In the last essay I mentioned that Joel Horne was my Sunday School (Bible) teacher when I was 12 years old in 1954. Joel’s mother and father, J. R. and Ardena Horne, had moved in 1903 from the Lakeland, FL area to this small village, then called Hillsboro,* later changed to Deerfield. Citrus growers and vegetable farmers, they came to Deerfield because the steam-powered trains on the recently built Florida East Coast Railroad had to stop here to take on water from the Hillsboro River to make steam. This stop allowed farmers located here, including the Hornes, to load their winter-grown crops and citrus on those trains for onward transport to northern markets.

J. R. Horne was quite successful and ended up owning a large amount of land in the area, including what is now the Deerfield Beach Country Club, which was his citrus grove, and lands east and west of that all the way to Powerline Road. But unfortunately, he was murdered at his citrus grove in 1920 when he came across thieves, reportedly railroad workers, stealing his citrus. The murderers were never caught. His wife was left with small children to raise and had to sell off their property to support the family.

*The area’s name originated from the Earl of Hillsboro, who had received large land grants from King George III during England’s hold on the area between 1763 and 1783. In 1897, reportedly an engineer working on the construction of the Florida East Coast Railroad named C.E. Hunt renamed the area from Hillsboro to Deerfield because of all the deer in the area.

Click on ObserverTV>On Demand>Community Videos to watch an interview with Edna Horne