Roadside signs remind drivers of German colony in the pines
Once in the German community of Gotha in southwest Orange County, the songs of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann floated in the night air, sung by settlers who also recited Homer and Ovid as they plowed their Florida fields.
Thatwas in the 1880s, and even a century or so later, Gotha seemed to retain a certain identity as a halcyon, rural spot. These days, though, except as a home to Nehrling Gardens and the esteemed eatery Yellow Dog Eats, many folks have never heard of the community where German settlers once tilled fields and discussed German philosophers.
Gotha’s community historian, Kathleen Klare, hasworked hard for years to keep Gotha’s identity alive. Recently, she led a project by the Gotha Rural Settlement Association to place markers along roads at seven entry points into Gotha’s boundaries, as those boundaries were designated when Orange County named Gotha a rural settlement and preservation district in 1995.
Hunt for historical facts
Klare grewup in Gotha and returned there in 2003 after a career in architectural interior design that took her to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Guatemala and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Soon shewas diving into her hometown’s past, eventually researching and writing a book about Gotha that’s nearing completion.
She loves the “thrill of the hunt” for historical facts, as she describes it, and she also has a personal interest in the story. Her grandfather, H.A. Wilkening, and his family arrived in 1911and owned a farm where the Tuscany Ridge neighborhood is today. “I have a long view based onmy own family,” she notes.
A February 1915 Sentinel article noted Wilkening’s “Hoosier-Kansas” roots and credited him with having “the banner display of farm products” at Orlando’s midwinter fair aswell as the largest and most diversified exhibit of seeds.
Hempel’s ticket south
Klare’s grandfather Wilkening was drawn by theweather, aswell as by the German Lutheran colony that Henry Hempel had officially established in Gotha in1885.
Born in Germany in 1836, Hempel had trained as a printer and emigrated first to England and then to the United States in1866, where he settled in Buffalo and became the foreman of a large printing press. When he devised a handy invention for printers, he also found theway to a new life in Florida.
Printers’ type at the time was set in lines of metal, in a technology that continued well into the later 20th century. The lines and metal engravings had to be locked together in a secure rectangle to make a proper page on the printing press, and to do this printers used wooden wedges of varying shapes.
Hempel came up with a quoin— an expandable metal gadget that could hold the type into a form with greater ease— and patented it.
An 1890s broadside for Orange County proclaimed that Hempel was “known all over theworld as the inventor of that boon to printers, Hempel’s adjustable quoin” and described Gotha as “the prosperous settlement of thrifty Germans in West Orange.”
Hempel “organized Gotha as a planned community,” Klare notes. It flourished especially in the 1890s. Even if surviving buildings are rare, and “even ifwe have all this cutthrough traffic,” she says, the new historic markers will help people know they’re driving through “someplace special.” To learn about Gotha and its history, visitmygotha.org.
Plan a holiday visit
Nehrling Gardens’ annual Holiday Amaryllis Festival on Dec. 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., offers a great opportunity to visit Gotha. The free community event features amaryllis bulbs for sale. There also will be nature-themed vendors, food, music and crafts for children. Where: 2267Hempel Ave., Gotha. Details: nehrlinggardens.org or write info@NehrlingGardens.org.