<center>The Way It Was, 1976</center>

1976

William Eugene "Gene" Barber, Artist, Instructor, Historian & Genealogist authored a series of articles for the Baker County Press entitled "The Way It Was".

His articles covered all aspects of Baker County pioneers lives in a colorful, entertaining, as well as, educational manner. At an early age, Gene possessed the desire and ability to interview the 'Old Folks'. He was as talented in the use of the pen, as he is with a brush, choosing his words and expressions in a way to paint an exciting and interesting story.

The following are Gene's articles composed and written in 1976.

Williamsburg - The Town Killed By A Hill
The Florida, Atlantic And Gulf Central Railroad
A History Of The Canady Fort
The Florida Record
Okefenokee's Chesser Island
The Glen St. Mary Nursery - George L. Taber, Pioneer
Some Notes On The Crews Family
Historical Notes On The 'Georgia Bend'
St. George And Other Communities
The Burnsed Settlement And Oak Grove Church
The Powers Pioneers
Earn Harris And The Discovery Of The Taber Azalea
The Beginnings Of Lake Butler
Raiford And The State Prison Farm
Our Minorcan Heritage
Educator Waits 63 Years For High School Diploma
Mose Thompson
The Story Behind Ellicot's Mound
From The Diary Of Charles W. Turner
County History Relatively Unknown, But Unique
A Chronology Of Baker County's Past 500 Years
The Turner House - Among City's Oldest
The County Via The Eyes Of An 1885 Guidebook
Methodism In Baker County
Mrs. Fraser And The Yankees
'Sugarman' And The Polecat In The Mailbox
The Beginning Of Woodlawn Cemetery
American Settlement In Spanish Florida
The Seminoles Arrive
Early Residents And Roadways
Historical Potpourri
Historical Potpourri
The British Colonial Period In Florida
Historic Barber Home Is Site Of Art Studio And Museum
The War Of 1812 To Cracker Horse Trading
How The County Figured In The Election Of 1876
Republic Of East Fla.
Spanish Florida Seen Through The Eyes Of A Northern Visitor
Prehistoric Man In Baker County
Maryann Hicks
A Cracker Christmas
An Incident Of The Seminole War - Part one

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday January 1, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Way-Gene Barber
Williamsburg - The Town Killed By A Hill

One of the early stockholders in the Floridan Atlantic, and Gulf Central Railroad (the present Seaboard Coastline) was Samuel Neil Williams, Sr. He was born in 1814 in North Carolina, a son of a Welsh immigrant. His wife, Eliza Smith, was born in 1823 in Darien, Georgia.

As a timber buying agent for the New York company of Eppinger and Russell, he began to visit Jacksonville in the mid 1840's, purchasing his first land there in 1846. In 1850, he moved his family there while he was working the present Baker County area, buying hundreds of acres of virgin timber land for $1.00 an acre.

An epidemic of scarlet fever in Jacksonville prompted him to move his family to Cedar Creek north of Sanderson in 1862. After the Civil War he returned them to Jacksonville while he built a fine two-story house just south of the railroad on the east bank of the Little St. Marys River.

His spacious frame house was completely plastered and surrounded by giant water oaks. Several acres were planted in fruit trees under the care of a man named either Raulerson or Register. Mr. Williams moved his family into 'Williamsburg' just prior to 1870.

In October of 1865, according to an item in The Jacksonville Times, Mr. Williams was elected to the Florida House of Representatives from Duval County for Baker County.

As a stockholder in the railroad company, he worked to have his small community used as the railroad depot in this area of central Baker County. But, his influence as a stockholder could not overcome the fact that the incline at Williamsburg was not conducive to locomotor stops and starts. The station was given to the younger community of Darbyville (MacClenny) about one mile and a half east.

His last move was to Olustee, where, for reasons yet to be discovered, several others involved with the financially troubled railroad lived. He died there in 1881, and was buried in Old City Cemetery in Jacksonville. His widow, who died in 1889 at her son Richard's home in MacClenny, left an estate of $250.00 to her surviving children, an unfortunate end to the story of a man who tried to build a city.

THE WILLIAMS FAMILY RECORD

The first four children were born in Darien. Henry Clay, born in 1839, and John Jasper, born in 1843, died in infancy in Darien.

Florida, born 1841, married Robert W. Cone of Olustee. He was a son of Aaron Cone of Bulloch County, Georgia. Florida is buried in Old City Cemetery, Jacksonville.

Samuel Neil, Jr. was born in 1848. His first wife was Victoria Thompson, widow of James E. Barber. His second, and more successful marriage was to Florida Virginia Harvey, daughter of Capt. John and Mary Ann Johnson Harvey. Sam was buried in Pinkston Cemetery north of Whitehouse.

Mattie, born 1850, married Sam A. Bryan. She lived, and is buried at Starke.

Eliza Rebecca, born 1853, Jacksonville, died in infancy.

Roland was born in Jacksonville in 1855. He worked for the Jacksonville Fire Dept., and died as a result of an accident while rushing to a fire. His burial place is Evergreen Cemetery in Jacksonville.

Georgia was born in 1857, in Jacksonville. Her husband was James Lorenzo Wolfe of Georgia. The Wolfes lived in MacClenny, and are buried in Woodlawn (the Misses Mae and Rosa Wolfe, daughters of Georgia, still live in MacClenny on South College St.)

Belle Daniel, born in Jacksonville in 1859, is buried in Old City Cemetery. Her married names were Roberts, Anderson, and Quinn.

Richard D. was born in 1862 at Cedar Creek. His wife was Eliza, daughter of John and Sarah Rowe Alford. His burial place is Woodlawn.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday January 8, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
The Florida, Atlantic And Gulf Central Railroad

Dr. A.S. Baldwin of Duval County was a farsighted gentleman who began agitating and evangelizing for a railroad to connect Jacksonville with the interior of the state. He and his associates believed that $250,000 would be needed to lay tracks from Jacksonville to old Alligator Village sixty miles inland. Financial support came from private individuals, the state, the city of Jacksonville and Columbia County.
In May of 1855, a majority of voters in Jacksonville supported an issuance of $50,000 in municipal bonds, with the proceeds; to be used to purchase capital stock in the company. The Columbia County commissioners were also authorized by their voters to issue $100,000 in bonds, the proceeds of which were to also be invested in capital stock in the railroad company.

The Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, a state program, was organized in January of 1855, and the rail company applied for, and received help. In addition to other aids, the Board granted state lands along the rail right-of-way amounting to about 200 000 acres (the section of land involved with the Shuey-Sessions tract as written in the 29 October article is one such grant).

The Town Council of Jacksonville granted tax-free concessions and generous depot rights-of-way. Numerous articles appeared in both Jacksonville and Alligator newspapers in attempts to secure popular support. And, with all the optimistic turns spurring them on, the Board of Directors appointed F.F. L'Engle to begin surveying the 60 mile route. The Board originally consisted of Dr. Baldwin (for whom the town of Baldwin was named), president; J . S; Sammis; T. E. Buckman H.A. Timanus, J.M. Baker (for whom Baker Countv was named); and J.P. Sanderson (who lent his name to the former Johnsville Station).

Progress went much slower than expected. By June of 1856, only nine miles of roadbed, not quite as far west as Whitehouse, had been readied. A yellow fever epidemic in 1857, complications involved in purchasing the iron from England, the astronomical salaries created by one dollar a day, each for work crews that sometimes numbered 150 men, and shortages of labor all hampered the railway's completion.

A celebration had been planned in early March of 1858 when the tracks were completed to Baldwin, A tragedy marred the day when, according to the ALLIGATOR INDEPENDENT PRESS, the "contractor for laying the iron...from Jacksonville to Baldwin was accidently killed by being struck with a bar of iron...just as the last piece was being laid that completed his contract".

In spite of the accident, events began to look up. Train service for freight and passengers between Jacksonville and Baldwin was instituted, and by November of 1858 the entire grading of the road to Alligator had been completed. In June of 1859, the tracks were at the crest of Trail Ridge, and in November Olustee Station was being served by the railroad by the locomotive "Jacksonville".

The final 1000 tons of iron arrived from England in January 1860. Plans were made to celebrate the completion in both Jacksonville and in Alligator Town. Made dignified by the approach of a railroad, the little community also dignified itself by assuming the new name of Lake City. Free barbeque, speeches and other festivities awaited the eight hundred visitors to Lake City from Jacksonville.

The few inhabitants between Trail Ridge and the Columbia County line had little part in the celebrations (they were not even consulted on the renaming of their principal little community of Sanderson). Several had come out of the woods to see the big locomotive thunder through, many would later buy an excursion ticket to wildly ride the rails, but, on the whole, they waited quietly as the railroad brought them the first prosperity they had ever known.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday January 15, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
A History Of The Canady Fort

Until very recent times, there stood on the banks of Joniken (listed as Joaquin on old maps) Branch south of Moniac an old structure called by various names; Canaday Blockhouse, the Old Fort and Moniac Cabin. One historian has given its erection date as 1799 and that its original site was near North Prong Church but was ferried across the river to Georgia in the early 1800's. Still others believe that the original cabin was built by an Indian ancestor of the Canaday clan and inherited by John Canaday or his Indian wife.

The first known John Canaday to enter the area was born in 1797 in South Carolina, probably a son of Henry who was of a North Carolina Huguenot extraction. Both John and Henry, and Henry Jr., Martha and Edmund Canaday were in Lowndes County in the mid-1830's, and the Henrys were still there as late as 1850, but John had moved down to near the headwaters of the St. Mary's River in old Camden County.

John's wife Sarah, called Sarie, had been born in Georgia in 1800. Their known children were Jackson 'Jack', born either in 1826 or 1837 (records give conflicting dates), and who died young and single; Elizabeth, born 1823 and married Westberry 'Wes' Raulerson; John Milledge, born 1827, and married Sarah Ann Howell; and Henry, born 1829. All were born in South Carolina.

Although no certain date can be given the Canaday Blockhouse, it is known by the family that Mr. Canaday was living there at least by 1832, and probably killed there by, warriors under the command of Bolech (Billy Bowlegs) around 1838.

A short time before the 1838 Indian raid, a family named Howell had moved down from upper Georgia and settled at a place later known as 'Moonshine' and now called 'toledo'. An attack by the Creeks destroyed the homestead and supposedly killed every member of the family except an infant who was carried into a cane patch by a female slave and hidden. Reared by William and Nancy Raulerson, she grew up to be the wife of John M. Canaday, Jr.

There is a story about the Canaday family, but not told or accepted by the family as a whole, that the wife, Sarie, of the elder John Canaday was a sister of Billy Powell known as Osceola. The story could be very easy to accept; Osceola and his mother did live in the vicinity of the Okefenokee Swamp around 1814-15. Sarie was scalped but not killed by the renegade Creeks because of her supposed Indian blood, and many of the descendants possess the handsome good looks shown by the Osceola portraits.

Some drawbacks to the tale are that Osceola's two sisters were left behind in west Georgia with their father, most contemporary historians agreed that young Billy Powell (Osceola) was the only child with his mother Polly Ann when Andy Jackson confronted them near the Suwannee, two women whom claimed to be Osceolas sisters were found living with Creek husbands in Oklahoma in later years, and such an illustrious ancestress as the sister of Osceola would certainly have been mentioned many times by the older heads.

If indeed the same blood runs in the veins of these Baker County descendants of John Canaday as ran in the veins of the patriot Osceola, it is to their credit, and it is hoped that proof can be produced.

The Canaday Blockhouse was finally slowly and ignominiously destroyed by vandals because it had lived past its usefulness. Its roof leaked and neighbors needed the lumber to patch houses and to burn for fuel. Only a very few, handicapped by lack of ownership and funds, were able to see the value of looking at a house here in our own Charlton and Baker Counties that was built only a generation after the birth of our nation, a house that weathered the awful hurricane of 1895, that withstood flaming arrows, that housed and protected ancestors of thousands. The past is done and cannot be recalled for correction; the future is not even a promise; but, we have a marvelous possession called the present and there is no other time but the present to vow to preserve our old buildings that have served us so well in the past.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday January 22, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
The Florida Record

When collecting the history of an area, it is impossible to stop at county lines; kinship, social and economic ties easily cross the boundaries of political units. And, with this in mind, we present some gleanings from a west Nassau County newspaper of 1886. The FLORIDA RECORD began weekly publication in Callahan in 1885. O.J. Farmer was editor and W.A. Mahoney was proprietor, and they proclaimed in the masthead that their area was the 'Land of Sunshine, Prosperity, Health, and Happiness'.

In the four-page issue of September 25th, 1886, the motto regarding health seemed a bit odd with twenty two ads and references to medicine, four about doctors and a wealth of notices regarding illness.

Mayor S.D. Jones, who also advertised 'everything you want to eat and wear', had held court the previous Tuesday morning. The reporter who covered the court story claimed that "everything had been so quiet for the past month that even a dog fight would be hailed with delight by our citizens".

From Dyal's Station came news by Messrs. B.G. Dyal and H.C. Picket that J.J. Mizell was offered the Democratic nomination for senator from his district. In the same communication, it was announced that Mr. Mizell declined the nomination.

The last ice cream festival, of the summer for Callahan was announced. Ice cream, cake and other refreshments, as well as a pleasant time was promised.

Dr. E.H. Wright and son of King's Ferry rented a downtown building from B.G. Dyal to open a drugstore. Mr. A.E. Braddock purchased a lot near the railroad from the same Mr. Dyal. The writer of the above items foresaw a building boom for Callahan makinq references to several sawmills nearby.

The RECORD was uncompromisingly Democratic in its politics, calling for a final ousting of the state's remaining Republicans.

There were a number of references to the Charleston earthquake. The following paragraph is copied from the Bryceville news section. "A protracted religious service has been going on at Brandy Branch school house about six miles distant since last Sunday, under the direction of two Baptist divines, Revs. Hall and Kickliter. Up to the present there have been no new members added to the church. It seems funny that people will so soon forget their dependence on a higher Being for life sustenance. If reports be true, most of that whole community would have joined any Christian organization on the night of Aug. 31, when the earthquake was shaking them so badly, and no doubt then many promises were made that are now forgotten. But then, 'When promises come from wickedness, tis weakness to believe them'.

Also from Bryceville comes the notice that precinct 11 had chosen its delegates to the county Democratic convention in Callahan. W.S. Motes was selected chairman and H.L. Mattair, secretary. Delegates were Thomas J. Peterson, H.L. Mattair, J.S. Surrency and alternates were N.A. Hicks, S.J. Woods and W.R. Adams.

The schedule for the Florida Railway and Navigation Company did not list Darbyville-MacClenny on its itinerary. In fact, with the wood-burning locomotor taking only one hour and 25 minutes to travel from Baldwin to Lake City, it is doubtful that it took but a few minutes to refuel and rewater at the old Darbyville stop on the present east side of MacClenny.

The H.W. Alleger Co. of Washington, N.J. advertised "strictly first class organs for $50 on up to $250, stool and book,...warranted five years." O.Z. Tyler, and Co. of 44 West Forsyth, Jacksonville, advertised that they furnish undertakers with orders at all hours of the day or night promptly executed. Among other services, embalming was a specialty.

And, buried at the bottom of the second page is a borrowed editorial from the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION which closes with "...Rush,...that is why the undertaker treads on our heels. It is a lightning express schedule from cradle to coffin. But we cannot slacken our speed: To 'get there' is our main object, and it is the undertaker's too. Are we not 'getting there' a little too early?"

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 29, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
Okefenokee's Chesser Island

William Thomas Chesser and his wife Mary Elinor Kirby, with their children, formed an ideal self-sufficient community within the Okeefeenokee Swamp. They grew all their foodstuffs, raised sheep and cotton for their clothing, and set up a civil defense system. They bought nothing which could be made by hand by themselves. Metal was brought into the swamp to be fashioned in their smith for wagon fittings and plow gear. Broken and worn-out metal pieces were reworked and reclaimed as firedogs and nails. Cattle grew fat quickly on the lush growth within the swamp. Their flesh was dried or fried down and preserved in crocks of lard. Their hides were tanned into harnessing or shoe cobbling material. When hogs were killed in the winter, everything was used except the squeal. Even ropes were braided at night by the firelight (it didn't rate very highly as entertainment, but it helped pass the short while between sundown and bedtime). Some essentials, such as salt, were bought 'outside'. However, money was seldom used, if possible; the Chessers were great trappers, and they bartered pelts for outside supplies and rations. And, it was simply a commodity they never had much of.

William Thomas Chesser was born in 1814 in old Appling County, Georgia a son of Thomas Samuel and Louisa Chesser. Thomas Samuel was born just prior to the Revolutionary War in South Carolina, probably a son of Revolutionary Soldier John Chesser. Family tradition gives them an old country background of Holland.

After the Second Seminole Indian War, William Thomas made his way into old Camden County, and in 1842, he moved his family into the southeastern corner of the vast Okeefeenokee Swamp, located just south of the present Suwannee Canal Recreation Area at Camp Cornealia between St. George and Folkston). The small island became known as Chesser Island.

His brother Samuel and sisters Sarah and Martha continued on down into Florida, settling the north and east sides of the Alachua Territory. Another sister, Harriet Emeline Copeland, remained in Camden County.

William Thomas and Mary Elinor were married in Tattnall County on August 25, 1833. Their children were Thomas Tennyson 'Tom' who married Lucretia Dedge, Martha Emeline Jane who married Thomas P. 'Tom' Petty, Moab Columbus 'Buck' who married Hettie Osteen; William M. 'Bill' who married Zilphia Hicks, John Edward who married Easter Crews, Samuel Archie 'Sam' who married Sarah Altman, Robert Allen who married Lizzie Eugenia Altman, and Hardy who died single. All, except Tom, were born on Chesser Island.

Tom, Buck, and their brother-in-law Tom Petty were conscripted into the Confederate Army. Being opposed to the war, irrespective of who was fighting, they deserted above the swamp. They came down through the swamp and according to those who heard the story from those who saw the boys, they were so swelled by mosquito bites and brier scratches that they were not recognizable.

These men lived out the duration of the war in the swamp, surviving on game they shot and supplies left at a designated place by the family. Their excess game was left to be picked up by the hard-pressed family who left salt and other provisions. A time and a place was set for the exchange. The men and the family did not meet during this entire time, and so they never had to lie when the military asked if they had seen the deserters.

Whenever troops of either army (U.S. and C.S.A.) moved near, or other danger was close a large conch shell horn was blown at the 'big house'. The runaways removed themselves deeper into the Okeefeenokee.

The conch horn continued its purpose as an alarm after the war. Whenever a member of the family or others were overdue from the swamp, or varmints were menacing, or other trouble was present, the horn was sounded. All were to stop whatever they were doing, and run to the 'big house' for instruction. Children, under threat of an unforgetable beating, were cautioned to never blow the horn or remove it from its place on the front porch.

The Chessers eventually moved away from the island except Sam and Allen. Sam's son Tom, who passed away a few years ago, continued to live on the island until 1958, and was the last Chesser to live there.

Martha and her husband Tom Petty settled near the St. Marys River. Hardy never married, and died at 23 years of age. Returning home from plowing, he stopped at a huckleberry bush to pick some berries. As he was backing out of the tangled growth, a rattlesnake struck him, and he died shortly after (it is strange that so many of this family have been bitten by rattlers, and Hardy is the only one ever known to have been bitten in the swamp).

Bill Chesser (the ancestor of the Baker County family) settled on Trail Ridge southeast of Brandy Branch in Baker County. From the local judge's office the following homestead exemption items were listed for 4 March 1886; 1 horse, $55; 10 head stock cattle, $60; 8 head goats, $7; household and farming tools, $50. As the list showed, the Chessers still used very little money because it was still a commodity they still had little of.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 5, 1976, Page Two
The Way it Was-Gene Barber
The Glen St. Mary Nursery
George L. Taber, Pioneer

George Lindley Taber was an extraordinary man; at twenty seven years of age, he was given by his doctor the option of remaining in the north and living no longer than six months, or he could find a gentler climate and survive, perhaps, as long as a year. He chose to go south, do those things he had always wanted to do, and thus lived forty eight more years and revolutionized Florida Industry.

Born in Vassalboro, Maine on the 18th of October 1854, a son of George and Esther Pope Taber, he was descended from a long established (since 1630) New England family of Gaelic background. His education was received at Oakgrove Seminary, Vassalboro, and the Moses Brown Friends School at Providence, Rhode Island.

Mr. Taber was united with the Society of Friends (Quaker). This religious training, combined with Yankee industry, evidently made for a competent and credible business man, for he was, when 24 years old, a trusted employee of the Chicago Board of Trade, and, later, held a seat as one of its Directors.

Owing either to the harshness of the New England and Chicago winters or to the rigors of the hectic post Civil War boom, his health failed. As was stated in the first paragraph, Mr. Taber came south, picking Florida to die.

The Fernandina, Jacksonville, St. Augustine areas was the end of civilization in 1881, and it was the more centrally located city of Jacksonville that became his headquarters. While staying at the fashionable hotels and possibly visiting the curative spas of the vicinity, he discovered many new friends, his six foot and four inch frame filled out, and he recalled a daydream which used to invade his no-nonsense New England mind; "Could I make a living out of the land?"

By various conveyances, Mr. Taber began to travel out from Jacksonville, and on one of those trips west, he detrained at a flagstop across the river from Darbyville. He talked to the locals and recent northern immigrants, surveyed the soil and existing farms, and decided he would try his hand at agriculture. He purchased several acres of an extensive abandoned cotton plantation, and with the help of a friend, Mr. Beeth, erected a log cabin and cleared land.

In addition to his subsistance crops, he set out several fruit and nut trees with the idea of shipping to northern markets. The natives were cooperative and offered advice and assistance in the mysteries of budding, grafting, and urging growth from the Florida sand and clay. A new imposing dwelling house of sawmill lumber was built, and the little cabin utilized as office and packing house. In 1882, Just one year after he began, the optimistic young nurseryman issued his first catalogue, naming his nursury and shipping station 'Glen Saint Mary'.

In 1883, after deciding that he apparently was not closer to eternity than anyone else, he returned north to marry. Mrs. Gertrude (nee St. John) Small of Kent, Connecticut. He brought his bride to his new and spacious home,'Linwood', built on New England lines complete with a Yankee widow's walk atop the two story structure. His only concessions to cracker architecture were broad porches, high ceilings, and a separate kitchen for safety and summer comfort.

