Ghost Towns of Florida 


The author recalls the history of two towns that my Krimminger Jones and Severance ancestors helped settle. 


Shown are 4 great uncles, 1 uncle and 1 Severance cousin in the background.

Old Troy - New Troy

“Ghost Towns of Florida”


By James R. Warnke. Printed by Star Publishing Co. Boynton Beach, Fla. - Copyright 1971

 by James R. Warnke. - First printing April 1971.


“The banks of the Suwannee River are steeped in history. No other river in the United States, except for the Mississippi, has played so great a part in the heritage of the American people. For decades the river was used for commerce, a water highway, and a gateway to the interior of pioneer Florida. Even though Stephen Foster never saw the stream he immortalized in song, he made it so famous that hardly a school child today does not know the lyrics of his wonderful tune. Many towns sprang up along the banks of the Suwannee, but curiously, not a single large city exists along the river’s entire length, all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to its head waters at Billy’s Lake in Georgia.


This is really the story of two ghost towns. Old Troy and New Troy were each an integral part of Lafayette County in the 1800’s, and neither of them exist today. Old Troy, in the year 1860, could boast a one-story log courthouse, five stores, two doctors, a saloon, and a post office with William F. Bynum as postmaster. During the Civil War (or should I, as a southerner, say, “the War of Northern Aggression”?), deserters raided the hamlet in 1865 and put the torch to every building in town. Rather than rebuild the town on the old site, the residents salvaged a few documents from the ruins of the courthouse and established New Troy a few miles down the river.


By 1870, New Troy was a thriving community. John N. Krimminger was postmaster, D.M. McAlpin was superintendent of schools, and William Edwards was the sheriff. The new courthouse was a two-story frame building. People would come from all over the county to watch the court proceedings, which sometimes lasted as long as two weeks. Mail was carried by horse to the small towns in the vicinity, and supplies were delivered by steamers from the coastal seaports.


In the years between 1880 and 1890, the community grew with prosperity and, in the year 1891, could boast a Methodist and a Baptist church, warehouses, stores, boarding houses, sawmill, cotton gin, grist mill, courthouse and jail, blacksmith shop and many homes. Two Newspapers, The Lafayette County Messenger and The Lafayette County Enterprise, were both published in New Troy and a ferry had been established to carry passengers and goods across the river to Branford on the East shore. The area was teeming with game and fish. Northern sportsmen making the long journey to the New Troy area were well rewarded for their efforts, for here was a land of plenty.


On New Year’s Eve at the close of 1892, the court house caught fire. No one knows how it started but many said drunken revelers did it as a prank. In any case the building burned to the ground. The county officers, for lack of a meeting room, held the next commission meeting in the Methodist parsonage on Jan.2, 1893. Mr. T. Cates was the chairman and the minutes of the previous meeting were dispensed with as “the safe was still too hot to be opened” (the clerk of the circuit court of Lafayette County can show the old documents that bear scorch marks of the courthouse fire).


At this time the residents of the county were campaigning to have the county seat moved to a different location. An election was held in February 1893 and the vote for the new county seat showed 299 votes for Mayo, 244 votes for New Branford and only one vote for New Troy. After the election it was discovered that one or two of the men carrying the ballots to the temporary courthouse in New Troy might have become a little too enthusiastic about the outcome and may have moved a few of the X’s to a new place on the handwritten ballots. Rather than fight a long court battle to prove this, the commissioners decided to re-canvass the voters and, in effect, hold a new election. On the sixth, of March 1893, the new count and hopefully the correct one gave Mayo 218 votes, New Branford 187, New Troy 1 and Old Town 1. The new official seat of Lafayette County was declared to be Mayo and still is today.


Removal of the county courthouse from New Troy somehow spelled the end for the community and folks started to move away. Merchants felt the pinch of the loss of business and were forced to close their doors in favor of other and more profitable locations. As trade dwindled, more folks left and one by one the buildings were boarded up and offered for sale to anyone at any price. There were no buyers. New Troy was gripped with a miniature depression and finally was completely abandoned. Descendants of the early settlers, the Severance and hill families still live in the area, but the site of New Troy is completely deserted. Giant oak trees spread their limbs over the bricks of the foundations and the Suwannee River glides silently by the few remaining pilings of the steamer dock. Hand cut nails, and broken pieces of chinaware stick up from the sand and once in awhile one finds a rusty horseshoe from the blacksmith shop. There is little to show today that here once existed a thriving town of over 500 people.”


 My gratitude for a wonderful article Mr. Warnke.

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Richard “Rick” Chancey