Clark-Chalker House

About this property

The Clark–Chalker House is a historic home in the Middleburg Historic District located on 3891 Main Street in Middleburg, Florida. It was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on October 5, 1988. The Clark–Chalker House was built in 1835 in Garey's Ferry, a settlement located along the North Fork of Black Creek and along the route of the federal road, which passed through the settlement. Under construction upon the breakout of the Second Seminole War, the Clark–Chalker House and surrounding area was quickly enveloped within a hastily erected stockade palisade that was called Fort Heileman. It has been surmised that the house may have served as a hospital for soldiers during the war. The site of the home was directly along the federal road, which allowed residents of Garey's Ferry to access the nearby, neighboring settlement of Whitesville, which was located along the South Fork of Black Creek and would have also been a town through which the federal road passed. The federal road was funded by the United States Congress and constructed between 1824–1827, crossing Black Creek where the North and South forks joined, and ran north, allowing travel all the way to Camden County, Georgia, where it ended in the village of Colerain, Georgia; likewise, people could travel from Garey's Ferry, Fort Heileman, or Whitesville southwest to Tampa, Florida. The Clark–Chalker House was purchased by Isaac Varnes in 1845. Whitesville merged with Garey's Ferry to become Middleburgh in 1851, and Clay County separated from Duval County in December 1858. In 1859, Varnes sold the house to William Sims Bardin. The Clark-Chalker was one of many homes that were eventually built in this area, and saw frequent commercial trading as cotton and other agricultural produce from the Alachua Prairie area was carried over the Black Creek Trail through Garey's Ferry, and the surrounding area became an important cotton-shipping port following the Second Seminole War until the mid-1860s, at which point Garey's Ferry and Whitesville had both grown significantly in population and influence, and the fencing of Fort Heileman had long been dismantled, destroyed by a flood in 1842. During the American Civil War in 1864, Union Army raided and burned the entire area surrounding the Clark-Chalker Home, and the town (by then, known as Middleburgh) had lost its trade monopoly within the area. Bardin's daughter, Martha Anne, married Albert Chalker in December 1865. Chalker was a Confederate Army veteran of the American Civil War, having served under Captain J.J. Dickison in the Second Florida Cavalry.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Clay County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Clay County.

More historic places in Florida

Browse all historic places in Florida.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Florida history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.