"Baker's Dozen" book: biographical narratives of Baker County, Florida people (Pt. 1)

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                          Baker's Dozen

               By La Viece (Moore-Fraser) Smallwood
                          Published 1993

Copies available complete with photos, Favorite Recipes, Cracker Jargon,
                     Signs, and Superstitions

Permission has been granted by the author for posting to this page.

Contains biographical narratives and genealogical information of the
following Baker County folks:

* Otis and Mattie (Crews) Canaday
* Annie Mae (Mobley) Thrift
* Emily Davis Harvey
* Ella Dowling Taylor
* Bufort and Joyce (Fish) Thrift
* Nellie Gaskins
* Funston and Hazel Richards
* Abigale Camilla Stephens "Abbie" Cook (in pt. 2)
* B.R. "Bob" and Myrtle (Mattox) Burnsed (in pt. 2)
* Jimmy and Marie (Rowe) Burnsed (in pt. 2)
* McKinley & Daniel Crews (in pt. 2)
* Clyde and Mamie Sands (in pt. 2)
* Mary Finley (in pt. 2)

_____________________________________________________________________________

                 Otis and Mattie (Crews) Canaday 1993

     "God's been watching over me all my life and I didn't even know
it until 40 years ago. I just always thought it was luck."

     Those are the sincere words spoken by Otis Canady, born March 21,
1917 South of Moniac, in the Georgia Bend area. He was the only child
born to the five year union of Aaron Canady and Rosa Mae (Rhoden), but
prior marriages of both parents had produced many offspring and gave
Otis a rich family heritage he treasures.

     Otis's father Aaron was a prosperous farmer and cattleman. He
worked hard to make a living that supported his large family. He'd
kill hogs on Fridays and peddle the meat to turpentine camp, said
Otis. "Recon, that's where I got my peddling."

     Almost any day of the week, except Sunday, you can find the
retired 'Jack of all trades' sitting by the roadside 'Peddling' the
lush wares that comes from the rich flourishing soil within the 40
acre plot of land he and his beloved wife Mattie have toiled for most
of their half century married life. 'Just Right' turnip greens (his
favorite), Florida Broad Leaf mustard greens and Georgia Collards are
his specialty. Then there are Georgia Red sweet potatoes, vine ripe
tomatoes, Black-eyed peas, Purple Hulls, Zipper Creams, Cow Horn okra
(grows up to 12 inches long) and corn...perfectly grown Silver Queen!
He's got it all, including the best reputation possible for the best
Baker County farmer around!

     And wife Mattie knows how to cook it up and serve it 'just right!
when he sits down at her table laden with food she's learned how to
season with personal meticulousness over the years of experienced
cooking.

     The tall lanky youthful looking man, with piercing blue eyes,
began his life in a frail existence. No one expected him to live
longer than a day.

     "I don't really know what was wrong with me," he said, but the
ole Grannie woman that delivered me told my mama I wouldn't make it."

     Rosa Mae, his mother, weighed almost 300 pounds, and Otis has a
feeling that may have had something to do with his feeble condition.

     "I've since watched animals that are overweight give birth to
smaller, puny offspring.... and I just think that's what happened." he
said, explaining his observations.

     He was his mothers baby until the end of her life. Even though he
was a grown man with a family, he nursed her, and cared for her in his
home, when she became ill and helpless.

     "We were close. We were always together."

     It was one of those times when they were together that he first
saw Mattie. "I couldn't have been more than six or seven, but me and
Mama were walking along the road going to a cane grinding, and I saw
all these children playing in the yard. I began to beg Mama to stop
and let me play with 'em, but she was in a hurry, so we went on."

     The home they passed was that of Tom Crews and his wife Mary
Thrift. Their daughter Mattie was three years younger than Otis.

     When school started he didn't pay much attention to the 'younger'
Mattie, but cast his attention on 'the older girls'.

     Otis was five when his parents separated and his mother moved
near her brothers farm near Kyler so that is where he began school.
Scores of Rhoden cousins were his classmates.

     Before long though, Otis and his mother, two brothers and a
sister, moved to a home provided for them by T.J. Knabb in the
Macedonia area and sharecropped his land.

     "I don't see how Mr. Knabb made any money off the deal," he said.
"He provided all the equipment we needed to farm, the mules, plows,
seeds, fertilizer, and even our home. When we made the crop he'd take
what we'd produced to town and sell what he could and give us half the
money, which wasn't ever much, but enough to buy us some shoes and
clothes." he said.

     Otis attended the Garret School, where Mattie was a student until
he finished the eighth grade.

     "My mama could outwork any man around and she worked from sun-up
to sundown. Times were hard. She picked cotton, plowed the fields,
whatever needed doing. Most people made .75 cents a day, a $ 1.00 a
day was tops, and considered that real good money. Mama saved every
penny and had over $400 in the Macclenny bank when it went busted. A
man by the name of Goodbread ran the bank and one day he just closed
the door and left. I remember my mama being so upset. She never had
anymore money to save.

     "Most people didn't have a car in those days. We walked
everywhere we went unless we could catch a ride. Mama and I walked
through the woods to Oak Grove Church and hoped we could catch a ride
home."

     Otis was yet a teen-ager when he cast his eyes on acres of land
that belonged to Mr. Rubewn Crawford adjoining the land where he
worked as a sharecropper for Mr. Knabb.

     "I could see it was good land, very fertile and rich. Everything
he grew was pretty and glowed with color. He had the prettiest patch
of strawberries you ever saw right there at the corner of 23-A and
23-D where my son Marvin now lives. He grew the finest sweet corn and
greens in the county. I wanted that land so bad, but I knew it was
impossible, because I was lucky just to have shoes and clothes to
wear," he said.

     Otis next move was with his mother on 10 acres of land in the
Macedonia area that his brother Willie had purchased. He was out of
school by now and farming, finding work when he could with others.

     "The first job I had besides plowing an ole mule was cutting
green oak wood for 75 cents a cord. I had to walk two miles totin' an
ax, my lunch bucket and a water jug. You had to work hard and fast to
get a cord of wood and earn the 75 cents," he said.

     Then his employers truck tore up and ended the wood-cutting job.

     Otis had an opportunity to buy his brother's ten acre farm for
$200.

     'But I didn't have $200. That was lots and lots of money back
then. The bank turned me down, Then I went to see some people who were
known to loan money. They turned me down, too. Finally my uncle Hardie
Rhoden loaned the money to me. I had to pay him 10 percent interest ..
yep, way back then and as hard as times were..10 percent interest," he
noted.

     "The first year me and mama was left by ourselves I planted a
patch of okra and carried it on the back of my mule in a hog sack
(called so because corn for the hogs came packed in it) into Macclenny
and peddled it to merchants like Ira Walker, Leo Dykes and Mr.
Thompson.

     "Me and mama got by. As tough as times were I never remember
sitting down to the table when there wasn't enough to eat. And it was
good, cooked or raw."

     "I planted watermelons but could only get 5 or 10 cents a piece
for them. I peddled them in a mule and wagon in town selling to the
merchants and around in the settlements. I wasn't making no money,
just barely enough for necessities."

     Then things changed financially for Otis.

     "Just before my daddy Aaron died, he divided his herd of Piney
Woods cows with his children. I was about 17 or 18 years old. My share
was 47 head. I could butcher a cow, peddle it to town and sell the
meat for $10-$12 dollars, and the cowhide would bring me $4.00. I
could buy the best pair of Sears Roebuck leather brogan shoes for
$1.98 back then."

     He bought his first car. It was a 1928 Model A. Ford and on sale
for $80. Otis talked the owner, Mr. Charlton Mobley, into a fair
trade.

     "I gave him 40 gallons of good cane syrup and four of my Piney
Woods cows for it," he said.

     In four days he had returned it to Mr. Mobley.

     The old car was just wore out and it started knocking and making
a terrible racket. I told Mr. Mobley he could just have the 40 gallons
of cane syrup for the four days I drove it and, I'd keep my cows which
I hadn't delivered yet But Mr. Mobley said a deal was a deal so I just
kept the old car. it still knocked real bad, but it would run."

     His mind turned to marriage and the cute little girl he had seen
playing in her parent's yard many years ago.

     "I really liked the looks of her. I wanted to get married but she
didn't want too. We dated for awhile, but finally I just told her if
she didn't want to get married we'd just break up.

     "I kinda went hog wild after that," said the forthright Otis.
"I'd hate to tell you all I did. I'd stay out all night come home just
in time to dress and go to work."

     Mattie's mother became ill when a rabid house cat bit her. After
she recovered from the bite the doctor warned her not to get in the
sun or 'the fit will come back on you', he told her. But a few weeks
later the hard working Mary Thrift Crews placed her small baby in a
wagon, pulled the child to a shaded tree area, and began hoeing in the
hot field.

     "By night fall they had to tie her to the bed," said Otis. "She
went mad and died just like the doctor told her she would."

     Thomas Crews was left widowed with six children: Roy, Donald,
Edward, Lillie, Mattie and the little baby Lennie Mary. Before long
Mattie's father Tom married Otis's older sister Rosie Mae. She brought
a daughter Juanita (Burnsed) into the marriage with her. The couple
then had four children together, Auzie, Lewis, and Beulah. A little
daughter, Ruby Jeanette, died young. in all, Mattie belonged to a
large family of 12 people including her parents. Even though the
family was large and the home overcrowded, she still did not have
marriage on her mind. She worked in the adjoining fields of her
neighbors for six cents an hour, mostly hoeing peanuts and corn in the
heat of summer. Otis was determined to marry her.

     "We went to a family gathering and Mattie was there with my
nephew. I decided then and there I was going to have her so I talked
to her and we started dating again.

     "I had sold some of my Piney Woods cows and traded my old 1928
Model A in on a great looking 1931 beauty with vinyl upholstery. It
ran 50 miles per hour. And that's when Mattie decided to marry me," he
winked.

     "Well, not exactly," spoke up Mattie.

     With out a formal wedding ring, a new dress, or her parent's
permission, Mattie went with Otis to see judge Frank Dowling one night
and he married them in the privacy of his home.

     We just ran away, I didn't ask her daddy, I think they must have
had an idea."

     The two drove to Jacksonville in Otis's 1931 Model A Ford.
Neither remember the name of the hotel where they spent their four day
honeymoon. She was 17. He was 20. The year was 1937.

     "We drove back to Baker County to my little mansion on the ten
acres. It might not have been much, but we could lay in bed at night
and look up through the wood shingled roof and see the moon and
stars." he said dreamily.

     "Yea and that's not all we could look up at," reminded Mattie.

     "Right, there was a big rat snake on the rafters just above us,"
he said laughing.

     And Mattie laughed too.

     "He told me the snake wouldn't hurt us and that it would eat the
rats," said Mattie. "He promised that as soon as the rats left the
snake would too. I had to believe him."

     Mattie says she doesn't look back on the past as 'the good ole
days'.

     "I don't really like to talk about it or think about it" she
said. "we didn't really live any different than most people back then,
everyone had a hard time, there just wasn't money to buy the things we
do today. My daddy usually traded the vegetables and meat we had from
the farm for our necessities. I had one pair of shoes each year when
school started and used the older pair for the field work. We made our
own clothes from flour sacks, sugar sacks or chicken feed sacks," she
said." The material was colorful and pretty for our dresses. We'd
bleach the white sacks for our slips and underware. Everything was
home made.

     "If we girls got any jewelry it came from a Cracker-Jack box,"
she noted.

     And wash day wasn't the ' good ole days ' either.

     "We made our own soap by frying the hog's skin (crackling) and
adding lye. After taking all day to do the family wash by boiling the
clothes and scrubbing them on a scrub board, rinsing the clothes in
boiling water, we'd hang them on the line and fence to dry. We
starched the clothes by making our own starch from plain flour and
water, then ironed them on a hand made ironing board, with ole heavy
hand irons that we heated on the wood cook stove. No, that wasn't the
good ole days to me, I'd just as soon not remember," she said.

     And bath time in the good ole days wasn't exciting either.

     "We'd let our number two tub of water sit in the sun to warm all
day, then tote it back of the barn, or somewhere private, and bathe.
We started with the youngest child up to the oldest using the same
water unless it got too dirty. Sometimes we had more than one tub.
When we got bigger two of us could tote the tub filled with water into
the bedroom for more privacy."

