Around 1866, Daniel Sloan left the swamps of Slone's Ridge and moved eastward until he hit another batch of swamp along the Palatlakaha River. He settled on an island and built what is considered to be the first house in Groveland proper.
A history of the island as recounted by Gail Clay England, great granddaughter of E. E. Edge.
"In the beginning Edge Island was a true Island.
I was told by L. D. Edge that a family, the name of which I can't remember, lived in that little one room log cabin on the Island.
It was a man and his wife and 8 small children and every Saturday the man would get into his boat and push pole over the swamp to come into town to get supplies.
He said a couple of weeks passed by and some people noted the man hadn't been to town so E. E. Edge and some others pushed poled over to check on the family.
They found some fresh graves near the cabin and the rest of the family dead in the cabin from unknown cause. They were afraid it was some kind of disease so out of fear of bringing the other bodies to town they decided to bury the rest of the family on the Island.
No one went back on the Island for a few years. E. E. Edge bought the island and decided to make it accessible so he hired men with buck boards and mules and they built a man made fill road out to the island hauling load after load of dirt in those buckboards just off of Sampey road, so you could easily access it by car or truck.
It was then referred to as Edge Island. He then cleared the Island and planted an Orange Grove all over the Island, but the little cabin remained untouched throughout time.
I grew up being on the Island with my Dad and Uncle Rex always going out to check on the fruit and playing in that little cabin, often wondering where those long ago unmarked graves were. I even remember going frog gigging off of that man made fill as a young adult.
Many years passed and in the 1990's my Dad and I decided to sell Edge Island as the freezes had killed off the Orange Grove years before. My Dad made an offer to the city to donate the little cabin to the city so it could be preserved but the offer was turned down because they "didn't want that old cabin in town because it was so old and would only be an eyesore".
As we were in the process of making a sale some people approached my father and said they were related to the long ago deceased family and wanted to purchase the old log cabin. My Dad told them they could have it if they would remove it because he hated to see it destroyed. I don't remember their names but they came and marked every log before disassembling it, then moved it and reassembled it somewhere out around Slone's Ridge on family owned property.
There are some very old photos of some of those men in their Buckboard wagons and mules. This story of its original history was told to me personally by my grandfather L. D. Edge."
[Contributors: Gail Clay England, Jason Brown]