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The Man Who Brought Sebring To Life

Photo from the Sebring Historical Society

George Sebring, center, holds goods purchased at Milt Baker's store, the first grocery store established in Sebring.

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By PALLAVI AGARWAL

Highlands Today

Published: July 27, 2008

SEBRING - An undated photo of him in glasses and a full mustache benignly keeps watch in the lobby of the Sebring Chamber of Commerce building on the Sebring Circle. A buff-colored historic building that squats on North Ridgewood Drive, a few blocks away, bears his name on a sign that only those who look up notice.

George Sebring may not have busts and statues of him in the city he founded, little-known folklore that people love to recite and perhaps no living soul left who knew him in the 1910s and '20s. But this upright, driven, high school drop-out who became a self-made millionaire and founded two towns was the heart and soul of Sebring from the time it was just an idea germinating in his head until his death in 1927.

When he died after spending 16 years of his life molding the town that was a pine forest when he bought it, Sebring had changed forever.

George Sebring realized that citrus could be grown successfully in Central Florida's sand hills, and that could have been the basis of Highlands County's citrus industry. He built Sebring's roads, sidewalks, the first buildings, paid for the town's utilities in the early days, strung telephone lines across town and installed telephone stations so that people didn't need to have phones in their homes.

"If there was a need, he would get it done," said Carole Goad, archivist with the Sebring Historical Society. "If there was no money he did it himself."

He and his family, especially his son H. Orvel Sebring, brought the early settlers from Ohio and Pennsylvania. His unique downtown circular plan with roads radiating off the Circle piqued the curiosity of northern bankers, entrepreneurs and developers. Pete Pollard, the Sebring Community Redevelopment Agency executive director, said in the 1910s only Sebring, Hollywood and Miami Springs were platted in that fashion in Florida, and Sebring's Circle could have been the first.

George Sebring also left behind the City Pier and hotels like the Kenilworth Lodge that catered to prosperous Northern winter visitors. When he died, Sebring had less than 10,000 residents.

In Sebring, its founder saw a land of "sunshine, fruit and flowers." George Sebring wasn't trying to make a quick buck building Sebring. The town he had in mind was to be a "delightful, wholesome community," where Christian workers, preachers and evangelists could retire, and sick people could recuperate in warm weather along pristine lakes with white sand beaches.

A thrifty man who is believed to have saved 10 percent of whatever he made, the city changed its founder, too. George Sebring went broke building Sebring, Goad said. After the boom times of the early and mid '20s, the state was on the verge of the Great Depression when George Sebring passed away.

His True Legacy

Today, one can recreate his life and achievements from the well-compiled articles, write-ups and photos of him, at what used to be the site of his two-storied bungalow on Lakeview Drive and is now where the Sebring Public Library is located.

George Sebring made his fortune making pottery, and pottery was the foundation of the town he founded in Ohio, also called Sebring. Some of the fine china he crafted - cups and saucers with angels and intricate gold borders - lies in glass cases at the historical society, situated at one side of the library facing Lake Jackson.

Local historians have been lucky with written records and photos of those times. While George Sebring didn't keep a diary and apparently didn't take photos, John Newcomb, a Salvation Army officer, kept meticulous records. The town's first general store owner Milton Baker was handy with the camera and left behind several photographic glimpses of Sebring's early days and its founding family.

George Sebring is the father of Sebring, but to some like Goad, he was more than just a resourceful, tireless entrepreneur.

Goad got a better glimpse into the man after a chance encounter with a file she found lying around, titled "Amanda Smith." Smith was a world-known black evangelist, who was born in Maryland and, to Goad, had no apparent connection to Sebring.

"I read, read and read," Goad remembers. She finally learned that Smith had retired and died in Sebring after George Sebring built a house for her, across from his own. He had been taken up by her preachings many years ago and had promised to help her retire to warm Sebring whenever she was ready.

The South was segregated those days and a black woman and her black companions living on Lakeview Drive, among the white gentry, raised eyebrows.

