Among the first Anglo settlers of the area was Chauncey A. Bacon, an architect and Civil War veteran from New Britain, Connecticut, who in 1876 purchased in present-day Ormond-by-the-Sea and named it the Number Nine Plantation. In her book Ormond-On-The-Halifax, Alice Strickland describes the site: "The land was covered with a dense, tangled forest of palmettos, scrub oaks, and pine trees which Bacon cleared out with axe and grub hoe. The Bacon's first home was a palmetto cabin, but later Bacon built a small, two story house with a large coquina rock fireplace on top of the Indian shell mound."