     After the clothes were rinsed on wash day, the family used the
rinse water to bathe because it was usually warm from the fire built
beneath the big iron wash kettles.

     At least this was a weekly chore. During the week the family
usually just washed their feet.

     "We had a foot tub we used at night, and we set it before the
fireplace so it was warm. We all used the same rag.

     And the water was brought up from the well, set on the water
shelf on the porch, and before each meal everyone washed their face
and hands.

     With no electricity, there was, of course, no indoor plumbing
either.

     "We girls had a chamber pot we used at night, but in the day we'd
have to empty it at the outdoor one seat toilet (or privy). We'd then
have to wash it out good and let it set in the sun all day so it
wouldn't smell so bad."

     The boys had a different ritual, she said.

     "Well, they'd go out to the barn, or chicken yard, or the woods,"
she explained.

     You may have a good point I told her, about the past being the
'good ole days'.

     From that humble beginning the two have lead a happy and
prosperous life in Baker County.

     Mattie cooked on a wood-burning stove in her humble abode. No
one, including them, had running water or electricity in the area.
They farmed and peddled vegetables for a living. His Uncle Shep Rhoden
would come by their house and load up vegetables from the garden and
take them to Jacksonville to sell at the market along with his. Otis's
Piney Woods cattle began to multiply.

     Otis's little mansion on his ten acre farm suited Mattie fine,
but it had its problems and Mattie set out to solve them. She took
b1eached flour sacks and with the help of her neighbors, Liza Nipper
and her daughter Ruby (Rolfe), she fashioned some pretty curtains and
room petitions. When she needed baby clothes, her neighbors taught her
how to sew them, using pretty sugar sack material. She bought some
soft flannel to make the baby's diapers.

     "The shell of a house was kind of dilapidated because no one had
really lived there in awhile," she said. "The house was close to a
branch so the wood varmints had to learn it wasn't theirs to occupy
anymore," she said. "We could hear the rats out at night roaming
around, but they finally disappeared when they found out we were there
to stay." Otis promised her they would all go away including the big
fat rat snake that obscured their view of the stars and moon as they
laid in bed at night staring up through the wood shingles.

     But that's not exactly how it happened. Otis had said they needed
the rat snake to eat the rats around the house, and as the rats began
to leave it eventually disappeared too.

     Or so Mattie hoped. She hadn't seen it for awhile.

     "My dad built me a small linen closet in the house and, one day
when I was reaching for some linens it fell right on my head. I just
screamed and ran, Otis had said we couldn't kill it."

     Thankfully, after a while, the snake took up resident in the
barn.

     "I got use to it, Otis said it wouldn't hurt me, but I also got
use to killing some that I wasn't so sure of," she said.

     When Otis's daddy died, Otis's share of the estate came to $1,050
and things began to change for the couple. They paid off a few bills,
bought some badly needed items and began to think about another kind
of investment.

     "I told my wife, I was going to see Mr. Crawford and try and get
that land I'd always wanted," said Otis. " I knew Mr. Crawford had a
$1,000 mortgage on the entire 80 acres he owned and had only been
paying interest and a little principal for 17 years. Maybe he'd sell
me the 40 acres I wanted."

     Otis went to see him and Mr. Crawford said, "Son, I been thinking
about selling if I can get enough to pay the mortgage off." "Well how
much is it Mr. Crawford?" Otis wanted to know.

     "Seven hundred and fifty dollars," came the quick reply.

     "I only got $700. Mr. Crawford," Otis told him. (Otis had spent
some of his inheritance on other things).

     After thinking about it Mr. Crawford agreed and Mr. Branch Cone
made up the deed. He explained to the two men though that if Mr.
Crawford was to default on the $50. or payment on the other adjoining
40 acres he still owed, Otis would lose his 40 acres to the Federal
Land Grant Company.

     That didn't sound so good, so Otis agreed to go borrow $50. and
pay Mr. Crawford if Mr. Crawford would throw in his nice fertilizer
distributor with two disks. (Oh it made the prettiest rows you've ever
seen, said Otis.)

     It was a deal! Otis and his wife now started talking about
building a home. They sold the old farm back to his brother and Otis
headed to Sanderson with a friend, Jimmy Lyons, to look for lumber at
a previous sawmill site.

     "The salesman told us he'd give me the best deal around. It was
good cypress lumber, not a knot in it, 3/4 by 8 inches wide and 14-16
feet long. The good deal was $20. for a 1,000 pieces."

     Their four room wood shingled house was built with pride, friend
Jimmie helping when he could, and cost the couple between $200-$250 to
build. When his employer saw signs of success, Otis lost his
Depression job with the WPA because they thought he didn't need the
money from it as much as others.

     With World War II raging, Otis went to work in Camp Blanding
applying for a .35 cents an hour assistant carpenter's job thinking
himself not qualified as a $1.00 an hour carpenter. By the end of the
day he had changed his mind.

     "Why them other men couldn't drive a nail straight!" he wailed.

     Next morning he stood in line to apply for a job as carpenter.
With a lot of running here and there he made the change and he was on
his way to preparing for a new and exciting career.

     Mattie was staying home having us some children and working on
the farm during this time," he said smiling at Mattie.

     Their children born close together are Wayne, Marvin and Sandra.
A son, Bruce came along when daughter, Sandra, was 13 years old.

     "We grew greens but they didn't bring but five cents a bunch or
.25 cents for a dozen bunches. They went so cheap because the market
was flooded with 'em." said Otis.

     There was little money in farming, so when Otis left employment
at Camp Blanding he went to work in the Jacksonville Ship Yard until
the war was over.

     Otis then used his carpentry skills to build homes and business
in Baker County. Among the many he built was TJ. and Lyma (Fish)
Raulerson's first home in Macclenny, Claude and June (Yarborough)
Walkers home on Hwy 90, Mr. Claude Rhoden in Glen and two for Jack and
Jean (Rhoden) Tony. His pride and joy is the Glen Baptist church ...
the old one and the new. That's where he worships with Mattie and with
friends.

     "I'd called everything good that happened to me luck," he said.
'oh I knew about the Lord. My mama was a Christian and she would read
her Bible to me sitting in front of the fireplace by the glow of a
kerosene lamp. Lots of times what she read and told me about such as
the Lord's goodness and love and about how God would come to His
people, came back to me. I'd remember her words. My mind had them
stored, but I'd tell the Lord, 'Lord, I'm not a hypocrite, I'm not
really bad,' and I didn't think I was."

     One day that changed.

     Daughter Sandra invited her parents to a revival in the Glen
Baptist Church.

     "We went one night and when they had the invitation to join I
just sat there holding Bruce who was a baby, and I'd stare at the
wall. Then the next night we went it happened again. I was holding
Bruce, staring at the wall during the invitation to come up, when I
felt movement. I looked up to see Mattie going down that isle. I just
laid that baby down on the seat and caught up with her. It was what I
wanted to do, and just wouldn't do it myself.

     "I didn't call the good things that happened to me luck after
that. I knew the Lord had been looking out after me all these years.
That was 40 years ago," he said.

     Mattie eventually returned to the class room and received her GED
certificate of graduation at the age of 48. She was employed for 6 1/2
years in the Macclenny Elementary School Cafeteria.

     Today Otis peddles his reputable vegetables for fun of the labor
and harvest. He and Mattie sit beneath the tall majestic pecan trees
he planted in 1939. They shade their house from the sun and give
stately grace to the now modern home that has changed but very little
since they built it They talk about the good old days. The hog
killings. "We used up everything the hog had to offer except his
squeal and his hair," said the jovial Otis.

     They tell about how they stored hog bones without refrigeration
to be used all year for flavoring. The bones were fried in a huge
kettle, then usually stored in five gallon lard cans packed in the hog
grease.

     "We'd flavor vegetables with 'em, or cook them in rice, or with
dumplings," said Mattie.

     Mattie is known as one of the best country cooks around. When she
flavors her greens she uses fresh bones, preferably fresh back bone,
for the turnips. For mustard greens she fries or steams smoked bacon
in a small amount of water, then adds her greens. For collards she
uses smoked meat like bacon. On New Years Day she adds smoked hog
jowls to her black-eyed peas.

     There's a secret to growing good greens too, said Otis. It's
important to plant them in well prepared soil. it's important to break
the soil up with a good disk, buy good seed and good fertilizer and
never, ever, let grass grow up around what you've got planted. Keep
the weeds down. When the greens are about 8-10 inches high give them a
good side dressing with nitrate of potash. If you do all this your
greens won't likely be bitter.

     Mattie cooks her okra in the oven. She cuts it up, salts it adds
bacon grease or oil then puts it in a baker covered with tin foil for
about an hour. She takes the foil off for a few minutes so the okra
can dry out a bit. She likes the long tender cow horn okra for frying
or baking because it doesn't have as much slime in it

     Farming's not easy, just rewarding they say.

     "We depend on the Lord to send rain for irrigation. I figure if
we'll get out there and work the land he'll bless me with a good
crop."

     Otis said his real harvest is in the church.

     "That where I've seen the miracles," he said, his steel blue eyes
misting with emotion.

     "I remember once when a new minister at our church ask all the
men attending prayer meeting to name the five meanest men in Baker
County to add to our prayer list They named one man, and I thought 'I
know it's no use to put his name on the list' then they named another
and I said, 'no use to put his name there either. I felt the same by
all five of the men whose names were put on the list for prayer, but I
have lived to see three of those men, their wives and some of their
children saved."

     "If I had to live my life over again I'd just as quick as I
could, give my life to the Lord. After all, we're living in His world,
we're using His things, His medicine, His gasoline. It amazes me how
He provides for man as man needs it, reveals it all within the earth
He created."

     Most of their past lies buried in Macedonia Cemetery down the
road. But the memories are alive and a treasured part of the heritage
they value.

     And to repeat one of the favorite Baptist hymns to describe this
couple there could not be one more appropriate than "Oh when those
Saints, go marching in, Oh when those Saints go marching in, Oh Lord I
want to be in that number, when those Saints go marching in.

     FOOTNOTE:
Rosa Mae Rhoden married 1st Sun Rhoden: Their six children were Nealie
(Jim Lyons), Lottie (Dewey Fish), Mae ( 1st Fred Burnsed)( 2nd Thomas
Crews), and sons Lacy, Farley and Willie.

     Aaron married 1st Alice Crawford. Their five sons were: Canadier,
Fletcher, Main, Milledge, and Lonnie. Their three daughters were Sarah
(Fish), Emma (Harris-Stringer), and Sippie (Harris-Hardnstine).

     The union between Aaron Canaday and Rosa Mae Rhoden produced only
one child, Otis, born March 21, 1917.

     Aaron Canaday (1867-1935) is buried at North Prong Cemetery next
to his first wife Alice Crawford Canaday (1872-1912).

     The name Canaday is spelled both Canady and Canaday between the
various family members.

     Thomas Burton Crews (Jan. 25, 1887-November 9, 1951) and his
second wife Rosa Mae Canady-Crews, (August 20, 1907-Dec.23, 1991) are
buried in Macedonia Cemetery.

     Mary Thrift Crews (1885-1925) Thomas Crews first wife is buried
in Macedonia Cemetery. The dates engraved on her grave marker may not
be correct as Mattie said the family could not be sure since they have
no official knowledge of her actual birth date.

     Rosa Mae Rhoden (1881-1940) was first married to Isaac Rhoden who
died Feb. 14, 1909 at the age of 34. They are buried in North Prong
Cemetery next to a son, Leon (March 25, 1897-March 1909)

_____________________________________________________________________________


                       Annie Mae (Mobley) Thrift

     During her lifetime Annie May (Mobley) Thrift has been a
life-line between herself and others. She has nurtured, and cared for
scores of people, sustaining them through simple problems in their
life to showing compassion by tending to their needs to the end of
their journey. Her genuine love and compassion has not gone unnoticed
or unappreciated. As the winter of her life approaches, she is loved
and cared for in return by her family. And although she has forgotten
the insignificant formalities of some dates and places, she has not
forgotten the most important things of all. The love and heritage of
her family. Annie May was born to Andrew Jackson Mobley and his wife
Lucy Lucinda (Crews) on February 15, 1910 in Macclenny. She was
delivered by 'Aunt' Fannie Todd.

