North Brevard Heritage Foundation P.O. Box 6603 Titusville, FL 32782-6603

The Williams Family of Williams Point As recorded by daughter Patricia Williams Bayer Hub and Nell Williams came from north Florida to the community of City Point in 1903. In 1923, they built a restaurant on the banks of the Indian River in Sharpes, and named it "Hub's Inn." They started the business with five tables, and their food and recipes became world famous. Before opening the restaurant, the Williams sold fish meals in paper bags. Hub's daughter, Nellie Williams Lynch helped run the restaurant off and on when Hub and Nell were ill. They finally turned it over for her to run full time in 1932. She tried to make it into a tearoom, but fresh fish was the key to its success. Members of the Williams family continued to own the building, and leased it out until1966 when it closed. In 1901 their son Charles E. Williams was born. The family owned and operated a commercial fishing business, where Charlie worked. He attended Cocoa High School, and in 1919 was one of three students in the first graduating class. He furthered his education by attending Georgia Tech for two years, taking mechanic courses, and then attended automotive school in Missouri to receive his machinist degree. His first "garage" was operated out of his father's car garage. He later borrowed money and built a two-story building next to Hub's Inn. When U.S. Highway 1 opened, he bought the point of land created at the intersection of the river road and the Dixie Highway and named it "Williams Point." At this location, he built a filling station with a garage in the back, and a one-bedroom apartment upstairs and later an office downstairs. Charlie opened his business on Christmas Day in 1927, which housed a machine shop and a concession stand in addition to the filling station. When business became profitable Charlie invested in land. He donated some of his land to the Four Communities Fire Department of which he was a charter member, chief and volunteer fireman. Charlie married Myralene Thurmond in June 1935, and they lived upstairs in the one-bedroom apartment for the first five years of their marriage. Myralene and her parents came to this area from Georgia in 1924. She graduated from Cocoa High School in 1931, and attended business school for two years. She became a telephone operator when it was standard procedure to pull plugs to connect people on the line. She later was employed as a secretary by Dr. Kenaston, a well-known doctor in Cocoa, and became his medical assistant. In 1937 Charlie, Myralene and her father, a carpenter by trade, built a two-story structure on the west side of U.S. Highway 1. She operated Myralene's Pit BBQ Restaurant downstairs, and rented rooms upstairs. Myralene perfected her BBQ sauce as she served it to her customers, and then bottled and sold it. They also built a separate building for preparing the pit BBQ, and a fruit-packing house. Charlie, Myralene and volunteers caught mullet and made side dishes for "fish fries" to raise money to build the firehouse and later to continue supporting it. The packinghouse was used for cooking and serving the fish dinners. The windmill at the point was used to pump water to the elevated water tank which provided running water. Before the firehouse was built firemen used grove sprayers to put out fires, which were filled with water from the same water tank. The building that began as Myralene's Pit BBQ Restaurant in 1935 eventually became the home of the popular Corky Bell's Seafood Restaurant, which has been lost to the elements of nature in recent years. The elevated water tank and windmill that served the community of Williams Point for so many years, still stand caught in time on the hill located behind the new Corky Bell's Seafood Restaurant. Roz Foster, February 4, 2006 Windmill and Water Tower Heritage Foundation Non-profit Organizations North Brevard Business Directory HOME