Mayor William Henry Jewell: A Legendary Orlandoan

William Henry Jewell was a Northern-born Confederate soldier whose military service quite literally embodied the slogan “brother against brother.” Jewell served as Orlando’s nineteenth mayor, and his beautification efforts helped to create “The City Beautiful.” 

William Henry Jewell was born on February 26, 1840, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, to Henry Jewell and Elizabeth Baker, both from families with deep roots in New England.¹ Jewell was the second of five children, having an older sister, as well as two younger brothers and a sister.² Jewell’s father was a Universalist clergyman; his mother died when he was just 18 years old.³ His father remarried swiftly.⁴ William Jewell worked for a time as a bookkeeper in Massachusetts, but little more is known of his early life there. 

Sometime before the start of the Civil War, Jewell moved to Natchez, Mississippi. There, in 1861, he enlisted in Company A of the 21^st Mississippi Infantry as an alternate for Thomas Nelson.⁵ As a non-citizen of Mississippi, Jewell was exempt from conscription which meant that Nelson was able to hire him for a fee, possibly as high as $3,000, to take his place in the Confederate Army.⁶ 

Jewell’s first combat was at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, as a Private on the frontlines. He survived this battle, but he was not so lucky during his second battle.⁷ According to his service records, Jewell was wounded at the Battle of Savage’s Station in Henrico County, Virginia, on June 29, 1862.⁸ He was carried off the battlefield by Private Daniel O’Rourke, who would remain a lifelong friend.⁹ A transfer request letter written by Jewell in October 1862 states that he was struck by a buckshot ball which remained in his knee and prevented him from being able to carry out active field service.¹⁰ His request was granted, and he was assigned a detail as a telegraph operator that November, a role in which he served for the rest of the war. Notably, Jewell’s regiment fought at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. For the Jewell family, the battle quite literally pitted brother against brother, as his brothers, Benjamin and Edwin, both served with the Union Army at the battle.¹¹ 

In January 1864, the Superintendent of the Military Telegraph Corps wrote a letter requesting Jewell’s dismissal from service because he had “been using liquor to excess, and while under its influence, left his post without permission.”¹² This request for Jewell’s dismissal was not granted, and he was instead transferred to serve with Major General Wade Hampton one month later.¹³ He continued to serve as a telegraph operator with Hampton until the end of the war.¹⁴

After the war Jewell returned to Natchez and published The Daily Southern Star newspaper for a year starting in 1865. He was admitted to the bar in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1866, and from that point on, worked as a lawyer.¹⁵ In 1867, he married Emily Brooks Sturges, the widow of a Confederate lieutenant colonel.¹⁶ The couple had two children—May in 1869 and Walter in 1872.¹⁷ However, they separated after Walter’s birth due to “domestic unhappiness.”¹⁸ In 1879 Jewell married for a second time in Massachusetts.¹⁹ He took his new bride, Carrie Stonewall, and his son Walter, west to the Dakota Territory, where he worked as a clergyman.²⁰ 

 In 1885, Jewell and his second wife made their way to Orlando, Florida, where he again worked as a lawyer, eventually serving two terms in the state legislature. He was elected Mayor of Orlando for three one-year terms, from 1907 to 1910.²¹ It was during Mayor Jewell’s tenure that the City of Orlando pursued its beautification campaign, constructing sidewalks, planting trees and flowers, and adopting a new city motto, “The City Beautiful.”²² While in office, Mayor Jewell also became the first mayor to violate a city ordinance while in office; Section 269 of Article 6, when he hitched his horse to an awning post of a downtown business in 1908.²³ He was arrested and subsequently served as both defendant and presiding judge in Mayor’s Court, where he fined himself $5, with $4 of the fine being suspended. Mayor Jewell paid his $1 fine (equivalent to about $33 in 2023) and was released by the City Marshal.²⁴  

Mayor Jewell was commonly known as “General Jewell,” his elected rank in the Florida Division of Confederate Veterans.²⁵ In addition to his civic duties and beautification campaign in the City of Orlando, he also was a member of several Veteran and fraternal organizations, including the Freemasons and the Knights Templar.²⁶ He participated in the 1911 fundraising efforts that resulted in the erection of the Confederate “Johnny Reb” Memorial, originally placed in front of the Orange County Court House at the intersection of Central Boulevard and Main Street (Magnolia Avenue today), later moved to Lake Eola, and more recently to the Confederate section of Greenwood Cemetery.²⁷  

William Jewell died on January 3, 1912, at the age of 71, just one day after his Confederate friend and comrade, Private Daniel O’Rourke.²⁸ The former mayor was buried in the Confederate Veterans section of Greenwood Cemetery in a grand ceremony attended by hundreds of locals representing “every grade of Orlando citizen, from the cart driver, standing with bent head in the rear, to the foremost citizens of the county.”²⁹  

1. “United States Census, 1850,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Henry Jewell and Elisabeth Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXQC-7XC

2. “1850 Census,” FamilySearch, entry for Henry Jewell and Elisabeth Jewell.