     When she was young her parents moved to a farm north of Macclenny
and Annie May walked the mile and a half to Garrett school come rain
or sunshine, carrying her lunch pail of grits, fried egg, baked sweet
potato and bacon, ham or sausage. Tagging along were her brothers
Lacy, Claude, Jesse and Donald.

     "We had to eat a full breakfast before we left home, but when
time came for us to eat our lunch, Well, it was so good." she said.

     one of her teachers was Lucinda Rhoden and a few of her
schoolmates were Lillie and Lois Garrett, Russ Elmer Thrift (she had
her eye on him ), Donald Crews, Edna Thrift, Daisy Thomas, Vera Cox
and Charlton Mobley.

     We had fun at school. We played ball, drop the handkerchief and
games like that. The boys mostly wore over-alls and the girls knee
length dresses made from pretty material salvaged from flour and sugar
sacks.

     She was particularly fond of one classmate, Russ E. Thrift (whom
she fondly called Russie). He was a little older and in a higher grade
than her.

     We called ourselves 'dating' one another. We would walk home from
school together and when we got to my lane we'd say good-bye and he'd
walk on down to his house. "

     Each morning at breakfast her father Andrew would give all the
children instructions as to what to do when they came home from
school.

     "And we did it too, no problem, we knew not to, there was little
discipline problems because we did what was expected of us."

     After she finished the eighth grade at Garrett School she went to
work full time in the fields. Russie had moved to Macclenny to live
with a sister so he could advance to a higher grade in school. When he
came home on week-ends the two would see each other and talk about
marriage.

     One night we were sitting on a bench on my front porch and Russie
thought it was time to ask my daddy if we could get married. My
parents had already gone to bed but we went in and Russie asked my
daddy. My daddy said: Do you think you are old enough to take care of
my daughter and make a living for he?" Russie told him 'yes' and my
daddy gave us his blessings."

     The couple returned to the porch where Russie kissed her
good-night and walked the mile and a half home in the dark to his
house.

     Russie's father was not so happy and a few months later when
Annie Mae stood before Judge Milton at the old Macclenny Court House
in her pretty new blue dress, Moses Thrift was not there.

     He was home fuming," remembered Annie Mae.

     Moses wife Laura (Hunter) Thrift was there and Annie Mae's
parents Andrew and Lucy Mobley.

     The couple had expected opposition to their plan to marry. In
preparation Russie had previously taken Annie Mae to Jacksonville in
his Model T Ford, along with his sister Effie (Thrift) Barnes, and
bought Annie Mae's trousseau. A pretty blue dress, a pair of hose, a
slip, bra, and underwear. Annie Mae had hid her ensemble at Effie's
house for security.

     "If we had problems we planned to just run away," she said.

     For the honeymoon the couple drove to Dinsmore and spent a few
days with her brother Lacy who ran a rooming and boarding house.

     "Didn't cost us a penny," she smiled.

     Russie was working for his brother-in-law, Lynn Barnes, as a
mechanic on Hwy 90 (on south side of Macclenny Ave between 121 and
228). The couple lived with Russie's sister Effie and her husband
Lynn. They cooked together, ate together and got alone great.

     In a year Mose Thrift was in a better mood about the marriage and
the young couple moved to his farm and lived in the cotton house next
to Mose. Their furniture consisted of just a bed with a homemade
cotton mattress. During the day, Annie Mae did her share of chores
whether it was cooking cleaning and washing clothes or hoeing in the
field. The family all ate together. Russie still kept his mechanic job
in town.

     Russie bought some 'little ole shanties' outside of town, tore
them down, and Annie Mae's brother Lacy built them a house from the
rough lumber. It was close by her sister-in law Effie. The humble
abode had no partitions, no insulation, and no ceiling. They borrowed
a bed, wood stove, and table. They set on nail kegs to eat. Her
father, Andrew, built her some cabinets for linens, but the groceries
sat on a table with the dish pan and rinse water pan. There was no
electricity and they used a one seat outdoor privy for bathroom
privileges. Annie Mae wasn't employed outside the home so she worked
at home making curtains and rugs for her little house. She scrubbed
her floors with a corn shuck mop, sometimes using river sand that she
said left her floors pretty and white. They bathed in a tin wash tub
hauling in water from an outdoor pump, then heating it on the wood
stove.

     More than anything Annie Mae wanted children, but five times she
miscarried. One son they named Edgar lived only a few hours. One of
her infants died on 24 July 1928 and another on December 3, 1929.

     Wanting to move closer to her mother, although it was only two
blocks away, she and Russie sold their crude wood home and moved two
blocks further north near Andrew and Lucy Mobley.

     Then tragedy struck the family when Annie Mae's brother, Claude
Mobley, had an accident in Jacksonville where he lived. He was
emptying a drip pan full of flaming gasoline from the cook stove,
holding it with pliers, when he accidentally brushed against his
twenty-five year old wife, Maude, who was holding the door opened for
him. He was burned badly on his arm, but Maude Chesser Mobley died 18
days later from her injuries. Before she died she requested that Annie
Mae take care of her two children six year old Dorothy and eight year
old Wendell. ( Note: Maude was the daughter of Wiley Thomas "Snide"
Chesser and Mary Marguerite (Maggie) Johnson, a Baker County native.
Maggie's parent were Jackson "Jack" H. Johnson and Josephine "Josie"
Davis.
Snides parents were: William M and Zilphia (Hicks) Chesser, she was
part Indian). They are buried at Brandy Branch.)

     For the next three years, until Claude married again, Annie Mae
lovingly cared for her niece and nephew.

     "And anyone else who would lend me their children," she said. "I
loved children so much and couldn't have any of my own. So I'd go get
other people's children and when it came time to take them home it
would just tear me up.

     When an opportunity came along for the couple to go into business
they sold their home and moved to Whitehouse. While Russie worked at
Camp Blanding she ran a small gas station and restaurant single
handedly cooking the meals she served to others: fresh vegetables,
beef stew, chicken purlieu, beef and gravy, creamed potatoes,
cornbread and biscuits. There was her home-made pies and cakes for
dessert. She had snacks too. Soft drinks, many people called soda
water, sold for five cents a bottle, packages of peanuts and crackers
cost a nickel.

     "I was reared on a farm and knew about cooking for large groups,"
she said. She tended to the restaurant business herself, but had help
with the service station.

     After a few years Annie Mae and Russie sold the business, bought
a small trailer, and moved to Middleburg where she cooked for her
brothers Lacy and Donald and a friend John Sigers who were working in
construction. Russie was still working at Camp Blanding.

     Then the couple moved their trailer back to Macclenny, and parked
it in her dad's backyard. She told Russie she was tired of being
childless and getting heartbroken when she had to return the children
she 'borrowed' from friends and family.

     "Let's adopt!" she said.

     They bought his father Moses's farm and adopted Danny who was
born on June 30, 1945. They farmed and worked out on other people's
farms. The couple learned many ways to preserve their food for leaner
times. One such expertise was a way to mound the sweet potatoes for
protection and make them an annual food commodity. They sold the
vegetables they grew at the Farmer's Market in Jacksonville. They
killed their own beef, pork and chickens for meat.

     And killing chickens to eat wasn't a pleasant job but they were
so good to eat when fresh, said Annie Mae.

     It was a lot of work. First you caught the chicken (a fryer or a
boiler, depending on how you planned to serve it) and penned it up for
a few days. It was then corn fed to get it fat because when a chicken
runs around all day it burns all its fat. When the time is right the
chicken's neck is 'rung' until it is broken and the chicken dies. The
chicken is then dropped down into a pot of boiling water to scald,
holding it by the feet to soften the feathers for easier removal. Then
the feathers are 'plucked' off and the skin is scraped good and clean.
You then singe the chicken holding it over a flame made with either
paper or corn husks. That procedure removes the last traces of hair or
other unwanted trash on the chicken's skin.

     When the hen was cut up for cooking it usually had a lot of small
eggs inside her, and they were considered a delicacy when cooked with
a big pot of dumplings.

     Fryers were usually skinned and didn't require all the fuss a hen
did. And many times the feet of the chicken were skinned and boiled
and eaten.

     Annie Mae made her dumplings by using self rising flour and water
to make her dough, then rolling the dough out and cutting it in
desired strips to form the dumpling. She let them set a few minutes
until the dough 'toughens' then dropped them into the boiling chicken
broth.

     Annie Mae is known for her home remedies and her concoctions have
helped countless people avoid pneumonia, bad colds, and flu.

     "I use to make my mixture up and people would come from far and
wide wanting some. It got so expensive that I just bottled it and sold
it for cost." she said.

     Intermediate School principal, Ron Vonk, has used Annie Mae's
Goody Rub for almost two decades.

     "When I start coming down with a sore throat I just put a little
on my finger and it relieves it immediately," he told me when I asked
him about his use of her product. "I never have to worry about a sore
throat with Goody Rub around."

     Ron said he started using Goody Rub when his now adult children
were young. He obtained the recipe from Annie Mae's niece Dorothy
Mobley Barnes who gave it the name Goody Rub because it was good for
so many things.

     "When the children start to cough at night we just rubbed their
chest and back with it and they'd go right back to sleep. By the next
morning it has penetrated so deeply that there is no tale tale signs
of it on their skin."

     Ron said he consulted a pharmacist about Goody Rub's ingredients.

     "He told me that every ingredient was penetrating and he could
easily see why it worked so good."

     Annie Mae said the Goody Rub is not for use by mouth, only on
unbroken skin.

     "It's wonderful for pneumonia," she said. "And I've put it on
many a small baby who is all stuffy with a cold. I just rubbed the
chest and back, turned the baby on its side, and keep the child warm
so the fumes could be inhaled. That helps in the healing process too,"
she said.

     Goody Rub is good for sore breast (nursing mothers), for stiff
bones and arthritis.

     And Annie Mae has a sure cure for the ear ache. You take 2 oz. of
alcohol, 2 oz. of peroxide, dip a knife in boric add crystals and add
to the alcohol and peroxide mixture. Mix together, and it's the best
thing in the world for an ear ache," she said, adding that the
peroxide boiled the infection out and the alcohol prevented infection.
The crystals help cleanse, she said, and remarked that a crystal
mixture was used in times past to cleanse a new born baby's eyes.

     Then there is "Hiney Cream" primarily for the rash on babies from
soiled diapers, but good for abrasions and other skin maladies. For
Hiney Cream you take a jar of carbonated vaseline, a jar of vicks
salve, shave some camphor gum into mixture, blend in some mineral oil
(just enough to melt the camphor gum). Warm mixture on stove, return
to jar, and use as needed.

     And if you had athlete's foot disease, Annie Mae could cure that
too. just go to your friendly druggist and have him mix up grXL of
Salicylic Acid, grXXX of Benzoic Acid, grX Thymol and QSOzii of
rubbing alcohol. It works she said, although it burns alot.

     Eventually Annie Mae and Russie sold their farm and bought an old
wooden store and moved it to Twin Bridges and ran a general store for
many years. They lived in an apartment in the back of the store.
Russie even built him a landing strip for his airplane he bought with
friend Elzie Sigers. Their hobby brought many happy times and laughs
especially once when a cow wouldn't move from the runway and Elzie
landed on the cows back.

     "Never did walk right again," said Annie Mae of the cow. "But she
had the nicest little calf."

     Of their hobby, Annie Mae said, "they bought it just to fly
around and make my hair white!"

     Russie and Annie Mae bought about 40 acres of land directly
across the road from their store, and within seeing distance they
built their present home. They have since sold all but 12 acres of the
land. The two bought a general and (mostly) furniture store in Baldwin
and ran that until retirement. Russie died December 27, 1987.

     The couple adopted a daughter Sybile Ann who was born on April
19, 1954. They have four grandchildren: Norman, Adam and Tiffney, and
son Doug, Danny's adopted son from his wife Mary's first marriage.

     Annie Mae is not too enthusiastic about talking about her past
life.

     "It's not that important," she quipped.

     But that's not so," declared her niece Dorothy Mobley Barnes, now
a great grandmother, but who Annie Mae nurtured when her mother died.

     "She's the most wonderful person I know," said Dorothy who was
present as her aunt reluctantly talked about her life in Baker County.

     "She's taken care of lots of different people, many when no one
else would take care of them," she said.