In the 1890's, Florida suffered a number of freezes which destroyed food crops and ornamentals throughout the state. Many fledgling growers returned north broke and disqusted. Mr. Taber immediately began searching for new freeze-resistant strains of citrus and ornamentals to revive the ailing nurseries. In his biography included in the American Historical Society's 'Encyclopedia of Biography' is the following quote: "His greatest contribution to the work of the horticultural society was given after the freezes of 1894 and 1899. He led the movement for the rehabilitation of the industry and the development of new industries".

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday February 12, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
George L. Taber, Family Man
And BusinessmanPart Two Of A Series

Until the 1880's, Floridans citrus crops were mostly confined groves and backyard plantings and these were subject to the unpredictable late winter freezes peculiar to the region. In the almost frost-free area of the lower peninsular land was still relatively wild and waiting for the Messrs. Flagler and Plant to send down their railroads. Mr. Taber needed, then, freeze-resistant citrus strains, and he began to search out, and experiment withn such novelties as the satsuma orange. In 1910 or 11, he purchased the rights to a revolutionary orange named for its developer Mr. Lue Gim Gong of Deland. This hardy fruit made north Fiorida orange production a practical reality, and its introduction in 1912, plus the new satsumas (which he made a Florida household word), and the use of freeze and disease-reistant Trifoliata root stock established the state's citrus industry.

No doubt, the taste of citrus among a widened northern market increased a demand that prompted many newer pioneers to tap the southern peninsula's growing potential. The Flagler and Plant rail systems reached southward, as much to bring citrus back as to take invalids south.

Mrs. Taber died in July of 1903. Unquestionable a person of taste and culture, as evidenced by her possessions and genealogy, she remains somewhat of a romantic mystery to the family.

In November of 1905, Mr. Taber and Miss Mildred Willey, daughter of John C. Willey of Maine, were married in Boston, Mass. Marriage had disrupted medical studies for the new Mrs. Taber, for she was well into her schooling toward a Doctor of Medicine degree.

Mrs. Taber left her cozy and cheerful New England home and society to travel with her husband "...to the ends of the earth". She later confided to her daughter-in-law, Emily, her shock and dismay as she entered the large dark house. However, it took the young bride little time in flooding the home with sunshine and gentle company. With the help of long-time cook Miss Idella 'Doll' Alexander and a staff of local domestics and outside men, 'Linwood' became a social center of Baker County and a novel Sunday excursion goal of Jacksonvillians. 'Miss Millie' quickly became acquainted with Jacksonville's first families, became a communicant of the Church of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal), and became mother of a son, George, Jr.

In 1907, after having traveled through the state and deciding, his original location was best for most nursery stock, Mr. Taber incorporated the Glen Nurseries, involving men of importance in the horticulture industry, including the brilliant botonist Harold Hume. In 1913, the little log cabin was removed to make way for an impressive office of brick.

Scores of Baker Countians were employed by the nursery. In fact, Glen Nurseries employment probably had the greatest influence, to date, on the county's population shift. For instance, from Cedar Creek, the Georgia Bend, and Nassau County came, respectively, such families as Harvey, Hodge, and Higganbotham, to name but a few.

The success of Mr. Taber prompted others to compete in the lucrative business. The Griffins, Tracys, and Bradleys of New England established the Griffin Nursery (later called the interstate Nursery) a little east of Glen. Farther east, C.F. Barber began his Turkey Creek Nursery. The nursery boom was on, and 'Baker County grown' was synonym for horticultural excellence.

Mr. Taber cooperated with Turkey Creek to sponsor a blue ribbon display in the 1903 (first) Florida State Fair at Tampa. Still later, he returned to his old working city of Chicago for the World Trade Exposition, and, this, established an international market for his plants. The writer well recalls his first geography lessons; jumping and riding the dinosaur-shaped and sized bundles while depot agent Hardy spelled and located such fantastic places as Venezuela, Russia, Japan, and England's Kew Gardens.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 19, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Baraber
Some Notes On The Crews Family - Part One

Unlike so many of Baker County's big families, the Crews clans cannot be traced to a mutual ancestor who settled here. The several sets who migrated into southeast Georgia and northeast Florida, however, seemed to originate 200 years ago in coastal South Carolina. This indicates the probability of kinship during the time of the Revolution.

In the 1830's and 40's, there appeared in Camden (Charlton) County, Georgia and Nassau and Columbia (Baker) Counties, Florida several Crews families. All were farmers by vocation and most inclined to large families. Particularly in the Bend Section, there were the brothers A. Graham, Micajah 'Mack', Calvin, and possible Bartley. It.is believed they had two sisters (perhaps cousins) named Sophia and Keziah, both of whom married Jesse Green, at different times of course.

Their father has yet to be determined. He was killed, as a young man, by Indians soon after his move to Camden County from South Carolina. The best candidate for their father is Alexander (born in 1802), whose wife's name was Sarah. This Alexander lived in Nassau County in 1830, moved back and forth across the territorial line, and was supposedly killed in an Indian raid between 1838 and 1841. Alexander, born 1773, to Revolutionary Soldier John Crews of Charleston District, South Carolina.

Of the orphaned Crews' children, Keziah was the oldest. She was born about 1820, and married Jesse Green. She died about 1845 in Camden County.

Bartley was born in 1822. His wife's name was Mary Elizabeth, thought to be a daughter of Jeremiah 'Jerry' Johns.

A. Graham, born in Georgia and is believed to be a daughter of Henry Bradley. A. Graham died in 1905, and he and his wife are buried in Emmeus Cemetery near St. George.
[Note cwm. Archibald Graham Crews born ca Feb 1823, son of Roger & Elizabeth Mitchell Crews, married Honor Civility 'Sis' Bradley 20 Feb 1850, daughter of Henry.]

Micajah 'Mack' and his wife Sarah Jane are buried at Boones Creek in Charlton County near the Okeefenokee.

Sophia, born 1827, married her widowered brother-in-law Jesse Green. They moved to Nassau County and she died in 1905.

Calvin had sons, but none were remembered by his relatives. He married into "some Nassau County or Georgia connections", and no more is known of him. One of his sons, Dave, carried a reputation as a "bad man", and is believed to have been murdered in Charlton County

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 26, 1976. Page Two
The Way It Was-Gene Barber
Some Notes On The Crews Family - Part II

It seems there were at least, three distinct major migrations of the Crews' family into southeastern Georgia; the latter 1700's the period of the Second Seminole War and Reconstruction through the 1880's.

Among the middle migration was the widowed Rebecca Elizabeth 'Becky' Crews, probably a cousin or niece of the Crews subjects of last week's writing. She settles near present St. George around 1840, and her descendants number greatly in Baker County.

As far as can be determined, Becky was born in South Carolina in 1830 or before. Her children were John C., who married Martha Johns (daughter of Riley and Sarah Leigh Johns); Berry, who married Triss (last name unknown); Tom; Martha; Francis Bartow, who married Isabella Taylor (daughter of Gordon S. and Eliza Sellars Taylor); and William, who married Fanny (last name unknown).

During, or soon after the Civil War, Becky moved across the river into Florida, settling on the road leading west for old Ft. Moniac. With her were sons, Tom and Joney Raulerson. Many of her children and grandchildren followed her and contributed much to the economics and politics of Baker County.

Although one Crews, alone, could fill a book with interesting anecdotes and tales, the simple and sad story of Mrs. Martha Crews' death remains one of the writer's favorites. In 1902, she took her sewing to her front porch, sat down on the porch edge and began cutting out overalls for her son, Owen. While engaged in a labor of necessity and love, she passed away. The cabin, built by her husband John C. in 1854 and later owned by his brother Berry, can still be seen on the loop road above Baxter.

Samuel Crews also moved to Camden County during the Second Seminole War. He was born about 1790 in Beaufort District, South Carolina. His wife was Elizabeth. They left Beaufort District about 1837, and moved to Ware County (that part now Echols). After living there, near the Florida line, through the Indian War, they removed to Ft. Moniac on the Florida side of the St. Marys. Samuel and Elizabeth evidently had marital difficulties since they were often living separatly, she usually moving back to Georgia to Camden County. He was supposedly buried near Ft. Moniac around 1865 and she survived him several years.

Their known heir to remain in the Baker-Charlton area was Samuel Lemrod. He was born in 1830 in South Caroina and married Harriet Raulerson, a daughter of Nimrod. Their many descendants live in Baker and Charlton Counties.

There were several others of the Crews' name to settle in the vicinity, but even less is known of them than the foregoing. One was another Samuel Crews, born in 1809 in South Carolina. He lived near the aforementioned Samuel near Ft. Moniac, and is believed to have been a soldier during the Seminole War. His wife was Mary E. Jones. They moved after the war to the south end of New River County where Samuel died in 1865.

Mary Crews, born in 1820 in Georgia, brought her three children, Charity, Rebecca and Isham into the Baxter section from Camden County soon after the Seminole War. It is almost certain she returned to Georgia prior to the Civil War, but her discendants eventually migrated back to Florida.

Roger Crews, born in 1808 in South Carolina brought his wife, Minerva, to Nassau County from Camden during the Indian War. Their children were Sam, Sarah Ann, Isham and Josh. Also with them were two other children, Jane and Sam (relation unknown). This family moved across the river to the Big Bend section and then into Baker County for a short while.

Additions and corrections on the Crews' Family would be greatly appreciated.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 4, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
Historical Notes On The 'Georgia Bend'

Referred to even on the maps of the Revolutionary War period as "the Big Bend of the St. Marys Rivers", this southern pocket of Georgias Charlton County is socially and economically bound to Florida's Baker County. And, Baker County has depended on that section for the great majority of its population. From a line drawn from Traders Hill to the headwaters of the St. Marys River above Moniac, then south to the St. Marys, and bounded east and west by that same river is the geographic location of the Big Bend.

The Bend was, at one time, the southernmost limits of inland colonization by Anglo-American pioneers. Traders Hill was the last outpost of civilization before the wagon and cart trains headed into the new U.S. territory of Florida. Here, they found the last food rations and other provisions, and, here, was the limit of navigation on the St. Marys for cargo-carrying ships.

In 1802, Maj. Archibald Clark damned up Spanish Creek nearby, and set up the oldest industry in the Bend and southernmost industry in the U.S. Operated by water power, the upright saws sent many Bend trees down the St. Marys as lumber until supplanted by steam mills. The only skirmish of the War of 1812 in our area was when Capt. Wm. Cone and 28 Americans halted a British advance sent to destroy the Clark mill.

Soon after, Seminole attacks forced the establishment of Ft. Alert by the army (the soldiers' duty of alerting the settlers prompted the name). In 1832, the post office of Traders Hill came into being with John Mizell as postmaster.

From Traders Hill, a trail led southward skirting the Okefenokee to Camp Cornealia and Chesser Island. Camp Cornealia was named in 18?0 for the daughter of Capt. Henry Jackson of the Suwannee Canal Company. Toward the turn of the century, Camp Cornealia gained prominence as a sawmill site. Chesser Island, dating from 1842, was never an economic center, but was community of some size with a school as late as the early 1900's.

The trail, long since grown over, crossed Hog Pen Branch and passed near Ellicot's Mound (a marker of 1795 indicating the headwaters of the St. Marys River proper).

Moniac's past is somewhat shrouded in mystery. It is known that the earliest settlement there was in Florida a few miles away near Ft. Moniac. The fort, according to Charlton County historians, was named in honor of a Creek, or Creek-related, chief on whose trail the fort was erected in 1838. Others believe that Moniac was a Creek in the service of the U.S. Army.

The fort stood until 1858 when the Seminole troubles were declared at an end. As Raulerson's Ferry, near North Prong Church, became important with increased migration and crop hauling, the population began to drift south, and, for a while, Moniac was a rather nebulous community. The Dyal-Upchurch Corporation opened a large sawmill there in 1898, employing hundreds. The mill's rail transportation, known as the St. Marys Railroad, was later sold to the Georgia, Southern, and Florida Railroad for three million dollars. For a while, Moniac was Charlton's most populous community.

From Moniac, a 'beat-out' road followed an old southerly Indian trail to Jonniken (Jernigan) Branch. This was the home site of Capt. Aaron Jernigan, a slave trader and Indian War Army officer. The road forked south of the stream, the western route crossing Baker Branch near North Prong Church. Other waterways crossed were Barber and Tiger Branches. Grandison Barber lived in the 1830's near here, accounting for the name of the one stream and the other was undoubtedly named for the local 'tiger' (panther).

The eastern fork continued toward the south, passing by Sandusky School. At the Thrift Settlement, the roads joined above the Smith Bridge to cross the St. Marys into Florida.

In 1850, Dr. Francis Marion Smith moved from Elbert County, Georgia to Traders Hill. He was, in addition to a practicing medical doctor, a licensed Methodist minister. In 1861, this influential citizen of Charlton County was chosen as one of the two delegates to the secession convention at Milledgeville. He voted against secession which seemed to not reflect the wishes of the majority of the county. Back in Traders Hill, he was declared 'persona non gratis', and asked to move.

His son James C. Smith was operating a turpentine still and sawmill at Sandusky, about, seven miles north of Macclenny. The elder Smith joined his son there, building himself a stately home which he named 'Montesuma'. The Smiths' holdings were quite extensive, and due to their Florida business and Dr. Smith's practice and preaching circuits in Baker County, they build a bridge across the St. Marys. Dr. Smith, his wife Lucretia, his son, and daughter-in-law are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery south of Macclenny.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday March 11, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
More Historical Notes On The 'Georgia Bend'

The Bend, being heavily populated in the last century, was criss-crossed with many roadways and trails, though few could be termed major. Among the most important was the Traders Hill (later known as the St. George) Road. From Macclenny, this ancient trail crossed the St. Marys River where later a bridge was built and named in honor of the numerous and influential Stokes family of the area. The bridge was about two and a half miles east of the Smith Bridge of last week's writing.

The very old Jacksonville-Tallahassee Road, dating from the 1830's, swung northward and touched the river at this point. From there, travelers and traders turned north into Georgia to Stokesville. This little community was well populated with the Stokes and other families into the first two decades of this century. Stokesville boasted a church, and a little to the north, a school. This post office, established in 1906 with William H. Stokes as post master, Continued until 1918.

Across the river from the Stokesville school was another community closely connected the area, Nassau County's Bryce's Camp. Founded soon after the Civil War by George Bryce of Atlanta, the large turpentine and lumber camp began to drift into two communities around 1915-20, Bryceville to the east and Brandy Branch to the west. Like so many other settlements of that time, it moved with the economy, and when trees played out in the vicinity it moved to where trees were. Unbelievable as it might seem, much of the wild country we see about us now simply was not here fifty to a hundred years ago. Much of the land was denuded, including parts of the great Okefenokee.

The Traders Hill road then ran east of Trail Ridge crossing Green, Spring, and Tiger Branches to Suggs Mill. A check of a topographic map might make one wonder why the route did not take advantage of the high sandy ridge; the Bend 'Great Divide' was relatively free of boggy places and contained streams to ford or bridge. First, this relic of prehistoric oceanside dunes was usually too dry from runoff and was possessed of hardly any soil nutrients. As a result, the pioneers remained close to the river for transportation for themselves and their lumber, and for better farming.

Now steadily running true north, the little roadway crossed Mill Branch. This little stream has been dammed since the early 1800's by various individuals and families to provide power for saws and grits grinders. Some of those families have been Suggs, Nelsons, Hodges and Hicks. A little north is Saucer Branch, named for a pioneer turpentine distiller from west Florida, John Milton Saucer.

Saucer Branch's sister stream on the Florida side was Deep Creek (not to be confused with the Deep Creek between Baldwin and Trail Ridge). In Revolutionary days this waterway was called Deep Run Creek, and it formed the southwest limits of English settlement and the northeast boundry of the Seminole hunting ground.

Skirting the eastern edge of Schoolhouse Bay, the road passed Chism School. To the east, and on the river, was Emmeus Primitive Baptist Church and Cemetery.
This church was constituted in 1858, a short while after it had been established as an arm of the Sardis Church near Traders Hill. The charter members came from both sides of the river, and they were Thomas Crawford, A.P. Murhee, William B. Connor, Mary Connor, and Sarah Johns, all names well represented among Baker Countians' ancestors. Among the early pastors were William R. Crawford, John C. Crawford, John D. Knight, and W.O. Gibson. Clerks in its early history were Henry M. Gainey, R.S. Davis, R.N. Chism, A.W. Hodges, N.S. Connor and D.W. Connor.

During later years the church disbanded for lack of membership, and most of its remaining members tranferred to North Prong across the Bend in Baker County.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 18, 1976 Page Two
The Way it Was - Gene Baraber
St. George And Other Communities

To speak of downtown St. George became a sad local joke within the past several years, but, at one time, that little community's downtown was a serious reality. The crossroads between Jacksonville and south central Georgia and the old north-south Yelvington Trail attracted several settlers who milled, farmed, and operated mercantile outlets for the surrounding pioneers. Among these were the Gaineys, an old Nassau and Camden Counties family with Spanish background, and the area was early known as 'Gaineyville'. The first recorded name of the settlement was 'BattenviIle', in honor of Isam Batten.

The tramroad came through in 1898, and the station's postoffice, Battenville, was established. The following year, post master John R. McNeil renamed the station for himself. When the Georgia Southern and Florida Railroad bought the Dyal-Upchurch tramroad in 1900, the stop was named Cutler for their general traffic agent John W. Cutler. For many years, the two voting districts of the area were Cutler (later St. George) and Gaineyville, the railroad being the dividing line.

In 1904, P.H. Fitzgerald, publisher of the American Tribune at Indianapolis, Indiana, formed the '1902 Colony Company'. As in earlier pioneering projects, each stockholder was to receive a certain amount of land and would be required to make certain improvements. In December of 1904, Mr. Fitzgerald purchased 9,000 acres from the Georgia, Southern and Florida RR. By 1906, Mr. Fitzgerald had purchased much of present St. George, and Cutler was no more. He named the little community in 1905 in honor of his deceased son George.

With its transplanted population, St. George grew into a little city of more than a thousand residents. Its, downtown maintained 54 businesses and several masonry buildings (Macclenny, at the time, could only boast of one such structure). The Bank of St. George, owned by John F. Blake, operated from 1910 to 1916. The Gazette began publication in 1905, and was replaced by the Outlook in 1911. The Outlook folded in 1913. John Harris; the Gazette's publisher is still active at 100 years plus in Folkston.

Mr. Fitzgerald, the founder, became involved in a federal lawsuit regarding irregular business practices and his colonization company went under. The court ordered the sale of remaining colony land, and the funds received built a brick school building. Unlike some of her neighbors, Charlton County has maintained the handsome structure and used it for seventy years, proving it unnecessary to erect a new school house every Generation.

As the Bend's timber and valuable farmland played out and the local citizens began to feel crowded by the newcomers, a great population shift took place. Several families of long standing sold out to the Fitzgerald company for 5 and 10 cents an acre and moved to Nassau, Duval, Baker and Columbia Counties, Florida. The new bustling nurseries industry attracted many to the Macclenny-Glen Saint Mary area.

One example of those migrants was Mrs. Sarah Thompson Hodges, widow of John Hodges. She sold hundreds of acres and transferred her large family to south of Macclenny. Mrs. Hodges was later immortalized as the midwife in Harwick's 'Possom Trot'. Following suit were the families Crews, Lauramore, Harris, Johns, Johnson, Burnsed and others.

Farming alone could not sustain St. George and when many attempts to bolster the economy failed, most of the colonists returned north. A few hardy souls remained, including a group of Union veterans. The old gentlemen from the Grand Army of the Republic finished their lives peacefully among their former enemy and now rest in a special plot within the St. George Cemetery.

Further north on the Yelvington Trail lies the now defunct mill camp of Toledo. It was the namesake of Toledo, Ohio, home of the brothers J W. and R.B. Brooks who set up their mill in Charlton County in 1887. Two doctors served the sprawling encampment of several hundred souls. A money order post office was established in 1895, and tram road was laid to Traders Hill.

Financial trouble killed Toledo in 1898. However, the post office was revived in 1899. In 1905, it died again, but was re-established in 1909 and survived until 1930. In an earlier article (the Canaday Fort), it was erroneously stated that Toledo was once called Moonshine'. That community was not within the limits of the Bend, however.

To the northwest of St. George, near the Okefenokee, is the Boones Creek Cemetery, and Church. Once the nucleus of an extensive community of Crews, Stokes, and Roberts families, there remains no more than a beautifully kept burial grounds and a little meeting house of the old Cracker Primitive Baptist architecture.

In 1881, an infant, and first child, of Mr. and Mrs. Enoch Jeff Roberts died and Mrs. Roberts traded a cow and calf for three acres of land on which to bury his baby. This plot, called the 'Roberts Cemetery' for years, gradually assumed the name of nearby Boones Creek.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 25, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
The Burnsed settlement And Oak Grove Church

Southwest of the old Smith Bridge and located on the Jacksonville - Tallahassee Road was a community of pioneers known in the last century as 'the Burnsed Settlement.' James M. Burnsed had lived there soon after moving into this area of Florida in 1840. When he moved closer to the Cedar Creek section in the 1850s, two of his children, Adolphus 'Doss' and Cynthia, remained to rear their families.

Their families were large and when other pioneers, Thomas, Rhoden, Howard, Powers, Hodge, etc., added their numbers, a log schoolhouse was build for their education. Called both Burnsed and the more euphonious Oak Grove School, it became one of the county's largest.

It was typical in our rural past that school buildings served many purposes other than education. Sometime in the mid 1880's one of those other purposes was a mission of the Primitive Baptists of the Georgia Bend to their relatives and friends on the Florida side. Mr. Sylvester Lyons began to regularly preach in the small log structure, and when the school was phased out to be replaced by the Garrett School to the east, Oak Grove Church was established.

Although the church was not consituted until 1912, and early records have been difficult to come by, a map of the Eppinger and Russell Timber Company shows a church located there in the 1890's.

The Burnseds were engaged in the timber business, cutting and running logs down the St. Marys River to Traders Hill. Doss Burnsed's son Peter was considered the best log runner in the area, sometimes walking them the complete trip to prevent jams. But, in 1892, young Peter Burnsed walked his last log.

