The Great Orlando Fire and the Burning of the Orlando Cemetery

In the early days of the City of Orlando, two major fires defined the growth of the young city and its shift toward modernization. The first of these fires, in 1884, burned four buildings at a time when Orlando was only a square mile. Another fire in 1891 destroyed a great portion of Greenwood Cemetery, including nearly all the wooden headboards, prompting the cemetery’s purchase by the city as well as subsequent fire code changes.  

In the early 1880s, when Orlando was still a small frontier town, a devastating fire swept through the city, bringing new changes to the growing city and its fire department. On January 12, 1884, when the city was still only the size of one square mile, a fire destroyed four buildings.¹ The “Great Fire,” as it was known, destroyed the Orange County Reporter newspaper office, Delaney’s Grocery Store, the Bassett Millinery Store, and the Drs. RJ Gillam, Ketcham & Gillam Drug Store.² This disaster prompted changes to Orlando’s building codes, and from that point onward, there were no wooden first floors in new construction.³ Prior to the Great Fire, Orlando’s volunteer fire department consisted of six members as well as a hose, a bucket brigade, and a painter’s ladder on a cart that had to be hauled around by hand.⁴ It would not be until 1885 that Orlando’s volunteer department was officially established, with John Weeks appointed the first official fire chief.⁵ [Orlando’s Fire Department has a fascinating history; to learn more, visit the Orlando Fire Department Museum located in Loch Haven Park.] 

In 1891, a fire at the cemetery destroyed much of the property and led to its purchase by the City of Orlando. The Orlando Fire Department believed that the fire started in nearby Jonestown and spread into the cemetery.⁶ Most grave markers before the fire were made of cypress wood; granite and marble headstones were too expensive before the railroads and mass-market catalog companies made them affordable for Orlandoans.⁷ The fire destroyed all but two of the original cypress wood markers. The City of Orlando purchased the cemetery from the Orlando Cemetery Company in 1892 and reinterred many bodies from the city’s homesteads to Greenwood Cemetery.⁸ It is due to this fire that Section H of the cemetery appears largely empty today. Section H was originally the rear western area of the cemetery, housing the first “pauper's row” and a small, segregated African American section. It's possible that this section had fewer markers to begin with, but also that many were wooden and thus burned in the fire. 

One of only two surviving wooden markers in Greenwood Cemetery belongs to Harriet Smith Adams. She was born to Amos Smith and Sarah Crabtree Smith on August 14, 1846, at sea.⁹ She married Benjamin Adams, a Corporal in Company C of the 59th Massachusetts Infantry, on March 28, 1864, in Beverly, Massachusetts, where Benjamin worked as a farm laborer and Harriet kept house.¹⁰ They had no children. Sometime between 1870 and 1900, the Adams family moved to Coconut Grove in Dade, Florida.¹¹ In 1907, Harriet and Benjamin moved to Lake Minnie, in present day Lake Mary.¹² Harriet Adams died on September 3, 1909, at the age of 63 from diabetes, and she was buried in section A in Greenwood Cemetery.¹³  

The subject of the second surviving wooden grave marker is Elizabeth Renfro Bazemore. Elizabeth Renfroe was born on March 14, 1823, in Georgia.¹⁴ She married Madison Turner Bazemore, a farmer and slaveholder, on December 28, 1843, in Jones, Georgia.¹⁵ Over the next twenty years, they had ten children, five boys and five girls, including one set of twins.¹⁶ Madison Bazemore fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and, in 1876, he died at the age of 53.¹⁷ As late as 1880, the Bazemore family resided in Jones, Georgia.¹⁸ By 1890, Elizabeth Bazemore was living with her youngest son, William, in the Pine Castle area of Orlando.¹⁹ Elizabeth Bazemore passed away on November 25, 1890, and her grave is marked by her original cypress wood marker and a metal name marker in section A of Greenwood Cemetery.²⁰ 

1. Dick Camnitz (Orlando Fire Department Historian), in-person interview, Sarah Boye, Orlando, Florida, February 1, 2024. 

2. “History,” Orlando Fire Museum, 2015, www.orlandofiremuseum.org/History#2000. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.

3. Camnitz, in-person interview.

4. “History,” Orlando Fire Museum.

5. “History,” Orlando Fire Museum.

6. Camnitz, in-person interview.

7. Sears Roebuck & Co., Tombstones and Monuments (Chicago: Sears, Roebuck & Co., 1906), 3.

8. Eve Bacon, Orlando: A Centennial History (Chuluota: Mickler House Publishers, 1975), I: 188.

9. “1900 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Harriet S. Adams, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/422452:7602 ; “Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Benjamin Adams and Harriet A Smith, accessed March 21, 2024,  https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6F69-1W1; “Florida Deaths, 1877-1939,” FamilySearch, entry for Harriett A. Adams and Amos Smith, 3 Sep 1909, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FPS5-ZWG 

10. “Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Benjamin Adams and Harriet A Smith, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6F69-1W1; “US, Civil War Pensions Index, 1861-1900,” database with images, Fold3, entry for Benjamin Adams, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.fold3.com/image/2787660/ ; ”1870 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Benjamin Adams, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/28337129:7163 

11. “1900 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Harriet Adams, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7602/images/4120038_00255

12. “Orlando,” Tampa Morning Tribune, September 12, 1909, 19.

13. “Florida Deaths, 1877-1939,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Harriet A Smith, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FPS5-ZWG 

14. “1870 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry.com entry for Elizabeth Bazemore, accessed February 15, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7163/images/4263489_00589  

15. “Georgia, U.S., Marriage Records From Select Counties, 1828-1978,” database with images, Ancestry.com entry for Elizabeth Bazemore, accessed February 15, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/4766/images/40660_307798-00575; ”1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules,” database with images, Ancestry.com entry for Madison T. Bazemore, accessed March 21, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/92507461:8055 

16. “1870 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry.com entry for Elizabeth Bazemore, accessed February 15, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7163/images/4263489_00589

17.  Joseph S. McGee and Ruth B. Clark, Bazemore Ancestry (Butler, GA: R. B. Clark, 1955): 21. 

18. “1880 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Elizabeth Bazemore, accessed February 15, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4240142-00265 

19. “Madison T. Bazemore and Wife, Elizabeth S. Bazemore,” The Gospel Messenger, September 1891, 11, no. 13: 454.

20. “U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current " database with images, Ancestry.com entry for Elizabeth Bazemore, accessed February 15, 2024, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/98070830:60525