Throughout history towns and villages that were once bustling with activity are now a shell of their former existence or have disappeared altogether. They can vanish for a variety of reasons but one of the purposes of a history museum is to ensure that their memory lives on.
Today the town of Campville is an unincorporated community in Alachua County, Florida. Most people only know it as a green location sign near the intersection of Highway 301 and County Road 1474. Yet, from the 1880s to the 1960s it was a different story.
Founded in 1880, it was originally named Santa Fe because of the nearby lake of the same name. The name was changed to Campville when the post office was established on September 12, 1881. At that time there was a store, school, church, sawmill, and about 20 residences. In Carl Webber’s Eden of the South, published in 1883, he described Campville as having “a wonderful spirit of enterprise.”
Why call it Campville? It was named for the three Camp brothers who moved to the area from Virginia in 1880 and 1881 and became the major land owners and opened a variety of businesses. They owned a sawmill, general store, orange groves, and interest in a nursery. Between the three of them they also owned 4,000 acres but agreed to sell some of it as lots in the town as long as liquor was not sold within the town limits.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin Camp (Frank) was the first to move to Florida in 1880 for his health. His enthusiasm for Florida’s potential encouraged his brothers Paul and Robert to travel there by train and see it for themselves. Coming from a lumber and paper manufacturing family, they saw the promise of Florida’s natural resources. Eventually their brothers William and John and sister Jenny Norfleet would also move to Florida, although not everyone stayed.
John and Robert joined forces with Frank in 1888 to form the firm of R. J. Camp and Brothers. According to Frank, they split up the duties as followed: John - logging, Robert - general store and sawmill, Frank - orange groves. Prior to this Frank had also founded a brick kiln in Campville in 1885. According to him there was no brick kiln in Florida before he began his business. Over the next forty years the Campville Brick Company would make an average of four million bricks a year. At its height it would ship three carloads of bricks a day.
Campville Brick Company, 1914, courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida.
A receipt from R. J. Camp & Bros., courtesy of the Alachua County Clerk of the Court Ancient Records
Robert moved back to their hometown of Franklin, Virginia, within a few years but stayed invested in the Florida ventures until his death in 1915. John died of alcoholism in 1899 while operating the company store in Campville.
The only visual piece of Camp history in Campville is the Camp-Tillman house, which Frank built in 1880. Located at 1512 NE 191st Terrace, its beautiful architecture includes two-story verandas on the front and back and a bay window on the north side. The last occupants were the Tillman family who bought it in 1938 and upgraded it with electricity and indoor plumbing. It was last sold in 1983 after Mrs. Tillman’s death and sadly sits empty today.
The Camp-Tillman House - undated, courtesy of the Southampton County Historical Society.
In 1896 Frank moved his family to White Springs, Florida. His businesses had suffered as a result of a fire at the sawmill and the Great Freeze of 1895-96. In White Springs he started another sawmill and built a short-line railroad to join the Seaboard line at Welborn. In 1898 he helped build the White Springs Baptist Church. He was involved in a variety of businesses but after the Panic of 1907 he never fully recovered financially. He died in White Springs in 1927.
Another building from Campville’s early days is the Orange Creek Methodist Church located at the corner of County Road 1474 and SE County Road 219A. It was founded in 1869 and its current white, frame building was built in 1900.
Orange Creek Methodist Church, courtesy of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.
After the Camp brothers left, Campville continued to flourish with lumber and turpentine and a variety of crops that replaced the citrus groves. For example, according to the Lakeland Evening Telegram, in 1919 there were 120 acres of cantaloupes with an estimated yield of 30 train car loads. Another long-running business was the Dyess store, which opened in 1900 and doubled as the post office. It closed in 1971. The brick factory shut down in 1940. In 1966 the post office was moved to Hawthorne and Campville became a sleepy street of a few homes.
For further reading on the Camp family check out “The Timber Tycoons: The Camp Families of Virginia and Florida and Their Empire 1887-1987″ by Parke Rouse Jr., published by the Southampton County Historical Society (1988).