Peter and his brothers had crossed over into Georgia, probably to attend a frolic. The weather was rainy, and upon returning to the Smith Bridge, they discovered it had been almost washed out by the flooding water. All the boys but Peter had crossed when the final hold of the wooden bridge onto the sand bank gave way and it went rushing down the river with the logs.

"How're you going to get across?" they yelled. "I'll show you how," he answered, and rolled a log from the bank into the water. While walking it cross he fell into the swift water and was not seen again for 31 days.

Relatives and neighbors camped along the river, searching and watching for the body day and night. Finally, the badly decomposed corpse was found and gathered into a sheet to be brought home. His father's home was near the Oak Grove School and Church and young Burnsed was laid to rest in the shade of the old oaks which had given the area its name. This was the beginning of the Oak Grove-Burnsed Cometery.

Years later, young Jimmy Lyons, son of one of the first preachers and later judge of Baker County, cut the lumber at Stokesville in the Bend for the present structure at Oak Grove.

Corrections on the Crews Families Part II

Although the census records stated Rebecca was from and born in South Carolina, she told her family her home has been North Carolina. That mistake was not so bad, but the writer should clear up other more serious discrepancies. Becky's children were, and married, respectively, John C. md. Martha Johns; Thomas C. md. Mary Electa 'Triss' Sapp of Blackshear; Berry md. Arilla 'Rillie' Sapp, sister of Triss; Emily Narciscus 'Ciss' md. Mack Raulerson; William Shelton md. Isabella 'Belle' Taylor.

Many thanks to Mrs. Sarah Burnsed of Glen St. Mary for her help and for calling my attention to the errors.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 1, 1976
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
The Powers Pioneers

According to family stories, the Powers clan had one of the most unusual beginnngs to their migration of any known in our area. Survivors of Indian attacks on wagon trains west are a common fact in our county's history. However, the two Powers boys, ages 12 and 13, who started the Georgia-Florida families were involved in exactly the opposite. Soon after acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, a Powers family was traveling east, rather that west, when they were attacked by Indians on the east bank of the Mississippi.

The only two survivors of the incident were the two aforementioned youths. From the scene of the attack somewhere in either West Florida or the Mississippi territory, they made their way to Georgia. One, supposedly named Alexander Hamilton, settled in east-central Georgia, and this was the line which would, in another century and a quarter, make the Powers' Hotel Annie in Macclenny one of the state's most famous eating places.

Before enlisting for service in the War of 1812, he had a son, Alexander, and serveral years later, in 1819, he had another son named James C. born in the south Georgia county of Appling.

Soon after his marriage to Sarah Thornton, James C. 'Jim' left Appling for Nassau County, Florida. He and Sarah were located there during the 1840 census. Soon after, they removed across the St. Marys into Camden (now Charlton) County where most of the children were born. After farming his homestead in the Bend, he moved back to Appling sometime prior to 1850. His moving spirit caused him to migrate once more just before the outbreak of the Civil War back to Charlton County. This final homeplace was above the Smith Bridge and to the west of the old Yelvington Trail (approximately the route of present 121).

Jim and Sarah had the following children; James Hamilton, born 1842, married Nancy Tomlinson; George Alexander, born 1849, married (1) Jane Weingold, (2) Lottie Lamb; Reubin, died in Orange County; Richard, born 1851, married Mary Burnsed; and Louvice, born 1845, married Adolphus 'Doss' Burnsed. Simeon, born 1843, and Serica, born 1845, were with the family in 1850, but their relationship is unknown.

In 1863, mail service was a hit-and-miss affair in our area, and families depended on each other for delivery. On such an occasion, Mrs. Sarah Powers had received a letter for a Florida family, and with her 14 year old son Alex, walked the short distance to the state line to deliver it. Her only means of crossing the river was by a footlog, and the water was swelled by floods. She lost her footing and disappeared into the rapid water, Alec tried to save his mother and almost drowned.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, James Hamilton had volunteered for service. He fought at Bull Run and Manasses, and taken prisoner at Newport News, Virginia. Soon after the war's end, Alec and Reubin left for south central Florida, and the other children married and moved across the river into Florida. Jim was left alone to spend the remainder of his life alone in the Bend. He died Just before the turn of the century at the home of his son James Hamilton.

James Hamilton had inherited some of his father's restlessness, for when he returned from the Confederate Army, he began a series of moves. His first farming was done on the Stallings Place just north of the St. Marys River in the Bend. He left that 400 acres for a plot just north of there known as the Flat Place.

His itchy feet took him next to near Jacksonville on the banks of McGirts Creek. Poor land and oak runners whipped him out, and he searched nearer home for land. A few miles southwest of his father's home lay some attractive hilly land owned by a Mr. Mott (an early Baker County businessman and politician). In 1875, Mr. Powers negotiated for 160 acres which contained a little cleared land and a large seedling pecan tree for the sum of $400. On a high hill near the big pecan tree, Mr. Powers constructed a log house. He had evidenthy found his home, for he remained there until his death in 1897.

Behind the present Powers house is a small cemetery where Mr. Powers and most of his family were buried. Unfortunately, the little burial ground cannot be used by the family today because of certain Florida laws regulating burials.

Ninety-three year old Mr. Rufus Powers can often be seen each fall still collecting the nuts from the ancient pecan tree which was old and large when his father moved there in 1875. It is comforting to know that some things remain.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 8, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
Earn Harris And The Discovery Of The Taber Azalea

One is surprised at what one discovers at an art show. While in Jacksonville recently at such an affair we ran across a distant relative-in-law and an interesting bit of information regarding one of the county's most famous products. The story is as follows.

In the mid 1920's, a few years prior to the debut of the George Lindley Taber azalea in the Glen Nurseries catalogue, a young production (propagation) assistant discovered it as a sport off an established variety. Ernest 'Earn' Harris noticed a freak branch on an otherwise one-of-thousands Homasaki azalea of a medium to deep lavender-pink type. He called his immediate supervisor (who was also his father-in-law) John O. Barton to investigate. Mr. Barton's experienced eye recognized the strange branch as a possible sport and new variety.

He, in turn, called the attention of botonist, Harold Hume, to the plant and he aggreed that it warrented observation. He directed the men to prune away the normal plant, leaving the sport to grow alone and unhindered. Mr. Harris placed a sign by the little shrub directing that it be not dug, pruned, or tampered with.

In time, the sport bloomed. It was watched with interest and then admiration as the blossoms opened profusely into the most attractive azalea, as claimed by some, produced since the plant was first captured and improved from the wilds.

Mr. Hume asked Mr. Barton to begin propagation of the new variety. Hundreds of little cuttings were made and cared for in the greenhouse. They, in turn, were cut into many more propagations until within a very few years several thousands were ready for the market. That, was incidentally the same year Mr. Taber, Sr. died.

When the azalea, labeled with the number 21 was to be included in the catalogue, the office staff (Messrs. Aubrey Greene, Steele, Hume, et al) called in Barton and Harris to consult with them on the name. Someone suggested the name of their deceased boss. All agreed, and in 1929, the revolutionary George L. Taber azalea graced the cover of the Glen Nurseries.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 15, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
The Beginnings Of Lake Butler

From 1858 to 1861, Baker County shared a common government with Union County in the name and form of New River. The county line overlap of such pioneer families as Driggers, Richardson, Dobson, Roberts and many others strengthened our ties. Lake Butler was the trading center for Baker County's Possom Trot community.

Lake Butler (the body of water, not the town) has carried a number of names, among them 'Lake Randolph'. Unlike most geographical features which finally evolve into a final name, this scenic little lake reverted to its first Anglo-American appellation.

During the first Seminole war the years following the War of 1812, Gen. Andrew Jackson received word of a particularly troublesome cheiftain in the southeast Georgia section. This cheiftain, Bendoris by name, was among the many early Seminoles who had populated the area around and near the great Okefenokee in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Encouraged by the Spaniards, he made repeated raids on the south Georgia population, each time retreating into Spanish Florida.

While on the banks of the Suwannee, Gen. Jackson sent a detachment under a Capt. Butler to destroy Bendoris. Bendoris, meanwhile was plundering newly settled Ware County, Georgia. Capt. Butler trailed the raiders south across the Georgia-Spanish Florida line at Blount's Ferry near the present Fargo site.

Bendoris' town was south of present Lake Butler on Odom's Spring, and to protect their families, the Seminoles met Capt. Butler on the north side of the lake. There, they engaged in a fierce battle in which both Bendoris and Capt. Butler were killed. Capt. Butler and his fallen men were buried on the north bank of the lake, large mounds marking the sites for almost a century until they were worn away.

Bendoris' followers deserted the area and traveled to the Alachua prairies several miles south, defeated once again and increasingly bitter.

Among those U.S. Army survivors was Private Elisha Green of Georgia, a man who had seen service throughout West Florida and much of upper central Florida under Andy Jackson. About ten years later (1889), he talked several other pioneers into making the trip with him as he returned to the vicinity of his battle with Bendoris. Among them were Bill Wester, Bill Driggers, and Bill Richardson, all destined to be progenitors of large Baker and Union clans.

During the second Spanish colonial period (1783-1821) the main east-west trail lay to the south of Lake Butler. The Americans needed a more direct route to the new capital of Tallahasse, and so John Bellamy's new military road ran to the north of the lake, and there the little community grew into an important stage stop. From an inn and horse-changing station, the town spread rapidly. However, population shifts and the coming of the railroads in the 1880's determined that Lake Butler Station on the south side was to become the main city. The north side town is hardly a memory.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 22, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
Raiford And The State Prison Farm

Where the Johnstown Road crossed the New River - Palestine Road in old New River County, a loose but sizable community grew up (census records show several families near there from 1850 through 1880). From Georgia came the Sapps. From Baker County's north end came Conners and Taylors. From old Saint Augustine came the Alvarez family. And, among the many others came Hunter Warren Raiford.

Hailing from Haskinsville, Georgia, Mr. Raiford boarded with Mrs. Dora Tyson in the middle 1890's. He soon had a turpentine distilling operation nearby and he established a commissary and post office.

The first railroad through the area was the Cummer Line, built in the 1880's for the use of the Cummer Line and Lumber Company. Many Baker County families owed their livelihood to the construction and operation of this railroad, including such One of the early residents of Raiford was Baker County's Henry Jones, a son of John Paul Jones of an earlier article. His sons Clifford and Joe were postmasters in the new little post office. Henry joined forces with Dennis Andrews in 1900 to names as Bell (Beal), Thompson, Jones, Rosier, etc. The rail line later became the Jacksonville and Southeastern, which ran to Newberry and in 1901 became part of the Atlantic Coastline.
?? build a store and cotton gin. They were later joined in partnership by John and Jim Ritch. Mr. Andrews left the company and built another larger store and gin.

Soon, the growing fever hit, and Raiford boasted nine stores, including a meat market, dressmaker shop, millinery, three drug stores and two barber shops. The turpentine and cotton business prompted the establishment of the Citizens Bank of Raiford and the Raiford Weekly Tribune newspaper. The boom of the 20's caused the incorporation of the town with Nelson 'Nelse' Ritch as mayor.

As early as 1899, a legislative committee had investigated the convict lease system and finding it largely deplorable, urged the state to terminate the practice and locate the prisoner on a productive state farm. In 1913, the state prison farm was begun nearby and in 1914, all the convicts not leased out to private individuals and companies were transferred there. In 1923, due to a scandalous convict death in a lease camp, all prisoners were finally placed in Raiford with the exception of raod work camps scattered about the state.

At first, Bradford Farms (one of the early names owing to the fact that the site was still located in Bradford County) was the holding place for one hundred able bodied men, the sick, tubercular and all women. The State Road Prison force, established in 1915, handled all the rest.

The first superintendent was Mr. D.W. Purvis. He was followed by Mr. J.S. Blitch (the superintendent's home during his tenure can be seen accompaning this writing). Holding that position today is Baker County native L.E. Dugger.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 29, 1976, Page Two
The Way it Was - Gene Barber
Our Minorcan Heritage
Part One - Canova

Movie buffs of the 40's, when asked to name the most popular singing hillbilly comedian of that era, would answer quickly 'Judy Canova'. A most unlikely surname for a cracker girl, but that same pigtailed singer of 'Puddin Head' had a great-grandfather who fought with the Confederates at Olustee in 1864.

From the Appinines of Italy to the island of Minorca, to New Smyrna in wild Florida in 1778, came the Canovas. When Andrew Turnbull petitioned the British king for permission to establish a colony of Greeks and Minorcans in Floridan he set in motion a strange and sad migration.

Turnbull's overseers were reportedly unjustly harsh. The Greeks, still chafing from their subjection by the Turks, and the Minorcans (and some Corsicians), still chafing at their ill treatment from everybody, were only halfheartedly willing to trade one cruel master for another. The colonists ran away by the hundreds, and when Florida was given back to Spain in 1783, New Smyrna Plantation was empty.

The unfortunates scattered themselves from Saint Augustine (the Canovas settled there) to Fernandina. A sprinkling went to the lower southwest coast, the old province of West Florida, and into the interior to live with the Seminoles.

Some Minorcans entered Florida's interior during the Civil War. Discovering the smoldering resentful Latin population was not going to take the oath of allegiance during the Federal occupation of St. Augustine, the army banished many of them from the city. Several families were welcomed in Lake City, among them were some Canovas. Whether they included the Baker County family of that name is not known.

In Jacksonville, Paul P. Canova, an Indian War veteran was found in records predating the Civil War and he died in Jacksonville in 1886. His son, George P., was born in 1844 in St. Johns or Duval County, and was a member of Company D, 1st Florlda Cavalry during the Civil War. He saw action at Olustee, and, after he was honorably discharged, moved to Sanderson.

George P. married Diana Green, a daughter of pioneers Elisha and Elizabeth Driggers Green. For several years he operated a store and cotton gin and owned large tracts of land in and near Sanderson. Besides his sizable holdings in Sanderson, an Eppinger and Russell timber map of the 1880's shows additional extensive acreage near the Bradford County line.

Throughout Reconstruction, Mr. Canova remained an ardent Bourbon (unreconstructed Democrat). He once ran as an independent Democrat, but refused to accept the seat in the Florida legislature because he thought it was unfairly won. In the rough times after Reconsstructionn Mr. Canova was shot, and his unknown assassin was never apprehended.

Footnote: (In the 12 April article 'The Beginnings of Lake Butler', paragraph 7, Elisha Green's return to Florida should read '1829' rather '1889', and special thanks to the Lake Butler Woman's Club's HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY).

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 6, 1976 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Our Minorcan Heritage
Part Two - Ponce

When we cook up a mess of 'perlow,' throw an extra handful of red pepper and sage into our sausage, admire a cracker's olive complexion and thick black hair, or name a child after Grandma Marguerite, Uncle Carlos, or Aunt Marianne, we are unconsciously indulging in our Minorcan heritage.

Although none remain of the old Mediteranean names, their blood still courses within many Baker County cracker families. One of those Spanish-Minorca progenitors is the (Ponce) family. Francis Domingo Ponce was born in 1785 in or near St Augustine, a son of Juan Ponce. As a merchant, he moved to Fernandina in the early 1800's and in 1808 or 1809, he married Mrs. Mary Villalonga. Mrs Villalonga was a widow of Juan Villalonga of an old St. Augustine and Fernandina clan. Her father was Juan Secondino Acosta.

Juan Secondino Acosta was born in Madrid, Spain and, after living in New Smyrna, St Augustine, and Fernandina, was commissioned by the king of Spain to be keeper of Moro Castle in Havana, Cuba. While in Cuba, he died and was buried there. His father Juan Dominga Acosta was the first postmaster in Florida, and his mother was of Italian-Greek ancestry from Smyrna, Greece.

Juan Secondino Acosta, by his several children, is the ancestor of many of the names Higganbotham, Gainey, Tison, and Johnson, in the Nassau, Chariton, Duval, and Baker Counties area.

In 1812, the Ponce's second child was born, and Fernandina was captured by American George Matthews (he was not known and loved for his gentlemanly treatment of His Catholic Majesty subjects). The war of 1812, pirates, American raiders, and renegades of all nations made living in Fernandina unhealthy, and Mr. Ponce took his family inland, preferring the Indians to the former company.

During the First Seminole War, he was a volunteer, helping to protect the coastal farms, towns, and St. Mary's River border. In 1820, a fifth child was born, and Florida was ceded, in practice if not in formality, to the United States by Spain. The Minorcans, although loyal to the crown in the past, felt not enough allegiance during the transfer of flags to quit the territory with the Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Ponce remained, and were among the first to move into the wilds of western Nassau County, farming and selling merchandise along the River Road near the St. Marys.

Around 1833, Mrs. Pons (the name had become anglicized by then) died, and Mr. Pons next married Martha (last name unknown). Martha was a Baptist, and Mr. Pons' Catholicism was weakened by many years of nonpractise, and, so for a while, they attended the Pigeon Creek Church on the St. Marys River. Around 1841, they moved into old Columbia County where Martha joined the Providence Baptist Church on the 14th of Septmeber, 1844.

By 1850, the Pons family had moved back to Nassau County, leaving some of his children in Columbia County (present Baker County area) to marry into the Anglo-American Crackers. His vocation was listed on census records as 'merchant', and his estate was probated in Duval County in 1866.

A son by his first wife was Francis J. He was born in 1833 in Nassau County, anq his wife's name was Marcella. Francis Pons was a superhuman person who, as clerk of court in Baker County, undertook to re-write and re-record every deed destroyed by the courthouse fire of 1877. He, asked for, and, received, no extra compensation for those tiring hours.

Francis lived in Sanderson and was a merchant and landowner there, owning much of that community south of the railroad. His son Francis, Jr. was active in politics, and was Treasurer of the State of Florida in the late 1880's. His other son Charly was reputedly active with the ladies, and was known to settle arguments with a pistol. Francis, Sr. had a rival across the tracks by the name of George Canova. It is ironic that Mr. Pons owned land south of the railroad and was buried in a cemetery (Cedar Creek) on the north side. His rival, also of Minorcan descent, owned land north of the railroad and was buried on the south side(South Prong-Green's Creek).

And, another little note of no importance, but too good to throw away: Francis, Jr. married Zuella, a daughter of Humpy Smith who moved to Fishbone (wherever that is).

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 1, 1976

What would you think of a man who took 63 years to get his high school diploma?

Better yet, what would you think if you knew that in the meantime he went on to earn a Batchelor, Master and Doctor of Philosophy degree in psychology, launching a career devoted to the education of others including appointment to the prestigious position as Dean of Furman University?

Indeed it sounds unbelievable put it happened here this week.
The man is John G. Holt, 82, now retired and living in Macclenny.

The diploma is from Fitzgerald High School, class of 1912.

The way, it happened, Holt, then a young man 18 years of age, had to move to Mississippi with his family in May of 1912, just prior to graduation ceremonies at Fitzgerald. As he remembers, it was quite a disappointment particularly because he was to have been valedictorian. He had alreay prepared and in fact had begun practicing his speech. But when your family goes, you go.

Even though he attained his high school diploma in spirit, John Holt never actually had possession of one. That didn't stop him from gettig a job a short while later as principal of a small country school in Ashton, Georgia. World War I intervened and he saw service with the Second Marine Corps Division on the dreaded fighting fields of France returning home wounded to later enter Furman in Greenville, South Carolina while at the same time supporting a wife and two children.

From Furman as both a graduate, and later dean, Holt's academic career continued to blossom with a Master Degree from the University of Virginia in 1924 and later, a PhD from American University in Washington completed in the early 1950's. The absence of his high school diploma, in fact, had long since been forgotten and according to him, didn't make much difference until now.

It did make a difference to the current Superintendent of Fitzgerald Public Schools, James Y. Moultrie. He discovered the missing diploma predicament when reviewing records of the old high school there. He traced Holt's whereabouts checking through Furmnan and even out to Wyoming where Holt worked in the late 40's and 50's with Indians as social worker-teacher. The contact was finally made here and Monday of this week, John Holt received a new, blue vinyl covered diploma.

I'd completely forgotten about the high school affair, but I cherish this delayed diploma more than all the others put together," beamed Holt Monday afternoon.

An accompanying letter from Moultrie stated "In recognition of the advanced education you have received and the many contributions which you have made in the fields of public and higher education since you left Fitzgerald in 1912, we are pleased to award you this delayed diploma from Fitzgerald High School. I hope that it will give you much satisfaction as you add it to your collection which, I am sure, brings you many memories of a successful career.

In an interesting sidelight, Moultrie added that all 12 of the original Fitzgerald graduating class of 1912 are still living.

Other than the deanship and years of teaching psychology at Furman, Holt spent five years up until 1930 as one of the founders of the old Georgia State College for Men , originally located in Tifton, Georgia and now in Atlanta. A several year stay here during the 1940's, Holt tried his hand as owner of a jewelry store in Macclenny and later as a farmer. For one year during the way, he was principal of the old Taylor School. From 1958, through 1960 he was instrumental in the establishment of Birdwood College in Georgia and after moving to Savannah in 1960 he later founded the Southside School.

Holt generally shys away from much discussion on past academic achievements, but his small apartment here in Macclenny is known to contain innumerable mementos dating back over 55 years when he insisted he be admitted to Furman after by chance observing a phliosophy class when in Greenville recovering from a war wound.

Not at all bad for someone who had to wait 63 years for a high school diploma.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS Thursday May 13, 1976 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Mose Thompson, Accidental Pioneer

The land of Florida has always seemed to elicit fantastic tales of fairyland scenery and get-rich opportunities. It was no different in pre-Civil War days than during the land-boom 20's. Up in South Carolina, middle-aged Mose Thompson listened to the stories of his step-son and son regarding how one could just throw seeds on to the ground and harvest their produce within two or three weeks. He heard them tell of friends who were getting rich on groves of oranges.

They had been down into the wild semi-tropical 'paradise' earlier visiting friends and relatives, and with each telling of their adventures, the better became the land they told about.

And so, in 1852, Mose loaded his wife, the former Mary Williams, baby John, and their household goods and family Bible onto a little pony cart equipped with a wooden axle, and left Edgefield, South Carolina for the land of promise. Walking along side were stepson Rance Williams, sons Tom and Roe, and daughters Lizzie and Vic. Their goal was a little roadway junction in the northeast corner of central Florida called 'Banana' (just a couple of miles south of present Melrose in Alachua County).

