The Eternal Revenge of Fred Weeks

One of the most popular stories in Greenwood Cemetery is that of a land deal gone wrong and the eternal revenge of Fred Weeks. Often repeated, the story has amused generations of Orlandoans and served as a warning to those tempted by deals that are too good to be true.  

The first rendition of Fred Weeks’ story appeared decades after the fact in Karl Abbott’s Open for the Season, published in 1950. Sometime in Orlando’s early days, according to Abbott, a newly arrived Englishman—presumably Weeks—purchased a twenty-acre tract of land from three newcomers, or as Abbott called them, “Johnny-come-latelies.”¹ The story goes that Weeks was unable to properly survey the land before the purchase due to brush fires in the area, and when he was finally able to see it, he discovered that it was “useless swamp.”² 

According to Abbott, upon making this discovery, Weeks turned his mule around and left without saying a word. After this, it is alleged that he bought a plot at the entrance to the cemetery and erected a large headstone for all to see with an inscription that read, “There was a man who came down from Jericho and fell among thieves; their names were…” along with the names of the three men who had swindled him. While Abbott doesn’t name the three “real estate sharks,” he says that a “gale of merriment that swept Orlando forced the three to give the Englishman back his money, buy the cemetery lot from Weeks, and take down the tombstone.”³

A 1960 re-telling in the Orlando Evening Star, though disregarding the part about the headstone and the original plot’s repurchase, builds on Abbott’s version saying that Weeks was threatened with lawsuits over the names inscribed on his mausoleum and that the names were merely chiseled off. The article also claims that Mrs. Weeks refused to be buried with her husband “in the tomb that had been the symbol of so much trouble during her lifetime.”⁴ Subsequent renditions of the story have gone on like a game of telephone, evolving to say—for example—that Mrs. Weeks left her husband before his death.⁵ These versions of the story repeat the essence of the tale, as first narrated by Abbott, while adding fanciful new details.

Detailed research has uncovered the facts of the case. 

Frederick Salvo Weeks was not actually an Englishman, as the story suggested, but instead was born in January 1839 in Bangor, Maine.⁶ Both of his parents were from the New England area, with deep roots in Massachusetts. Weeks married Grace Naomi Winters in Quincy, Illinois, in 1865 and worked as a clerk for the railroad.⁷ Fred and Grace Weeks never had children—another departure from some versions of the tale. In 1878, they purchased a winter home on Lake Killarney in Winter Park and started an orange grove.⁸ By 1900, they had moved to Central Florida full-time.⁹  

Fred established himself as a real estate mogul in his own right, buying and selling forty-three different parcels in Orlando, Winter Park, and Maitland alone.¹⁰ A close examination of these deals, and the evidence provided by the account of Karl Abbott, furnishes clues to the exact real estate deal that caused Fred Weeks’ infamy. Abbott was born in 1889 and his parents operated the San Juan Hotel during the Great Freeze of 1894. By 1895, the Abbotts were in Punta Gorda, Florida, operating another hotel.¹¹ This means that for Abbott to have been present at the time of the sale, it would have occurred between 1889 and 1895, and for him to have any memory of the event as a child, it would have happened toward the latter end of that range. During this period, the purchases made by Weeks were, for the most part, fairly standard transactions, except for one; the purchase of 160 acres near Lake Fairview in July of 1893 from James LeRoy Giles for the price of $15,000 (equivalent to more than $512,981 in 2023).¹² The interesting thing about this particular purchase is that less than one year later, in May 1894, Weeks sold the same 160 acres to Giles’ wife, Nannie, for only $100.¹³ This represented the loss of a substantial sum of money for Weeks. He had never before, and never would again, buy or sell a piece of land for anything near as much as he had in the deal with Giles.  

Though the paperwork for the deal only named Giles, in September 1915 Fred Weeks posted a “To Whom It May Concern” notice in the Orlando Morning Sentinel. The notice acknowledged the “error” that was made in the carving of the biblical verse on his mausoleum and stated, “the names mentioned in the verse did not refer to J. H. Vick or J. A. Knox of Orlando.”¹⁴ In naming these two individuals in the newspaper, Weeks achieved even more publicity for his case. While neither John Henry Vick nor James Abner Knox appear in the records of sales to Weeks, they can be linked to Giles. Knox, an insurance agent and real-estate investor, was the uncle of Giles’ wife, Nannie, and lived nearby the Giles home on Lake Lucerne.¹⁵ Vick was the sheriff at the time of the original sale to Weeks and, by 1915, was a wealthy real estate agent.¹⁶

In response to Weeks’ notice in the paper, Vick countered publicly through another notice in the newspaper that Weeks “had that carving done under his own instruction” and that he was well aware that the inscription referred to J. H. Vick and J. A. Knox of Orlando and thus claimed that Weeks told “two falsehoods in one explanation.”¹⁷ Vick went on to say that “the only truth he has told is when he said that he had it removed, and it is well that he did.”¹⁸ James L. Giles was elected Mayor of Orlando the following June.¹⁹ The fact that Giles’ name does not appear alongside Vick’s and Knox’s names in the paper speaks to the high profile of the third name etched on the stone of Weeks’ mausoleum. 

