By B.C. Manion
During her lifetime, Elizabeth Riegler MacManus got a thrill from tracking down historical facts, collecting artifacts and gathering old photographs of the people, places and institutions in Lutz and Land O’ Lakes.
Her passion prompted her to co-author, with her daughter Susan A. MacManus, a community history, “Citrus, Sawmills, Critters & Crackers: Life in Early Lutz and Central Pasco County,” published in 1998.
The younger MacManus has now wrapped up the sequel.
She and her mother finished most of the legwork for the 690-page companion volume – “Going, Going … Almost Gone: Lutz-Land O’ Lakes Pioneers Share Their Precious Memories” — before Elizabeth Riegler MacManus died in 2008. Her mother, blind in her final years, was familiar with the content because friends lovingly read most of it to her before she died.
The book traces the history of agriculture and commerce in Lutz and Land O’ Lakes and contains a treasure trove of more than 1,000 photographs. It also shares recollections from taped oral histories collected by Elizabeth Riegler MacManus.
MacManus, a widely known political science professor at the University of South Florida, said the sequel was always intended. The authors wanted to share the personal stories of early residents and publish material left out of the first volume, which prompted people to come forward with photographs and archival documents after crawling into attics or sifting through boxes in garages or closets. MacManus spent hours over the better part of a decade to complete the book.
The book contains information from deeds, maps, newspaper clippings, programs and newsletters. It recounts how Lutz and Land O’ Lakes – which straddle US 41 in northern Hillsborough and southern Pasco counties – came by their names.
“Lutz got its name from two brothers, William and Charles Lutz. The two had connections with two railroads that met and joined at Lutz Junction,” the book says.
“William was a train engineer for the Tampa Northern Railroad that ran north and south through the North Tampa Land Company’s development.
“Charles built a railroad line that ran west of the station to Odessa to transport lumber from his sawmill there. That was part of the Tampa and Gulf Coast Railroad.”
Land O’ Lakes was named much later.
“In 1949, the residents of the communities a few miles north of Lutz – Nowatney, Myrtle, Denham, Drexel, Ehren, Godwin, Greenfield, Tucker, Diston and Loyce came together to form Land O’ Lakes,” the book relates.
The book also maps the history of buildings and commerce locally. The Lutz map identifies 123 sites, including cemeteries, churches, restaurants, grocery stores, a barbershop, a bandstand, a post office and a lumber mill. The Land O’ Lakes map identifies 102 sites, including a log cabin, restaurants, churches, banks, motels, schools, a funeral home and dairies.
People traveled by stagecoach or wagon or on horseback. Later, they drove cars over rutted, sandy roads. A trip to Wesley Chapel was a bit of a haul, recalled Annie Belle Strickland Brock.
“We had a wagon and horses. When we’d go to stay for all night with my grandmother, Mama’s mother, on the other side of Wesley Chapel, she would take us in the wagon and we’d take lunch.”
The book is loaded with facts and figures.
It notes that the 1927 construction date commonly associated with the Old Lutz School actually referred to the end of its first school year.
It also gives the genesis of the Lutz Civic Association, which grew from a nucleus of about 20 people who gathered for a meeting on Nov. 16, 1943 into an organization that has shaped community life and development.
The book chronicles where people worked, what people ate, where they worshipped and how they had fun.
“You name it, they did it. From growing, picking, and hauling fruit to making charcoal and moonshine, raising chickens, grinding cane, herding cattle, cutting and hauling crossties, selling ferns and killing gators – Lutz-Land O’ Lakes pioneers did it all to make ends meet,” the book says.
“With much of the area covered in pine trees, lumber and turpentine were boom industries in the late 1800s and early 1900s,” the book notes.
“Citrus was king for many decades,” states a caption, under a photograph of a man standing in a grove. “By the 2000s,” the book notes, “there were very few orange groves left in the area. The freeze of 1985 was the final blow to most. Rather than replant, many owners sold their property for commercial purposes, often to developers.”
The pioneers of Lutz and Land O’ Lakes didn’t have microwave ovens or fast-food restaurants, but they were resourceful.
“If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat just about anything,” the book says. “The pioneers did just that. Possums, rabbits, coons, turkeys, dove, quail, soft-shell turtles, wild hogs – even sand hill cranes – landed on many a table as the meat of the day.”