Among the first of many troubles to beset the little band of pioneers happened when they forded the Savannah River near Augusta. The wooden axle broke, and the cart body floated away from the wheels. Mrs. Thompson held her baby and Bible above water and only a minimum of damage was sustained by the household goods. Time was taken on the Georgia side to mend the cart and dry its load.

At the end of sixty days they reached the St. Marys River and Florida. Not far from the site of the present concrete bridge across the river on 121, there was a pole bridge. As they crossed, the little horse slipped through the cypress poles and crippled himself.

On the Florida side, they camped for the, night and planned for tomorrow. Tomorrow brought no better news, for the pony was still unable to resume pulling. The family waited. The oldest boys were impatient to get on with the journey, but their father was not noted for his drive and action and he waited. Mrs. Thompson, not noted for her tolerance and understanding, continued the constant nagging that had been the themesong of the trip.

A man happened along, and suggested that Mose take his family down the road (near the present route of 121 and called the Yelvington Trail) to an abandoned house and camp there. Mose not only accepted the suggestion, but decided to stay the season so that his wife and children could make a crop.

The well, old in 1852, could still be seen until a few years ago on the east side of 121 on the banks of a small pond of water north of Macclenny. The house was adequate, and after one season, Mose decided not to rush things, and stay just one more year. Rance and Tom became increasingly eager to get on down to Banana, and after helping with the first crop, left the family to its own devices. Mary and the children made another crop and then another until the Mose Thompson family was firmly rooted, by accident, in Baker County soil.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 20, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
Part Two
Mary Thompson - Resourceful Pioneer Woman
Mary Thompson was a hard working woman who milked the family cows, plowed and hoed the fields, and maintained strict discipline over her children.

She made butter, formed it into half-pound balls and kept it stored in crocks of brine. She stored her eggs in the smokehouse, small ends down in the sand. Their ripe peaches, with home-made cane syrup, were converted into peach brandy, also stored in crocks. When she had enough produce, she loaded it and one or two children in a wagon, and traveled to Jacksonville to trade.

Although she was illiterate, she could outfigure, in her head, any clerk who was using paper. She compared prices, reckoned values, added, and multiplied with the world's best computer.. her brain. She returned home with goods and some change to begin the process again.

Her husband, Mose, pursued a different form of trading. As a cobbler and furniture maker, he took his wares to Baldwin. His 'trading' usually took from one to two weeks, necessitating several trips to the Baldwin tavern. When he returned home, a few days to a few weeks were required to recover from his exhaustive 'trading'. During these periods, it was difficult, if not impossible, for him to exert himself through work. Today, it is called 'hangover'.

It was on one of those trading trips to Baldwin that Mr. Thompson decided to "teach an Irishman a lesson and send him back to where he belongs." The Irishman, big and brawny from working on the new railroad through Baldwin, decided he didn't care to return to where he belonged, and slapped Mr. Thompson down. Mose figured his timing was wrong and tried again. The Irishman floored him again. A third time Mose tried and was downed. His opponent asked if he wanted to try once more, to which Mr. Thompson replied, "ol' Mose thinks he's learned to let well enough alone."

Mose never owned his homes, but was forced to move whenever the owners made legal claims. One of his homesites was the old Eli Hicks place near Macedonia (called the Rube Crawford place). Another was in present Macclenny (in the backyard of the Eldred Jones') on Willingham Branch (Brickyard Branch). His final home was south of Macclenny in a house provided for him by his youngest son John (site of Paul Rhoden's home).

Mrs. Thomnson never refused aid to the needy, although "Lord knows," remarks descendants, "she was, herself, in the worst circumstances." She assisted travelers, providing them beds and food. Her less fortunate neighbors also came to her for food and clothes.

The Thompsons became charter members of the Bethel Baptist Church south of Macclenny in 1877 and remained faithful practicing members until their deaths.

Mrs. Thompson and her daughter Victoria were remarkably quick tempered and difficult to live with. Mr Thompson best described them with an oft repeated comment as he sat leaning back on the front porch, "that Mary Thompson is meaner'n hell a mile, and Victoria ain't slow a quarter."

Mose Thompson died in September of 1882, and was the first interment in Woodlawn Cemetery. The widow lived with relatives and spent much time at the Macclenny Hotel, where her grandchildren and great-grandchildren read to her from her old Bible brought down from Carolina many years before. It should be mentioned that she was quick to correct any slip or mistake made in their reading, practically having committed the entire volume to memory. She died in 1898 at 91 years of age.

Mary Thompson would have been proud to have known that her adopted grandson was the Baptist Church's first foreign missionary sent out from Florida, and, the writer is rather happy for that little slippery pole bridge, for without it he might never have known Baker County as his home; the Thompsons were his great-great-great grandparents.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, May 27, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
The Story Behind Ellicot's Mound

No sooner had the fledging nation of north America secured her independence than she began tidying up her boundries. One of her most vexsome boundries being between the commonwealth of Georgia and the Spanish colony of Florida. A treaty negotiated in 1795 by Thomas Pinkney of the U.S. and the Spanish government called for, among other things, a survey of the border between U.S. territory and Spanish Florida. The thirty-first parallel was agreed on, and Andrew Ellicott was engaged by the American government to run the survey.

Mr. Ellicott arrived in Natchez, West Florida on the 27th of February with an escort of about twenty men. Spanish Governor Goyoso evidently, along with the entire government in Madrid, suspected the Americans of using the survey as a plot to gain more control of Florida. The rebellious and trying attitude of the Governor prompted Ellicott to ask for and receive further detachments under Lt. Percy Smith Hope.

In this tense atmosphere, Ellicott began his work and trip on the 9th of April. Gov. Goyoso joined him later.

The governor's lack of cooperation and severe Indian attacks forced Ellicott to retreat from the Apalachicola River, where he began the survey to St. Marks on the Gulf Coast. From St. Marks, he sailed, 18 October, around the Florida peninsula to St. Marys, Georgia at the mouth of the St. Marys River. He was joined there by a small party who had traveled overland from the Flint River in West Florida.

Camp was pitched on Point Peter on the St. Marys. While on the St. Marys, Ellicott reported a deep snow, measuring eight inches in some places.

The surveying party began its investigation to determine the headwaters of the St. Marys River for the purpose of connecting that point with Ellicott's beginnings on the Apalacicola and thus fixing the Spanish-American line. From early maps, the Anglo-Americans and Spanish, had been aware of the north and south prongs of the St. Marys and now surveyor Ellicott was to explore both as well as what has become known as the 'Middle Prong'.

The surveying party of Americans and Spaniards made its way up the brown waters of the St. Marys to Traders Hill, south to Trail Ridge, west to the Little St. Marys (South Prong), and along that stream until Ellicott had decided its candidacy as a headwater stream was poor indeed. They backtracked to the mainstream, and continued west and north to the fork of the middle prong. That run was only intermittent and likewise an unlikely source. When he reached the great Okefenokee where the tannin-stained stream emerged uninterrupted and relatively strong, he declared that to be the true source of the St. Marys River.

There, in the northeastern corner of present Baker County, Ellicott directed his party to throw up a sizable mound of earth as a marker. He made no further efforts to connect to east and west by a surveyed line, but reported that the disputed boundry began in the west at his beginning on the Apalachicola and ended at his considered source of the St. Mary's.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday June 3, 1976 Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
From The Diary Of Charles W. Turner (Part One)

On the 8th of May, 1869, Charles W. Turner arrived in FIorida. The scars of war were still much in evidence in Jacksonville. But, he had left worse scars in his home of Memphis and Mississippi. Now, he was searching for a new beginning and home.

In typical tourist fashion he took a coastal-river excursion on a schooner captained by Thomas Leach. His journal records the embarking date as 17 June 1869. On 19 June, they grounded on an oyster bar near the mouth of the St. Johns and remained there until next high tide.

He commented on Pable Plantation (between Jacksonville and the beach), and entered notes on stops at Palatka, Mandarin and Green Cove (he took a swim in the springs). But, nowhere did he feel he had found a home for his family. As his granddaughter noted 107 years later, "grandfather looked all around for a nice place to buy and live."

Hearing of a new county in the relative wilderness west of Jacksonville, he took the train to Sandersonn the county seat, and there found land that struck his fancy. Land was plentiful by reasons of remoteness and reclaiming by the loyal reconstruction state government (It should be noted that Mr. Turner, although a native New Yorker, was not, and, would not be a carpetbagger).

A Mr. James S. Barnett was engaged in a lumber and naval stores operation and held the power-of-attorney for a number of Civil War widows and orphans and disillusioned and disenfranchised ex-Confederates. Mr. .Turner went to his camp southeast of Sanderson and purchased from him as agent for George J. Smith, the Smith farm.

The Smith farm was located on the main Jacksonville-Lake City Road (south of present I-10), six miles east of Sanderson (the only community in the county other than Olustee in 1869) and about one mile south of the railroad, and on the west bank of the Little St Marys. This land was part of the first recorded private land transaction in the county, being part of that parcel sold to Richard Mott by Josiah Gigger (Geiger). Twelve years later, it would be purchased by George L. Taber to become part of his Glen Nurseries.

Mr. Turner's new home place consisted of 160 acres, 50 acres of which was under fence. There were 100 bearing peach trees, 10 orange trees, 6 quince, 6 figs, 5 pomegranates, several bananas, a log dwelling house, a corn crib, stables, a cabin for the black man Moses and a smokehouse. Some of the fruit trees were later incorporated into the horticultural stock of the Glen Nurseries.

The Turner family arrived at the farm Sunday, December 5th, 1869. A grey horse named Billy was bought for $160. Moses, found a wife Myria. With children Walter, Irene, Edgar, baby Charles, Jr., Moses and Myria, and horse Billy, they settled in while wife Martha, accustomed to better facilities, cooked Christmas dinner over an open fire in the fireplace.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday June 10, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
From the Diary Of Charles W. Turner (Part Two)

January 5th brought the coldest night of the year (24 degrees). Mr. Turner bought a sow with 9 pigs that day. He, Walter, Edgar, and Moses fought woodsfires on the west and north all day. It broke out again on the 6th, and Mr. Turner and Walter battled it until Moses arrived and assisted in bringing it under control.

On January 10th, Charly went to secure his deed to the farm. He and Mr. Barnett went to Mr. Richard Mott's house in Sanderson to view the original deed given by Geiger to Mott. After satisfying his shrewd Yankee mind that the land was clear, he paid $800 to Mr. Barnett, agent for George J. and wife Mary S. Smith for the homestead.

The locals were friendly and helpful. On the 19th of January, 1870 Mrs. Penny (nee Alexander) Barber called on the Turner Family. She lived about 4 miles to the east (near the present intersection of I-10 and 228), and, within two months, would be widowed by Florida's only major state-wide blood feud, the Barber-Mizell Feud of central Florlda.

Also, on that day, he received a bundle of corn, bean, and grape seed from a friend, Mr. Ames, of Las Cruces, New Mexico Territory.

On January 31st, 1870 he recorded his deed.

February 4th: Jackson Mann called on the Turner's to request medicine for his wife. Mr. Turner was knowledgeable in the medical arts, being referred to by the natives as 'Dr. Turner'.

On the 6th of February, Moses skipped out, leaving his wife Myria behind.

Mr. Turner entered into his journal that he went to Mrs. Lizzy Barber's for chickens (her home was on the site of the Earl Knabb home situated on the south city limits of Macclenny). While returning with his three laying hens, he noted the May rains had raised the St. Marys uncommonly high.

On Saturday, May 19th, 1879, Walter Turner, later to become postmaster at Macclenny (as yet not founded), fired a shotgun for the first time in his life. He killed two quail with that first shot.

Sunday, 20th May: Walter and Edgar, called 'Bud', attended Mr. Mann's Church (Mt. Olive Methodist at Manntown). The entire family was faithful in church attendance, always remaining loyal Methodists.

In the fall of 1870, a hurricane destroyed all the crops in the area. The Turners lived on Indian cornmeal bread, salt pork, and a little fruit through that winter. In the midst of these hardships, Mr. Turner was quick to be thankful that his farm was possessed of the best water in the country.

Charles was appointed postmaster at Sanderson soon after he arrived in Baker County. Because of the three to four hour round trip to the job, he, in turn, appointed a deputy postmaster to serve in his absence.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday June 17, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
From The Diary Of Charles W. Turner (Part Three)

As Charly Turner stood on the Mississippi river bank of June 6th, 1862 and watched the great gunboat battle off Memphis, he was caused to later remark in his diary, "I, my father, and my grandfather have stood on the bloody fields of war in defense of this once glorious union". Indeed, he, his father, and grandfather believed in the United States, and all served to preserve it.

An ancestor, George, Saul (Sowle) was a signer of the Mayflower Compact and served various civil offices in Massachusetts Colony. Charles Turner ancestors fought with the Rebels in New England against King George. His father Eli was a soldier in the War of 1812, helping to preserve that hardwon independence.

Charles W. Turner was born on the 7th of June, 1828 in Durhamville, Onieda County, New York. His wife, of old Dutch stock, was Martha Fraker. He moved, with his father Eli, to Howlett Hill in Onandage County, New York, and worked in the city of New York.

At twenty four, he volunteered for the U.S.Army during the War with Mexico, and was stationed at Ft. Gibson in the Cherokee Nation. On July 17th, 1848, his unit left Ft. Gibson to march to California via Santa Fe.

He recorded in his journal his enjoyment at hunting buffalo and small game. He wrote of seeing wild horses and of Indians stealing the soldiers horses from camp one night.

The troops arrived after 56 days of travel at Santa Fe on September 12th, and were informed that peace with Mexico had been secured. The soldiers were discharged to return home as best as they could. Civilian Turner decided to remain in New Mexico for two years, entering the grocery business.

He left New Mexico Territory in 1850 with nearly $2,000 in gold and a warrent for 160 acres service bounty land. He wandered throughout the west, arriving in St. Louis, Missouri June 1, 1852.

Charles toyed with a longstanding wish of attending college. He, instead, chose to continue working in order to send financial help home to his father who had become blind in his old age. Charles became an agent for Aetna Insurance Company, and traveled extensively in the west and south selling the relatively new service to pioneers and plantation owners.

Whether he returned home to marry or found his bride on his travels is unknown, but in 1854 or 55, he took the seventeen year old Miss Fraker as his bride.

They lived in Mississippi not far from Memphis, Tennessee where their first three children were born. After the war, he began his search for a "a nice place to buy and live", and thus we are returned to the beginning of our narrative.

The epilogue of the Charles W. Turner pioneer story was, according to descendants, as follows. He died at home on the 13th of June, 1872, and was buried on the grounds of Mt. Zion Church near Sanderson. Dr. P.A. Holt of Lake City attended him and pronounced him dead. Rev. J.R. Burnett of Sanderson officiated at the funeral services. The widow survived him until 1895, and was buried in Macclenny's Woodlawn Cemetery.

During the past year, we have tried, with this historical series to present a lucid perspective on what created the area we call Baker County and home. We researched and wrote of the pathos and comedy of our ancestors, of events odd and history-changing, of good times and bad.

If sufficient attention was granted, it would have been noted that not one of the pioneers attained any measure of success for himself or security for his progeny without a struggle. Sometimes, as in the case of Charly Turner, it was "...on the bloody fields of battle...".

If they were permitted to look down on us, some, if not most, would be hard pressed to understand our discussions for a Bicentennial celebration. Small wonder, for they were too busy making it possible for us to celebrate America than think about future Fourth of July festivities.

We are among the first generations to truly, have the time, finances, and facilities to memorialize those pioneers and say " thank you". We are possessed of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to teach ourselves and our kids the worth of all that spilled blood, sweat, and tears. No generation has ever been more in debt to its past or, faced with a greater charge to the future than ours.

Just in case they can look down on us right now, and just in case we will have to join them face to face later on, perhaps we should give some thought to a Fourth celebration that amounts to a little more than a beardgrowing contest and a street dance. Maybe, we should let them know we are capable of more and better.

An army commander stationed at Lake City in 1866 said, "the locals of this city and neighboring Baker County show no enthusiasm for celebrating Independence Day". People and times really don't change...do they?

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 24, 1976, Page Two
The Way It Was - Gene Barber
County History Relatively Unknown, But Unique

At the end of this little offering of historical notes honoring our Bicentennial year, we trust we may editorialize a bit about our heritage, attitudes, and direction.

Baker County of 1976 is an end product of a long and unique, and relatively, unknown history. It is a story of poverty and paradox. We have entered the history and guide books via but two counts; the Battle of Olustee (referred to as near Lake City rather than in Baker County) and being possessed of quaintness and color (meaning moonshine manufacturing and drinking, a marriage mill, and floor-stomping frolics of olden days).

Baker County was created not out of necessity, but to honor a regional politician, and she was created by a 'nation' rather than a state (between Florida's secession from the U.S. and her entry into the C.S.A.).

For generations she has been an area of extremes with hardly any middle ground. Her citizens have been mostly rich or poor, but seldom ever middle income. Until the past thirty years or so, only a handful could boast of higher education while the majority of the remainder did well to recognize their own names.

Baker County has been under martial law twice, ravaged by yellow fever and influenza epidemics, crippled by severe freezes, and had her population decimated by feuds and assassinations. Hurricanes have wreaked havoc with her buildings and roads. She has felt fire, earthquake, and war, and, at times, the censure of the state. But, perhaps the cruelest of all, because it was so unwarranted, were the gibes and labels given by sister counties and news media.

In spite of it all, Baker County has quietly provided people, products, and services for which she has received, and asked for, no reward, recognition, or thanks.

The first Floridian to assume a Presidential cabinet post graduated from the Baker County school system. Besides several other valuable members of her legislative delegation, she Provided the state with history's most able Secretary of the Senate. A Baker Countian was the wife of a Governor of the State of Florida. That fact is perhaps not as important as is that, as a young pretty girl, she looked up at the important visitor to her school and said, "I'm going to marry that man and be Firt Lady one day"

Our county was honored to have one of her number appointed to head the Florida Sheriffs' state organization. One citizen received the coveted laud of the sports world in All-America football. Another citizen was bestowed the title of President Emeritus in the Florida Cattlemens Association for his work in helping salvage and boost the cattle industry. Baker Countians have served as Presidents of the Southern Nurserymen's Association and American Nurserymen's organization. And, surpressing little humility in the telling, Baker County also gave a president for the nation's oldest and one of its most prestigious state art organizations.

Believing in the preservation of home and independence, Baker County sent her numbers to defend her ideas of democracy. Many Baker Countians are descended from Revolutionary Soldiers, and some of their ancestors fought with Andy Jackson in 1812. Yet, when Englishmen moved into the county during the latter 19th century, they were accepted and assisted.

Baker Countians battled the Seminole, but, recognizing greatness and patriotism named their children in honor of Osceola.

Most cared little for the politicians War Between the States, but rose strong, and united against the invaders. Years later, they received the former Union soldiers as neighbors, friends, and relatives, harboring little, or no, bitterness.

Many answered President Wilson's call to aid Europe during the 'War to End War', and some remained in Flanders.

But, to use an old but very .... Japan's whereabouts, but many went to battle her during the even greater World War II. Some came home, when they did come home, in boxes. They left limbs, guts, and minds in Korea and Viet Nam. One made the ultimate sacrifice in the Lebanon Crisis, leaving a heliport to bear his name with honor.

They left us widows, orphans, and grieving parents who taught us acceptance, sacrifice, humility, and the power to begin again. They left us living and the privilege of deciding our future.

It seems strange that all we have been able to do with our inheritance has been to create an ego paradise in which some of our highest goals are to foul once pretty county roads with beer cans; visit Disneyworld; speak obscenities in public; own, one each, color TV, CB, and motor home camper; break school windows; and be otherwise engaged in the pursit of happiness.

We had hoped to see the powers-that-be and citizens of influence use this Bicentennial year to establish a heritage museum before the opportunity was lost as was the year of our Centennlal. We had hoped to see the stacks swelled at the Baker Free Library by the donation of books in memory of local pioneers, patriots, and citizens.

We had hoped to hear responses to the repeated calls of the Bicentennial Committee Faithful Few. We should have been warned a year ago at one of our biggest programs; our crowd consisted of four men and two children, and one of the men apologized that he had to leave early to throw some feed out to his cows.