     Dorothy said Annie Mae's widowed aunt, Ida (Chalker) Mobley, was
nursed through cancer until her death by her good samaritan aunt. "She
changed her dressings and nursed her with great compassion. Younger
family members were afraid of 'catching' something, but not Aunt Annie
Mae," said Dorothy. "The older family members that would help were not
able, so Aunt Annie Mae did it until Aunt Ida died."

     And when Annie Mae's mother became ill with a heart condition and
was hospitalized, Annie Mae became concerned with the scalded
condition from lack of proper cleaning her mother was given in the
facility.

     "She just told the doctor she was taking her mother home so she
could properly care for her." said Dorothy. "The doctor said, 'do you
think you can do a better job than us?' and Annie Mae said she knew
she could and would."

     With her mother home, Annie Mae used the Hiney Cream on her
mother and in no time she was cleared up of the disorder.

     And Annie Mae tended to her parents needs and nursed them until
they died eight months apart in 1963, said Dorothy.

     Annie Mae helped take care of three of her grandmothers until
they died. At 12 years old she went to live with Tabitha Mobley and
assisted her until her death.

     "In those days we considered it an honor, not an imposition, to
take care of our elderly, or sick" said Annie Mae. " People used to
set up all night. We didn't know what a hospital was, and our aged
family members stayed in our homes until they either got well or
died," she said.

     Today Annie Mae takes it easy around her modest, but comfortable,
little home. She is recovering from a recent heart attack, but she has
plenty of loving family and friends who are now caring for her,
staying around the clock when necessary. They are grateful for the
opportunity to pay back, in some small way, all she's done for them
through the years.

     People like Annie Mae are now few and far between. Sincerity,
kindness, and compassion is what she knows best and passing it on may
not be easy. Most people are too busy to learn the rewards such
charity brings to them. Her example is a heritage of eternal worth.
She is truly a good samaritan who has earned the adage, "Well done, my
good and faithful servant. As you have done it unto the least of
these, you have done it unto me."

GOODY RUB

(NOT TO BE TAKEN BY MOUTH USE ON UNBROKEN SKIN ONLY

3 cakes of Camphor Gum
1 jar Vicks Vapor Rub
1 small bottle of mineral oil
A small amount of kerosene (about 1/2 teaspoon)
A small amount of turpentine (about 1/2 teaspoon)
Use great care when mixing. this can catch fire if over heated.
Cut up camphor gum, melt camphor gum and Vicks Vapor Rub together,
adding a small amount of mineral oil. Then add kerosene and
turpentine. After mixing together over a low heat, add the rest of the
mineral oil. Cool enough to put in glass jar. Keep well closed.

TO USE: Heat small amount of mixture in dish and rub well into skin of
chest and back. Go to bed and stay beneath the covers. Keep warm. When
you get out of bed wash the skin off well with warm water and soap.

RUSSIE and ANNIE MAE's SWEET POTATO MOUND

For preserving sweet potatoes for annual use.
Dig dirt out in the form of a shallow bowl, about a (6) six foot
circle.
Line with deep layer of pine straw
Dig sweet potatoes early in the morning
Get as much dirt as possible when you dig
At area where you dig, lay the potatoes out in the sun to dry good.
Move potatoes from the field
Pour or place them in a straw lined prepared area, in the center of
the circle
As you bring each new batch from the field, place the potatoes on top
of the last batch. they will spread themselves out
When as full as you want it:
Get fat lightered rails, build a frame with the rails in a teepee
shape
Fasten tops together by wrapping with wire
Have rails close together so that a layer of pine straw will not fall
through the rails.
Place a 6 or 8 inch layer of pine straw on the rails all around the
potatoes.
Dig ditch approximately 12 inches away from the rails and straw
Use dirt to cover the straw mound with three inches of dirt all the
way around
At bottom of mound the rails will be far enough apart that you can
move away some dirt and straw to reach in and get a mess of potatoes
to bake
After you remove the needed amount of potatoes cover them back again
until more potatoes are needed

FOOTNOTE
Andrew Jackson "Ander or A.J." was born Oct. 7, 1876 on or near the
Florida Georgia Bend area. He died April 2, 1963 in Macclenny and is
buried in Macedonia Cemetery. He was the son of Jesse Daniel Mobley
1850-1925 buried Macedonia.

     Lucy Crews Mobley was born Mar. 9, 1883 in Charlton Co. Ga. She
died Dec. 17, 1963. Buried Macedonia. Andrew and Lucy married Aug 14,
1899. Their children, all born in Baker County, were Wilbur Lacy, born
June 6, 1901, died Dec 18, 1981, buried Macedonia. Rufus Claude born
May 30, 1904, died April 17, 1959, buried Warren Smith Cemetery,
Jacksonville Beach, Fl. Jesse Daniel born Sept 23, 1907 [died Aug 3,
1990 and buried Macedonia Cemetery], Annie Mae born Feb. 15, 1910,
Donald Burton born Aug 16, 1913, died June 12, 1966 buried Macedonia,
Linnie L. born Sept 17, 1917, died Apr. 18, 1918 died from Colitis
(dysentery) buried Macedonia, Edgar Ferdinand born Nov. 14, 1919, died
from Colitis, buried Macedonia.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                        Emily Davis Harvey 1978

     "Old people, if they could come back now, they wouldn't want to
stay," said 90-year-old Emily Davis Harvey. The native of Baker County
speaks with conviction.

     "Times have changed. People used to wear clothes. Now the young
people don't," she declared.

     Married for 60 years to Grover Cleveland "Cleab" Harvey, she
speaks fondly of her nine surviving children, the oldest 72 years old.

     "I've got five daughters," she says. "They all take care of me.
Else I'd go to an old folks home."

     On this particular day Mrs. Harvey reminisced from her wheelchair
at the home of her eighth child, Fairley Rhoden.

     Back then when a boy took a girl to a frolic (dance) he'd better
just take her by the hands. If he didn't he'd get slapped loose," she
said with a chuckle.

     "When Cleab came a courtin' he usually walked the five miles to
see me. If he rode a horse, it would usually break loose and run back
home anyway. Sometimes I'd see him at church. All men wore hats then,
and he'd draw up cool water from the well and we'd drink from his
hat."

     Her next words sounded as if she'd borrowed lyrics from the
movie, "The Sound of Music."

     "I was 16, going on 17, when I married. My sister Ollie had run
away and married Cleab's brother. My ma had cried and cried." So 19
year old Cleab took another approach and asked her parents' permission
and for them to be present.

     The next day her father asked her what she needed from the store
to prepare for her wedding.

     "I said, 'One pair of stockings."

     So off he went for the purchase.

     "Back then they were all cotton," she added with a sly grin.

     After the wedding, which took place at her parents' home, the
couple was driven by horse and buggy by her father-in-law, Bud Harvey,
to his house.

     "That was the first time I'd ever sat in Cleab's lap," she says.
"There wasn't room enough in the buggy, and it had to be. His ma had
what she called 'our room' waiting for us. We changed our clothes and
went to the cane patch and chewed cane. I told Cleab that was the
sweetest honeymoon anyone ever had."

     A few months later the young couple moved into a home on a farm
where Cleab had located work. Their first child arrived there. Because
of complications a doctor was required to come by train from
Jacksonville.

     With the help of their families, the couple soon built a home for
themselves next to Cleab's parents. Ten more children were born, with
the last two being twins. Two of the 11 children died at an early age
of whooping cough.

     The family raised their own food, except for flour and some
spices.

     "We bought 96 pounds of flour in barrels at one time," said
daughter Fairley. "Can you imagine that!"

     Cows were a luxury, so goats and goat's milk were used. The
family made cottage cheese by hanging clabbered milk in a sack and
letting it drip.

     Salt was made by digging up the floor in the smokehouse and
draining it.

     Sugar was made during cane season. The last two cookings of syrup
were stirred down until the liquid became too thick to stir. Then it
was poured into kegs with nails driven into them.

     The nails would then be removed for draining and sugar would be
left in the bottom of the keg.

     Fairley's mouth watered as she told about her mothers
gingerbread.

     "Once a week she'd make huge quantities of the best gingerbread
in the world. Sometimes she'd roll it out and cut it into squares.
Other times she'd put the dough into round shapes. After it would
bake, you could still see her fingerprints. When we'd come in from
school, we'd all run first to the flour barrel, where the gingerbread
was stored. it stayed good and moist all week."

     The ginger was grated on a handmade grater consisting of a bucket
through which nails had been driven leaving sharp edges for grating.

     Christmases of the past were fond remembrances for Mrs. Harvey.
She would make a dish pan full of eggnog in preparation for a
Christmas morning game called 'Shootin One Another.' The neighboring
menfolks would ride up on their horses and fire a shot from a pistol
(good and neighborly),. The folks inside the home would run outside
with a cup of homemade eggnog. Indoors homemade decorations adored the
red berry bush brought in from the woodlands. All the little girls had
stockings hung and Santa was expected to know to bring little rag doll
babies to fill them. The little boys got firecrackers.

     Two more of Mrs. Harvey's children dropped in during the
interview and the subjects of plums came up.

     "I want you all to make me a plum pie now that plums are ripe,"
Mrs. Harvey said.

     "Plumb pie!" they exclaimed.

     "Mama, you tell us how and we'll do it" said daughter Leila
Prevatt

     . Son L.E. volunteered to get the plums.

     While on the subject of pie, Fairley suddenly remembered 'the
best pie in the world...syrup pie', the kind her mother used to make
when she was growing up on the farm.

     "It tasted like a custard," she said. "Mama could make the best
ones."

     Until the early 1950s Mrs. Harvey cooked on a wood burning stove.

     Today she never ventures far off the 80 acres that she and Cleab
shared until his death in 1965. Located went of Macclenny, the acreage
is now divided among the children. Their modern brick homes are
nestled among the pines. The virgin timber gives way to make room for
garden plots.

     When I stood to go, Mrs. Harvey looked longingly through the
sliding glass door toward the pine trees in the distance.

     "Sometimes I think I hear his footsteps or see his face," she
said. "I miss him so!

     UPDATE: Mrs. Harvey was born January 5, 1888 and died November
23, 1978. She is buried Sanderson, Cedar Creek Cemetery.

_____________________________________________________________________________


                         ELLA DOWLING TAYLOR
              of Taylor Florida/Jacksonville August 1978

     "I was said to be a good cook," said 86-year-old Baker county
native Ella Taylor when asked about the 35 years of her life she spent
operating boarding houses in Jacksonville. "I wore out three houses.
They've all been torn down."

     Reminiscing in her cozy sitting and sleeping room overlooking
Trout River at the home of her daughter, Louise Paschal, she recalled
her arrival in Jacksonville in 1935.

     "My children had moved to Jacksonville from our home in Taylor,
to find work. The Depression was just about over. We moved into a big
old house on Eighth Street. I cooked for them and made their clothes,"
pointing to a pedal sewing machine standing in a comer of the room. "I
bought that in 1924."

     After the children married and moved to homes of their own, she
took in boarders. People were beginning to move into the city from the
country, world War II started and the shipyard employed many people.

     "I cooked country just like they were used to. I learned from my
mother."

     Her daughter, Louise, recalled that she would get up at 5 a.m.
everyday and walk the two blocks to her mother's to help prepare the
huge breakfast for boarders.

     "We cooked on a wood stove and Mama would steam sausages in an
old iron frying pan. After they were done, she'd add fresh pork brains
and beaten eggs to the broth."

     Mrs. Taylor smiled. "Everyone loved that!" she said.

     "I remember making mountains of sandwiches for their lunches,"
said her daughter. "There were always three different kinds of
sandwiches-a meat an egg and a sweet one, usually jelly. We made them
at night, packed them in sacks and stored them in our ice box. Very
few people had refrigeration then. The next morning they were ready
for the men."

     Afternoons, when the 5 p.m. whistle blew and the hungry boarders
left their work for home, they were greeted with the aroma of baked
sweet potatoes, collard greens with rutabagas added to them, boiled
cabbage with ham hocks, fresh peas with boiled okra, or sometimes
cut-up okra added to make a thick juice....and always lots of hot
biscuits and cornbread.

     The men were charged $6. a week for room and board, and this
included having their room cleaned and fresh linens supplied.

     Mrs. Taylor was very loyal to her boarders and catered to their
whims. She refused to leave home on Thanksgiving and Christmas so she
could prepare food for her boarders.

