Excerpts from The Awakening of St. Augustine: the Anderson Family and the Oldest City 1821-1924, by Thomas Graham, published by the St. Augustine Historical Society
It wasn't long before Dr. Andrew Anderson began to think of the newly acquired property he called Markland as the site for a grand home for his family.
He and Mary and their three daughters moved permanently from New York to St Augustine in 1829 for Mary's health. Dr. Anderson quickly became a community leader, and turned his attention to land speculation, which many 19th century doctors found more profitable than doctoring.
T
hat activity led to ownership of land extending from Cordova Street to the San Sebastian River and between King to Valencia streets.
When Dr. Seth Peck moved to town in 1833, Anderson retired from practice and went into the orange grove business, enjoying success until the hard freeze of 1835 pushed the citrus business further south.
Now he focused on a new prosperity for the Anderson family, mulberry trees, to be grown and sent to silk cultivators up north. Markland boasted 11,000 trees in 1837, 80,000 in 1838 and nearly 150,000 in 1839.
Mary, her health never fully recovered, died in 1837, and her wish that Anderson marry a longtime family friend, the widow Clarissa Fairbanks, was accomplished in 1838, and the birth of a son, Andrew II, in 1839.
Anderson now acted on his vision for a grand estate at Markland. Foundation work began in the fall of 1839, at the same time a yellow fever epidemic forced Anderson back into practice to assist Dr. Peck.
Dr. Anderson became a fever victim himself, and died three weeks after the foundation work at Markland began.
Clarissa continued work on a scaled down version, eventually moving in and creating a sort of elite B&B, as much for social companionship as income.
Clarissa died 1881, and Anderson II decided to enlarge the house for his family. It was doubled with the addition of a west wing with dining room and library.
Anderson's close relationship with Henry Flagler is well known. He sold the eastern portion of Markland to Flagler for his Hotel Ponce de Leon, and as Christmas gifts in 1900, Flagler presented Anderson with a portrait of himself and, for his wife, a portrait of Anderson. Those portraits still hang in Markland's drawing room.
Dr. Anderson died in 1924. The house was purchased by Herbert E. Wolfe, a mayor of St. Augustine, whose family sold it in 1966 to a fledgling college named for Henry Flagler.
The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
This year, give the gift of history, St. Augustine Bedtime Stories, dramatic accounts of famous people and events in St. Augustine's history. Information here
