With a current population estimated at 50,789, Sumter is a rapidly growing County.
There are five incorporated areas or cities – Wildwood, Webster, Coleman, Center Hill and Bushnell, as well as large unincorporated areas that make up the bulk of the population. Some of the unincorporated areas include Lake Panasoffkee, Adamsville, Tarrytown, Wahoo, Royal and Oxford, where a large subdivision knows as the Villages of Lake and Sumter is located.
The Villages is a retirement community that offers residents an entire lifestyle.
But with its growing population, Sumter has a history and heritage, steeped in facts not necessarily well known.
Count Administrator Bernard Dew cited some of the secrets of the Sumter County Courthouse, including a step on the north stairwell, damaged by a bullet that was fired when a prisoner tried to escape. It was in the 1960s when the man fled from the second floor courtroom area. He was racing down the stairs and nearing the first floor, when a deputy shot at him, hitting him in the leg. The bullet traveled through the suspect’s leg and into the step.
At the time, Dew was a deputy clerk in the downstairs records section of the courthouse and recalls seeing people step out into the hall to see what happened. He said one woman even fainted at the end of the hall, when the shot rang out.
Former Clerk of the Circuit Court Burton Marsh said the prisoner had been in the courtroom, jumping over a banister and fleeing the courtroom before running down the stairs.
Dew said there are also a lot of people who don’t know there’s a basement in the building.
“There aren’t too many buildings around here that have a basement,” he said.
Dew also cited a couple of other tidbits about the building, including the fact that the bell tower is without a bell and the east wall of the second floor courtroom covers windows.
At one time, the courthouse was only as wide as the courtroom, but additions enlarged the size and sealed off the windows that opened out to the east lawn.
As for Marsh, he cited the changing location of the Sumter County seat. In the earliest days, part of Sumter, Lake and Marion counties were combined as one county with a Leesburg courthouse.
After the lines were redrawn, the courthouse was in Adamsville. Eventually a series of elections moved the county seat from Adamsville first to Sumterville and then Bushnell.
Bill Wing, current president of the county historical society said that during the Civil War, cattlemen would bring cattle from south Florida into Sumter to graze, adding to the herd from other areas in the state, before driving them on to Columbus, Ga. where they were butchered to feed the Confederate Army. Sumter County was also home to military personnel during World War II.
A major air base was located less than two miles north of Bushnell and a searchlight battalion was housed in Orange home.
While Center Hill and other areas were once major exports of vegetables, according to Dew’s mother Pauline, St. Catherine also has history. The area once boasted a huge turpentine still, a post office, hotel and three general merchandise stores.
Between St. Catherine and the Croom-A-Coochee area, there were train depots and a Western Union station where the Coastline and Seaboard railroads crossed.
The remnants of an old iron bridge remain in the water in the Croom-A-Coochee wildlife management area; at a location call Iron Bridge.
Along with the railroad bridge there was buggy or car bridge that spanned the water, linking the counties.
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Sumter County Chamber of Commerce, 223 N. Main St., Bushnell, 352-793-3099.
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Directions go to Sumter County Chamber of Commerce
