Geneva
Geneva is a community located in unincorporated Seminole County and is the home of the Little Big Econ State Forest and the Big and Little Econlockhatchee Rivers. The area, once home to the Timucuan tribe, was explored by Naturalist William Bartram in the 18th Century.
Geneva was once called “Harney Cove” after a military leader, Colonel Harney.
The story goes that a lady who was from Geneva, New York named Geneva, Florida. Emma Van Brunt Wilcox is said to have thought that Harney Cove (what the Geneva area was originally called) looked like her native Geneva, New York.
Mal and Mary Jo Martin on one of their camping trips decided to visit Geneva, NY and see what they could find. Geneva, NY is in what is called the Finger Lakes Region of west central NY State and is located on the west shore of Lake Seneca. (The lake is also part of the Erie Canal system.) Geneva, NY is now a much larger city than our Geneva, but it still has a small town feel.
As Lorraine Whiting had found in years past when she visited Geneva, NY, the Martins also found evidence that there were Van Brunt and Wilcox families in Geneva, NY in the second half of the 1800’s. An exciting find was the newspaper clipping about the marriage of Emma Van Brunt and her husband, John Wilcox.
But the most interesting thing they discovered was when they decided to have a picnic lunch at the lake. Standing on the west shore one would have thought that they were looking at Lake Harney. The lake was approximately the same distance across, the shoreline on the other side could have been Volusia County looking across Lake Harney, and the water was nearly the same color.
Resources: Wikipedia Listing Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc.
For more information about Geneva, visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva,_Florida