But, to use an old but very true cliche, it's never too late.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, Jul 1, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
A Chronology Of Baker County's Past 500 Years

(In preparation for compiling a history of Baker County, to be published in early 1977 a time table of events pertinent to the area was assembled. We trust this selected sampling will generate enthusiasm for the forthcoming book. If, while reading, the reader's mind is jogged to recall other events, corrections, and additions, it is hoped he will contact us. Our data on blacks, the community of Olustee, all churches, clubs, and service and fraternal organizations need much help. Please respond by writing to P.O. Box 523 Macclenny)

BAKER COUNTY, 500 YEARS
1476 - County area inhabited by Timucuam language group of American Indians, and was in the north of the province of Potano
1539 - Hernando de Soto's expedition passed either near southwest corner of county or through it into Okeefeenokee.
1564 - French founded Ft. Caroline 40 miles east of county.
1565 - St. Augustine begun by Spain 65 miles southeast of area.
1698 - Spain re-settled Pensacola, and utilized an ancient Timucua-Apalachee route as the Spanish Trail (US 90).
1702 - The English of South Carolina ravaged the Florida and south Georgia countryside, destroying the Timucua Indians.
1719 - County area completely uninhabited.
1720 - Creek related tribes (especially the Oconee) move into County and begin to farm. Possibly founded Olustee.
1763 - Treaty of Paris, ending the international Seven Years War, gave Florida to England.
1765 - Baker County was within northern limit of the hunting ground granted to the Seminole Nation by British Governor James Grant.
1773 - James Spaulding's indian trading post set up at Olustee near Ocean Pond (Lake Spaulding).
1774 - John Bartram in Cowford. River Road east of St. Marys and Trail Ridge shown on British maps.
1776 - Declaration of Independence. Area was a haven for Tories and international renegades (Dan McGirt). An English settler named Anderson lent his name to the intersection of the St. Marys' and Trail Ridge.
1778 - Minorcans arrived at Andrew Turnbull's New Smyrna Colony, and some ran away to the interior. Battle at Alligator Bridge near present Callahan.
1783 - End of Revolution. Florida returned to Spain. New influx of Seminoles into area.
1795 - Pinckney Treaty attempted to prevent Spanish Florida from harboring renegades and slave-stealers. Call made for determining boundry between U.S. and Spanish Florida.
1797 - Ellicott surveyed Georgia-Florida border, and erected mound in northeast corner of County to indicate true source of St Marys. Snow covered the ground up to 8 inch drifts.
1803 - Pres. Jefferson expressed a desire to annex Florida. Americans move into northeast Florida.
1805 - Jefferson's annual message to Congress called for warfare to acquire Florida.
1808 - Fernandina established by Spanish.
1809 - Southern slave-holding warhawks agitate for annexation of Florida. South American revolutions weaken Spain's hold on Florida.
1810 - Osceola (Billy Powell) and his mother Polly Ann Copinger Powell in vicinity.
1812- American George Matthews captured Fernandia driving Spanish, Indians, and some Americans inland toward County area. War declared by U.S. against England.
1815 - Raids made into Georgia and Alabama by Indians and international thieves. U.S. calls for punishment.
1816 - Lewis Hogan and the Widow Taylor settled at Cowford. Isaiah Hart platted and named the city of Jacksonville.
1817 - Amelia Island captured by U.S. to clear out pirates. Gen. Jackson crossed Florida border to punish Seminoles for their raids. Georgia legislator Cone argued to take in a portion of Florida including most of present Baker County.
1818 - Jackson and his forces captured all Florida posts except St. Augustine. Battle of Lake Butler (Lake Randolph) between U.S. military and Seminole Chief Bendoris.
1819 - Adams-Onis Treaty forced Spain to relinquish her claim to Florida. End of First Seminole War. Settler move in.
1820 - Florida formally became U.S. territory.
1821 - All territory east of Suwannee organized as St. Johns County. First known Baptist church in Florida established on Pigeon Creek about 15 miles northeast of County.
1822 - Duval County (including present Baker) cut out of St. Johns. Alachua Trail crossed southeastern section of County.
1823 - Treaty of Moultrie Creek, near St. Augustine, removed Seminoles from north Florida.
1824 - Bellamy Road (U.S. military) ran just south of County. Territorial site of Tallahassee selected.
1827 - Great exodus of Georgia Indians through area to Alachua.
1828 - Alachua County (including Baker) created. First U.S. Post road through area for mail delivery (U.S. 90).
1829 - First pioneer wagon train into County area. Pony express mail service.
1832 - Columbia County (including Baker) cut out of Alachua. Scattered Seminole attacks. Ft. Olustee established.
1834 - North end of County surveyed for cross-Florida barge canal.
1835 - Stage coach mail service. Second Seminole War. Severe freeze.
1837 - Burnsed blockhouse (Raulerson or Carl Brown House). Nationwide economic panic.
1838 - Florida Constitutional Convention at St. Joseph.
1840 - Mt. Olivet Methodist Church (Manntown).
1841 - Macedonia (Hicks) Cemetery. Yellow fever and violent hurricane season.
1842 - End of Second Seminole War. Armed Occupation Act took many settlers south to former Indian lands.
1844 - Ocean Pond appointment appeared on Newnansville Methodist circuit.
1845 - Florida statehood signed by Pres. Tyler on March 3rd.
1850 - Cedar Creek Cemetery. First circular sawmill in east Florida set up at Jacksonville.
1851 - Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad incorporated. Eppinger and Russell Co. of New York began buying timber in area.
1857 - Railroad construction began at Jacksonville.
1858 - New River County (including Baker) cut out of Columbia.
1859- RR at eastern county line in April. At present-day Macclenny in August. At Olustee in December.
1861 - Civil War. Secession. Baker County created from New River County in February. Sanderson founded as County Seat.
1862 - Scarlet fever epidemic. Fernandina in Union hands.
1863 - Jacksonville raided and burned by U.S.
1864 - Union camp at Sanderson. Battle of Olustee on February 20.
1865 - Peace. Former U.S. soldiers settled in County. A Duval County man was elected to serve in State Legislature for Baker County.
1866 - First recorded deed 17 February from Mr. Geiger to Mr. Mott. Florida-Georgia boundry dispute settled.
1867 - John Darby and Oliver Savage bought up site of present Macclenny. Darby's Station. Residents refused to celebrate Independence Day under Union rule.
1868 - Ku Klux Klan activities at peak in County.
1869 - Williamsburg founded on RR near present St. Mary's Church.
1870 - Sanderson F and AM. First state political candidate, William D. Bloxham, visited County, Darbyville named.
1871 - Dawkins F and AM Lodge, Darbyville.
1874 - First newspaper in County by Charles A Finley in Darbyville.
1876 - Voting scandal in Baker County felt nationwide.
1877 - Courthouse in Sanderson burned. Darbyville begins movement to relocate County Seat. Bethel Baptist, Macclenny, constituted. Bethlehem Primitive Baptist, Sanderson. St. Marys Primitive Baptist Association formed. County road districts set. Yellow fever epidemic.
1878 - Last known Indians left County. New frame court house built.
1880 - Macclenny Hotel built.
1882 - Glen Nurseries. Woodlawn Cemetery. Glen St. Mary founded.
1883 - First Baptist, Macclenny. Macclenny platted and named by northern land company.
1884 - First Methodist Church, Macclenny.
1885 - St. James Episcopal Academy, Macclenny. Miles marked along Alachua Trail. Glen St. Mary road district created. Voting precinct boundries set. Petition begun for County Seat removal.
1886 - Severe freeze. Charleston earthquake felt in County. County Seat Removal Referendum.
1887 - Macclenny named new County Seat, and celebrated with fireworks and fights. Olustee Baptist Church.
1888 - New frame courthouse erected at Macclenny. Yellow fever devastated County.
1889 - Macedonia Methodist Church established.
1892 - Pleasant Grove Primitive Baptist, Taylor.
1894 - Freeze destroyed County citrus.
1895 - Freeze worse than previous year.
1896 - Hurricane damage heavy. Blew away bell tower from Macclenny First Baptist Church.
1898 - Spanish-American War. Local trestles guarded by U.S. troops.
1899 - Severe freeze.
1900 - Courthouse burned. First state LDS Church Conference met at Sanderson.
1904 - Baxter Rebellion. Martial law declared.
1905 - Cedar Creek No Hell Baptist Church. Griffin Nurseries (Southern States). Macclenny's first masonry building.
1907 - Macclenny Church of Christ.
1908 - New brick courthouse. Dinkins New Congregational Church. First rural mail carrier, Macclenny.
1911 - Landfill begun for new Jail to replace calaboose. Oak Grove (Burnsed) Church.
1913 - Florida's first cattle dipping vat for control of fever tick began operation near Macclenny.
1918 - World War I. Troops guarded local trestles. Spanish influenza kills hundreds. Glen's first masonry building was a combinational mercantile and Masonic Hall.
1920 - Land boom.
1924 - U.S. 90 paved (first paving in County). First accident on the new highway ocurred near Olustee. Citizens Bank.
1925 - Austin Bus Line was first public transportation through County.
1927 - Boundry of County given in Florida law.
1929 - Macclenny Church of God.
1931 - Osceola National Forest.
1935 - Mt. Olive Congregational Holiness, Manntown. Macclenny Lions Club.
1937 - Fire destroyed the Powers block in Macclenny.
1938 - Paving begun on Raiford Road (121).
1939 - Business and Professional Womens Club.
1940 - New courthouse begun.
1941 - World War II. Courthouse construction halted and workers transferred to Camp Blanding.
1945 - End of World War II. Courthouse construction resumed. Postwar boom and increase of 'shine' activities.
1947 - Hurricane damage to roads and bridges. First Pine Tree Festival (co-sponsored by Mr. Will Knabb and the Lions Club).
1948 - Mt. Zion New Congregational Methodist. High School Band begun. Leona Knabb Chapter, Order of Eastern Star.
1949 - Olustee Battlefield put under Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials. Entire community of Baxter transported to Tallahassee by chartered bus for Fuller Warren's inauguaration.
1950 - Raiford Road Church of Christ. Faith Baptist.
1951 - Baxter Church of God.
1954 - Consolidation of County high schools.
1957 - Ed Fraser Memorial Hospital. Friendly Fellowship Club.
1958 - Northeast Florida State Hospital.
1959 - St. Marys Catholic Church. Alpha Delta Kappa. Jr. Women's Club.
1961 - Baker County Centennial Celebration.
1962 - Macclenny Art Group.
1970 - Integration of public schools. Baker County Retired Teachers Association.
1974 - Nursing Mothers Organization.
1975 - Bicentennial Committee. New jail and first permanent building for Health Department.
1976 - First mufacturing industry. Bicentennial festivities.
1977 - What we make it.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 8, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Turner House - Among city's Oldest

Macclenny cannot boast of many old houses. Among the several reasons for this are the following: the town site was either marshy or sandy and not conducive to building or agriculture; the major routes of the old days ran far around the area; the town was not platted, named, and advertised until 1883; the humidity and temperature extremes speed deterioration; and many of her citizens have equated progress with razing and rebuilding.

Macclenny does, however, possess a few homes nearing the century mark. These are often labeled 'fever houses' by the older local populace to indicate their construction date prior to the 1888 Yellow fever epidemic.

It would be well to remove split-levels, palaces, and 'Gone with-the-Wind homesteads from our minds for an afternoon, (and take a tour of these old buildings. But, do it now. One more sweep of progress will soon have the remainder of Macclenny's giant trees removed, every winding hogplum-lined rut road paved, and the last of the old Darbyville houses (as warm and sweetly musty as a grandma's bosom) sided with aluminum or leveled to the ground.

Anyone having the privilege of knowing Mr. Duncan Rhoden willl often be reminded of the handsome, white-haired gentlemen serenely surveying the traffic from his porch in downtown Macclenny. His home at a site behind Hunter's Amoco Station on north 5th Street was built about 1903 by Edgar Turner and his wife the former Mississippi Lyons.

Its architecture is much like that of Mr. Turner's boyhood home south of Glen St. Mary, and is strongly reminescent of rural New York and New England home (former home of the Turners).

The house's site, like so much of Macclenny, was deeded to the Messrs. Oliver Savage and John Darby by the Trustees of the State Internal Improvement Fund in 1867, and had been originally granted to the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad. Col. Darby's role in the future of the lot was lost at Sanderson in the courthouse fire of 1877, but Mr. Savage lost his share in a court case in which he was sued by Messrs. Daniel P. and Frank Smith in 1876. A Sheriff's Deed, dated 1885, conveyed the lot to Mr. Carr B. Macclenny, late of Virginia, for the sum of. $110.

The sheriff, John W. Vanbuskirk, formerly of Indiana, later bought the land which contained the three-year old Macclenny home. Seven months later, the fever hit the Vanbuskirk children, and the Vanbuskirk home was destroyed by fire. Completely disillusioned by their stay in the tropical paradise of healthful Florida (as per the realty advertising), they sold out to Phillip H. and Emme Ruth Dowling (nee Wolfe) and returned to Monroe, Indiana.

The Dowlings had planned to build, but reconsidered and removed to Suwannee County where they made a fortune in timber and founded Dowling Park. They sold the lot in 1890 to George T. and Phenie Pearce who, in turn, sold to Edgar W. and Mississippi Turner.

The Turners built the present house and sold it and its land in 1911 to Lot M. and Bertie Dyal for $700. In the same year, the Dyals sold out to Mr. Duncan Rhoden, a Macclenny merchant and son of a Confederate Veteran. Mr. Rhoden and his wife 'Miss Lila' remained there until his death.

The present owner, Mrs. Carol Fish Howard, is to be commended for not only securing and renovating this Macclenny landmark, but for her plans to reconstruct its turn-of- the-century appearance; perhaps a first step in preserving the town's heritage and personality.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 15, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Macclenny's Old And Interesting Houses
(Part II) The Hardware Brown House

Macclenny's past (and that of its parent towns) is one of bitter struggles between northern land companies, millionaire financiers, and even England's international money adventurer Sir Edward Reed. Among the first of the opportunists to move in after the Civil War and buy up the Cracker's land for taxes were John Darby and Oliver H. Savage.

Mr. Darby was born in Ireland, and, although little is known of his background, he moved to Baker County from South Carolina in either 1866 or '67. He established a turpentine distillery in the vicinity of present Highland's in Bradford County. He then moved his still to Trail Ridge between present Macclenny and Baldwin, and, with his partner Mr. Savage, began buying land in the McClenny area in 1867.

The little village that grew around his distillery became known as Darbyville, and it was principally a community of southerners. In 1876, Darby and Savage were in a serious suit in the Duval County court, wherein they were the defendants and lost their extensive holdings. Involved were all of Section 22, Township 2 South, Range 22, East, and other lands.

Shortly before, the McClenny family moved in from Virginia, and set up saw mills in the area. Mr. McClenny was supposedly related to the Smiths, Daniel P. and Frank, who were plaintiffs in the case lost by Darby and Savage. A northerner, Charles F. Shuey moved to Darbyville from Jacksonville in 1880 or '81, and established his law practise there. Mr. McClenny and Attorney Shuey entered into a partnership company calling themselves the Florida Improvement and Colonization Society. Mr. McClenny was president and Mr. Shuey was land commissioner for their group.

A guidebook of 1884 stated that "the country surrounding is rapidly settling up with white people from the north (the writer, representative of the more tolerant citizens from the north, made special effort to carefully separate white from colored and always capitalized 'north' and kept 'south' lower case).

Shifting the scene to Jacksonville, a Mr. Talbott of Indiana and Ohio moved to Jacksonville in 1879 to recuperate from illness. He had entered the U.S. Army in 1861 as a private and was mustered out four and one half years later as captain.

He was educated at a Friends (Quaker) Seminarny, and was a successful hardware merchant in Cincinnati. In 1880, a Mr. Coloney, wholesale grocer of Gallipolis, Ohio, also moved to Jacksonville due to failing health. The two entered partnership as Cloney, Talbott, and Co. Among the more than 70,000 acres of land they purchased at tax sales, were several acres near Darbyville; in fact, only across the railroad tracks. In 1883, they platted a town and named it in honor of Hon. C.B. McClenny, who, by-the-way, had bought into Coloney, Talbott, and Co. at the retirement of Mr. Coloney. Strong rumors have it that Mr. Coloney, the original money man in the company, was forced out.

The land on which the 'Hardware Brown' house sits, from the old Darby-Savage purchase, was sold by Sheriff Vanbuskirk to C.B. McClenny in 1885. A warrenty deed in 1886 conveyed a part of the land to W.H. Herndon, a young single man from the rural area north of McClenny and son of Methodist preacher William Z. Herndon. This lot was on the north side of Talbott Avenue, now Shuey Avenue, and west of present 228 North.

Mr. Herndon sold out in 1886 to I.H. Johnson, who in turn sold to James L. Herndon. Mr. Herndon also purchased another lot from Mr. McClenny who then had realized a handsome profit from his sales. His original purchase of $110 had grossed $662 in two years.

Mr. Herndon built the house which is still standing on that corner lot just north of the Methodist Church. He sold both his lots and house at a loss in 1895 to Mr. M. T. Howell, late of North Carolina. He, in turn, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Charly L. Hodges who had recently moved from the Georgia Bend-Baxter area after the unfortunate bloody battles in that vicinity during the so-called 'Baxter Rebellion'. After an exchange of lots between Mrs. Hodges and her brother Mr. R.L. Knabb, the Hodges sold to Mr. W.M. Brown and his wife Eunice May the lot on which the house now known as the 'Hardware Brown' house stands.

Mr. Brown, late of Columbia County, gained his title from his years of merchandising hardware at the corner of Macclenny Avenue and College Street, and was later County Judge. Mrs. Brown operated a store for some years after his death on South College.

We are indebted to Mrs. Geraldine Brown Roberts for the abstract deed information which fitted so perfectly with court records for Duval County and Webb's Guide to Florida.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 22, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The County Via The Eyes Of An 1885 Guidebook

After its creation in 1861 Baker County first made national news in 1864 because of the Battle of Olustee. In 1876, our county again became known to the world because of a little election scandal that affected the national ticket. Then, in 1885, a guidebook was published extolling the various excellent points of Florida, and Baker County was included.

Written by a Mr. Webb, here are some of the points he felt were worthy of mentioning. The county contained over 500 square miles of territory, or 320,000 acres. The population in 1880 was 2,312. He lists the bordering counties of Nassau, Duval, Clay, Bradford, and Columbia (Union was not created at the time). He credits the county as giving birth to the St. Marys River, and informs his readers that a portion of the 'Okeefernokee' (note spelling) lies within the county boundries.

Of general characteristics, the writer states that the land is level, heavily timbered, soil productive, and compares with Bradford County. Products listed are turpentine, vegetables, and fruit.

Most of the writer's opening remarks are not very enlightening, but interest comes alive when he begins to describe the communities. The four communities he lists with information are Darbyville, Glen St. Mary, Olustee, and Sanderson. McClenny merits a scant mention within one sentence under the Glen heading.

Darbyville: The fare to this little town was, in 1885, $1.40 on the Florida Railway and Navigation Company's railroad, with reduced rates to those proposing to buy land. Mr. Webb states that this site was once an old sawmill settlement but became controlled by the Florida Improvement and Colonization Society. Hon. C. B. McClenny was president of the Society and C.F. Shuey, Esq., attorney-at-law, was land commissioner for the group, and they were listed as the prominent residents.

The population was about 200. Charles B. Finley began publishing the Baker County Star in October of 1884. The town had three churches, but Mr. Webb declined to name them.

He claims the land is high and dry and the soil the best in Florida. The land, worth from $5 to $25 per acre "is rapidly settling up with white people from the North". The aforementioned Florida Improvement and Colonization Society owned nearly 50,000 acres selected land in and about Darbyville.

One of the features praised by the writer was the Hotel McClenny. Mr. Samuel H. Smith, formerly of Philadelphia, and until October 1 st, 1884, manager of the popular St. Marks at Jacksonville, was manager. Every room in the hotel was on the outside and lead directly to a broad veranda which surrounded each story making over 800 feet of covered promenade. The rates were considered reasonable, the transient rate being from $2 to $2.50 per, day.

Glen Saint Mary: Mr. Webb, as did most of the northern writers in the post Civil War in the turn-of-the-century era, completely ignored the locals. Forgetting the host of Davis, Johnson, Harvey, Alexander etc. families, he states that the first settler of Glen was Miss T.M. Tilton who located there in October of '82. Miss Tilton was the postmistress and also built a hotel to accommodate the rapidly growing population and the transient public.

About 15 families lived in Glen, most coming from the states of Kansas and Kentucky and New Engiand. The land was mostly owned by C.B McClenny. The fare from Jacksonville was $1.60 and the writer concluded by saying that Glen Saint Mary was considered a good place to make and save money.

Olustee: One hour and 30 minutes and a fare of $2.50 took businessmen and health seekers to this village of 300 population. About 100 families lived within a 5 mile radius of the post office (postmaster, V. Edwards).

The lumber mills of Eppinger and Russel, among the largest in the south, were located at Olustee. From 25,000 to 40,000 feet of timber were turned out daily, and the mills employed 126 people. Mr. Eppinger lived in New York City, but Major Russell chose to live at Olustee overseeing the mill. He also engaged in truck farming, experimented in citrus, and might have been the first in the county to attempt sugarcane on a large scale.

Olustee boasted of two schools segregated, and one church (Methodist). Mr. Webb ends his Olustee sketch with the information, "Olustee was made famous by the battle of Olustee which occured during the late Civil War."

Sanderson: Being the only community within the county that was populated and dominated by native-born and other Floridians, Sanderson was given last place and less than 10 lines. In 1885, either Mr. Webb was misinformed or Sanderson was not in favor with the railway company (the rail company was pushing Olustee at the time for settlement and investment), because the nearest station was at Margaretta, several miles away.

Population in 1880, according to the guide book was 500, an increase of 50 in 10 years. George P. Canova and Capt. Francis J. Pons owned representative orange groves. Land was worth $5 to $40 per acre. Professor R. G. Blair was principal of the county school and H.E. Thomas was postmaster.

In addition to informing the readers that this was the county seat, Mr. Webb said; "climate, water, and health excellent".
and....An Invitation

If you were living here in the winter of 1890, and ran with the right crowd, you might have received this in the mail.

This extraordinary bit of Baker County's past was provided courtesy of an individual who wished to remain anonymous and concerns a certain Masquerade Ball at the Hotel Macclenny the evening of January 30 that year. Note the "You will be expected to unmask" phrase and the names of both the invitation committee and "floor managers." Also, the fact that ladies were free. Admission, of course.

You Are Cordially Invited to Attend a
Masquerade Ball,
---To be Given by the---
St. Marys Social Club
---AT---
Hotel Macclenny
THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 30, 1890
You Will be Expected to Unmask Before a Com-
mittee of Two, Appointed by the Club to Avoid the
Admittance of Objectionable Persons.
COMMITTEE ON INVITATION.
I.H. GATES. - F.H. MATTHEWS. - C.F. PONS.
FLOOR MANAGERS.
M.D. BARBER. - F.J. PONS. - F.L. BUTLER.
Admission, Gentlemen. - 50 Cents
Ladies Free.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 29, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Background
Methodism In Baker County

Most local Methodists would like to believe Methodism began less than 100 miles northeast of Baker County when John Wesley preached beneath the giant oaks on St. Simon's Island. The truth of the matter is, Wesley was still a member of the Church of England when he left Georgia in 1737, and was still a member when he died.

It seems more than coincidental, however, that the Wesley brothers, Charles and John, experienced a religious re-awakening so soon after their return from Georgia (Charles had been secretary to Gen. Olgethorpe and John was missionary to the settlers and Indians). Whether New World-influenced or not, the 1739 Wesley experiences in London's Aldersgate District was the accepted beginning of the Methodist movement.

Methodism is distinctive in that it was not intended to become a separate denomination; its birth was almost concurrent and separate in England and the Colonies; although its founder was connected to the Colonial south, its American beginnings were in the northern Colonies; beginning in the north, it soon became a southern sect; and Methodism was probably the only sect within the Christian religion that matched its parent religion in speed of growth.

The Methodist Episcopal Church of America, the first religious group to formulate a national church in the new Republic (1784), held its first conference in April of 1785 in North Carolina. It was at this conference that an appointee was sent to ne work in Georgia.