Beef was rare, however, recalled Ted Williams. “About the only time we would have beef was when one of Sam Hopson’s cows got hit on the road.”
Fruits and vegetables were a prime source of sustenance.
“Wild huckleberries, blackberries, strawberries and guavas were picked to make jams and jellies or used in fruit cobblers.
“Vegetables – collard greens, turnips, potatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, carrots – were homegrown,” the book notes.
At the end of the workweek, families were ready to worship and socialize.
“The faith communities in Lutz-Land O’ Lakes have been strong since the first churches were founded in the early 1910s,” the book notes.
“Going to church gave neighbors a chance to see each other and be informed about marriages, births, deaths, and illnesses, as well as be uplifted spiritually,” the book says.
Recreation was simple. Picnics, dances, softball and swimming were among the mainstays. Old-fashioned fun ruled the day. The most popular events at the original Fourth of July celebration in Lutz in 1947, were climbing the greased pole and catching the greased pig, the book says.
The book’s photographs show change, with images of buildings that no longer exist, of churches that have moved and of people posing in groves or at picnics.
MacManus said her efforts were a tribute to her mother’s quest to preserve local history.
While she is not planning another local history, she hopes other communities will be encouraged to write their own.
“They think they have to be professional,” she said, but they shouldn’t feel intimidated.
“All it takes is a little organization and somebody to put it together.”
Pioneer Memories
Recollections from “Going, Going … Almost Gone: Lutz-Land O’ Lakes Pioneers Share Their Precious Memories” by Elizabeth Riegler MacManus and Susan A. MacManus.
Willie Haug: “I was 10 years old when I started comin’ out there and on Saturday evenings, there were two brothers that had the sawmill over here at Ehren, Lutz brothers – Charles and William Lutz. William Lutz associated mainly with the old folks, and Charles Lutz, or Charlie Lutz, as they called him, came over to the little store and every kid that was in there, he would buy a piece o’ candy, chewing gum, ice cream or a cold drink. Each one of them got somethin’ every Saturday night.
“Charlie was about 5’6” or 5’7,” weighed about 160, 165 pounds and he dressed like one of these plantation owners from South and Central America – real light or white suit, white shoes, Panama hat, such as that.
“William was quite reserved, he wore dark suits, shoes and hat all the time, whether it’d be grey, dark grey, or black or blue.
“But Lutz was named after those two boys way back then.”
Worth Johnson: “Bill Hood and I cleared several acres of land around there – grubbed palmettos out of it with a grubbin’ hoe to make some extra money. I made the money for my first pair of long pants delivering four-feet cord wood in the boxcars down there at Stemper. Fifteen years old. Went to town, down there at the corner of Lafayette and Franklin Street to Giddens Dry Goods Store, bought my first pair of long pants.”
George Riegler: “We’d frequently go to town with six or seven hundred pounds of cabbage, couple of hundred pounds of potatoes and rutabagas, carrots, turnips … you name it, there’s just barely enough room for Grandpa, Grandma and the kids stuck in, and all of the rest of the touring car was vegetables; back bumper, front bumper, fenders, parking lights, running boards, door handles, burlap bags, hung on it across the engine …”
Jimmy Marsh: “The big day for me is when I’d eat lunch with my dad at the depot. He’d get a can of potted meat, and a can of Vienna sausage, and a sleeve of Nabisco saltines, and a cold drink. We’d share a cold drink.”
Local shops offer book at special price
“Going, Going … Almost Gone: Lutz-Land O’ Lakes Pioneers Share Their Precious Memories,” retails for $65, but three local shops are selling it for $50. Co-author Susan MacManus wrote the book with her mother, Elizabeth Riegler MacManus, who died in 2008. MacManus is using some of the money left by her mother to subsidize the book so more readers can enjoy it.
Emma Lou Harvey, of Harvey’s Hardware in Land O’ Lakes, said book sales are brisk: “We had a lady call who no longer lives in the area and she bought seven books. She was buying them for different members of the family.”
Tana Brackins, owner of Beck Gallery in Lutz, said the book is a hit: “Everyone loves it – especially people who have been out here a long time.”
The books are available at $50 at these locations:
–Harvey’s Hardware, 5400 Land O’ Lakes Blvd.
–The Beck Gallery, 1720 Land O’ Lakes Blvd.
–Lutz Ace Hardware, 18469 N. US 41
