The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1913-08-11
ADVANCE OF NORTH OCALA

The editor of the Star had a pleas
ant ride, the other morning, with Mr..
B. H. Seymour, over North Ocala and
out along the Anthony road for a
couple of miles.
Mr.. Seymour and the editor were
bare-legged boys together in North
Georgia forty years ago. They swan
in the same creeks, drank from the
same springs and stole from the same
melon patches, so it is easy for them
to chum in North Ocala now
Eighteen years ago, Mr.. Seymour
established his we'll remembered
saw mill in North Ocala and bought
six hundred acres of the pine forest
that, broken by only a few little
clearings, stretched to Orange Lake.
Mr.. SeymOur's home stood almost
alone, and beyond it of OcaIa there
was none. He had a strenuous strug-
gle for the next dozen years-time
after time his mill was burned, and
as he cut down and cut up the huge
pine trees on his land it didn't seem
like anything of value would ever
take their place.
The land however is high and dry
and as the growing city came nearer
it occurred TO Mr.. Seymour that
houses might stand and people walk
where the pine trees had furnished
harps for the zephyrs for thousands
of years. He offered his land in
small lots at reasonable prices, and
though response was slow, it acceI-
Grated as time went on, and now a
busy and very pretty settlement
forms an important part of our city.
People who whirl northward in
their autos over the Kendrick or An
thOny roads have very little idea
what a fine little town has grown up
between the last four or five years,
mostly in the last two. There are
forty or fifty white families in neat
little cottages and handsome houses,
and no part of the town looks any
more prosperous or comfortable
Mr.. Seymour has gone to consider
able trouble and expense in helping
the Improvements, making streets
and doing many other things that
shows he has living interest in the
land that he worked over for a third
of his lifetime.
His gift of five acres of land for a
school house was patriotic indeed.
He has given the school district a lot
that at the present growth of the
city will be worth $4,000 for the land
alone in a few years, and nothing
could help the community any more.
1t will save hundreds of children two
long walks every day and rid scores
of fathers and mothers of the anxiety
they would feel if their children had
to make the long trip thru the heart
of the city
Mr.. Seymour took the writer up
the Anthony road a couple of miles
beyond the Seaboard crossing. The
newspaper man hadn't made that trip
for half a dozen years, and the last
time he went that way there was
only one house and one shabbily
tended farm the entire distance. Now
there ,are a dozen pretty homes and
we'll cultivated farms. Messrs. Byrd
of Virginia, Whitcher of New Hamp-
shire, Krago of Lincoln, Neb., Dun
lap of West Virginia, Edwards and
Fosby Of Youngstown, O., and sew
eral others are in the farming bust
ness with profit, and if one may
judge by the looks of their places,
with pleasure. The land is the or
binary Florida land spoken of so
scornfully a few years ago, but they
are making two crops year off it of
hay and fine crops of potatoes. pin
ders, peas. cane, corn and other
things too numerous to name. They