Friday, March 8, 2013

Local Names: Live Oak Plantation Road

Florida's last territorial governor:  John Branch,
Father-in-law of Arvah Hopkins
From a March, 2004, Tallahassee Democrat article by Gerald Ensley:
Live Oak Plantation Road, between Thomasville Road and Meridian Road, is named for the plantation established on its western end in the 19th century.  Most of the plantation, which once stretched all the way to Lake Jackson, has been subdivided into homesites since the 1950s.  Originally, Live Oak was the 10,000-acre plantation of John Branch, a governor and U.S. Senator from North Carolina.  Branch moved to Tallahassee in the mid-1830s and served as the sixth and last territorial governor before statehood in 1845.  Branch's daughter married planter and merchant Arvah Hopkins, owner of Goodwood Plantation (and grandfather of the late longtime city manager Arvah Hopkins).  After Branch, it passed through many owners, including Dr. Tennent Ronalds, a native of Scotland, who built one of Tallahassee's first golf courses on the property in 1903.

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