Windermere home houses five generations of memories

Windermere Town Council Member Andy Williams loves living in the house in which he grew up because, even though it’s been renovated, there still are reminders of his life there decades ago. He still wakes up to the morning view of Lake Down, and his childhood bedroom now is occupied by his daughter, Loren Abigail Williams. 

His mother, Lavina Williams, lives next door in the family’s original home, built in 1922 by his ancestors.

Andy Williams is the fifth of six generations to call Windermere home. The first family members to arrive were his great-great-grandparents, John W. and Amelia McMurtrey, who were some of the earliest settlers and who opened a store on Main Street. This store later was moved and made into a cottage on Lake Butler.

Generations of the McMurtrey-Rosser-Williams family have kept family records and documented stories of the town’s infancy.

THE WINDERMERE OF YESTERYEAR
Andy Williams’ father, Robert Wesley “Bob” Williams, was born and raised in Windermere. In a “Windermere, Then and Now” remembrance written by Bob Williams, he said his father, L.R. “Andy” Williams, was born in the house that had belonged to the town’s first schoolteacher.

He further writes: “An old-timer, John Riles, tells how he used to walk from Turkey Lake to Windermere by wagon-rutted trails to school in a tiny house near Lake Bessie.”

Bob Williams wrote of the wilderness that was early Windermere too: “All property was carefully fenced to keep out the destructive cattle and hogs that wandered loose through the woods. My grandmother (Marcelle McMurtrey Rosser) says she would not walk to Windermere from her place on Lake Down because she was so afraid of the wild cattle and animals. At that time, panthers and bears, as well as wildcats and other beasts, were common.”

Bob Williams’ mother and Andy Williams’ grandmother, Mildred Rosser Williams Grice, grew up in Windermere, attending Sunday school at Windermere Union Church and getting her education at the old Windermere School, which later was used as town administrative offices. After the eighth grade, she went to Ocoee High School, graduating in 1935 with 11 other students.

In her written memories, Grice shared: “We had many happy years growing up here on Lake Down. Daddy worked as a grove hand and planted his own grove after hours and on weekends. He cleared this land by hand with a grubbing hoe. He had mules that helped drag heavy logs.

“One of the pleasant things I remember of growing up was our summertime. Daddy came home at 5 o’clock, we had supper real soon, then went to the lake and played. Sometimes Mother washed the clothes we had worn that day down in the lake. In the summertime, we always had our bath in the lake. We came in, put on night clothes and went to bed.”

Grice later served as Windermere’s town clerk in the 1950s. By then, the town was booming with about 210 homes and 450 people, two combination gas filling stations/grocery stores, one general variety merchandise store with lunch and soda fountain, two retail fruit packing and shipping outlets, a beauty shop, barber shop and two real estate brokerage offices, three building contractors, one registered architect and four medical doctors.

THE HOMESTEAD
Andy and Colleen Williams and his mother, Lavina Williams, live in side-by-side homes on Rosser Road in the southeast part of the town. The land was homesteaded by his great- and great-great-grandfathers, John Wesley Rosser and John W. McMurtrey, and three family homes arose on the properties, which were surrounded by orange groves. 

Various family members have lived in these three houses for generations.

The first of the three houses — a two-story with about eight rooms — was built in 1922 without plumbing or electricity, which wasn’t added until after World War II. The family pumped water from Lake Down. This was where all the family gatherings took place through the years.

Mildred Williams Grice recalled the houses being about one mile from the center of Windermere.

“We had no sidewalks, so when we went walking, it was around the groves,” she wrote. “Mother and I used to go down on Lake Blanche every February and pick wild violets. Isleworth is on that property now.”

When Andy Williams was growing up in the middle house in the 1970s and ’80s, his great-grandparents, John and Marcelle Rosser, lived to the west in the original house and his grandparents, Bud and Mildred Grice, lived to the east. When the Rossers passed away, the Grices moved into the house. When they died, Bob and Lavina Williams moved in. This is where Lavina Williams lives today.

She keeps close all the memories her late husband, Bob Williams, shared with her about his early days in the town. 

He and his friends regularly crawled under a fence and lied in the grass to hear the gospel singing coming from a church for migrant workers in Chase Grove on Lake Bessie. To make money, he let some of the air out of the tires of his Model A Ford, rolled it on the railroad tracks and followed the tracks through town and through the area later developed as Bay Hill, looking for game to shoot and sell.

BUILDING A LIFE IN WINDERMERE
Andy Williams, who spent his childhood outdoors, remembers Johnny’s Country Store, where he bought lures and other fishing equipment.

“I always rode my bike or walked to my friends’ houses downtown, and we would go to the country store,” he said. “Your first taste of freedom you got on your bike.”

When he was older, his grandmother took him to the Chevron station at Sixth Avenue and Main Street to buy $5 worth of gas for his boat.

Andy Williams was named for his grandfather, Loren Robertson (L.R.) “Andy” Williams. Andy is an inherited nickname, which came from L.R.’s father-in-law, who said his daughter’s husband looked like Andy Gump, a cartoon character from the 1920s. L.R. Williams was a town council member and mayor, a building inspector, scout leader and owner of L.R. Construction Company.

As an adult, Andy Williams also has served Windermere as a town council member and is mayor tem.

Lavina Williams has stayed in Windermere because she enjoys the small-town atmosphere.

“It’s a quiet small town; it used to be everybody knew everybody,” she said. “I lived back here in this grove for 53 years, and I just love the small town.”

Andy Williams has lived in a few other places, but nothing is “home” like Windermere.

“It’s my history; it’s me,” he said. “I grew up here. When your roots are here, everything is important. Everything from how Main Street looks to our traffic issues, everything becomes personal. Taking care of our other residents is part of that. … I am blessed that I live in a house that I look out over the lake. And I’m blessed I live in the house I grew up in.”