In 1795, the state of Georgia, and, in time, East Florida was included in the South Carolina Conference. No doubt, when the St. Mary's appointment was established under South Carolina supervisions, Baker County forbearers had, at least, some binds with Methodism.

No detailed attempt will be made to bridge the denomination's American background with our area, but two books by Dr. Charles T. Thrift are recommended, namely the Trail of the Florida Circuit Rider and From Saddlebags to Satellites.

In the 1820's and early 30's, Isaac Boring preached along the routes south of our area. Boring was one of that clery breed, instituted by the Methodists, that kept preaching appointments along a circuit of missions and churches The circuit rider's transportation was his horse, his protection was his faith, and some were not opposed to giving Divine protection the added boost of a firearm, although it is not known if Rev. Boring resorted to firearms during his trips through the untamed back-country.

The circuit rider performed marriages, some couples already having entered into connubial bliss and bringing one or more children to their wedding altars. He officiated at services for the deceased, sometimes over weeks old graves. He copied statistics and dates into their Bibles, delivered letters, instructed lay preachers, ordained deacons, and arbitrated disputes.

Surely, some influence from Rev. Boring filtered northward along the various trails that crossed his regular route. But, no sooner had he laid the foundations for Methodism in the interior than the Second Seminole War erupted and cleared the Alachua region of settlers.

After hostilities ceased, the interior was re-opened and the missionaries followed settler and trader. In 1844, Ocean Pond was listed among the appointments of the Newnansville Circuit (Newnansville, one of Florida's most important towns at that time and one of the two land offices, no longer exists). In that same year, Methodism had progressed sufficiently to warrant the formation of the Florida Conference.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 5, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Split
Methodism In Baker County

1845, saw the break that created the Methodist Episicopal Church, South. The year before, Bishop James Andrew of Oxford, Georgia found himself the subject of a heated controversy at the Methodist's General Conference. He had inherited slave, Kitty Andrew (later Mrs. Snell), from a friend and admirer, entrusting her to his care, education, and manumission (freeing) if (1) Kitty wished it and (2) if Bishop Andrew believed it in her best interests.

Bishop Andrews, opposed to slavery, found himself in an embarrassing situation. The Georgia law, at that time, forbade the freeing of slaves except to be transported to Liberia in Africa, and Kitty requested to remain in slavery, fearful of a land she did not know.

The General Conference passed a resolution asking the Bishop to desist from the exercise of his office so long as the impediment of owning a slave remained. Southern members mostly protested, to no one's surprise, but, to almost everyone's surprise, the Southerners resolution was ignored. The southern delegates later met at Louisville, Kentucky in May of 1845 to separately organize.

In little more than a hundred years since its beginning, Methodism had experienced a sad schism. It took almost another hundred years to re-unite the grand sect that began with John Wesley's rules for the regulation and control of the religious life and activities of the members.

In January of 1844, Florida Methodists met in their own conference. This Conference set up, among others, the Newnansville Circuit with John W. Yarbrough as Presiding Elder. The northern section covered all or parts of the modern counties of Baker, Bradford, Columbia, Hamilton, and Suwannee, and an adjoining strip of Georgia. It should be noted that very little of present Baker County was included in this appointment, but Ocean Pond Mission was listed.

Twenty three year old John Ley, just admitted on trial to the ministry, traveled the northern Newnansville Circuit. At first, his rounds took him two weeks to complete, but due to his zeal and success, the circuit was soon extended to three weeks. He, as did all his contemporary pioneer missionaries, claimed to find no post office, church, or school building within the bounds of his circuit (one begins to wonder what happened to all the churches established by each of these Methodist, Episcopal, and Baptist missionaries when his other-denomination brothers happened by).

Earlier (about 1840), a lay, or local preacher had begun a mission about 16 miles east of Ocean Pond on the Jacksonville-Alligator Road. Located in the settlement of Manntown, the little group found regarding the beginnings of this church, but it, as many others in less civilized areas, owed its establishment to unordained preachers who saw little need to record dates.

Daniel John Mann, the settler of Manntown, was a lay preacher of the Methodist faith (the church was called for many years Mr. Mann's Church). The date of about 1840 has been corroborated by evidence and testimony made by past generations of Mann, Berry, and Reeds.

In 1846, the St. Marys District was resurrected and it included northeast Florida (westward to Trail Ridge and the Georgia Bend) and southeast Georgia. The area that was to become Baker County was still largely a stepchild of the Florida Conference, receiving no official appointments, nor even included in a circuit district.

When the fact of the population averaging about three persons per square mile is considered, there is little doubt as to the Conference's wisdom is not sending in a preacher. The Conference depended, instead, on the zeal of the local preachers in the remote regions, and, we are certain, continually prayed for their success and orthodoxy.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 12, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Methodism In Baker County During Post Civil War Era

That Mt. Olive (Manntown) Church was active in 1848 is known by the marriage ceremony of Mr. E.M. Futch and Miss Lydia Ann Mann being solemnized there. According to grandchildren, the structure in which the Futch couple married had been built of logs by the congregation, and was the second such building on that site.

In 1851 the present Baker County area was placed in the Madison Circuit and seems to have been later included, for a while in the Jacksonville District (formed, in 1867).

Civil War and Reconstruction brought problems to Methodism. New sects appeared out of the north. Splinter groups formed out of the desperation and despair of the southerners. War casualties had decimated some churches until they disbanded. As best as can be determined from scanty records, Ocean Pond (Olustee Station) Methodist Church disappeared at this time.

Upper middle Florida had dominated Methodism since its introduction into this state, but in 1869 the Annual Conference was held in Jacksonville (testimony to that city's growth in size and influence). The aforementioned problems and the shift in population might have been part of the causes of a second Conference that year, held in Lake City (still considered part of middle Florida).

The trials and tribulations of Reconstruction acted like adrenalin to Florida's religions. The Methodists, for instance, probably founded more churches in Florida then than in any other time. Unproved, but not unreasonable, stories among some of the staunch Methodists of the past claim that a Methodist Society was formed in Darbyville around 1877 or '78. Like rumors place the date around 1881-82 for Glen St. Mary's first Methodist Society (keep in mind, neither have been authenticated).

Whenever the Darbyville Society began, it is known that in 1883 it became a part of the St. Marys mission (meaning along the St. Marys River and environs, not Glen St. Mary, and stretched along the entire length of that river). Rev. W.P.O. Cain was pastor of this circuit in 1884 and 85. Rev. S.S. Gasque was the next appointment (1886). In the FLORIDA SENTINEL (Macclenny's newspaper) of Saturday, Nov. 26, 1887, is this notation: "FAREWELL SERMON". Tomorrow at 11 am Rev. S.S. Gasque will preach his farewell sermon at the M.E. Church at this appointment, and in the evening at Bluff Creek".

Bluff Creek's establishment has yet to be determined. This area north of Glen St. Mary and on the west bank of the St. Marys River had been settled by a group of Englishmen in the 1870's and 80's, and , their presence could account for the strength of Methodism there as well as a new influx of Georgians strong in that faith. (anyone with knowledge of this church would make the writer happy by sharing it with him).

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 19, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Macclenny Methodist Church - The Final Part

The earliest record of the Macclenny Methodist Church is a deed dated June 6th 1884, transferring the present property (corner of north 5th Street and Shuey Avenue) from Carr B. McClenny and wife to the trustees of the St. Mary's Mission of the Live Oak District. The sum of one dollar is acknowledged in full payment. The deed was witnessed by John McIver and A.M. Darby.

As was mentioned in the previous article, Rev. W.P.O. Cain was appointed to this circuit in 1884 and 1885 and S.S. Gasque followed in 1886. During the next five years, the following ministers were appointed to the St. Mary's Mission; J.W. Folsom, E.S. Tysen, W.S. McMannen, R.H. Barnett and John White.

At the January Conference of 1893 the charge was assigned to Rev. W.C. Norton. It was while he was pastor that the land adjoining the church property on the south and the building thereon, was acquired. The deed, dated 4 February 1893, transfers the said property from Ada McClenny and Carr B. McClenny to the trustees of the Methodist Church. The trustees were F.G. Williams, H.S. Reed, and M.G. Berry. A receipt, for $39.60 is attached to the deed covering the obligations of the church to date. A clause in the deed restricts the use of the property to a church, a parsonage, or other church needs.

During the conference years of 1894 through 1900 five preachers, traveled the circuit, including Macclenny. They were G.G. Kennelly, R.L. Summer, C.P. Setzer, L.W. Moore, and J.E. Dodd.

The next record is from the BAKER COUNTY PRESS of 8 January 1901. "METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. Services every second Sunday at 11 am and 7 pm Rev. Oliver Faus, pastor. Sunday School every Sunday at 3 pm; S.F. Bair Superintendent. Prayer meeting Wednesday at 7 pm."

It is interesting to note that the two other Macclenny churches made announcements of services in the same issue and none of the services conflict. According to some of the older heads around here, one did not have to be Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopal to achieve salvation and the citizens of this little community believed in the good effect of each of the small churches, a far cry from modern religious isolationism.

Sometimes between 1883 and 1903 the name of the charge was changed from the St. Mary's Mission to the MacClenny Mission of the Live Oak District. In 1903 this mission consisted of MacClenny, Baldwin, Mt. Olivet (Manntown), and Bryceville.

The Quarterly Conference Roll for 1903 includes the following, names; T.J. Nixon, Presiding Elder; L.B. Thurmond, Pastor, S F. Bair, Steward and Trustee; J.E. Sessions, Steward; C.C. Fraser, Sunday School Superintendent; M.C. Berry, Steward and Trustee; Charles Eiserman, Trustee; U.C. Herndon, Trustee; and J.L. Vining, Trustee.

According to the report of the Trustees at the Fourth Quarterly Conference that same year the church property was valued, at $500. There was a church at MacClenny but no parsonage.

Much of this information was borrowed from a history prepared by Miss Karlie Tyler of Glen St. Mary and former pastor Bruce Pickering with, I understand, much help from the late Mrs. Ruth Cone and from Mrs. Wilma Morris' private collection of Baker Countians. After one more article on the MacClenny Church we'll let the Methodist rest for a while.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 26, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Mrs. Fraser And The Yankees

Prior to the Battle of Olustee on February 20th, 1864, the Confederate commander sent out skirmishers and reconnaissance troops from Lake City to Impede Federal Col. Barton's advance through Florida's interior. They traveled the main Jacksonville-Lake City Road and passed at night by the home of Tom and Emily Fraser, formerly of South Carolina. The Fraser place was located near the present Hamp Register farm a few miles of Margaretta.

After a skirmish on the 10th of February on the South Prong of the St. Mary's river (about 1/2 to 1 mile north of the present U.S. 90 bridge) the Southerners were mostly killed by the overwhelming numbers of Union soldiers. It is believed that only two escaped back to Lake City and it is known that one scout, Pvt. Nathan Hunter of Columbia County, was left wounded, hidden in the scrub on the west side of the Prong on the old Barber place.

The Barber doublepen log house was appropriated by the Federals as their headquarters and hospital (the story is that the spilled blood stain could not be scrubbed or planed away and remained bright until the house burned in the late 1870's). However, with a medical team less than a mile away, Pvt. Hunter was slowly bleeding his life away in the frosty palmetto patch.

On their way back to Camp Finegan, the first place the survivors found inhabited was the Fraser House. Since not all citizens of the area had been seccessionists and the rigors and deprivations of three years fruitless war had begun to bring out the Unionist in many former Confederates, the men were cautious in approaching.

The Frasers, saddened by the loss of a son, John, in Confederate service in '62, welcomed the soldiers with food and comfort. The soldiers told the family of the wounded man they were forced to leave behind and asked them to take charge of getting him to the Confederate camp at Lake City.

It was agreed that Mrs. Fraser and the youngest son, Brantley, would make the six mile trip to the Prong. The Federals would often force almost any local male into service and the nearly seventy year old Tom would have been no exception had they needed him. An old slave was also taken to help lift and drive, Mrs. Fraser hoping the Union troops would not take him.

Thus, the 54 year old Emily, her 8 year old son, Bentley, (still alive during the writer's childhood), and an old slave of undetermined age set out in the freezing dark to find the wounded soldier.

About daybreak, the dreaded moment arrived; the mercy party met a squad of blue coated soldiers. They questioned the three at great length. Mrs. feared the honesty of an 8 year old and the loyalty of a slave so close to liberty. Perhaps, for the first time in her life, she lied. Again and again they asked her destination, but she refused to weaken, knowing that the mission of saving the soldier was foremost at the moment.

She was forced to swear allegiance to the U.S. flag; to her the banner of an invading enemy. It is creditable to Mrs. Fraser that she never passed on any bitterness, if there was any to her children.

Pvt. Hunter died that night and was buried in the Fraser front yard. The following June, the soldier's father John and a slave transferred the body from its resting place beneath the crepe myrtles to old Bethel Cemetery south of Lake City. Mr. John Hunter followed his son in death a few weeks later.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 2, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
'Sugarman' And The Polecat In The Mailbox

Sometimes an event from the past does not have to be earth-shaking or history-changing, but can simply relate to some of the human qualities possessed by our ancestors. For such an incident we are grateful to Lt. Col. Mace Harris of Orange City; Baker Countian, retired army man, genealogist and Cracker wit.

In the years preceding World War I, called 'the Great War; two of the north county's young pranksters were Henry Reynolds and Isaiah (called 'Sugarman' by the area girls) Harris. They effected the improbable task of catching a polecat (Baker County-ease for skunk) and stuffed him into the Stone-Reynolds rural mailbox.

It would be somewhat of an understatement to say either Mrs. Reynolds or the rural route carrier received a surprise package that day.

The mailbox was eventually cautiously approached and replaced. For reasons unknown (perhaps the thrifty Crackers couldn't toss away anything), the mailbox was stored in the cotton house and was almost forgotten. We don't know whether the culprits were punished.

Other events, probably bigger than a polecat in a mailbox, began to crowd the front page of the BAKER COUNTY STANDARD. Kaiser Bill and his Hun Hoard had started to gnaw and then run across Europe. Pres. Wilson protested on behalf of the United States and kept us out of war for awhile. Isaiah 'Sugarman' sailed with the Merchant Marine and his co-conspirator Henry sailed with the U.S. Coast Guard.

The War to end all wars' dragged on and Henry Reynolds wrote home near its end requesting his mother to buy some little gifts for his younger brothers. As his ship sailed the English Channel off Bristol, a German submarine torpedoed it. Henry Reynolds was Baker County's first known loss of World War I, and was soon followed by Lonnie Blair (for whom the local Legion Post was named).

Years later, Lorenzo Harris called out his young nephew Mace to assist him in setting up a mailbox for the widowed Mrs. Emma Stone Harris. They went up to the old Stone place where rumor had it a good mailbox was stored in either the cotton house or corn crib. Out in the sunshine they opened the old box for cleaning and discovered that some stinks raised take many years to die.

Many months of sun and air finally cleared the polecat odor, but the years never erased the loss of the lovable prankster and war hero Henry from the memories of the Reynolds-Stone-Dowling family.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 9, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Beginning Of Woodlawn Cemetery - Part One

This week's voting reminds one of past years when elections and their losses were subjects of some heavy fun-poking. There were recipes for gopher soup and on Wednesday mornings early risers were treated to the sight of a mock cemetery on the courthouse lawn. One year's little graveyard included the final resting place of 'your's truly'. It added to the disappointment of some, but to others it brought a smile and helped salve the hurt.

Thinking of the little courthouse lawn cemeteries prompted a search for some notes from a booklet found several years ago. It described the beginnings and rules of Woodlawn Cemetery south of MacClenny. The 2 subjects are, for all practical purposes, unrelated, but both are a part of 'the way it was'.

A small one-room schoolhouse was constructed by Confederate veteran Robert Rowe on the old Jacksonville-Lake City Road during Reconstruction for the many new families moving south of Macclenny. In 1877, a group of area Baptists began meeting in the schoolhouse and soon organized themselves as the Bethel Baptist Church.

When one of the charter members, Mr. Moses Thompson, died in 1883, Mr. Rowe offered the use of his adjoining land for the burial. For the next four years the small burying ground was known as the Rowe Cemetery and was rapidly being filled with Macclenny's deceased.

Careless interment practices and disregard for Mr. Rowe's permission to use the cemetery prompted him to threaten closing the facility to all but his immediate family. However, once a family cemetery receives one non-family burial, the die is cast; it is no longer private ground.

Mr. Rowe's second thought was to consult his brother-in-law C.F. Barber, the Rev. C.S. Snowden (Episcopal). J.O. Thompson (son of the first interment), and Messrs, J.D. Merritt, W.F, Porter and T.W. Lakin (three gentlemen lately from the north) as to the possibilities and means of controlling the grounds use. They, in turn, talked with a lawyer who advised the formation of a cemetery association.

The aformentioned gentlemen became charter members of the Woodlawn Cemetery Association which was incorporated by an act of the legislature of the State of Florida May 30, 1887. They secured other land from Mrs. Will Tracy and Mr. Ben Rowe, brother of Robert, donated land, and soon the Association began to plan out a serene parklike setting.

The original plans called for avenues converging in the center where a fountain would play, surrounded by benches and shade trees. Some of the avenues are still used but most were filled and lost during the malaria epidemic of the folowing year.

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 16, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Beginning Of Woodlawn Cemetery - Part 2

Slnce last week's write-up, this column received additonal information regarding other land donors for Woodlawn Cemetery including Mr. Dave Griffin and Mr. Addison L. Tracy. All the material for the first part of this series came from a small booklet owned by the writer's great uncle and included only the three donors named.

In a rules and regulation booklet printed by the Baker County Standard in 1903 are some rather surprising provisions. Among these was the meeting time; the first Friday of each May at 2 pm. Evidently the first members of the Board of Dlrectors were able to conform to that particular time. Today, such a date and time would indeed be awkward.

The superintendent was given general authority and would direct how work would be performed on the grounds.

No fence was allowed higher than three feet, and those built of wood were subject to explicit dimensions for pickets, rails and posts. No wood fence lumber could be undressed and it must carry "two good coats".

All lot owners were requested to remove all trash from the clearing up of lots to a safe distance from the avenues and not throw same upon other lots or in the avenues.

Jefferson's Manual, not Roberts' Rules of Order, was chosen as the authority upon all questions of parliamentary law. We doubt if anyone has lately, if ever, heard of Jefferson's Manual.

All sounded quite proper, and it is sad that the yellow fever epidemic filled the new cemetery and voided its rules so soon after the founding. But, the association survived and remains one of the county's oldest existing organizations.

Throughout the little book were penciled in notes of reminders and payments collected. "Don't forget to make form for block corners" was written on the back cover. The following people purchased and paid dues on lots: "Joseph Barton, $10; C.F. Barber, 7 lots, $105; R.W. Estes: Frank Howard; (illegible) Howard; T.J. Knabb (for Mack Monk); R. Lowde (Lowder), recpt. of $5, balance due; J.W. Rowe; I.V. Shepperd $10; Mrs. Joe Tyson, $10". These names and data were copied as written.

Another reference was to "A.D. Powers, Pres., Frank Rowe, Secty."

Woodlawn remains one of the area's most attractive cemeteries even though the founders plans for a dancing fountain and broad avenues did not materialize. Woodlawn, like our other burying grounds, is perhaps the only memorial some hardworking, hardplaying, good and/or bad people will ever have; brush off a grave today.

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THE BAKER COUNTRY PRESS, Thursday, September 23, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
American Settlement In Spanish Florida

During the British Colonial period (1763-83), Gov. James Grant had decreed that the land west of Trail Ridge was to be retained by the Seminole nation as its hunting ground and that no white settler would be permitted to enter. When the Spaniards returned in 1783, that vast territory still remained virtually unsettled.

Spanish officials traveling between the Cowford (present Jacksonville) and Alligator Town (correct Seminole name: Halpate Talahassee Telopha) found it unfit for anything, being far too sandy for crops and possessing no valuable mineral content. The end result was that very few located there, and probably none stopped in what we know as Baker County.

The nearest authenticated neighbor on our eastern side was William Daniels, Jr. (Spanish Land Grant Claims, Vol. 1). In attempting to verify his Spanish grant claim before the U.S. Claims Bureau, he deposed that he had cultivated his land before and after 1819 in Nassau County bounded on the West by the St. Mary's River and on the South by Deep Run Creek. There are two Deep Run Creeks emptying into the north-running stretch of the St. Mary's, and, according to information given in the 1827 deposition, this claim most likely meant the Deep Creek on Baker County's east boundry (this Deep Creek was later called Big Creek during the late 1800's and known again in more recent times as Deep Creek).

The heirs and relatives of Burris (or Burroughs) Higganbotham also claimed land along and near the St. Mary's near present Baker County and the Georgia Bend. Among them were Thomas, Jose, David, and Elizah Higganbotham. The Higganbothams had lived among the Spanish long enough that they often used the Spanish forms of their given names. It is interesting to note that the famed Zephaniah Kingsley (the land baron who flew the Mexican flag, married a black princess from Madagascar, bred slaves, and lent his name to Kingsley Lake) was a neighbor of the Higganbotham boys and farmed not many miles from the Baker County line.

William Nelson, ancestor to several Baker County natives and who is buried at Mill Creek above Brandy Branch, was in possession of a Spanish land grant of 640 acres on the St. Mary's near Mill's Ferry (not the same as Mill Creek). He had held his land since 1817, erected several buildings, and kept it in continuous cultivation.

The wingates, who have been active in politics and who were engaged in an unfortunate latterday feud with the Rowe family, were represented by their ancestor Jeremiah. He held 420 acres across the river from the Georgia Bend in three separate tracts, acquired in 1817 and 1819.

Thomas and Joseph R. Prevatt lived near Pigeon Creek in Nassau County, and their descendents are legion among our modern Baker County population. Thomas later became an agent for the citizens trying to verify and retain their grants under the U.S. ownership.

The index of the Spanish Land Grant Claims reads like a genealogy index of Baker County families, but it seemed that, in Spanish Florida, nobody wanted that particular area. She remained the last of the northeast Florida counties to be tamed and settled, and it was going to take a different breed of man to tackle her sand and swamps.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 30, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Seminoles Arrive

Sometime after 1807 and before 1813, a group of Seminoles moved into East Florida and settled on the northern edge of the old Alachua country (ancient Potano Providence). Driven from their homes and farms in Georgia, Alabama, and West Florida by American troops and settlers, and even by their own tribesmen the Red Stick Creeks, they were welcomed by the Spanish.

