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Virginia Lee Laney's papers and photos detail a family whose history is intertwined with Pinellas'.
By ADRIENNE P. SAMUELS
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 23, 2002
It is like walking into a treasure trove of history.
Ancient books line the walls, faded maps of Pinellas County are strewn about the floor and turn-of-the-century dolls peek from under chairs stacked with several years worth of dust and spiderwebs.
Postcards no bigger than the palm of a hand declare "Merry Christmas" underneath 2-cent stamps. Paper ledgers meticulously detail the contents of the corner feed store. And in the corner sits an old organ, the kind that plays music from a scrolling paper roll.
This quiet two-story house and the things within it don't just tell a story, they are the story of one branch of Pinellas County's pioneering McMullen family. The tale surfaces a month after the death of Virginia Lee Laney, great-granddaughter to Daniel McMullen, one of county's seven founding brothers.
With Laney's death, the home and its surrounding orange groves are passing away from the McMullen clan and into the hands of a large corporation.
Now, the race is on to evaluate and distribute nearly a century's worth of antiques, books, newspapers, handwritten letters, black and white photographs and other historical documents.
The main beneficiary of these efforts is the Pinellas County Historical Museum.
"The Holy Grail is still out there, but it doesn't get much better than this," said Donald Ivey, curator of collections.
Ivey last week went through the first installment of history taken from Laney's house: 26 bound volumes of McMullen family clippings and genealogy. This week he continues the task of copying and identifying hundreds of black and white portraits, some dating back to the mid 1800s.
Laney, who was 75 when she died May 23, would have wanted it that way, said Robert "Bobby" Lee Laney, one of her sons. Like all McMullens, Robert Laney said, Virginia collected history like a pack rat.
She belonged to the Largo Historical Society and volunteered at the library almost daily until her death.
Now the information collected in her house should be shared, Robert Laney said.
"There are some things in there that maybe could be construed as sentimental value to me, but what am I going to do with it?" he said. "What's it going to do in my garage? This has a lot to do with my mother. I'm not going to keep something the Historical Society can use. I'd be disinherited if I didn't do this."
The only problem is that the new owners, Minnesota-based senior housing developer the Sage Group, want everything cleared out of the house in 30 days, Robert Laney said.
That is not possible, he added.
"This house was built in the 1800s -- you can't expect me to clean that house in 30 days. I need at least until October," he said.
The Sage Group says the land is really owned by a company named Imperial Land, which is affiliated with other businesses under the umbrella of the Sage Group. The Sage Group, also affiliated with the Goodman Group, developed and runs the Palms of Largo senior living community near old Keene Road and East Bay Drive in Largo.
The company says the family misunderstood.
"There are no plans for the property at this time," said Dan Peterka, president of the Goodman Group. "There is no hurry to get anyone out of the house."
Virginia Laney's plantation-style, wooden frame house was built in 1898 by her grandfather, Robert "Dr. Bob" McMullen, one of the county's most popular dentists and a well-known orange grower. The house once sat on nearly 120 acres of McMullen property and was surrounded by orange groves, pecan stands and wild oaks.
Cuban bougainvilleas, wild oaks, night blooming cereus and bamboo stands shroud the narrow property from the street and from its neighbors. Vines hang from the 100-year-old oaks, creating an atmosphere of chirping birds, singing cicadas and filtered sunlight around the raised wooden porch outfitted with a wooden rocking chair.
A gazebo sits in the front yard, two pump houses sit in the rear yards and three three-car garages sit near the back. The front yard gazebo was a recent addition, built by Virginia Laney's children. The sheds, like the house, were built by Dr. Bob.
Virginia grew up in that house, just steps from trees thick with ripening grapefruit and oranges too green to pick. She was the daughter of businessman Alec White and Lucy McMullen. (White compiled the 26 volumes of history now in a special collection at Heritage Village.)
Virginia's mother, Lucy McMullen, was the only daughter of Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob was the son of Daniel McMullen, a county founder.
After years of selling portions of the McMullen tract to the Sage Group, the McMullen-owned land was whittled down to something between 8 and 12 acres. In 1997, Imperial Land bought that last piece from Virginia Laney.
The company allowed Laney to live in her grandfather's house until she died.
The house is a living piece of history, said Ivey, with the county's historical museum. It can't yet qualify for placement on the National Historical Register of buildings because of several modern additions to the building. If those additions were torn down, the building would be a shoo-in, said Bob Delack, president of the Largo Historical Society and a friend of Virginia Laney's.
"This is the oldest house left where it started at," Delack said. "It is a historic home. One of the most historic homes in Largo and, unfortunately, we don't know what's going to happen to it. There are plenty who want to see the house preserved."
The Sage Corp. has begun to realize the significance of Laney's family and the house, Peterka said. It didn't have any special interest in the house except that it sits in the middle of the Palms of Largo, he added.
"The land for the Palms of Largo and the house were sold at one time," Peterka said. "We didn't buy it for the house, we just acquired the land because they wanted to sell it. ... About the historical nature of it? We'd be willing to listen."
Delack and his friend Jim Strigle make daily pilgrimages to the Laney house to sort through the papers, envelopes and postcards. They hope to find the original ledgers detailing the business interests of the McMullens. They already have found ledgers detailing what might be the contents of the old Largo Feed Store.
The Largo Library also is taking a large number of the McMullen family's book collection while the family likely will keep most of the original photographs.
"There are five generations of photographs, personal papers and correspondence," Delack said. "Collections of books and bound volumes of the Tampa Times and the Tampa Tribune go back to the turn of the century. This is wonderful."
While going through old letters and touching the walls of the home, Strigle remembers his friend, Virginia Laney.
"She was one special lady," Strigle said.
Robert Laney is proud of the legacy his mother left behind. He is keeping a collection of ancient grandfather clocks and one of Dr. Bob's original journals.
Sorting through everything in the house is a humongous task, Robert said, but it is teaching him the value of history.
"You don't know what's going to be of import to you until it's gone," Robert said. "So value your stuff right now."
Jesse R. McMullen, 76, is one of Virginia's cousins and a historian herself.
"Everything we have has come from Virginia," McMullen said. "I wish I'd known about this before, because I would have gone and gotten things together before now. Now it's sold, and I'm sorry about that. "
The Pinellas County Historical Museum plans to enlist the help of the public to identify certain people pictured in the McMullen family collection. After that, they will wait until the next great treasure trove is unearthed.
"We'll always be searching for the be-all end-all," said Ivey. "But this is pretty good. This doesn't come along every day."
-- Adrienne Samuels can be reached at 445-4157 or samuels@sptimes.com