Generations Remembered As Historic Home Demolished

By Dalton Yancey
   The Yancey home was demolished this week to make way for a 40-acre, 85-family residences and commercial area development that the grandchildren are moving into the City Limits of Umatilla and are offering for sale. The insurance company told the family they would no longer insure the over 100-year-old family residence because it was vacant.
   The Yancey family moved to Umatilla in 1881 from Brazil. Originally from Alabama, Benjamin Cunningham Yancey fled with about another 10,000 Southerners to Brazil after the Civil War. There, Benjamin married a Georgia native, Lucy Cairnes Hall. The family settled in 1881 in Umatilla with three children. Fred Yancey and his only daughter, Lucy Hall were born after Benjamin and his wife settled in Umatilla. They originally lived on East Wafford Street. That home is still occupied.
     The demolished home was constructed in 1920, north of Umatilla, on State Road 19. The road was a new two-lane highway, ending north in Palatka, beginning in Groveland; it was only 100 miles long.
     Mr. Fred Yancey came to the citrus fruit industry with a broad background of business experience. He owned and operated his own groves since 1914.  One hundred years later, the groves went out of business, due to the Citrus Greening Disease.
     Mr. Yancey was born on November 9, 1888, in Umatilla, son of Benjamin Cunningham and Lucy Cairnes (Hall) Yancey. His father spent fourteen years in Brazil following the Civil War, and during that conflict was a captain of the Artillery in the Confederate forces.
     Umatilla public schools provided Fred Yancey's early formal education, and he was graduated from Umatilla High School in 1907. He attended a business school in Jacksonville. His initial employment was in Jacksonville, in a stenographic capacity for the Cumberland and Liberty Mils Company, with which he was associated for two years. He held different posts thereafter, in Umatilla, working with the Osborne Lumber Company and construction enterprises as well as a small property which he gradually build up to an orange grove. He has also given each of his children an orange grove. Mr. Yancey was one of the busy growers of the area, shipping a considerable volume of citrus fruits annually. He operated a citrus nursery for twenty-five years. Many of the citrus fruits now growing in central Florida were produced in his nurseries. In addition to his other activities, he raised watermelons.
     Many organizations in Umatilla claim his active, help and interest, among them the Presbyterian Church, in which he was an elder from 1912 until his death in 1967. Hunting and fishing were his favorite recreations.
     Fred Yancey married, on September 30, 1914, in Umatilla, Bessie Mae Hodges, a native of Georgia, the daughter of Brown Cato and Mary Elizabeth (McNeill) Hodges, of that state. Mr. And Mrs. Yancey are the parents of three children: 1. Frederick Dalton, Jr., born September 27, 1915, who married Margaret Louise Johnson. They became the parents of two children: Frederick Dalton III, born June 18, 1944; and Margaret Susan, born June 21, 1948, 2. Lucy Elizabeth. born December 11, 1920, who was a teacher in the public schools. 3. Mary Ann, born July 5, 1928, who was a graduate of Florida State University and also a teacher.