The Seminoles would provide, it was hoped, a good buffer between themselves and the land and power hungry Americans or British (the Spaniards were 'not convinced' that the American Revolution would last). The Indians hoped for just treatment and food from their longtime Spanish friends.

Among the leaders of the displaced Indians was Halpate of the Tallahassees (there are about a dozen variations and arguments regarding these two Creek words, but these will be used for this article). He stopped at a clear pond near the Spanish Trail and established his town of Halpate Tallahassee Telopha. The first American visitors, among which were Pvt. Enoch Daniels, Col., Newmans, Pvt. Elisha Green (all during the war of 1812 and the First Seminole War), James Dell, Henry Edwards, and Samuel Worthington (all Spanish grant settlers) quickly corrupted the unfamiliar Creek word Halpate into 'Alligator'.

Daniels claimed in court testimony regarding U.S. land claims by the Spanish Arredondo family that the chief of the town was called Alligator and that the town was located on the northeast side of Alligator Pond which had a spring. He stayed in the chief's home for about four days and that the house sat about 300 yards east of the spring. He estimated the town to consist of about 70-80 families.

The surrounding area was cultivated and cattle were tended on foot and on horse. At about the same time Bendoris, a Red Stick Creek sympathizer, moved to the southeast of Halpate (Alligator Town) and settled on a spring south of present Lake Butler. His community was not nearly as large as Halpate's. He and his men began raiding into South Georgia.

Another Creek Seminole, although an Irishman by birth, was James McQueen (great-grandfather of Osceola). He led his band through the area but chose not to remain near his enemy cousins of north Florida. He died in 1811 at the extraordinary & verified age of 128 years at Cape Florida at the opposite end of the territory.

His Granddaughter Polly Ann Coppinger Powell led a small faction of peace-desiring White Sticks into the southern fringe of the Okefenoke Swamp. She had earlier been confronted by Gen. Andy Jackson on the west bank of the Suwannee, but talked him out of capture and promised to go into south Florida (unfit for anything, man or beast). Probably in hopes of returning to her Georgia or Alabama home, she, instead, turned northeast and hid in the edge of the great swamp.

None by McQueens' Seminoles found relative peace. Jackson's forces under Butler killed Bendoris on the north shore of Lake Butler and scattered his town. Polle Ann's group split and drifted into the Georgia Bend, some along the upper reaches of the St. Johns, and she and her children, including young Billy (Osceola) Powell, moved to the vicinity of Ft. King near present Ocala. There, she lived some few years of peace and protection by the U.S. Army from molestation by Cracker settlers, unfriendly U.S. troops, and her own Seminole enemies.

Halpate's Alligator Town existed until 1818. The roving warring Seminoles were getting nearer and would have destroyed Halpate Tallahassee Telopha because he was, to them, a traitor to his people. The U.S. Army could not distinguish between a Red Stick (at war with the U.S.) and a White Stick (trying to live in peace with the U.S.) and most soldiers began using a phrase that went something like "the old good indian is a dead '." His Spanish friends were powerless against the relentless Americans who were determined to wrest Florida from them and clear it of Indians. Halpate was persuaded bv Col. Newmans to leave his new home for his own protection.

Once more the weary but patient Seminoles packed a few belongings and trudged south, relocating mostly in Alachua in the hammocks and swamps near Ft. King. Seventeen years later, the aging and bitter Halpate, who would then be known as Alligator, would no longer try to befriend the Americans. He would join the grownup Billy (Osceola) Powell and would become Red Sticks in the most vengeful, drawnout, and costly war the U.S. had yet fought.

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BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 7, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Early Residents And Roadways

In 1840, a big change had been made in the area's settlers. The beginning of the Second Seminole War and the great freeze of five years before had driven many pioneers back home to Georgia and other points north. In neighboring Duval and Nassau counties, the residents complained to Washington City that "starvation and murder stared them in the face."

A nationwide economic panic was probably felt only indirectly by the Cracker settlers but, nevertheless, it undoubtedly brought in new faces seeking new beginnings. The Constitutional Convention at St. Joseph in '38 seemed to make statehood inevitable and many opportunists flocked into the territory. Surely, some stopped in this area.

From old maps, a rather approximated and estimated roadway (it would be more appropriate to refer to it as pathway and trailway) map of our area in 1840 has been prepared. Combined with the existing census report of that year, we can get a fair picture of where some of our ancestors lived in relation to each other.

Beginning at Brandy Branch (topmost community on the extreme right), Bryant Hicks was the first settler within the old Columbia County line. There was much difficulty regarding just where the line lay, sometimes taking in much of present Nassau and Duval counties. Next, below Deep Creek (also called Big Creek) was the home of Jonothan Thigpen. Both gentlemen would be dead within a year as a result of an Indian raid.

Swinging southwesterly across Trail Ridge, the next settlement was that of Mose Barber. Between him and the St. Mary's River lived Mary Norton, [Thomas H. Goolsby, Daniel Nortor and, possibly, John N. Fry.

At the fork of the main river and its south prong, the trail turned west and curved northward. Along its route lived Asa Wilkinson, James Hogans, and James M. Burnsed. This trail ran into the Raulerson Ferry Road, and along it toward the east lived Samuel Davis, Abner Sweat and John Canaday (before he moved his house across the river into Georgia).

Adjacent to and within the loop of the Raulerson Ferry Road were found the settlements of W.H. Williams, John D. Williams, Roland Williams, William Williams, Elizabeth Thompson, Samuel R. Sweat, Auck Johnson, Mary Beasly, John Osteen, Hiram Bennett and James Dees. Mr. Dees seems to have also lived along the old Tallahassee Road to the west.

The ferry was owned and operated by William Raulerson, and from the ferry a trail led north to newly established Ft. Moniac at the confluence of the St. Marys and Moccasin Branch. Within eyesight was the Archibald Hogans place, and from there the trail skirted the south edge of the Okeefenokee Swamp and led into Georgia via Blount's Ferry.

The residents near this stretch were James Albritton, John Tanner, Stephen Hall, Jacob I. Blount, John F. Webb, Zachariah Davis, Noel R. Raulerson, Joseph Locklear, L. Sparkmen, L.G. Sibley, Nancy Simpson and, turning back south along the Socum Road were Elizah Wilkinson and Eilsha Wilkinson.

From the Williams settlement on the Middle Prong to the Green settlement on the South Prong, one can now only guess; those census records were lost by fire in Washington.

From Elisha Green's to Alligator were Shadrack Hancock, Phebe Loper, John Sapp, Joseph Wilkinson, Littleton Smith, Samuel Barber, John J.H. Davis, Grandison Barber, Isaac Daniel, Jesse Wiggins, Absalom Wood, Richard Tullis (or Tillis), James Edwards (very near Ft. Olustee), James Gibson, John Powell, Job Manning, John Parks, Benjamin Moody, John Williams, Leng Pierce, James Dees, James Tullis, Ezekial Weeks and William Carver.

This is not a complete list of area residents during 1840. Some records were destroyed, some of these pioneers moved every time the wind shifted, and the census takers would often rely on hearsay information. But, as close as we can get to it, that's the way it was 136 years ago.
(Note cwm: Map omitted here.)
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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 14, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Historical Potpourri
(or a collection of interesting facts not detailed enough for separate articles but too good to not mention)

Almost everyone who has searched for a word's meaning in a dictionary knows the frustration of getting sidetracked by the meanings of other words and eventually forgetting the original search. Such also happens in historical research. Many of these little gems are tantalizingly mentioned in dusty records and are never heard of again. This, then, is a collection of such odd-but-true tidbits of history.

Among Baker County's largest land owners was Sir Edward J. Reed and his Lady Rosetta of Hextable, County of Kent, England. Sir Edward, a Member of Parliament, once purchased, among other things, 86,496 and 45/100 acres for the sum of $1,000,000. Sir Edward was writer, editor, ship designer, and financier. He is generally known as the father of the modern British navy, and his designs were used by the turn of the century by Turkey, Japan, Germany, Chile, and Brazil.

Another interesting landowner was U.S. Grant, Jr. and his wife Fannie. They bought their land from Homer G. Tabor (apparently no relationship to our Tabers). Both Sir Edward and the President's son purchased their holdings in the early 1880's, and it is doubtful that either ever visited the area.

Although Hon. Fred P. Cone was not from Baker County, Baker County felt he was its own. Probably more stories are told about him and his administration than any other. At his inauguration, his sister stated that she had always wanted to slide down the governor's mansion stairs bannister. She finally had her chance and did so. And, broke her leg.

Gov. Cone told state archeologist Lamme that he didn't think the state needed an archeologist; it already had a state geologist.

And, the Governor, as a legislator, in the 1913 legislative session introduced a bill for women's suffrage (an unpopular, issue then). Sen. Cone, after seeing, his bill's weak chance, substituted with another containing both women's suffrage and the grandfather clause which would disenfranchise Black men. He claimed everything would work out fine since they were just replacing one vote with another. It didn't pass.

Sidney J. Catts, who as a gubernatorial candidate had said, the poor man of Florida had three friends, "Jesus Christ, Sears-Roebuck, and Sidney J. Catts", had been a strong runner in Bible Belt Baker County. But, six relatives on the payroll later, he had lost some of his charm. The MacClenny Standard, in 1920, endorsed his opponent Senator Fletcher by saying the Senator had done more on behalf of the newspaper fraternity, by way of preventing the paper manufacturer from going still further with their profiteerlng antics, than any other individual in Washington. His efforts shall not be overlooked here in his home state.

Two of Baker County's most interesting industries were 'The Pecan and Pony Farm' at Olustee in 1915, and a Silk Farm east of MacClenny at about the same time. The fate of the Pecan and Pony Farm has not been learned, but the Silk Farm complete with Japanese and the assistance of Mr. Ambler Dowling failed because the proprietor, Mr. C.F. Barber, had been sold the wrong kind of Mulberries to provide silkworm food (the leaves).

Snow blanketed the ground here in 1795.

A meteorite struck the south end of county shortly after the turn of the century so violently that it rocked buggles in the north end of the county.

Glen St. Mary's first drugstore was opened in 1884 by Dr. Horace Berry, formerly of Jacksonville and a native of Boston, Mass. He also operated a drugstore on Bay Street in Jacksonville, and has been given the dubious honor of bringing the yellow fever to Baker Cnunty. His house still stands in Glen.

And, Baxter, Florida is the only known community ever transported completely to a governor's inauguration and paraded for all the world to see.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 21, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The British Colonial Period In Florida

From 1763 to 1783, by reasons of the complexities of international politics, Florida belonged to England. That twenty year period did little to leave a lasting English influence, but it did create some major history-changing situations.

For instance, although they were responsible for the earlier extermination of the aboriginal Florida Timuquas, the English welcomed their relatives the Apalachees (mostly scattered remnants bonded by a common language). The Apalachees (Hitchiti, Alachua and Muscogee, among others) moved into the empty peninsula and formed a buffer zone between the loyal English Colony of Florida and the rebellious Anglo-Americans to the north and the French and Spanish to the west.

Old Spanish pathways were resurrected, Indian paths improved, and new trails cut. As best as can be determined by amateur history sleuthing, the accompanying map gives a fair idea of routes and settlements in our area during the British Colonial Period.

The map is not in complete accord with historians, but it agrees very well with maps and reports made during that period of our history. Some of the spelling is lifted directly from those old sources. Note that some settlements and geographic features have different names than those we are accustomed to.

The settlement of Traders Hill is almost as old as the Colony of Georgia and was a rather important hub of English traffic.

From it came the Ridge Trail (later called the Yelvington Trail, Trail Ridge, and highway 228), the River Road (used as an alterntative during renegade raids on the old easterly Kings Road), and spurs to the original Kings Road and the military-Kings Road, built by British Gen. Howe. Northward from Traders Hill, the trail joined an ancient Indian and trading path that ran from the Savannah River into the Creek Nation of West Georgia and West Florida.

Near present MacClenny-Baldwin, the cryptic name Anderson is listed on a 1776 map by Engineer De Brahn, Capt. Collet, Mouzon, and others. This could be either a settler or a trader. To his west, James Spaulding operated an Indian trading post near Ocean Pond, and the Hitchiti settlement of Olustee.

As can be noted in modern Baker County lay within the Seminole hunting grounds as assigned by Gov. James Grant in 1765. No permanent white settler was supposed to have taken up residence there or even pass through witthout written permission or passport.

Without the English use of the old Spanish Trail from Cowford west, the route might have been lost and never picked up by the U.S. military forty or fifty years later. The Spanish had found it to be time-consuming and unprofitable to go the northern route and had abandoned it. The English traders kept it beat out and it was evidently still visible and remembered when the Americans took over the territory. This trail is today, of course, the approximate route of I-10.
Note cwm: Map omitted here.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 21, 1976
Historic Barber Home Is site Of Art Studio And Museum
By Hank Heatherly

The establishment of a new Art Gallery and Museum at the old Barber homestead south of Macclenny is going to bring about two important objectives for Baker County. It will move the present art classes and studio of our accompilshed local artist Gene Barber, who is this year's president of the Florida Federation of Art, to larger more managable quarters, and secondly it will keep one of our county's historic homesites from the slow death of neglect.
The structure located west of SR 228 on Barber Road was originally built by C.F. Barber in 1889. The large rambling farmhouse is going to be divided into two main sections, one housing a museum of local county history and artifacts and the other to house the art gallery and separate classes and offices.

Working out of the gallery, under the direction of Sally Daniels of Baldwin, will be the Macclenny Art Group. Formed in 1962, the group did not officially conduct business until 1974 when officers were elected and by-laws formed. It is this group that is doing most of the restoration work on the homestead.

According to Gene, the traditional motiff at the homestead will reflect the staid leanings held by the group in selection of subject matter, a fact further reflected by glancing at the paintings that hang now on the walls of the new studio. The beauty and talent evident in most of the work of local artists more than compensates for any similarity in theme. Barber indicated he would like to see more adventure and liberalization in the work turned out by the studio this season.

If painters are looking for that bit of tradition, the trappings of the old homesite will offer plenty of material for them.

The history of the old farmhouse is in itself quite a story. It is located approximatley 50 feet west of the original Barber homesite, which in its own right was an imposing log cabin built by Arch Barber in 1829.

Next to the log cabin and fronting the original Macclenny road was another structure, which contained such varied businesses as a photo shop and book bindery, and a post office. The photo shop and book bindery was used in conjunction with the old Turkey Creek Nursery for the making of catalogues. This was during the years of 1907 to 1919. The road used to go to a small settlement on the Atlantic Coast line called Nursery, which was in Baker County also.

C.M. Barber had many unusual trees imported to the nursery, some of which remain and others which were unprofitable and did not fare well with the local insects. There is one large row of camphor trees still standing, they were brought to the nursery for the production of camphor oil but proved unsuitable when the cost of production could not be kept down. Also behind the present structure is a grove of tall bamboo, which was imported for fishing poles, but this again proved a mistake when it was learned that this particular variety of bambo had too great a distance between joints to be strong enough to withstand the pull of a fish.

Across the road from the nursery offices, at the site of a barn present now, once stood a huge barn that the road actually ran through, although no one seems to know the purpose for such an arrangement.

The old farmhouse has seen many historic faces. The evangelist Billy Graham once ate there as a small boy and Mrs. C.M. Barber was said to have given him some advice. Whether he took this advice to heart or not is not known, Other guests have included Florida Governors Fred Cone, Sidney Catts and Spessard Holland.

The bedrooms had no closets and all clothing was kept in shiftrobes, or more well known, wardrobes. And the ceilings in the bedrooms very low, much in contrast to the downstairs rooms which had high celiings and large windows for cooling effect.

Originally the house had a separate kitchen and you had to risk the weather to get to it, but this has since been rectified. Eating at the old farmstead followed a strict procedure. There were four tables in the dining room, at the first sat the menfold and guests, the second held the womenfold, the third house help and the fourth the youngsters. Which is quite a change from today when the children always seem to be fed first at all gatherings.

During the Baxter Rebellion as many as 100 guests were fed dinner each day of the trial at the farmhouse.

The immediate area of the farmhouse still has much of its charm. The trees have air plants suspended in their branches. And there is even a large spruce tree that is doing the impossible by reaching old age in an prohibitive climate.

The work being done now by Gene Barber and the Macclenny Art group is helping all of us. They are not trying to live in the past, but more, they are trying to give us something to gauge the directions of our community and keep the future in a proper perspective.

Some of the functions coming up for the group include a showing at the First Guarantee Bank of Jacksonville and a show with the Beta Sigma Phi sorority Winter Arts and Crafts Show on December 4th. Also this week on October 22nd, 23rd and 24th the group is having a display in Jacksonville's Normandy Mall.

The Macclenny Art Group is open to all interested persons and new members are warmly received. Curiosity about our county's past, or maybe a talent for painting that you would like to develop, or just a desire to enrich your life with art, are all excellent, reasons to stop by and join in our county's culture.
Note cwm: This Studio/Museum is now closed.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 28, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The War Of 1812 To Cracker Horse Trading

When the British marched up the St. Marys River in 1814, for the purpose of destroying the valuable Clark sawmill on Spanish Creek, (near present Folkston) Capt. Cone's Georgia Militia successfully repulsed them. Among those Mounted Riflemen was a young man named Obadiah Garrett.

After being mustered out of the Georgia Calvalry young Obe returned to his home in old Effingham County. The land along the St. Marys, unbroken and promising opportunities, remained strongly in his mind. Around 1822, he married (believed for the second time). and moved his wife to a claim northwest of Traders Hill and erected a long house on a rise near a small sand-bottom creek.

The site is now known as the J.H. Johnson place.

Making the move with Obe were his sister Mahaly and her family (married name unknown), a brother Charles, a brother or nephew named Charney and a brother William. They were the children of William Garrett of Virginia (Revolutionary Soldier). He moved his family into North Carolina during or before the War of Independence and later into Georgia onto bounty land.

Billy Bolech (Bowlegs) and his renegade Seminoles, who recognized no treaties between the Creek Confederacy and the U.S., began to boldly venture out of their hiding places within the Okeefeenokee Swamp to raid the ever increasing white settlements nearby. In either 1830 or '32, a large number of his band skirted it. Alert at Traders Hill and quietly surrounded the Garrett settlement,

Obe was about a mile away in the fields. His wife and their four small children were on the creek bank washing clothes. When he saw smoke billowing above the pines between his house and himself, he jumped on his horse and rushed home.

The little house and all the outbuildings were already consumed by flames and he saw the last of the Seminoles at a great distance disappearing in the direction of the swamp.

In the creek swamp among the blood-spattered palmettos he found the murdered and scalped bodies of his wife and three of the children. The surviving child, John, had escaped and hidden from the orgy of slaughter. He responded to his father's grieving cries and crawled from the underbrush.

The two were soon joined by neighbors who had been spared the gruesome visit of Bowlegs. Some rode hard to warn other settlers, some went for troops at Ft. Alert, and others readied the bodies for burial. Some of the riders discovered that Obadiah's sister Mahaly and family had also been victims of Bowlegs. A mass burial and services were conducted in a nearby field now known as the Hinton Gay, or Courtney, place.

Obe and his son left the burned-out farm for Traders Hill where he worked at a mill & posibly as a blacksmith. He soon remarried to Miss Mary Murray, thought to be a daughter of Richard Murray. His son John died young (legend says drowned in the St. Marys or was murdered), but Mary soon presented him with four children to ease his sadness.

After Seminole hostilities ceased in 1842, the Garrett family moved to near Ft. Moniac on the Georgia side, farming and milling. When Charlton County was created in 1854 and Traders Hill became a growing and prosperous town, Obe returned there to ply another trade, horse-swapping.

Four years later, a murder was attributed to two slaves. The victim Henry Jones, was a customer of Mr. Garrett's (no one took into account that the young Mr. Jones had engaged in activities which might have aggravated the unfortunate incident). Dr, C.E. Ballard, owner of the slaves, was also a highly regarded horse customer. When a resolution was signed by the adult white males of Charlton County that the slaves be hanged (as they indeed were, the trapdoor rope being taken in hand by each signer), Mr. Garrett's name did not appear on the document. Whether his refusal to place his signature with the others was due to his earlier situation of killing or to his better judgement regarding business can never be decided, but he became an unpopular citizen of Charlton County afterward.

Three of his sons, William, Charles, and George, volunteered for service during the Civil War. William and Charles served for the duration of the war, but George 'retired' from active military service early in the conflict. Charles might have died in the war; his young widow married a Mr. Dobbs during the 70's and moved to Tallahassee. William married Henrietta 'Henny' Murray of Charlton. They moved to Moniac where several children were born. He later removed to the Macedonia section of Baker County, farmed, and died. George, a horse-trader, was three-times married and lived in Traders Hill, Macedonia, MacClenny, and Jacksonville. He also had a large family. one to several children by each of his wives. His last wife, a widow, brought a whole slew of Strickland gals to the household.

A daughter Sarah married a Kersey (probably William or Morgan), and she later died in the 1888 yellow fever epidemic. Her newborn baby died also and was buried in the mother's arms in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Old Obe lived his last years in Traders Hill watching the town die. And, when it had died, so did he.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 4, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
How The County Figured In The Election Of 1876
[Ed. Note: We thought this chapter would be of particular interest this week, since it not only coincides with the national election but occurred 100 years ago this week.]

The occupation of Florida by Federal troops and Reconstruction forces was into its eleventh year. A national election was coming up and the vast majority of Floridians was hardly more than moderately concerned. Since the end of the war eleven years earlier, most had been concentrating on feeding & clothing themselves, oblivious to politics.

However, the fact that the controlling people in Tallahassee were "not our kind of people" and blacks were given the vote and were often dominent in local politics (most southern white democrat males had been disenfranchised), those who could, went to the polls on November 7th to cast their votes for the "old way."

If the republicans could be accused of using less than ethical and constitutional means to keep democrats away from the polls, the democrats were as guilty of using any means, mostly lawless, to intimidate republicans and blacks on that day. The telegraph lines were destroyed at several places & at least three trestles between Jacksonville and Tallahassee were burned on the morning of the 7th, including the one between Darbyville and the future Glen St. Mary.

