Leigh Read County, Florida

Leigh Read County was a county in Florida proposed to honor General and Legislator Leigh Read following his assassination. In 1842, the Democrats in the Florida Territorial Council passed a bill that would have renamed Mosquito County - which at the time included all of today's Orange, Seminole, and Volusia as well as parts of Lake, Osceola, Polk and Brevard counties - to Leigh Read County.[1] Many claim that the bill did pass the Territorial Council, but there are no legislative records of the bill.[2] What happened is unclear, but some claim a clerk withheld the bill, while others claim Whig Governor Richard K. Call, who routinely clashed with Read, refused to sign the bill.[1] One historian says Governor Call claims to have signed the bill, "but through some misadventure the law never appeared on the books."[3]