     "We could come to her house, but she wouldn't come to ours," said
Louise.

     Mrs. Taylors daughter Bernice Hudgens said her mother was very
frugal.

     "She would walk from 8th and Market to downtown Jacksonville,
catch the free bus and go around to pay all her bills such as light
and water," she said. "Times were hard and Mama saved every penny she
could. She wouldn't have a checking account, she'd rather pay her
bills directly. We finally got her to have a savings account though,"
she said. "Mama walked to pay her bills buy her groceries and shop
even when she grew older and walked on a cane.

     Mrs. Taylor loved to return to Baker County to visit friends and
family in Taylor especially for the Pine Grove Methodist church
services. Louise or Bernice would always take her. They remembered
their mother had a brilliant memory and could remember the birth,
marriage and death dates of almost everyone she knew.

     "A lot of people went to Mama for confirmation of their birth and
death dates when they were searching and the record had not been made.

     Mama always took lots of food. Everyone liked her cooking.

     She knew the secret of good and effective seasoning they say.

     "Mama bought ham hocks by the tray," said Louise. "She cooked ham
hocks in almost everything for flavor."

     Mrs. Taylor added, "Today I see my girls throw away nice bones
that would season a good pot of greens."

     Dried peas and beans were usually a big part of her menu.

     "Everyone loved them. When I'd cook black-eyed-peas I'd add
dumplings to them," Mrs. Taylor said. This brought a loud chuckle from
her daughter, who recalled that she had cooked them that way once for
her husband, Pat, who told her she sure had messed up a good pot of
peas.

     Mrs. Taylor learned to cook at an early age, from her mother,
Emma Crews Dowling Her father, John Riley Dowling died in 1904,
leaving the family of seven (twins had died in infancy). The two-room
log cabin with its separately attached kitchen holds many memories for
Mrs. Taylor.

     "My mother spoiled and pampered us," she said, remembering how
her mother would rise at 4 a.m. every day and go to the kitchen to
start breakfast Then she'd warm a pan of water and bring it into the
room where she and her sister Hattie slept set it up by the fireplace
and call the children to get up and wash their faces.

     "To this day Mama still washes her face every morning in warm
water," her daughter said.

     Mrs. Taylor remembers when her mother would have all the
children's clothes laid out by the fireplace, all warm and ready to
slip into. Her mother even catered to their taste buds.

     "I liked my grits, bacon, syrup, biscuits and cream. Hattie liked
for mother to pour the milk into the homniny (grits) pot, scrap up the
crust and eat that. Then Mother would sit us by the clay chimney in
the kitchen to keep warm."

     Each week the family took their corn to the grist mill for
grinding. Back home, it was sifted to separate the meal from the
hominy.

     Once an agent came by their Country home selling fancy wood
ranges with a water tank connected to the stove. Thoughts of hot water
being available in their kitchen convinced them they really needed the
stove. Arrangements were made to pay $50. a year for two years.

     "We thought that wood stove was the most wonderful thing in the
world. My mother used the hot water to scrub the floor. She'd use an
old block which holes had been bored. Corn shucks were inserted in the
holes to make the brush, and we used croaker (feed) sacks to dry up
the floor.

     "We always had good food, usually whatever was in season fresh,
and preserved for when it wasn't. We killed hogs in the winter, beef
in the summer." She explained how they'd lay the meat out in the sun
to dry, or smoke it in the smokehouse, putting corn husks between each
layer of meat for storage.

     "Our family lived much better than many of the rural families.
Some of them did not even have out-houses (outdoor toilets) and had to
use the cattle pens or the woods or whatever," she said.

     Mrs. Taylor couldn't remember when she had not known her husband
Lee, who died in 1970. They were born on the same day, January 10,
1892; their families were good friends and the two grew up together.

     The first time our mothers took us to church when we were babies,
Lee's mother said to mine, "here, let him see his future wife." Little
did they dream that 19 years later this would be true.

     The first year Mrs. Taylor was married she was destined to have
two special boarders, one of whom is still around to vouch for her
excellent style of cooking. Her nephew, Ralph Knabb, president of
Guaranty Life insurance Co. of Florida, and his late brother, Carl,
president of the Citizens Bank of Macclenny, as boys lived with their
aunt Monday through Friday during the school year. Their parents,
Minnie (Mrs. Taylor's oldest sister) and Lucius Knabb, lived in
Moniac, Ga., where they were in business. Moniac had no schools, so
every Monday morning the boys' mother drove them across the Georgia
line to their aunt's home in Taylor. When Mrs. Knabb picked them up on
Friday she would always give her sister $5. for their board.

FOOTNOTE: The following genealogical information has been submitted by
the family and descendents of Ella Nancy Dowling Taylor.

Lee Monroe Taylor was born Jan. 10, 1892 in Baker County Florida. He
married Ella Nancy Dowling, born in Taylor on Jan. 10, 1892. They are
buried in Taylor Cemetery in Taylor Florida.

     They married June 25, 1911. They were the parents of four
children:

CHILD #1: Thomas Herbert Taylor, born May 16, 1912. On Dec. 30, 1930
Herbert married Opal Raulerson who was born Jan. 19, 1914 in Baker
County. Herbert died Feb. 13, 1966.

2-Son, Herman Fulton "Booster" Taylor born May 5, 1916, died June 14,
1923.

3-Son, Charlie Harold Taylor, born Sept 21, 1918, On Sept. 18, 1938 he
married Eloise Drury, born Sept. 18, 1920. Harold died Feb. 7, 1963

4-Daughter Bernice Cleo Taylor, born Aug. 11, 1920. On Feb. 14, 1941,
she married James Henry Hudgens born March 15, 1913.

After the death of Ella's sister-in-law, Ada Rewis Dowling, second
wife of Lonnie Dowling, Ella's brother, Lee and Ella reared the
couple's only child, Louise, from the age of three months. Louise was
born on Feb. 26, 1926 in Baker County.

Family of Child #1, Thomas Herbert Taylor and Opal Raulerson Taylor
are four daughters:
Daughter #1: Alice Faye Taylor, born July 21, 1932 Married Thomas
Byron Prince, born Aug. 18, 1949
Their children:
1-Thomas Byron Prince, Jr., born March 1, 1950
2-Brenda Leigh Prince, born Oct. 16, 1953.
On June 6, 1977, Brenda married James Jay Fasick, born 1946. The four
children of Brenda and Jay Fasick are: Matthew James Fasick, born Aug.
25, 1980, Jason Eric Fasick, born Nov. 6, 1981, Shauna Leigh Fasick,
born July 21, 1983, David Nevin Fasick, born Nov. 1, 1990.

Daughter #2: Marie Eleana Taylor, born Dec. 26, 1941. On Dec. 13, 1963
Eleana married Ted Filer, born March 2, 1930. The couple has one son,
Michael Taylor Filer, born Dec. 5, 1964.

Daughter #3: Terrie Lee Taylor, born Jan. 7, 1946. On Aug. 31 1985
Terrie married Collins A. Terry, born July 9, 1953.

Daughter #4. Cheryl Denise Taylor, born Sept 25 , 1954. on June 25,
1983 Cheryl married Alan White born Dec. 18, 1951. The couple has one
daughter Kristy Marie White born Aug. 4, 1988.

Child #2 Fulton Booster Taylor (1916-1923)

Child #3: Charlie Harold Taylor and Eloise Drury.
Their children are:
(1) Harold Neal Taylor born Dec 6, 1940. On Sept 30, 1961 he married
Patricia Ann Smith, born July 27, 1940. Their children are:.1- Janet
Marie Taylor born July 10, 1962, 2- Harold Neal Taylor,. Jr. born Dec
6, 1963, 3- Mathew James Taylor born Aug 2, 1967, 4- Patricia Ann
Taylor died 1969. On June 14, 1970 Harold Neal Taylor, Sr. married (2)
Mary Mae Clark, born March 29, 1950. Their children are: Corey Damon
Taylor, born Sept 30, 1971, Jessica Bree Taylor, born Sept 4, 1974.
Harold Neal Taylor, Sr. married (3) Stephanie (?) ca 1990.

son #2 of Charlie and Eloise is Michael Wayne Taylor, born Sept 5,
1942. Michael married Agnes (?). A son Michael Joseph was born 1965
and a daughter, Patricia Ann, born 1969.

Son #3 of Charlie and Eloise is Russell Taylor, born June 25, 1944. He
married Donna Gail (?)

CHILD #4 Bernice married James Henry Hudgens on Feb 14, 1941 at the
home of her parents, Lee and Ella Taylor, on 8th St. in Jacksonville,
Fl. Their four children are, James Monroe, born Sept 12, 1942, Charles
Thomas, March 4, 1946, David Lee, born Dec 10, 1954 and Keith Quick,
born June 25, 1957.

Monroe married July 20, 1972. His wife Shirley Harlivey was born Sept
4, 1948. Their children are: James Monroe, Jr. born Dec. 21, 1975,
Anthoney George, born Nov. 26, 1977 and Kimberly Michell, Sept 2,
1965.

     Charles and his wife Ann Borum (born April 8, 1947) married May
6, 1969 in Jacksonville, Fl. Their children are John Wesley, born Dec
20, 1969 and Christine Ann, born Nov 28, 971.

     David Lee and wife Linda Sizemore (born Dec. 28, 1948) married in
Jacksonville on April 9, 1977. Their children are Kristie Michell
(born North Carolina) March 9, 1973 and Angela Nicole, born
Jacksonville Feb. 13, 1978.

     Keith Quick and wife Elaine Wynn (born Dec 31, 1958) married in
Jacksonville Feb. 24, 1979. Their children are Lacey Kay born Nov. 1,
1981 and Haley Marie born June 14, 1985, both in Jacksonville.

     Kimberly married Harvey Reichelt in Indiana in 1992. Their
children are: Keri Padden, born May 17, 1985, Jason Padden born Dec
25, 1986 in Florida, and McKenzie Reichelt born Sept. 4, 1991 and
Nickelas Reichelt born Aug 8, 1992 in Indiana.

Louise Dowling (Taylor) married Alton Eugene Fraser at the home of
Judge Frank Dowling in Macclenny Florida on March 31, 1941. She was
born February 26, 1926. Alton was born June 28, 1919. Alton died Nov.
22, 1947. Louise married (2) James Walter (Pat) Paschal, Jr. on Aug.
28, 1948. He was born Jan. 9, 1923.

Children of Louise and Alton Fraser are:
Michael Eugene (Mike) Fraser born Feb. 14, 1943 and Suzanne Elizabeth
Fraser born Oct. 22, 1947.

The children of Louise and Pat Paschal are:
Son, Robert Brantley (Bobby) Paschal, born Dec. 21, 1952 and daughter
Cynthia Lynn (Cindy) Paschal, born June 27, 1957.

Alton and Louise's son Michael E. Fraser married (1) Patricia
DeLetter, born Jan. 9, 1944. Their children are: Rhonda Lynn Fraser
born Dec. 5, 1971 and Stephen Michael Fraser, born Nov. 13, 1977.
Michael and Patricia divorced on Jan. 20, 1991. On March 14, 1992
Michael married (2) Elaine Collins born Nov. 14, 1960. They have a son
Robert Michael (Robby) Fraser born Feb. 17, 1988.

Daughter Suzanne Elizabeth Fraser born Oct 22, 1947 married (1)
Roderick Jennings (R.J.) Ridaught, born May 5, 1935, on May 27, 1966.
Their three sons are: Michael Lee Ridaught, born Aug 4, 1968, Roderick
Jennings Ridaught III, born May 8, 1970 and Mark Ryan Ridaught, born
Dec. 15, 1982. They were divorced on Nov. 21, 1985. Suzanne was
married on August 6, 1990 to Gordon Griffen born Feb. 17, 1941. They
were divorced Nov. 26, 1991.

Pat and Louise's son Robert Brantley (Bobby) Paschal, married Sylvia
Dianne Brantley, (born Jan 30, 1958) on October 7, 1989. They have one
daughter Monica Camiel Paschal born Nov. 8, 1990.

Daughter Cynthia Lynn Paschal was born June 27, 1958 is single in
1993.

DOWLING FAMILY RECORD:

John Riley Dowling was born Jan 1, 1860. He died Sept 14, 1904, age 44
years, 8 mos. 13 days. His wife Emma Crews was born Jan. 21 1859. She
died at age 88, Jan. 21, 1947. They were married Jan. 25, 1882.

