town marshall while Arthur Stivender became a dentist.

Arthur married his first wife, Annie D. Stroble, in 1867, though she died in childbirth in 1869. He married his second wife, Sarah L. “Sallie” Macon, on January 30, 1872, and had three children together. It should be noted that while records have her down as Sarah L. “Sallie” Macon, her gravestone reads Salley L. Stivender. She died on May 18, 1876, possibly in childbirth as well. Arthur married Rosabelle “Belle” Embry on October 18, 1882, and had four children together.

Eldorado, Florida

Three miles east of Leesburg, on the shores of Lake Harris, is the ghost town of Eldorado. Though Eldorado was a small yet burgeoning community with its own railroad depot and post office back then. One of the first citrus groves developed there was by James Robert Cunningham, a school teacher from Pickens County, Alabama, who served on the county school board for 20 years. He also served as a private in Company B, 2nd Regiment, Alabama Infantry of the Confederate States Army, a regiment organized in Pickens County on February 19, 1861.

He moved to Lake County, where his former captain, Colonel Thomas C. Lanier, had developed an orange grove just north of Eldorado near Lake Griffin. Cunningham bought a tract of land on a small island and, with buds from Lanier’s orange trees, budded it with sweet oranges. The soil on the island was well suited for growing such high-quality fruit that it became known as the “Cunningham Sweet” and was extensively grown around the Leesburg area.

Major O. P. Rooks, who owned vast tracts of orange groves and is credited for naming the town of Fruitland Park, took first place at the New Orleans World’s Fair in 1885 with the Cunningham Sweet Orange. Soon, others began investing in the area and developing their orange groves, such as Colonel William H. Sims, former lieutenant governor of Mississippi, and Ellen Lucy Barstow Platt, wife of U.S. Senator and “political boss” of the Republican Party, Thomas Collier Platt.

Stivender House

Arthur Stivender developed his grove at Eldorado, near the railroad depot. In 1881, he built this Italianate-style home for his large family. One of his sons was into racing automobiles in the early 20th century and built what is now Sunnyside Loop as a racetrack. On May 2, 1900, Dr. Arthur A. Stivender died and was buried at Lone Oak Cemetery, where much of his family is buried. His widow continued caring for the grove and house until her death on August 18, 1934.

The home and property remained in the family, with their son, Arthur Embry Stivender, taking over the property, followed by his daughter, Gladys Stivender Biggers. According to locals, Gladys had lived in the house her entire life, and the family’s orange groves had always been tended to. Towards the end of her life, she could no longer live independently; thus, the home was abandoned sometime in the 2000s.

After Gladys died in 2014, the home’s contents were sold at an estate sale, and the property was sold in 2016 to Eric H. Coe, a Leesburg primary care physician. Sadly, the house was destroyed in a fire on July 2, 2021. The house was featured in the comedy-drama film “Away We Go” in 2009; a scene clip can be seen below.

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