City of Holly Hill

City of Holly Hill Municipal Water Report Info

The British acquired Florida from Spain in 1763. Though they controlled Florida for just twenty-one years, they left a permanent mark on Volusia County. To stimulate population and economic growth, the British quickly invalidated Spanish land claims and implemented a generous land policy, which by 1776 resulted in 114 grants totaling 1.4 million acres. They also introduced the plantation system with its reliance on slave labor. Holly Hill was part of the Turnbull grant.

Florida returned to Spanish control in 1783. The new Spanish administration required all settlers to pledge allegiance to the Spanish crown or surrender their property to Spain. Most settlers chose to leave, and the region reverted to wilderness. The Spanish then offered land grants to English and Scottish settlers on condition they cultivate the lands.

Holly Hill's origins trace back to the early 1800s when Governor Coppinger of Mexico granted a royal title of 4,500 acres on the Halifax to Fernando de la Maza Arrendonda. This area was later sold to Thomas Fitch, who eventually sold a large parcel to William Samuel Flemming Sr. in 1817. Flemming acquired one of the Spanish grants containing 3,200 acres along the Halifax River but lost everything during the Second Seminole War in 1835.

The Halifax area was abandoned until after the Civil War, when courageous pioneers seeking better lives arrived to take advantage of the natural beauty and attractive climate. William Wallace Ross arrived in the 1860s and established a homestead at a location he called 'Palmetto Point'. There he set up the first Holly Hill area post office, known as the Palmetto Post Office.

Post Office Department records in the National Archives confirm a Post Office was established at Palmetto Point on July 21, 1868, with Samuel P. Wimple as postmaster. It was suspended on July 12, 1870. Tax rolls for 1869 show Ross had 200 acres of orange trees valued at $600. He owned the grove with his brother-in-law Wimple, who started the grove and a sugar plantation in Florida in 1868.

When Mathis Day, founder of Daytona Beach, arrived in May 1870, he spotted the Wimple and Ross grove behind a growth of Palmettos on the west bank of the Halifax River. A freeze in the early 1870s destroyed their orange crop, and the pioneers returned north.