Their children were: Minnie Lee Dowling, born Jan. 14, 1883. She died
Jan. 14, 1944. Willie Elbert Dowling born Apr. 23, 1880. He died June
7, 1959. James Lonnie Dowling born June 21, 1885 and died May 17,
1949. Mattie Dowling born Feb. 15, 1883, died November 26, 1888 and
Walter Dowling born Aug. 27, 1889. Died Oct. 1900, Nancy Ella Dowling
born Jan. 10, 1892. Hattie Mae Dowling was born June 13, 1893. Twins
were born July 31, 1895.

_____________________________________________________________________________


                    Bufort and Joyce (Fish) Thrift
                         Moniac, GA. Aug 1979

     Born into two of Baker County's oldest pioneer families, Bufort
and Joyce Thrift of Moniac (just across the Florida state line, know
what hard work is all about They know how to fend for themselves and
their family and how to survive off the land.

     They consider themselves richly blessed. The hard working couple
became somewhat famous for their homemade smoked country sausage and
people have come from miles around and across the nation to enjoy
their mouth watering specialty.

     "Our sausages have been purchased and taken to such places as
Canada, Venezuela, West Germany, Vietnam, Korea, California and
Alaska," said Joyce, but most of our regular customers are from across
the state line like in Baker County, Duval and Clay.

     "We started out by making sausages for some of our neighbors who
had quit butchering because they'd started working in the city and
didn't have time," Joyce explained.

     "It got to where we were making more and more sausages, but had
less and less for ourselves," chimed in Bufort.

     "It's not that our sausages are better than our neighbors'
sausages," explained Joyce, shy of any praise she might receive, "it's
just that we continued to make sausages when others quit for various
reasons."

     Eighty six-year old Lawton Conner and his wife Essie, regular
customers from the nearby community of Taylor, agree.

     "I was one of the last people around here to stop smoking
sausages," said Mr. Conner. "Even though that was a sad time for me, I
appreciate being able to go down the road a ways and buy ones that
taste just as good as mine were."

     When we started out more than 20 years ago we never dreamed it
would develop into a full-time business," said Joyce, explaining that
when the demand became greater she and Bufort would drive over the
state line the 10 miles to Macclenny with their sausages. They would
sell 10 pounds each week at two separate groceries. It soon grew to as
many as 300 pounds weekly-year around.

     "A law became effective that prohibited us from transporting
across the state line," said Joyce, "so we resumed selling to our
friends and people who would drive the distance out for them,"
describing Moniac as being "really a no-man's land, a betweex and
between." (The nearest Georgia town is Folkston, 48 miles away, and in
Florida, Macclenny, 10 miles.)

     "Then the Wholesome Meat Act was passed and we were stopped from
selling," said Joyce. "The only thing we had that passed inspection
was our concrete floor," explaining they could no longer scald hogs in
open boilers. "We could still custom butcher, but could not sell
directly."

     The inspector who brought the news did not bring specifications
with him that explained the requirements the Thrifts needed to meet.
When the Thrifts inquired, the inspector simply said they couldn't
financially afford to meet them anyway.

     Determined, the Thrifts persisted.

     "It took a year of red tape," said Joyce, "but we finally got
started on a new building meeting all federal specifications.

     Business resumed as people heard they were back in business but
it was when former President Nixon put a freeze on beef prices that
people rushed in overnight said Joyce.

     The one and two-day work pace became an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. six-day
work schedule, remaining so.

     The Bufort Thrift Farm on Georgia Highway 185 employs the
couple's two married children and though they specialize in home- made
country sausage (smoked and green), they sell their own grain-fed pork
and beef and do custom butchering.

     "People flock here because they know preservatives have not been
added and they can watch us cut the meat to their own specifications,"
said Joyce.

     "We add only salt, sage and peppers when we make our sausages,"
she said, "but we have added onions, left out sage and made them
Italian. The customers tell us how they want them and we make them
that way," adding that customers must bring their own extra
ingredients.

     It's been many years since Bufort and Joyce Thrift learned from
their progenitors how to cure meat on their tin roof by use of salt
for preservation. They do not feel their present refrigerated
building, with all the modem equipment, has changed the real country
taste and flavor one bit.

     Just as they recall the days of the sun-dried beef, salt pork,
salt-pickled and "cooked out" pork, they like recalling the days when
neighbors helped neighbors.

     "On hog killing days everything was cooked in big pots," said
Joyce, "because there was a crowd of hungry men, women and children to
be fed. We'd cut up a whole backbone, season with salt and black
pepper, cover with water and cook until tender. Then we'd add rice and
simmer until the rice was done. That was called back-bone pilar
("pilaf").

     "Backbones and dumplings were cooked on the order of chicken and
dumplings," Joyce said.

     Other hog-killing-day recipes included turnip greens and pork
bones, haslet stew, fried pork ribs and tenderloins.

     "To accompany this," said Joyce, "There was always potato salad,
plain rice, cornbread, biscuits, baked sweet potatoes and a big bowl
of thick brown gravy. There were gallons of tea and coffee," she said.
"Desserts usually consisted of pear cobbler, pound cake, jelly cake
and always fresh homemade cane syrup to eat with hot homemade
biscuits. If there was time on the day before, pies were cooked, but
the other things I've mentioned were always a must at our neighborhood
hog killings."

     Though their lives have been changed and modernized to some
extent, one thing remains the same. The Bufort Thrifts can still enjoy
the same down-home country cooking they've known all their lives and
have, at least in one respect, found a way to still share with friends
and neighbors-through their country store.

UPDATE:

Bufort and Joyce Thrift have closed their country store. The decision
to do so began on March 13, 1990 when the phone rang on a very busy
bright crisp morning at the store. The message brought the tragic news
that their daughter Penny's brother-in-law, Gerald Thompson, had been
killed in a wreck. Penny made the decision to spend more time with her
family instead of working so hard in the meat packaging business.
Their grandson Judd had already left to do work in near-by
Jacksonville, So Bufort and Joyce closed their family business within
two months. They still operate a meat producing business. Joyce says
that unlike their forefathers who let their livestock 'go find their
own feed, then hunted them down in the woodlands, penning and
separating them at round-up time for home use and sale", Bufort and
Joyce pen their cattle and as she says, "we go find the food and bring
it home to them".

     The Thrifts fertilize their pasture with commercial fertilizers,
and use the hay they grow. They buy the grain, salt and minerals to
supplement the grass their livestock eats from the pasture.

     The Thrifts are proud of their heritage and remember the times
past before electricity and refrigeration.

     "Bufort's family cut their beef up by the muscle, and salted it
down to absorb salt for two to three days for preservation," said
Joyce. " Then they would wash the meat off, put clean sheets or
material on the house or barn roofs and place the meat there after the
morning dew to be dried by the sun during the day." said, Joyce. "You
would have to turn the meat all throughout the day," she explained,
"and take it in before the dew started to fall in the evening."

     Joyce said when all the moisture was completely out of the flesh,
and the meat was kept dry, "it would keep forever." When the farm
families wanted to use the meat they would soak it over- night to get
some of the salt out, and slice and fry it to make stew or hash.

     "The meat could also be wrapped and carried in the men's pockets
or saddlebags when hunting They would slice little pieces and eat the
preserved meat raw..."sorta like today's beef jerky," she said.

     The screw fly and worm invaded and the pioneers had to find other
ways to preserve their meat explained Joyce. Three popular ways to do
it was to pickle it, cure it, and smoke it.

     The early Baker County settlers had hugh vats of grease on hog
killing day. They used the grease (hog lard) to fry four to five inch
pieces of pork bones that had enough meat for seasoning left on them.
When all the water was cooked out of the flesh the meat was paced in
five gallon lard cans and covered with the boiling grease. hog killing
day. They used the grease (hog lard) to fry four to five inch pieces
of pork bones that had enough meat for seasoning left on them. When
all the water was cooked out of the flesh the meat was paced in five
gallon lard cans and covered with the boil- ing grease. "The secret
was not to have any water left in the meat, and not let it scorch
while frying it, and to be sure it was completely covered with the
boiling grease." she said.

     "The lids were not put on the cans until the meat was completely
cooled," she explained. "That prevented the lids from sweating and
getting water back into the can." She said.

     "If these things were observed they'd have delicious meat until
the last pierce was forked out, heated and eaten," she noted.

     Joyce said the bones were eaten just as they came from the can,
or cooked with rice, dumplings, in dressing, soups, or used for
seasonings in vegetables, or dried peas or beans. Beef was prepared
the same way as pork, she said, except that beef was usually cut in
small roasts with all the bones removed.

     Joyce said that the pork meat removed from the bones was either
cured or smoked or pickled. The trimmings were seasoned and made into
sausage. The sausage was then smoked or cooked out like the pork and
stored in five gallon lard cans.

     The pork feet were 'washed as white as could be' she said, boiled
until tender and packed in hot vineger to pickle.

     The bones that were removed from the beef were boiled and all the
particles of flesh removed and the stock was sealed up in jars and
used for soup stock. The leg bones were salted and saved to be used
within the next few weeks for the marrow inside the bone. The bones
would be cracked and boiled so the marrow 'mar' could be skimmed off
the top and eaten as gravy over baked sweet potatoes, corn bread or
grits. If the beef bones with the marrow were not used within a few
weeks, they would spoil.

     Marrow was also used by some people as a base for home- made
salves. The beef hooves were boiled and the use of the oil was used to
cure sores that ordinarily would not heal, Joyce explained.

     To pickle meat, Joyce explained, the meat was cut in small
chunks.

     Then in the bottom of huge crocks (25-60 gallon size) a layer of
a mixture consisting of salt, sugar, peppers and saltpeter was placed
over each layer of meat in the crock until the crock was full. The top
and bottom layer of this mixture was two to three inches thick and the
inbetween layers measured to about an inch thick," explained Joyce.
Next Joyce said clean bricks would be placed on top of the meat and
mixture to keep the meat from floating to the top as the salt drew the
water from the meat to create the pickle.

     "The crock was then covered with a clothe large enough to come
down on the sides of the crock to be tied with string to hold
everything in place." said Joyce. "The meat had to be soaked (to
remove part of the salt before cooking" said Joyce. "And if the meat
was going to be used the same day then it was remove from the brine,
and sliced. Warm water was poured over it. This procedure was repeated
several times," she said, adding "This meat was also used for
seasoning. It was delicious.:

     To cure meat, the pioneers would place a layer of palmetto fond
on the dirt, usually in the rear of the smoke house. (Smoke houses
usually had dirt floors). After the hogs were butchered and cut up,
the meat would be taken piece by piece and rubbed good with salt and
spices. Every family had their own special recipe, said Joyce. They
usually put the salt in a galvanized wash tub or hewed out wash trough
to allow enough room to turn the meat and salt it completely into
"every nook and cranny," she explained. The meat was then placed on
the palmettos, flesh side down and skin side up, to cool, absorb the
salt and drain out excess blood. "This was usually one layer deep,
never, never over three," she emphasized. The bacon was an exception
she said, and was usually stacked in a wooden box with the bottom
layer used for salt (white pork) bacon.

     In a few days the meat would be turned and more salt rubbed where
needed. When the meat "was cured to the bone," the meat would be
washed, hung on meat sticks, with bear grass and placed across runners
in the smoke house. The meat was then smoked until the meat was all
dried out and brown. (The smoke was not generated by a fire, but a
smoldering effect. The preserved meat was used for frying and to
season with year round.

     Joyce said the "cooked out hog fat" was used as shortening and
stored in five gallon lard cans. The cooked out beef tallow was used
to make soap and stored in big cakes to be used when needed.

     Joyce said that in later years a plague of 'skippers' ( a small
slender worm) began appearing in smoke houses.

     "Then we'd have to take the meat down, rub it good with borax,
slip a brown paper sack over it and rehang it on the stick in the meat
house until ready to use." she said.

     A vivid memory Joyce recalls is how her daddy, Benjamin Roy Fish,
and her brothers would pack their saddle bags with food when they went
'cow hunting' in the Georgia Bend at round up time each spring and
fall.

     "I remember my mother (Sarah Canaday Fish) filling my daddy's
saddlebags with sweet bread cakes, sardines, baked sweet potatoes,
fried meats, pecan-raisin cake, parched peanuts, plenty of pecans,
cane syrup, peanut brittle candy, biscuits, oranges from our own trees
... both sweet and bitter .. and kumquats." she said.