3. “1850 Census,” FamilySearch, entry for Henry Jewell and Elisabeth Jewell.

4. “U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s-Current,” database with images, Find a Grave, entry for Elizabeth B. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122003520/elizabeth-b-jewell 

5. “United States Census, 1860,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Henry Jewell and Caroline Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MZHY-DMG 

6. “1860 Census,” FamilySearch, entry for William Jewell.; “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956739 

7. David A. Norris, “Substitutes (Civil War),” Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.ncpedia.org/substitutes-civil-war  

8. “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956741 

9. “Compiled Service," Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell.

10. “Grand Lodge of Masons Will Attend Gen. Jewell’s Funeral,” Orlando Evening Star, January 3, 1912, 1.

11. “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956809 

12. “Brothers Who Wore Gray and Blue,” Confederate Veteran, ed. S. A. Cunningham (Nashville: Confederate Veterans of America, 1911), 545-546, accessed November 18, 2023, https://archive.org/details/confederateveter19conf/page/546/mode/1up ; “Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Massachusetts,” database with images, Fold3, entry for Benjamin W. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/317051592 ; “Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Massachusetts,” database with images, Fold3, entry for Edwin C. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/316991290 

13. “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956805 

14. “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956862; “Grand Lodge of Masons Will Attend Gen. Jewell’s Funeral,” Orlando Evening Star, January 3, 1912, 1.

15. “1890 Veterans Schedules of the U.S. Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for William Jewell accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8667/images/MSM123_26-0243 “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Mississippi, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/76956717 

16. “Mr. Jewell,” Daily Mississippi Clarion and Standard, April 19, 1866, 3.; “W.H. Jewell,” The Vicksburg Herald, August 26, 1869, 2.; “Grand Lodge of Masons Will Attend Gen. Jewell’s Funeral,” Orlando Evening Star, January 3, 1912, 1.

17. “Mississippi Marriages, 1800-1911,” database with images, FamilySearch, entry for Emily Brooks Sprague and William H. Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V28G-1YB ; “US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate General and Staff Officers, and Nonregimental Enlisted Men, 1861-1865,” database with images, Fold3, entry for Sturges Sprague, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.fold3.com/image/73395914 

18. “California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994,” database with images, Family Search, entry for May J Bonn and William Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPSR-3ZMK; “1880 U.S. Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for Walter Jewell accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4240107-00159; “Pathetic Death of Mrs. Emily Jewell, Due to a Broken Heart,” The Vicksburg American, March 17, 1903, 1. 

19. “Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Records, 1840-1915,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for William Henry Jewell, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2511/images/41262_b139269-00323 

20. “1880 U.S. Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry, entry for William Jewell accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4240107-00159 

21. Jose R. Oliva, The People of Lawmaking in Florida: 1822-2019 (Florida: Florida House of Representatives, 2019), 96, accessed November 19, 2023, https://www.floridamemory.com/fmp/territorial-legislative/PeopleOfLawmaking.pdf; Mayors’ Gallery City of Orlando, Florida: 100 Years of the City’s Chief Executives, City of Orlando, August 1975, 6, accessed November 19, 2023, https://orlandomemory.info/wp-content/uploads/documents/Mayors%20Gallery%20100%20years.pdf 

22. Paul Lewis, “Orlando’s “Beautiful” Heritage: The City Beautiful Movement and Its Impact on Orlando,” City of Orlando, 9, accessed November 10, 2023, http://www.cityoforlando.net/greenworks/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/Orlandos-Beautiful-Heritage.pdf  

23. “City Code Dodos Are Still With Us,” Orlando Sentinel, December 13, 1953, 72.; City of Orlando Code of Ordinances, March 7, 1907, Ordinance Title 6, Article 6, Chapter 3, Number 269, pg. 63, City of Orlando, Orlando, Florida. 

24. City of Orlando Mayor’s Court Docket Ledgers, July 1, 1908, entry for Wm. H. Jewell, ledger F, box 6, 205, City of Orlando Government, Orange County Regional History Center, Orlando, Florida; “Value of $1 from 1908 to 2023,” CPI Inflation Calculator, accessed November 18, 2023, https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1908?amount=1 

25. “Grand Lodge of Masons Will Attend Gen. Jewell’s Funeral,” Orlando Evening Star, January 3, 1912, 1.

26. “Funeral,” Orlando Evening Star.

27. “Unveiling of the Confederate Monument. April 1911,” Dedication Program, Orange County Regional History Center, accessed July 17, 2023, https://collections.thehistorycenter.org/mIDetail.aspx?rID=2009-001-0206

28. Carey Hand Funeral Home, "Jewell, W. H.", Carey Hand Undertaker's Memoranda, 1912, 3, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-ch-memoranda-1912/3  

29. “Gen. Jewell Laid at Rest,” Orlando Evening Star, January 4, 2023, 1.