Editing Lake Panasoffkee, Florida (section)

==History==

===Early inhabitants===
Boggy Island was an autonomous black Seminole village that was settled by Central African slaves from [[kingdom of Kongo|Kongo]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Landers |first=Jane |title=Slavery in Colonial North America |work=Race, Development and Social Inequality Lectures |publisher=[[Vanderbilt University]] |date=Sep 26, 2006 |url=http://www.erudito.fea.usp.br/PortalFEA/Repositorio/1181/Documentos/leitura_1_1_2.pdf |access-date=May 6, 2014}}</ref>  Black Seminoles settled near the Boggy Island area of Lake Panasoffkee around 1813 and named it Sitarkey's Village after Sitarkey, an Alachua Seminole who had settled in the area.  Nearby laid the areas of Gum Slough and Indian Mound Springs.<ref name="LP Archaeology">{{cite journal |last1=Mitchem |first1=Jeffery M. |last2=Weisman |first2=Brent R. |date=Jun 1987  |title=Changing Settlement Patterns and Pottery Types in the Withlacoochee Cove |url=http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027829/00037/ |journal=The Florida Anthropologist |location=[[Jacksonville, Florida]] |publisher=Florida Anthropological Society |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=154–156, 160–163 |access-date=Apr 25, 2014}}</ref> The Seminoles used the Lake Panasoffkee area to hold councils and [[Green Corn Ceremony|Green Corn Dances]].<ref name="Coleman and LP">{{cite journal |last=Thomas Foreman |first=Carolyn |title=General Bennet Riley—Commandant at Fort Gibson and Governor of California |date=Sep 1941  |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v019/v019p225.html |journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma |publisher=[[Oklahoma State University]]  |volume=19 |issue=3 |page=241 |access-date=Apr 4, 2014}}</ref>

The black Seminoles raised corn, rice, and sugar cane which Dexter gave them in 1822.<ref name="LP Archaeology"/>  In addition, residents in Sitarkey's Village raised livestock, including cattle, horses, and hogs.<ref name="Trade Networks">{{cite thesis |last=Carrier |first=Toni |title=Trade and Plunder Networks in the Second Seminole War in Florida, 1835-1842 |publisher=[[University of South Florida]] |type=MA thesis |date=Apr 14, 2005 |location=[[Tampa, Florida]] |pages=30 |url=https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/2811/ |access-date=December 15, 2022 }}</ref>  They also possibly planted one of the oldest orange groves in Florida.<ref name="Sumter Show">{{cite news |last=Coll |first=Aloysius |title=Sumter County Citizens Want to Show Goods |newspaper=St. Petersburg Times |location=[[St. Petersburg, Florida]] |date=May 23, 1926 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19260523&id=gw9PAAAAIBAJ&pg=6380,7159160 |access-date=May 8, 2014}}</ref>

===Second Seminole War===
Generally, the Sitakey's Village area was untouched during the Second Seminole War,<ref name="Trade Networks"/> allowing black Seminole families to use the area as a refuge from the war.<ref name="LP Archaeology"/>  The United States Army, however, did search the village twice.  Looking for Seminole warriors, the Second and Eighth Infantry divisions, led by Colonel [[Bennet Riley]] and Colonel W. J. Worth, traveled from [[Coleman, Florida|Fort McClure]] to the Lake Panasoffkee area on June 10, 1840. On the morning of June 11, the troops found an empty village.<ref name="Coleman and LP"/>

After the [[battle of Wahoo Swamp]], [[Osceola]], possibly suffering from the effects of [[malaria]] that he contracted during the Seminole occupation of [[Fort Drane]] moved to the Panasoffkee Swamp to live with the black Seminoles who regarded him with devotion.<ref name="Hatch 2012">{{cite book |first=Thom |last=Hatch |title=Osceola and the Great Seminole War: A Struggle for Justice and Freedom |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YuN0E_vUPrYC |date=2012 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |isbn=978-0-312-35591-3 |pages=163, 176}}</ref>

On January 10, 1837, General Thomas Sidney Jesup, looking for Osceola, raided the village. Osceola and three warriors fled. Jesup captured 16 black Seminoles while the rest of the village escaped.  In all, Osceola, 50 warriors, and their families left for the headwaters of the [[Ocklawaha River]]. Twelve days later, Jesup led his troops from [[Dade Battlefield State Historic Site|Fort Armstrong]] to the Ocklawaha River.{{sfn |Hatch|2012|p=180–181}}

===Modern town===
According to Broward Mill, the past president of the Sumter County Historical Society, Lake Panasoffkee from the time that Sumter County was settled by whites until damaging freezes which wiped out the area's citrus industry in the 1880s and 1890s.<ref>{{cite book |author=United States Department of Agriculture |title=Soil Survey of Sumter County, Florida |publisher=[[Soil Conservation Service]] |year=1988 |location=[[Washington, D.C.]] |pages=2–3 |url=http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00025741/00001/|access-date=Apr 20, 2014|author-link=United States Department of Agriculture }}</ref>

Charles G. King, a [[Cleveland, Ohio|Cleveland]] entrepreneur, bought 2,500 acres (square kilometers) in Lake Panasoffkee and developed 737 acres (square kilometers) into Monarch Grove in 1908.  An oak hammock on the property was left undisturbed.  King and his employees used the sour oranges planted by the Seminoles for orange stock.  In 1926, the grove produced about 40,000 boxes of oranges.<ref name="Sumter Show"/>

Among the evidence was a group of house foundations and chimneys located in places where there were no known white settlers.  County officials later believed that the cemetery was a family cemetery as the newer marked graves listed the names of the few people known to be buried there.<ref>{{cite news |last=Mims |first=Amanda |title=Pondering grave issue |newspaper=Citrus County Chronicle |location=[[Crystal River, Florida]] |pages=A3 |date=Sep 27, 2009 |url=http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028315/01783/3j |access-date=Apr 25, 2014}}</ref>

===Lake Panasoffkee dredging===
According to [[Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission|Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation]] commissioners Bob Wattendorf and Marty Hale, Lake Panasoffkee had 15 fish camps and was considered to be one of the state's best places to fish.<ref name="FLW">{{cite journal |last1=Wattendorf |first1=Bob |last2=Hale |first2=Marty |date=Sep 2009 |title=It's about the habitat – Lake Panasoffkee |journal=Florida LakeWATCH |location=[[Gainesville, Florida]] |publisher=[[University of Florida]] |publication-date=Sep 2009 |volume=46 |issue=Sep |pages=4–5 }}</ref>

In 1981, water levels in Lake Panasoffkee dropped to levels that had not been seen since 1962, the year the Wysong Dam was built.  Southwest Florida Water Management District officials discussed the construction of a temporary dam to elevate water levels.  Lake Panasoffkee residents believed that the Wysong Dam contributed to the destruction of the [[Withlacoochee River (Florida)|Withlacoochee River]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Henderson |first=Jane |title=Group Discusses Low Level of Lake Panasoffkee|newspaper=Ocala Star-Banner |location=[[Ocala, Florida]] |pages=1A, 8A |date=May 7, 1981 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19810507&id=8H5RAAAAIBAJ&pg=5993,3397012 |access-date=May 8, 2014}}</ref>