At 4 pm the state was unsurprisingly conceded to the republicans. Congratulatlons were sent to Lt. Gov. Marcellus L. Stearns (former U.S. soldier from Maine and former Freedmen's Bureau offical) on his election as governor. The state canvassers still had to make everything official, and the republican headquarters in New York requested they hurry because the result of the national ticket depended on Florida.

George F. Drew democratic nominee for governor and another New Englander, contested the results. Crowds began to gather in the streets, emboldened by their 'almost win'. In Jackson County, local politicians attempted to transfer the republican votes to the democrat side of the returns. Telegraph lines were again cut, roads picketed with Cracker vigilantes. The general apathy which characterized the beginning of the election had changed to enthusiastic wholesale lawlessness and charges and countercharges.

In a letter to ex-Senator Thomas W. Osborn, former Lt. Gov. Stearns said, "I am convinced that it was the intention of the democrats to make the returns show 100 majority for the Tilden electors and they would have succeeded in making them show 90 majority as they claim if one of their own counties had not failed them. This was Baker County - a small democratic county which gave 90 democratic majority, but was returned by the county canvassers, by throwing out two precincts.

In Baker County, there was no republican candidate for the legislature but the seat was hotly contested for by democratic regular nominee, B.H. Gurganus, and an independent candidate, George P. Canova. Mr. Canova was among the most unreconstructed rebels in the county. Mr. Gurganus attempted to be a 'party man' who traveled the moderate constitutional path. The Canova faction, headed by county judge William Driggers, demanded the tossing out of two precincts which had given a majority to Gurganus. The democratic party attorneys urged the state canvassers to investigate the "fraud in Baker County", and set in motion a sweeping months-long recanvassing throughout the state.

As the state and nation waited, the Baker Countians continued to fight among themselves and among their party, not caring that they, unintentionally, had set the wheels in motion that returned the state for democratic nominee George F. Drew and pushed the electoral college votes over line for Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes.

In time, President Hayes put an end to the hated Reconstruction politics in the south; Dem. Gov. Drew instituted reforms to aid the state in becoming fiscally sound; ex-Gov. Stearns, an increasingly bitter man, continued to wage a hopeless battle to regain control of state politics; Mr. Canova relinquished his seat in the legislature as having been unfairly gained; Mr. Gurganus died in the 1886 yellow fever epidemic; and Judge Driggers' home precinct of Sapp, one of the 'tossed out' precincts, is now no more than a broad stretch of reforested, thinly-populated pine lands.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday November 11, 1976 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Republic Of East Fla.

The main reason for the study of history is to become acquainted with the events and situations of the past and thus, if necessary, be prepared to not make the same mistakes in the future; no argument with that. But, it's a sad waste that some history isn't included in the books just for the sake of good reading.

The Patriots' War or northeast Florida which began in 1812 and lasted intermittently until they were tired of the fun was such a romantic interlude in the Florida story. Connections to our Baker County area is but hinted at in the meager records and much conjecture.

Since President Jefferson's tenure, he and a large number of Southern warhawks had been itching for a fight with Spain in order to collect Florida as the spoils of the victor. The nation could be better protected if the entire Atlantic seaboard were under the U.S. flag, and, after the "Louisiana Purchase, they were all heady with size and possession.

Among the legal, advertised, and moral reasons for acquistion of the Florida colony were cutting off illegal slave importation, clear out the pirates' nests, and stop the raids into Georgia and Carolina by Spanish-harbored Seminoles and white renegades. It seems that little thought was given to the facts that the indignation expressed by the enraged southern-dominated Congress was coming from slave owners and sellers, the citizens of south Georgia liked the high quality and low prices of the pirates goods, and that many of the renegade raiders' leaders were relatives or countrymen of the Congressmen.

In 1811 Congress secretly authorized Pres. James Madison to plan and implement the takeover of northeast Florida.

As simply as things like wars and colony-grabbing can be stated, (1) Spain had opened her erstwhile closed colony to American settlers; (2) many moved in between the 1790's and 1812 and filled the vicinity of present Nassau and Duval Counties; (3) John Mcintosh, a planter, planted by the U.S., was to incite a rebellion of the Americans against alleged maltreatment by the Spanish government; (4) the U.S. army was to move in to protect U.S. citizens; and (5) we would accept the offer of a provisional citizens government and never let go.

From his home on Ft. George Island north of the St. Johns, Mcintosh sent out a call to the Cracker pioneers of Florida and the many fifth column soldiers-of-fortune to meet with him on the banks of the St. Marys River. They called themselves 'Patriots', formed the government of the Republic of East Florida, and elected McIntosh President.

Gen. George Matthews of the U.S. Army camped north of the St. Marys awaiting the Patriots first blow. While there, he rounded up many volunteers from among the south Georgia fold to help 'liberate' their downtrodden countrymen in Florida. Among the volunteers were a number of Greens, Prevatts, Staffords, Daniels, Sparkmans, O'Steens, Wingates and several other whose names are now familiar on Baker County census rolls.

The army crossed the St. Marys, probably near Coleraine, joined Mcintosh's Patriots, and quickly took Fernandina. That was so much fun that Matthews and Mcintosh decided to do the same with St. Augustine and all of East Florida. Taking St. Augustine has never been a picnic (the fort has never been taken by siege). To make matters worse, many of the American planters formed home militias, guerilla units, or joined the Spanish Army in order to defend themselves against the 'freedom' of having their homes burned, cattle and horses stolen, and crops destroyed by the Patriots and Georgians.

Since Congress and President Madison were also picking a war with England at the same time and the St. Augustine venture was becoming expensive and embarassing, they sent replacement for Gen. Matthews, apologized deeply to the Spanish government, and retired.

The Patriots mostly escaped to Georgia, many to the Bend, and Mcintosh was left to the pleasure of Spain. Whether because of coercion from Washington, a sense of mercy, or being just plain tired, Spain released Mcintosh, as one historian so well put it, "on his promise to behave."

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 18, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Spanish Florida Seen Through The Eyes Of A Northern Visitor

After the so-called Patriots War (see last week's PRESS), northeast Florida entered into another period of pirates infestation (among whom was Jean Lafitte) along its marshes and waterways. To worsen matters for the legitimate settlers in the Nassau and Duval Counties vicinity Andrew Jackson and the U.S. had pushed the western Creeks into what became known as the First Seminole War, and it spread rapidly throughout East Florlda.

No historian, expert or amateur, can describe the situation as well as the most, mundane letter contemporary of the period. Such a letter is included below. It was written in Fernandina in 1818, sent across the St. Marys to the town of St. Marys and placed in the U.S. mail (Florida was still Spanish territory, even though northeast Florida was mostly in the hands of the U.S. or freebotters).

Charles Millard, the writer, was from New York. He was very observant, mentioning all the common 'trademarks' of Florida; alilgators, Indians, swamps, fruit, and the weather. He omitted, however, those items that usually begin the list for latter-day visitors, such as the prices and the laziness and ignorance of the locals. Mr. Millard, not particularly noted for his permanence around manual labor nor for his erudition, did better sticking to gator and weather.
(edited)
Dear Brother,

My agreement is to stay on this island (Amelia Island) in Mr. Seton's store until the first of October and then go to the mill and stay on til the first of January and then I am at liberty to go where I please. My pay is $25 per month.

The people are considerably alarmed about the Indians up the Nassau, but I went to bed with my gun and pistol within reach and slept very sound. Nassau River runs very crooked, with large marshes on each side from one to three miles wide. Although the mill is in the woods, I could see off across the marsh at least six miles. I saw a number of alligators up the river but did not shoot any. I had one very good chance but my gun flashed twice so I was obliged to be contented with shooting some large birds along the shore.

I was three days up the river, rowed by four large negroes. This place is famous for pirates. There has been at least three or four vessels taken since I have been here. Whether they fitted out near here I cannot say. At all events, they come here to smuggle in there goods. There is one vessel off the bar now that is sunk in about six fathems water. They have four men in custody who were on board. They came to St. Marys (Georgia) and reported that the vessel was struck by a white squall and upset and that the captain and mate were wounded and that they were passengers and owned the cargo. It is now reported that the captain and mate were both murdered. It will not be ascertained until they get her up, which will be soon. There has been a number of trunks of goods found secreted in different directions along shore.

The troops here are healthy except for fever and ague. They parade twice a day. They have a band of music which plays every evening until nine o'clock which makes it very pleasant here.

(To be continued, telling of the wickness of the place.)

THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS; Thursday, November 25, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Everyday Life In Northeast Fla. - A Second Part.

Last week, we began a letter written by young Mr. Charles Millard, Jr. of New York from Fernandina describing the pirates, Indian War, and geography of the place. This concludes the letter.

"I wrote you in my last letter by mail that you must not write until you heard from me - for that occasion I have written you as soon as possible, for I want to hear from you very much.

"I had some idea of enclosing some money to you for to get me some few articles, but I concluded it might not be safe, therefore I did not do it. If you have the money to spare, I wish you would buy me two white (as best as can be deciphered these two words might be 'mosquito nets') of pretty good quality. Also one pair of shoes. Let them be made at the shop where I got one pair. You will let them measure your foot. I think your foot and mine are about of a size. Do not buy these articles until you have a chance of sending them. Send the bill and I will send you the money first opportunity. If Capt. Done, Brig-Porter, has left there, I think you will have an opportunity by the schooner Madison, Capt. Sawyer.

Do not fail to write as soon as you receive this and let Father know that I have concluded to stay here so that he may write. Direct your letters to me to the care of Robert R. Henry, St. Marys.

"I understand by the papers you have had warmer weather with you than we have had here. The thermometer has not been higher than ninety seven here except once, and then ninety nine.

"We have watermelons plenty here. Some peaches but not very good.

"I frequently hear of murders and swindlers here or at no great distance. The people here play billiards, fiddle, and dance on Sunday as much as any other day.

"I heard of Mr. Lezer's son Plexer. He was clerk in the hospital under the Patriots (see the PRESS, Nov. 11) but he since enlisted in the United States service and then ran away.

"Business is very dull at present. We do not average, in the store, ten dollars a day, which makes my work very litte (sounds like 1976).

"Give my love to Father and all my brothers and sisters, and likewise all enquiring friends. This from your affectionate brother."

Meanwhile, up the St. Marys River and 158 years later in Baker County, the official Bicentennial compilation of the county history is slowly progressing. But, very surely, the pages and chapters are falling into place and will soon be in the hands of the editors.

Our project is partly funded by a grant from the Florida Bicentennial Commission, and all such works are required to be completed by the 31st of December. The local Committee and the writer intends to comply with the rules.

We are pleased to report some volunteer aid and information over the past year. We had hoped for more material on area families' histories, churches, Blacks, education, and the community of Olustee. We anticipate some criticism because of a lack of sufficient coverage on these and other subjects. There is still time for a last minute offering of photographs, old letters, ledgers, maps, etc.

There is no great mysterious history source book hidden away under the capitol at Tallahassee into which only the elect may look and learn. History material comes partly from public records (census, tax rolls, court dockets, etc.), and the rest comes from your attics, family Bibles, memories, and cedar chests.

Our address is "County History, P.O. Box 523, Macclenny, Florida, 32063."

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 2, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Prehistoric Man In Baker County

There is no subject in new world history that is more disagreed on and more fraught with differing opinions than the American Indians of the period from prehistory through the early 19th century. There seems to be general agreement, however, that early man entered the north American continent from 10 to 20 thousand years ago. In addition to the older theory that most came be way of the island or land bridge between Alaska and Siberia, many more enlightened anthropologists think that others came by boat from Europe and Polynesia.

Radio-carbon dating (of which the writer understands little and suggests the reader check it in an encyclopedia) places some projectile points (arrows, spears, darts) at a date of 10,000 B.C. These were found with bones in Florida springs and rivers, and, give or take a couple of millennia, show that man was, or could have been, here at that time.

There are sites in Baker County where a large number of some types of points, dated 7,000 to 5,000 B.C., have been found. Three areas, Brickyard (Willingham) Branch in south Macclenny, Litered Bridge near Taylor, and Greens' Creek south of Sanderson have been particularly rich in prehistoric projectile points, certainly an indication of the habitation or visitation of early man.

The Brickyard Branch site yielded mostly stemmed (a projection on the bottom for securing to a shaft) scrapers and knives (see accompanying photo, second row from the bottom plus the blunt blades above them). These tools of hideworking and butchering are good clues to a camp site. The large pockets of chert (the material from which the points were made) chips and broken points found extensively in the Powell Bluff area is a further indication of a headquarters type site.

The Greens' Creek points are made of the same low grade chert containing fossils as was found throughout the Alachua country, dating from about 8,000 to 5,000 B.C. The extreme lower right point is from that vicinity, but is of a better grade material. A few points made of fossilized brain coral (bottom row, center) and quartz are occasionaly found with the poorer chert types. The brain coral can be found easily south of the county and quartz was probably obtained in trade or brought down by bands moving into Florida from Georgia and Alabama.

The experts disagree on the unstemmed points in the upper left. They are called, among many other things, bird points, fish points, the most archaic points, imported western points, etc. All we know is that they are found with all other types and are scattered about the entire county, and this leads us to believe they were made by different people for one common purpose.

Most of the Litered Bridge points are of the side notched (extreme right, 2nd row from top) and corner notched (3rd from left, top row) and were probably arrow heads for deer and smaller animals and large fish.

To date, no very early points of 10,000 to 8,000 B.C. are known to have been found within the county, but they might be buried so deeply that they just have not been uncovered.

Very little evidence of pottery has been found here and now known to be found with the earliest projectile points. Pottery sherds have been discovered in mounds near the okefenokee, near Taylor tower, between Big and Little Gum Swamps, north of Ocean Pond and along Trail Ridge south of Macclenny. The finds were small an not of high quality. Evidently the early people found local farming poor and moved on before developing towns and pottery.
Note cwm: Picture omitted here.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 9, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS--Gene Barber

A Letter From 1876 (All the mistakes and lack of punctuation is copied exactly)

Mary Ann Hicks was the illegitimate daughter of a young Creek girl and an unknown father. Adopted by Leke Sparkman of Camden County, she returned to her native Florida many years later as the wife of Cherokee-Irish Eli Hicks.

When reading the letter below keep in mind Mary Ann had only three months schooling and that the letter was written by her own hand. The penmanship is superb, the spelling and punctuation a bit crude, and the wording now considered quaint, but the thoughts and pain are as real as today.
(copied as written)
"S. of Georgia Charlton County, October 8th 1876

"Dear Son and daughter with a Sorrowfull heart I address you with a few lines that we are in moderate health what is alive of us tho in the most trouble we ever have experienced in our lives truly hoping this come Safe to hand and find you enjoying the blessing of good health We have the fatal news to write to you of the death of our beloved Son Robert he had Some money due him up at the Olustee Station and went up to try to collect it and Sum difficulty with a man by the name of George Cooper and the Said Cooper stabed him in the breast and he died in about ten or 15 minutes it was don on the 6th of (a capital S was scratched out) instant We have no Strait accounts yet the boys went up and brought him down and we bury him today up at the old place on the prong at the old burying ground where the old folks is buryed (Macedonia Cemetery) dear children it dont appear like we can ever bear it no tonge can express the trouble we are in "I would be glad to See you my dear children to Mourn with us tho as you are not with (us) you must Remember us in our tribulation do write to us as Soon as you Can and let (us) know how you are and when you expect to be here

"(a capital I is crossed out) we will close by subscribing ourselves your loving father and Mother till death

"Eli Hicks Mryann Hicks

"To Robert H Copeland and Maryann Copleland"

Mary Ann Sparkman Hicks had lost a brother in an Indian attack and saw her small son shot before her eyes during another Indian raid while living at Macedonia. Another son did not return from the Civil War. She later lost two other sons by violent deaths.

She lived the last few years of her life in insanity.

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 16, 1976. Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
A Cracker Christmas - Part One

By now, most of us are aware that much of Christmas originally had nothing to do with Christ's birth and was instituted as a holiday several hundred years after His death. The church fathers could not whip the ancient pagan habits, so they sort of joined them, or adopted them.

When we preach that this festive day began as a holy day and has been corrupted into nothing more than ful-filled day, we are probably preaching in reverse what our medieval ancestors complained of. They saw what used to be a lovely pagan bash being absorbed and destroyed by the big boys in Rome.

Except for the heyday of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Christmas has never been observed with more practices of organized Christian religion. However, we can be grateful that those old naughty pagan ancestors of ours (who, by-the-way, are responsible for our language, basic manners toward one another, our sense of humor, etc. etc.) are not completely forgotten. We still celebrate their old ways in their memory. Mainly, because we like it.

It is interesting, if not downright spooky, to trace Baker County Christmas beliefs and habits back to the forests of northern Europe. Sometimes, we can see an unbroken tradition for perhaps 20 thousand (a million?) years kept alive and well by genetic memory.

While Adam and family were enjoying perfection in Eden, the rest of us dwelling here in the Land of Nod were getting mighty tired of long dark winters, killing and being killed, starving, and working. As near as we could determine the middle of winter and the beginning of a new solar year (viewing the heavens took the place of TV and all night was prime time), we chose that as the time to break loose. And, we broke loose for approximately two weeks (mighty near the same time period as the 12 days of Christmas).

Greenery was brought into the huts and communal lodges to decorate and remind us of spring a'coming. Flowers were a bit scarce in northern Europe in winter, so berried foliage (holly and mistletoe) sufficed. So, while the rather prissy New Englanders were banning Christmas celebrations as being popish, and the Dutch and German tree decorations had not made it south yet, crackers in Baker County were twining cedar, holly, and smilax over the mantles as did their forbears. Christmas trees were late reaching Baker County, only a few families putting them up as late as the Civil War. The large influx of northerners after the war was the real beginning of our decorated trees.

A little midwinter gluttony was in order for old time Celts and Teutonic tribes starved for fats and sweets. Wild hogs were killed and the choice parts served for the midwinter feasts. Crackers continue to eat smoked hog Jowls (no self-respecting cracker would pronounce that word to rhyme with 'bowels' but rather with 'bowls'), and combines it with black-eyed peas and rice for New Year's. The ancients steamed puddings of dried fruits, tallow, and honey. The English later called it plum pudding, but American Anglo-Saxons in the south improved it, and now the world knows it as fruit cake. The writer remembers the ladies beginning before Thanksgiving cutting up fruit, etc., for several nights before the fireplace, baking and/or steaming the cake ten to twelve hours in a slow burning wood stove.

Extra logs were cut and dried months in advance to light the all night pagan feasts. Chain saws were difficult to come by in 10,000 B.C., so the several days chore of laying in a fire log supply was eased by attaching religious signifigance to it. Eventually, the very sane idea of retaining a fat, cured starter log for next year happened, and it became the Yule Log.

Baker Countians might have lost the year to Year Yule Log practice, but most unconsciously kept the fire tradition alive by keeping the fireplace filled and stoked all Christmas Eve night. The idea was to have a warm cabin for the children to wake to (a luxury) when they dug into their stockings under their beds for an apple or orange (more luxuries).

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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 30, 1976, Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
An Incident Of The Seminole War - Part One

"Many have been the victims who have fallen beneath the tomahawk, or before the Indian arrow or rifle; of these some have been scalped after, and some undoubtedly before life became extinct;, but few have survived the combined effects of the rifle, the scalping knife and fire, as occurred in the case of the young lady, whose sufferings we are now about to detail." Thus began the narrative of the life and sufferings of Mrs. Jane Johns as written by a contemporary who was hoping to sell copies, the receipts of which would aid her financial plight.

Mrs. Johns, her-ln-laws, and husband had connections with present Baker County families, and she and her husband, Clement Johns, lived near the banks of the north prong of Black Creek, not far from the present Baker-Clay-Duval Counties junction (Highland or Long Branch section). Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hall, moved to Spanish Florida soon after the beginning of the 19th century and settled on Trout River in western Duval County.

In 1813, a Seminole uprising was instigated by the Spanish against certain American settlers between the St. Johns and the St. Marys in retaliation for their plots against the Spanish government. Some Americans were killed, and the Halls fled by boat down the St. Johns to Pearson's Island where, in the rain and open, Jane Hall (later Mrs. Jane Johns) was born.

When the Seminoles ceased hostilites the following winter, the Halls returned to the interior and homestead on Sweetwater Branch.

There, they survived the most severe portion of the First Seminole War, but were attacked in 1821 by a band of Bolech's (Billy Bowlegs) Okeefeenokee group. Little Jane lost a brother during this attack. An uncle, a Mr. Carter, was seriously maimed, and her neighbors along the St. Marys, the Lanes, were butchered by the Indians.

After the 1821 raid, the Halls removed to the St. Marys River across from Ft. Alert (Traders Hill), and remained until the Seminoles again ceased their attacks. The Hall Family next traveled south along Trail Ridge to present Bradford County and settled on New River not far from present Raiford at a now defunct village called Alachua (not to be confused with the present town of that name). There, in 1836, married Clement Johns, "a young man of excellent character and of industrious habits".

The newlyweds rented a farm on the Jacksonville-Alachua Road (the southern route of the Jacksonville-Tallahassee Road), and awaited the birth of Mrs. Johns' first child.

The year was 1836. The month was a hot September. News had just reached Jacksonville of a Seminole raid on the Higganbotham farm west of Jacksonville. According to the Jacksonville Courier, Maj. Hart and several militarized townsmen rushed to their rescue. There, they found no one injured, but all badly shaken (more on the Higganbotham raid in a later article). The troops immediately hit the Indians' trail which had led from Brandy Branch, split toward Trail Ridge and McGirt's Creek, and aimed south toward Black Creek and Alachua County.

Maj. Hart's men did not find the Seminoles, but at the McCormick farm, rented out to Clement and Jane Johns, they found gruesome evidence of their visit. "On examination, Major Hart states they found the calcined bones of a human being burned in the house. A piece of the back bone was found with some flesh upon it. The skull was to be seen, but at the touch it fell into crumbled pieces.

The bones were mostly reduced to ashes. Near the house was found a quantity of hair, to appearance that of a female.

They rode hard to the Lowder place, expecting the same sight. The house was untouched, dinner still warm on the table, but the family gone. The next farm was that of the Sparkmans. What they discovered there, and the COURIER'S ensuing description, would remind us that violence and sensationalism-journalism is not a product of the 20th century.

To be continued

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