     Bufort remembers going camping with his Grandpa Jode Thrift to
work hog claims on Mill Branch, between Macclenny and St. George..

     "They would bait their trap pens to catch the young hogs for
marking their ears. Then they would castrate the males to cut down on
fighting and so the meat would be good when they were of age and size
to butcher." said Bufort.

     "Grandpa Jode would let me fish and tend the set hooks and we'd
have fish for supper." he said. "If we were blessed to catch more than
we could eat then we would carry the surplus home to be enjoyed.

     "We'd camp anywhere from overnight to two weeks according to the
work we had to get done," said Bufort.

     Bufort's granddaddy, Jode, and Caroline (Raulerson) ran away to
Waycross from the Georgia Bend to marry. Caroline wore her white
wedding dress and had to traispe through woods that had been burned.
They often told the story of how they stopped to sleep part of the
night as they travelled in the curve of the old rail fence. After
their long journey they stopped by a creek for Caroline to wash her
soiled white dress before entering Waycross and getting married. The
130 mile trip took two days to walk. Jode and Caroline were the
parents of 12 children. Caroline, who had extremely flat feet, always
wore sandles and wore them on the wrong feet. Jode's parents were the
beginning of a long lineage of Thrifts in the Baker County-Georgia
Bend area. They were Leron J. "Pomp" Thrift and Zelpha Hogan.

     Bufort and Joyce share vivid memories of days gone by and 'just
how things were done'. There was no waste in by-gone days, and a use
could be found for almost any and everything, they say. And the taste
of food was so much better back then.

_____________________________________________________________________________


                            Nellie Gaskins
                            Sanderson 1981

     For more than half a century Nellie Gaskins has cooked up a
double life.

     "I cook one way for the white folks and another way for the black
folks," she said from her small home north of Sanderson.

     Born in 1907, Nellie began cooking for others when she was 16
years old. At that time she already was married with a family of her
own.

     "I married Mac Gaskins when I was 13 after courting him with my
little vanilla short cakes baked in metal tops of baking powder cans,"
she said. "I'd take them to the field where he was working and catch
him good and hungry and he'd say it tasted just like his mama's
cooking.

     According to Nellie, she cooked in a dirt-floor kitchen that was
set apart from her rough clapboard one-room home.

     "It was a lean-to made from any kind of boards we could get our
hands on," she said. "Varmints such as field mice kept coming in
through the cracks all the time." Nellie said it was an everyday way
of life not only for her but for her neighbors as well.

     "None of us had educations to get jobs to work, even if there had
been jobs we still couldn't find work. In those days the black women
folks were lucky to find domestic work and that didn't pay us much.
Our men worked in the fields, or the woods, for white folks when they
could find work and we just didn't get paid enough to get ourselves
ahead. It took about all we could make to buy us something to eat and
a few clothes." she said.

     Nellie said most staple foods such as grits and rice had to be
protected by storing them in empty metal lard cans.

     The 76-year-old mother of 12 said she rarely stored food in her
home or planned her family's meals in advance. "Mostly I raised my
family on coons, squirrels, rabbits and fish caught in the pond with
my hands," she said. As she talked, she stirred a pot of hog chittlin'
fat simmering on the Stove. The foul smell permeated the air and
photographer Frank Smith was looking for the nearest exit before
taking her picture.

     "I'm going to make some crackling cornbread out of this she said,
adding that her daughter-in-law who lives next door, would use the
grease for seasoning.

     According to Nellie, there was a time she could feed the large
family for less than fifty cents a meal. "We could go up to the store
at Sanderson to get 10 cents worth of beans, 25 cents worth of lard
and a huge bunch of turnips for a dime. It was a real good time to
feed your family back then."

     Cooking techniques differed between white and black people
according to Nellie. "When white people cook they float things in
water, losing all the flavor," she said. "When I cook peas I put them
in a pot and add some salt, sprinkle on some flour, add a little sugar
and pour in the grease. I just put enough water in them to keep them
from sticking to the pan and when it cooks down you got a nice gravy
and everything's flavored so good," she said.

     White people usually just use a little margarine to flavor," she
continued. "The white folks I've always cooked for aren't too much on
meat seasoning. I just put plenty of bacon in mine and anything else I
can find, such as smoked bones."

     Nellie said she preferred using smoked hog face for flavoring.
"Used to be I could buy one for a quarter and I'd chop it up and put
it in my vegetables. It'd be so good."

     Nellie worked for 34 years 'on and off' for one Sanderson family.

     "I made $2.50 a day for years, but finally got up to $5. a day in
1979," she said.

     Widowed in 1960, she still cooks occasionally for others, but
prefers to stay close to home, within walking distance of five of her
children.

     Raccoon is the family's favorite food and Nellie's specialty.

     "My boy just visited me from New York and I had two ready when he
got here," she said, "but I ain't going to tell all my ingredients
that I put in my 'coon because so many people are wanting to know my
recipe," she laughed. "I got an extra touch I put into it and I ain't
telling it."

     Nellie said she recently cooked a 12-pound raccoon for three
white men who tipped her $30.

     "They ate it all, too," she said. "One man said to me 'Nellie,
I'm 59 years old and I never ate a meal like that before in my Life!"
The menu also included collard greens, northern beans, rice, sweet
potatoes, crackling cornbread and sliced onions.

     "My children that come home to visit don't think they've been
home unless they eat catfish stew," said Nellie, explaining that she
places a whole (gutted) fish including head (eyes removed) into a
well-greased iron skillet add lots of sliced onions, sprinkle meal or
flour over that add water and cover the pot long enough for the fish
to steam through.

     Nellie's oldest daughter, ( and my friend since youth), Eartha
Lee, lives across the field from Nellie in the original homeplace.
Declaring her mother to be 'the best cook around,' she thinks the
younger generation doesn't appreciate what she terms 'good cooking.'

     "I just love my mama's pig tail pilaf, especially the little
tender ends of the tails," she said, "but my children say, 'Mama, what
kind of meat is that? and I say, 'Oh, it's so good.' But they just
pick the meat out of the rice and leave it on the sides of their
plates."

     "My goodness," said Nellie, shaking her head in dismay, "I could
eat it until I dropped. What's this younger generation know about good
eating anyway?"

UPDATE:

Nellie Gaskins was the daughter of Tunny and Della McCrae. She died
suddenly on February 2, 1985. Nellie and MacKinley (Mac) Gaskins
children are: Bessie Lee, deceased, William, Jr., (Dee) deceased,
Lonnie, Mary Lee, deceased, Richard, Lumark, Eartha Lee, Gus, Arrie
and Mozel. All live in the Baker County area except for Mozel who
lives in New York. All deceased members of this family are buried in
the Sanderson Cemetery near the Hwy. 90 overpass.

_____________________________________________________________________________


                      Funston And Hazel Richard
                              Sanderson

     For more than 50 years Hazel Richard Mann has lived on the same
spot of land nestled off County Road 229 south of Sanderson. Memories
are fading not only for Hazel, but also for the man who brought her
there as his 16 year old bride. Gone are the days they ground grits
for their neighbors and friends at their popular grist mill, the
plowing of the 40 acres of rich farmland, of growing patches of sweet
potatoes and fields of golden corn and country vegetables, the
stringing of tobacco leaves and grinding of sugar cane into sweet
delicious homemade cane syrup, the hog killings and scrub board wash
days. Only the scant remnants remain, as far as the eye can see across
the windswept fields that surround them night and day. The forlorn
barn, the abandoned crumbling smoke house, the deserted syrup boiler,
the forsaken wood-burning cook stove all constant reminders of the
hard life. As swirls of sand from the fields are tossed around by the
wind so are their memories, sifted from day to day.

     Hazel was the daughter of a Raiford Florida native, Joseph
Richard, who married her mother, Baker County born, Rosena Smith
daughter of Georgia born Albert and Mary Elizabeth (Johns) Smith (from
Raiford). Joseph moved Rosena to Okahumpka in Lake County where he
worked as a fruit picker most of the time, supplemented by the
carpentry trade and farming. Times were hard, it was Depression days,
and she vividly remembers the little tenant house where she lived with
her parents, sisters Evelyn Louise and Ogreta Inez and brother Robert
There were no window shutters or glass panes in the small log
structure.

     "Mama hung pieces of material up to the window openings at night
to try and keep the misquotes and rain out,." she said.

     Woods varmints could get in the house very easily too. Hazel was
making up the bed where her two sisters slept one day when a long
slithery chicken snake poked his head up from the covers. Upon
screaming for her mother the two discovered that the unwanted guest
had been making his bed in the mattress apparently for a very long
time.

     "He had himself a little hole in the mattress where he curled up
and stayed," mused Hazel. "Me and mama got the hoe to him but he got
away from us. Mama had a hard time believing what we'd seen but the
way the houses were built and unprotected there was no way to keep
such things out of the house."

     So it was little wonder life looked a scant more appealing and
brighter when she visited her mother's sister, Loucrease Smith Mann,
south of Sanderson in April of 1940. One day during the Visit Hazel
and her cousin, Nina Mann, walked across the field to the home of Mary
Jane (Rigdon) Mann who was the mother of Loucrease's husband James
Field Mann.

     "It was just something to be doing," she said.

     But fate stepped in when five foot three inch good looking hazel
eyed Funston Mann caught her pretty brown eyes. Both were smitten
immediately and fell in love.

     Funston was a 28 year old widower with two sons. His first wife,
Lola Brannen, had died from complications in child birth. When Hazel,
who had just turned 16, returned to Okahampka from her visit the two
corresponded. And although her mother usually visited only once a
year, that October she returned to pay another visit with her sister
Loucrease. It was hog killing, cane grinding syrup making time at the
Mann home and Rosena wanted to be a part of it. Despite her husband
saying she couldn't make the visit Rosena went anyway and Hazel
immediately quit her penny a pound cotton picking job in Okahumpka and
anxiously returned to Baker County with her. She and Funston began to
straightaway plan their wedding secretly. A friend, the Reverend
Walter Sapp took the couple to Macclenny in his car for their marriage
license.

     We came back to Rev. Sapp's house and he married us," she said.
The couple had not told anyone. "We just ran away," said Hazel.

     "I really had a mad mama too, you can just imagine, I was only
16, and he was 28 with two children. But his mama wasn't as upset with
us as my mama."

     "I was young and I didn't know about anything that had to do with
married life," she said. "My mama didn't believe in talking about such
things, so she never said anything to any of us children. My friends,
or other family members never mentioned any thing either, so I didn't
know. I found out where babies came from after I married." she said.
"Back in those days we were not even told about our menstrual period.
I was 12 years old when it happened to me. I was scared to death. Mama
never explained a thing, and without a word, just handed me an old rag
because in those days there was no such thing as sanitary napkins."
she said.

     The young couple moved in with Funston's 72 year old hard-working
widowed mother, Mary Jane (Rigdon) Mann. Her once bright red hair, was
now faded. into a darker color and sprinkled with grey. (The color
change came after her hair all came out and grew back darker after a
bout with typhoid fever). His father, John Westly Mann, a native of
Columbia County, had died in 1926 leaving her with seven children.
John Westly was 16 years older than Mary Jane, having been married
first to Julia Ann Nettles who died in 1894. John and Julia Ann were a
hard toiling farm couple who had settled in Baker County with their
eight children. After her marriage Hazel immediately began helping
with chores around the farm, "anything that needed doing" she said. In
the farm home kitchen was a large clay, stick and straw fireplace that
took up half the wall. Cast Iron pots hung from long rods and they
cooked huge pots of beans, peas, or hearty stews while tender sweet
potatoes roasted in the hot ashes. The family ate their meals at a
nine foot dining table. Left overs, clabbered milk and homemade
biscuits were stored in a wooden box nailed to the kitchen wall. (in
later years a sturdy kitchen safe was an added luxury). Her paternal
grandmother, Salomia Browning Richard, had taught her to sew, and
quilt crochet and embroidery by the time she was twelve years old and
that is what she did when she wasn't working in the fields planting
and plowing, or cooking and scrubbing. She became mother to little
Talmage and Thomas, Funston and Lola's sons. In addition, she and
Funston added five more children to the family circle: Margaret Hazel
born in Lake City, John Paul, delivered at home by Dr. Anderson from
Macclenny, and Joseph Edward, Mary Esther, and Douglas Funston
delivered at home by Dr. John E. Watson from Macclenny. And they
legally adopted her sister Ogreta's son, William Elbert Richard when
he was five. The little children slept with their Parents as babies,
nursed from the breast 'until the milk gave out then transferred to a
bottle' she said.