Fred Weeks died on August 8, 1918, in his Maitland home after suffering for several months from the effects of atherosclerosis, or narrowing of the arteries.²⁰ He was laid to rest in the lower crypt of his mausoleum. Grace Weeks remained at their Maitland home until March of 1926 when a cousin came to visit and persuaded her to relocate to Tulsa, Oklahoma with him.²¹ Shortly after her move, she revised her will to leave her substantial estate to her cousins in Oklahoma with the provision that, on her death, she be buried with her parents in Quincy, Illinois.²² Whether she chose to be buried with her parents over her husband due to the scandal in Orlando can only be speculated.  

A noteworthy coincidence is that James Knox’s final resting place is just a few yards from Weeks’ mausoleum in section A.

1. Karl P. Abbott, Open for the Season (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1950), 44-45. 

2. Abbott, Open, 44-45.

3. Abbott, Open, 44-45.

4. “Behind the Mausoleum of Mr. Fred S. Weeks,” Orlando Evening Star, October 27, 1960, 17.

5. Marnie Austin, “American Ghost Adventures in Greenwood Cemetery,” The Grave Girl Cemetery Blogger, November 2, 2017, accessed November 6, 2023, https://www.thegravegirl.com/american-ghost-adventures-in-greenwood-cemetery/ 

6. “United States Census, 1850, ” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Jason Weeks and Phebe S Weeks, accessed November 6, 2023, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6VS-YTR 

7. “Illinois, County Marriages, 1810-1940,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Frederick S Weeks and N Grace Winters, 1865, accessed November 6, 2023, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X2T2-VWY; “United States Census, 1870,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Frederick S Weeks, accessed November 6, 2023, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M644-FH5

8. “Death of Mr. Weeks of Maitland,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, August 10, 1918, 8.

9. “United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Fred S Weeks, 1900, accessed November 6, 2023, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M36Z-P8L 

10. “Deeds, 1843-1917; index 1916-1937 (Orange County, Florida),” database with images, Family Search, 448, entries for Fred S. Weeks, accessed February 28, 2024, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C372-Z95S-G  

11. Abbott, Open, 55.

12. Orange County, Florida, Deed Book 85: 606 (James L. and Nannie Giles to Fred S. Weeks, 25 July 1893), accessed November 6, 2023, https://or.occompt.com/recorder/eagleweb/viewAttachment.jsp?docName=4284980&id=DOCC4284980.A0&parent=DOCC4284980; “Value of $15,000 from 1893 to 2023,” CPI Inflation Calculator, accessed November 6, 2023, https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1893?amount=15000 

13. Orange County, Florida, Deed Book 91: 101 (Fred S. and Grace N. Weeks to Nannie Bartlett Giles, 16 May 1894), accessed November 6, 2023, https://or.occompt.com/recorder/eagleweb/viewAttachment.jsp?docName=4286326&id=DOCC4286326.A0&parent=DOCC4286326 

14. “To Whom It May Concern,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, September 7, 1915, 4. 

15. “Last Rites for Knox Tomorrow,” Orlando Evening Star, February 27, 1931, 1. 

16. “Funeral Services for Mr. John H. Vick Set Wednesday at 2:30,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, October 29, 1940, 7.

17. “Notice to the Public,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, September 10, 1915, 2.

18. “Notice,” Orlando Morning Sentinel.

19.  City of Orlando, Mayors’ Gallery: 100 Years of the City’s Chief Executives (1975), Orlando Memory, accessed November 6, 2023, https://orlandomemory.info/wp-content/uploads/documents/Mayors%20Gallery%20100%20years.pdf 

20. “Florida Deaths, 1877-1939,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Fred S. Weeks, accessed November 6, 2023 https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FP4J-PBW;“Maitland,” Orlando Morning Sentinel.

21. “Society,” Tulsa Daily World, March 30, 1926, 6.

“Probate Records, 1907-1950,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Grace N Weeks, 1926, accessed November 6, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/9077/images/007074055_00656