Our company, Like New Carpet Care is very proud to call Orlando our home! Not only is Orlando home to our carpet cleaning Orlando company, it is also home to our employees and their families. Most of us have been raised in this beautiful city and are happy to raise our own families here. Since we do love this city so, we have decided to post a blog all about Orlando! We hope you might possibly learn a few new things about our home town while enjoying this informative read!
Orlando became an officially incorporated city 1855. Prior to becoming the city of Orlando that we are so used to today, this area was known as Jernigan. The name Jernigan comes from early settlers to the area named Isaac and Aaron Jernigan. Isaac and Aaron were to cattle farmers who had purchased the land on the west bank of Lake Holden, a few miles Northwest of Fort Gatlin. Prior to becoming known as Jernigan, the area was known as Fort Gatlin. Fort Gatlin was established in 1838 and was used by the 4th U.S. Artillery during the Second Seminole War. Fort Gatlin was named after Dr. John S. Gatlin, who was an Army physician killed during the Dade Massacre. The Dade Massacre was a U.S. Army defeat during the Second Seminole War. Fort Gatlin was abandoned by the Army only a single year after being established. The surrounding area was then settled and built up by newly arriving permanent settlements following the leads of Isaac and Aaron Jernigan.
Due to some questionable acts committed by Aaron Jernigan and a local militia he led, the local area was to be renamed from Jernigan to Orlando. As of 1857 to this day, Orlando is the name by which this land is referred to. There are a handful of stories as to how the name Orlando came to be. One of the more common stories of how the name Orlando came to be is centered around a man by the name of Orlando who was killed in the area during the Second Seminole War in 1835. The old story says that there was a well known marker on a grave that read “Here Lies Orlando” in a prominent area. There were many variations of who exactly the person in the grave named Orlando was. From an ox herder who was simply passing through the area, to a sentinel who helped the military and died as a hero, to a plantation owner who attempted to thwart peace talks between the U.S. Military and the Seminoles simply because the treaty did not reimburse him for crops and slaves lost during the war. It is said that at a local meeting it was decided that since the area was known as “Orlando’s Grave”, the logical thing to do was drop the word “Grave” and officially rename the area “Orlando”.
In 1975 there was an article written in the Orlando Sentinel by Judge Donald A. Cheney that had a bit of a different account of exactly how the name came to be. Cheney’s version of the story is a more accepted idea being that he was a local historian and Chairman of the County Historical Commission. The story was told to him by his father, Judge John Moses Cheney who arrived in Orlando in 1885 and went on the be a major figure in the area. The elder Cheney tells the story that a man named James Speer, described as “a gentleman of culture, who loved William Shakespeare”. Speer proposed the name based on a character from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. It is thought that James Speer used some of the other folklore stories of men named Orlando to convince the change, all while actually referring to the Shakespeare character. A little fuel to the fire could be the fact that one of the major roads in Orlando is named Rosalind, which is the name of the heroine in “As You Like It”. Speer’s take on the naming of Orlando seems to be the most accredited and accepted account. Regardless of how the name Orlando came to be, we love this beautiful city and are grateful to be a part of it!
We hope you enjoy this post as much as we have enjoyed writing it. Thanks to all of the wonderful residents of this great city, our carpet cleaning company has thrived. When starting a business, owners do not always have the luxury of their home town being such a great market. We do understand how lucky we are to call carpet cleaning Orlando our home for life and for business. Our amazing customers make Like New what it is, a successful, customer service based cleaning company. Thank you to each and every one of our customers! We are looking forward to a great future of growth and success in this “City Beautiful” and it’s many adjoining neighboring cities!
