Putnam County Historical Society Virtual Tour.
The Bronson-Mulholland House.
The Bronson-Mulholland House, also known as Sunny Point, is located at 100 Madison Street in Palatka, Florida and is open to the public for tours Thursday through Monday from 12:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. The House is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and all major holidays. Admission is free but donations are gladly accepted.
The house was built by Judge Isaac Bronson in 1854. Bronson, a native of Jefferson County, New York, had been a member of the 25th United States Congress. In 1840, he was commissioned a United States judge for the Eastern District of Florida and move to St. Augustine. Upon Florida becoming a state in 1845, he was appointed one of the four circuit judges.
Judge Bronson prepared and sponsored the city charter of Palatka in the Florida Legislature, petitioned that the town be the county seat, and donated land on which the courthouse stands. He and his wife, Sophronia, and their two daughters, Gertrude and Emma, were members of St. Mark's Episcopal Church of which the judge was one of the first vestrymen.
After her husband's death in 1855, Mrs. Bronson remained in Palatka until the outbreak of the Civil War when she returned to New York. Throughout the war the house stood empty but was occupied in turn by Confederate and Union troops.
In 1866, Charlotte J. Henry of New York, a friend of Mrs. Bronson, opened a school for freed slave children in the house. It was supported by the New York branch of the Freedmen's Union Commission.
Around 1875 Miss Henry, who had purchased Sunny Point in 1867, married Nathaniel P. White and it is believed that between then and Mr. White's death in 1895 extensive alterations were made to the house. Mary Mulholland, a nurse, remained with Mrs. White after her husband's death. In 1904, a few days before her own death Mrs. White conveyed Sunny Point to Miss Mulholland.
