Levy County, Florida: History
Levy County was created in 1845, after the Seminole Wars, and became Florida's 27th county. It was named for David Levy Yulee, a slave owner elected in 1841 as the state's territorial delegate to the US House of Representatives, where he served two terms.
Levy provided for long-term development in the state by constructing the first railroad across Florida, the Florida Railroad, linking the deep-water ports of Fernandina (Port of Fernandina) on the Atlantic Ocean and Cedar Key on the Gulf of Mexico.
The original county seat of Levy County was located in a neighborhood locally known as Sodom. This concerned the county commission so much that in April 1854 they changed the name to “Mount Pleasant”. The name was changed again in January 1856 to "Levyville". An act of the State of Florida legislature ordered the county commissioners to let the county residents vote on the location of the county seat. In 1869, a vote was held to decide the location for the county seat. Bronson was selected by popular vote. County officials cited illegal votes cast in every precinct, so a new election was set to take place in 30 days. The Board of County Commissioners would later reverse their previous decision and let the vote stand. The process to build a new courthouse at Bronson began along with the removal of the courthouse at Levyville.
In 1874, the county seat was moved to Bronson, originally known as “Chunky Pond”, and was named after an early settler, Isaac Bronson.
The Rosewood Massacre occurred in Levy County in the first week of January 1923. White citizens from the nearby town of Sumner, reacting to a what turned out to be a false accusation that a black man raped a white woman, burned the predominantly black town of Rosewood to the ground and brutally murdered several of Rosewood's black citizens. A film based on the incident was made in 1997, but was not filmed in Levy County.