A non-descript patch of land just south of the Orlando International Airport on Boggy Creek Road has significance to some families who go back generations in our area.
Trucks and other traffic connecting to the area’s industrial parks or the new, huge Amazon package processing facility pass by the Lock Family Cemetery, an inconspicuous quarter-acre piece of land with a sign and about 60 grave sites.
Members of pioneer St. Cloud families are interred there, and recently the cemetery was awarded an iconic blue Florida Historical Marker.
“There’s fewer than 200 of those in Orange County, and only a few thousand in the state,” said Phyllis Phipps, one of the cemetery’s trustees. “The application process has been long, we were working on it for 18 months.”
On Nov. 27, the sign was installed for all to see, bringing some historical context to the family plot. It’s part of the original land bought by Nancy P. Locke in 1881 from The Florida Internal Improvement Fund for $1 per acre, according to the family.
This cemetery has been owned and maintained as a working cemetery since 1887, when it was established by William Rufus Lock for his family and descendants, who came to be known as “Locke” in the early 1900s, according to Kathy Locke, another cemetery trustee and a descendant of those who started it and the area families buried there.
“We’ve traced back, and the first person buried there was a little girl,” Locke said.
The cemetery also contains graves of veterans from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
According to the historical marker, William Lock had been granted exemption from serving in the Confederate Army so he could maintain order in his home town in Echols County, Ga. His son, Pvt. James Calvin Lock, fought in the last conflict of the Union Army’s campaign through Georgia and Alabama known as “Wilson’s Raid” or the Battle of Girard in Columbus, Ga., on April 16, 1865. After the Civil War, Lock and his family relocated to the area, where they farmed and raised livestock during the open range years.
Among the burials is Jane Green, an independent pioneer woman who ran cattle and “took up with” Mose Barber, whose family ranched in the Osceola part of Mosquito County, later separated into Osceola and Orange counties. Green’s granddaughter, Cienne Tyson, married into the Locke family, who now reside in Orange County.
