Founded and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the Wetumpka Fruit Company became one of the largest agricultural businesses to plant citrus groves in St. Johns County. In 1881, George Waterman Leonard and his wife, Emma Jeanette Billings Leonard, left Plymouth County, Massachusetts, and moved to Lowell, a settlement in Marion County, Florida. Raised in the farming business tradition, Leonard developed some of the first holdings of the Wetumpka Fruit Company and served as manager of its Florida operations. After devastating freezes in December 1894 and February 1895, the Leonard family moved to Hastings. Soon afterward, Leonard purchased stock in the company and urged its directors to open new fields and groves there. Under his leadership, the company built a 1,300-acre farm where he served as manager, directed the acquisition of property, planted forty acres in citrus, and cleared and planted several hundred acres in vegetables. In 1895, George W. Leonard completed his two-and-one-half-story wood-frame family home at 8650 Hastings Boulevard. He died in 1905, and Emma Jeanette died five years later. In the early 1900s, the Leonard family's oldest son, George V. Leonard, took over management and operation of the farm. By 1913, he had increased cultivation to 260 acres planted in grapefruit, oranges, and tangerines. He eventually became president general manager and a major shareholder in the company. Although the company sold some of its Hastings real estate to farmers and settlers, it planted much of what remained in citrus and vegetables, primarily potatoes. It marketed its products under the nationally distributed Prairie Garden and Prairie Flower brands. Beyond the efforts of the company and other citrus growers, potatoes became the crop of choice for many local farmers, partly because of the freezes of the 1890s and partly because of increased national demand for early potatoes. By 1950, the farm shipped more than 350 rail carloads of produce annually, including over 200 carloads of oranges and 150 carloads of potatoes. In January 1983, a severe freeze destroyed all of the company's citrus trees and eliminated all commercial citrus production north of Orlando.