Apalachicola Digs Local History: The Orman House Public Excavation Project

Thomas Orman was born in Salina, New York in 1799. When he was 16 years old he moved to New Orleans, where he worked in the sugar industry. He later traveled to St. Andrews where he increased his fortune in the salt industry. Later on he purchased a plantation and slaves in Webville, near Marianna, where he married his wife Sarah. In 1830, their only child, William, was born. Thomas Orman was one of the original promoters of the town of Webville. The town was competing with Marianna for the title of Jackson County Seat. Marianna won this title and a short time later Webville collapsed. Then, learning of the opportunities in Apalachicola, Thomas Orman moved his family, slaves and belongings down the Apalachicola River to the booming port town in 1834.

The Orman house as it appears today.

According to local lore, Orman selected the site for his Apalachicola home while he was participating in a search party for invading Creek Indians in 1836. This property was once part of the Forbes and Company Purchase, held by the Apalachicola Land Company until 1835. In 1837 Thomas commissioned the building of his Apalachicola plantation home. Lumber for the house was cut in New York and shipped to Apalachicola. The house was constructed using wooden pegs and rope hawsers. The two-story antebellum house was oriented to receive late-afternoon sun in the winter and it overlooks the Apalachicola River. The home has Federal-style portions with Greek Revival-style detailing.  The property included an ice house, the “Charity House (which is said to have been a convent, a Civil War hospital and later a school), slave quarters, a kitchen, two wells and a mule barn. The property also included a still-standing magnolia tree which was pruned to resemble a design drawn by renowned botanist, Alvin Chapman.

Thomas Orman helped the town of Apalachicola become one of t he Gulf Coasts most important cotton exporting port in the mid-19^th century. By the 1830s Apalachicola was the third busiest port on the Gulf of Mexico. Orman was a cotton merchant and businessman from the 1840s to the 1870s. Bales of cotton were floated on riverboats down the Apalachicola River and were loaded onto ocean-going vessels for transport to cotton mills in New England and Europe. Orman purchased large shipments of cotton as they came down the river and sold them and shipped them to the mills to make a fortune. He used the antebellum mansion for both business and social gatherings. Visitors to the Orman house included local resident and inventor of the ice machine, Dr. John Gorrie, Botanist Alvin Chapman and Dr. Asa Grey, Captain Robert E. Lee and other prominent business and political leaders.

Historic photograph of the tenant structure.

The Orman property contained fields of rice and sugarcane and the manpower necessary to maintain those crops. Thomas Orman appeared in the 1850 Franklin County slave schedule as the master of 20 listed slaves and in the 1860 slave schedule he was listed as the master of 26 slaves. The property contained four buildings to house the slaves, and later these buildings were occasionally leased out to crewmen docked on Water Street. One small dwelling that has been described as possibly being the last of these slave dwellings. However, its style and construction characteristics date the structure to the late 19^th or early 20^th century. This building may have functioned as a servants quarters for paid help. A 1931 map shows the structure with the same configuration, but with a large addition on the northeast side. This addition has since been torn down and all that remains of the addition is a brick stove chimney. The structure is currently being investigated by FPAN archaeologists and Florida Park Service volunteers to gather more information as to the past uses of this structure and to see if there may have been a slave quarters at this location prior to construction of the current structure. The information collected during this archaeological investigation will be used to help the Park Service to recreate and accurately interpret the life of those that may have lived in this structure at one time.

During the Civil War, both Confederate and Union forces often appeared in Apalachicola, and both at some time during the war occupied the Orman house. Local legend states that Sarah Orman, a proud Confederate, would simulate roof repairs whenever Union troops arrived in town. She would place a large nail keg on the Captain’s walk of the house to alert southern sympathizers upriver and Confederate soldiers coming home on furlough that the Union was in Apalachicola. During the war the Orman fortune was dealt a blow and the family was forced to sell the bricks of the “Charity House” and all that currently remains is the foundation of this building. 

However, some of these bricks were not sold, and later on, when the house was owned by Douglas and Anna Gaidry (whom operated it as a bed and breakfast, called Magnolia Hall in the 1990s), the bricks that were left were used to line walkways around some gardens on the property. The Gaidry’s purchased the property from Iona Andrews, great grandniece of Thomas Orman, in 1994. Ms. Andrews was the last distant relative of Thomas Orman to live in the plantation house. The Gaidry’s restoration of the Orman house won a Florida Trust for Historic Preservation award in 1997. Anna and Douglas Gaidry sold the property to the State of Florida in 1999 and it is now opened to the public as a Florida State Park. 

Buttons excavated from tenant structure.

If you are interested in volunteering at the Orman House Public Excavation Project please contact Barbara Hines, North Central Outreach Coordinator, at bhines@uwf.edu.