"Word got around and somebody told George, 'You better watch out,'" Goad said. "He said, "'It's fine; it does not matter if only I, my family and Amanda Smith live here.'"

George Sebring also warmly welcomed Sebring's first Jewish family, the Kahns, when they moved here and even donated a lot for a synagogue.

"To me the biggest legacy, aside from building the town was his moral decency," Goad added. "I would like to see a whole lot more George Sebrings in the world right now."

Who Was George Sebring?

A devout Methodist who frowned upon drinking, George Sebring gave away free lots to churches that wanted to build a sanctuary in the fledgling town, said Virginia Neel, who has lived in Highlands County since 1954 and is well-versed in local history.

Early deeds also contained a covenant that prohibited the sale of alcohol, and at one point the Sebring Town Council passed a resolution offering a $5 reward for the arrest and conviction of anyone selling intoxicants.

George Sebring's religious convictions may have influenced Sebring's early days but the man himself was low-profile.

He refused to run for political office even when asked. If he had a message for city officials, it usually got sent with someone else, Goad said.

"He was not a man of great ego," she added. "He was goal-oriented but did not want to be in the forefront."

While in apparent semi-retirement after selling his share of the pottery business to his brother, he toured the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, according to "Sebring, City on the Circle," by Stephen Olausen. George Sebring was not just into traveling. He liked to hunt, fish and was into car racing. It's these past-times that brought him to Florida. While not fishing at Florida's unspoiled lakes, he was promoting auto racing on Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach.

Born in Ohio, he married a second time after his first wife died. Pictures of the father of six show a well-dressed, medium-built man with kindly eyes. An obituary on him in the Sebring Daily News, dated Jan. 5, 1927, describes his "expressive face" and eyes that glowed with pleasure, twinkled with laughter or grew dark with "sudden sympathy."

The Later Generations

Jacquie Trevelyan is a down-to-earth, 76-year-old Sebring from Sebring, with a wry sense of humor.

Those talking to her may never realize that she is a grand-daughter of George Sebring, daughter of one of his sons, Payne. If she had her way, she'd like to keep it that way.

Trevelyan grew up in the 1914-era family bungalow with her grandmother and other family. George Sebring had passed away by then and whatever anecdotes and stories she heard about him were passed down from the family.

She's heard her grandfather wanted to make Sebring into a tourist destination with citrus farming thrown into the mix. George Sebring wrote to his friends and associates up north to help populate the town. "One came to build, one came to bake..." and the town grew, she said.

That's how the Arrowhead Hotel, Sebring's first lodge - and once located at the now Highlands Little Theatre - came to being.

Actually, it was Trevelyan's mother's father, William Amy, who ran the hotel. Grandfather George used to vacation at grandfather William's hotel in the north. When George Sebring asked William Amy about opening a hotel in Sebring, he agreed. In the winter, the Amys ran their Sebring establishment. Summers, they moved up north to manage their other business.

Growing up was life as usual for Trevelyan. They didn't flaunt their Sebring family connections then and they don't now.

"When your name is Sebring and you live in Sebring, they think you are rich and you know all the history," Trevelyan laughed. "But you are not different from anyone else."

Over the years, members of the family have been part of civic groups and the city council. Trevelyan's own father was a Sebring City Council man and helped to build Hendricks Field, a World War II-era base that is now the Sebring Regional Airport. Many members of the Sebring family, from Trevelyan's brother and sister to her great-grandson, still call Sebring home.

Seventy-six years is a long time, and Trevelyan has seen a lot change in the town her grandfather built. She remembers as a child playing in the trees near the bungalow where she grew up. Life was much slower then. It was a small town where everyone was family. Today, her family home is gone and so are most of the trees.

Does Sebring's growth and change bother her?

"I'm not for change," she said without hestitation. "But my grandfather would be very pleased."

Pallavi Agarwal can be reached at 386-5831 or e-mail pagarwal@highlandstoday.com

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