     And the family was even larger than that at times.

     "There was always someone dropping in to live for awhile," she
noted, "in those days when the family members grew old and sick they
just moved in with the younger, more healthy ones. One who lived with
us was a family friend named Early Wiggins. We were always nice to him
when he came around. He just showed up one day and said 'I always said
if I had to live with someone it was going to be with you all'. So he
just moved right in and stayed. He had grown old and was nearly blind.
About two years after he came Funston had an operation so his daughter
came and got him and put him in a nursing home, but he left there when
Funston got better and came back to us for two more years. Then his
daughter put him back in the nursing home where he stayed until he
died."

     They kept family member George Rigdon for several years, and Josh
Rigdon as well. Then there was his mother and her parents. And on and
on. Some of them were invalids and needed constant care, which was
always given in loving and, charitable ways.

     Hazel and Funston were big tobacco growers, with little or no
cash reserves during the year, the couple worked hard in their tobacco
fields, hoping to make enough money on the annual sale to pay off
their grocery bill at Arthur R. Raulerson's store in Sanderson. In
fact, they depended heavily upon it because they charged what
groceries (usually staples) by the year.

     "We never got receipts in those days, Mrs. Eva (Raulerson) Mann
just wrote it down in her book and added it up at the end of the year
when we came in to pay. We all trusted one another. Hazel and Funston
could buy tomatoes, five cans for a quarter, bread for ten cents a
loaf, sugar 25 cents a pound and five pieces of candy for a nickel.

     "I remember one year our bill added up to $225," she said. "And
that was for our family of eleven plus all the comers and goers we
fed. We grew most of the things we ate and needed on the farm," she
noted. And of course we preserved the food from year to year to eat
year round. We depended on our crops for survival. Sometimes it was
hard making things go around that way.

     One year her mother-in-law bought a nice pressure cooker sold by
the government.

     "It would hold five quarts at a time." she said, "We really
thought we were uptown with that." They usually planted their crops by
the signs in the reliable farmer's Almanac.

     Funston once bought a farm tractor from Mr. Claude Rhoden. He had
to learn how to drive it around the farm. He assured Hazel he knew how
to operate it. Not long after he purchased it and brought it home,
Hazel heard him hollering out in the field. She went running only to
see him holding onto the steering, rearing back, screaming 'Whoa,
Whoa, I said Whoa', as the tractor continued on its way.

     "Shut it off Funston, it can't hear you, it don't know what
you're saying" she told him. "Step on the brake," she told him.
Funston sheepishly did as he was instructed and then shut the tractor
off and all quieted down. "Except I don't think he liked me telling
him," she laughed.

     Days were busy with children, milking cows twice a day, drawing
water from the out door deep well when they needed a bath, to do the
laundry, water the livestock, or do the home canning in number two
wash tubs outside in the yard. Laundry for the family was done on wash
boards or beaten with sticks to get the clothes cleaned. The clothes
were boiled in the large cast iron clothes boiler with a fire built
beneath it. It was hard work and back-breaking labor.

     And life was lonely for Hazel sometimes, even with all the work
to do. She did have some special lady friends that occasionally
visited: Mary Freeman, Callie Bryan and Agnes Jones were a few. They
could sip home roasted and home ground coffee. They purchased it
green, roasted it to their own taste then ground it with a coffee
grinder handed down to Funston by his father. The women admired the
yard flowers, an abundance of merri-golds and petunias that reseeded
each year. They swapped cuttings. In those days there was little
romance between men and women. Most men wanted to be recognized as
strong rugged farmers or rough and hearty hunters. At least that was
the way it was with Funston., said Hazel.

     "About all we ever did to relax together was take a walk out in
the woods. I'm still a wood's rat at heart." "I was really scared of
the dark and I didn't like staying by myself. Funston would go coon
hunting and leave me alone a lot at night. He would sell the coon meat
and keep the hides and cure them for our use. He hunted dove and other
birds like rabbits and squirrels for the family to eat. He trapped
various other animals for furs.

     At one time Funston worked at Raiford State Prison Farm and drove
a county school bus to supplement his farm income.

     Farm women of that day sewed the family's clothes from sugar and
flour sack material either by hand or on pedal sewing machines. Hazel
still has her mother in law's pedal machine that was made in 1890.
Occasionally she gets it out and uses it. There was little time for
just 'sittin' a spell or visiting with friends and neighbors.

     They used home medical remedies if someone got sick, or such
standards as Castor oil, SSS Tonic, or Groves Tasteless Chill Tonic.
Then there was Black Draught 'to work the bowels' out and keep one
healthy.

     "You had to really be sick to call on a doctor back then," she
noted.

     Dentists were not used often either.

     "You had to have a pretty bad tooth ache to go to a dentist," she
said, remembering that as a child it cost fifty cents to have a tooth
pulled.

     "I would fight the dentist until daddy promised to buy me a new
pair of cover-alls if I'd quit crying and let him pull my tooth," she
said remembering the coveted cover-ails cost about fifty to
seventy-five cents a pair to purchase.

     She remembers that her mother was superstitious but she doesn't
know what her superstitions were.

     "She kept all that to herself, but she'd do odd things I didn't
understand. After she died I found little pieces of rag tied up in a
rag or sometimes they'd be a rock tied in a rag What she did with
those things I don't know to this day." she said.

     The family made the eight mile half day trip into Sanderson by
mule and wagon on an unpaved dirt road for many years. They ordered
their shoes from Sears Roebuck catalog noting that sometimes 'they
didn't fit' when they arrived. They slept at night on lumpy cotton
mattresses, or mattresses made from moss or corn shucks. They used the
outdoor privy for years, no toilet tissue existed in those days, but
corn cobs and old discarded Sears and Roebuck Catalogs made do.(The
stiff catalog paper was rubbed together by hand to make it softer for
use). Funston never joined a church, but he belonged to the Sanderson
Masonic Lodge for more than 50 years. Hazel affiliated with the Glen
Baptist Church in Glen St Mary. They both are Christians.

     Today, a soft wind blows across the once vibrant land. Inside
their cozy modem home family pictures grace the walls.

     On a small table is a time worn box given to Hazel when she was
six. It once held her long discarded beads. Now she carefully and
lovingly fondles a little brown bag rotting from age with nine old
fashioned marbleized day marbles Funston played with as a boy, and his
little blue yoyo. There are a few sturdy arrowheads they discovered
when plowing their land. Funston, whose soft hazel eyes still twinkle
as a huge friendly grin creases his strong sturdy face, has suffered
from Alheimers Disease since 1989. Locked somewhere inside his mind is
the past. Hazel, still petite and pretty with a youthful stride, has
had a light stroke. She doesn't remember as well as she once could.
Their twilight years now tetter in a twilight zone.... Then returns
the laughter, happiness and treasured memories when their children,
who live near-by, bound in to regularly help and assist their stricken
parents. And as the sweet and lovely timely melody goes: "There is
beauty all around, when there's love at home. Time does softly,
sweetly, glide when there's love at home."

FOOTNOTE. Funston Mann was born October 1, 1912. His first wife, Lola
Brannen was born Sept 10, 1916. They married May 7, 1932. Hazel
Richard Mann was born April 9, 1924. They married 31 Oct. 1940.

Lola Brannen and Funston Mann's two sons were: TALMADGE MANN born
March 28, 1933, married Corraine Sparkman June 28, 1951, Their
children are Judyann Marie born Dec 9,1952, Marcus Eugene born March
14, 1957. Judy Ann married James Beard and they had two children,
Stephanie born Sept 18, 1972 has a baby girl. Tyler born Sept. 27,
1980. Marcus Eugene married LuAnn Smith and they have two girls. They
are Amanda Ashley born April 4, 1985 and Jinnifer Lyn born July 7,
987.

Lola and Funston's son JAMES THOMAS married Jeannette Griffis Dec 15,
1951. They had three children, Lois Frances born Oct. 31, 1952, Tommy
Dewayne born Oct. 8, 1954, Thomas Edward born Dec 29, 1956. Lola
Frances married Terry Young Jan. 10, 1979, They had two children Sloan
Anthony born Jan 7, 1980, Kelly Jeanette born Oct 20, 1981. Tommy
Dewayne married Debbie (?) Oct. 29, 1973, They had two children
William Dewayne Aug. 27, 1975, Jody Jeanette May 25, 1978. Thomas
Edward married Sherry Sisk Dec 12, 1978 and they have two children,
Kimberly Darlene born July 14, 1982 and Dustin Edward, born Sept 16,
1988. JAMES THOMAS married April 21, 1972. He had one son James
Thomas. Jr. born May 26, 1975.

FUNSTON AND HAZEL'S five children are: MARGARET HAZEL born Sept. 6,
1941, married Carlton Gene Sallie, Sr. Their five children are: Debra
Lynn born Dec 29, 1977 and married Michael Stephen Viddler. They had
one child Michelle Lynn. Carlton Gene. Jr. born Jan. 21, 1984. He
married Kimberly Starling. They had two children, Sarah Elizabeth born
April 6, 1985 and Rachel Lynn born June 6, 1982. Mary Jane born March
7, 1986 married Timothy Scott Wood, Sr. They had two children Timothy
Scott, Jr. born June 20, 1987 and Caleb James born May 31, 1991.
Timothy Paul married Pamala (Hershey)(Starling). They had one child.
Geneva Brook born Feb. 18, 1992. Stepchildren are Michael Wayne
Starling Mar 3, 1988 and Brittney Michelle Starling born Aug. 4, 1989.
Allen Dale married Stephanie Kennedy. No children. JOHN PAUL MANN
married Nancy Lou Mason Apr. 19, 1969. They have two children. John
Paul. Jr, born June 7, 1969. He married (?) and has three children
John Adam born Dec 5, 1989, Jonathan and Cleveland Anderson. Funston
Clifford Mann born Feb 26, 1971. He has one child Damon Clifford Mann,
born Oct. 9, 1990.

JOSEPH EDWARD MANN married Rose Marie Starling Oct 18, 1969. They had
one child Lisa Marie. JOSEPH EDWARD MANN married (2) Louise Stephans
in 1973. The couple has two children Edna Jo born Feb 15, 1977,
Crystal Ninette born Mar. 19, 1978, Charles Stephans. stepson, married
Tonya Kicklighter Oct. 2, 1988. Their two children are Tiffany Denise
born April 28, 1989, and Kelly Ann born Jan. 16, 1990. MARY ESTHER
married Roger David waters. They had one son, Roger David. Jr. who
married Carrie M. Snyder. They have one child, Roger David III born
July 29, 1991.

DOUGLAS FUNSTON married Cheryl Ann Simmons. He has three step-
children: Patricia Simmons, Tonie Marie Rainey and Christina Ann
Salamone.

The Mann family records are as follows:

John Wesley Mann, Sr. was born August 17, 1850 in Columbia County
Florida, died January 2, 1926. He was the son of William J. Mann and
Evelyn Wills. He married (1) on April 20, 1873 Julia Ann Nettles, born
Dec. 28, 1852 and died August 14, 1894. Their eight children were
Lyndia Ann Mann who married William A. Browning, James Field Mann md.,
Loucrease Smith, Frances Mann, md. Will Richardson, Elizabeth Ann
Mann, md. Andrew L Roberts, Marion Mann, md. Minnie Browning Julie
Etta Mann did not marry, John Wesley Mann Jr., md., Emma Rigdon,
William D. Mann md. Etta Rigdon.

John Wesley Mann married (2), Mary Jane Rjgdon, March 7, 1900. She was
born Feb. 27, 1868 in Charlton County, Ga. and died May 10, 1951. Her
parents were William Peter and Olivia (Agnes) Rigdon who settled in
Baker County. Their children were: Leafie Ola Mann who md. Earnest E.
Bryant, Abram Lincoln Mann, md. Effie Newmans, Leon Stubbs Mann died
as a baby, Leattie Mann, md. Clyde Larramore, Leah Mann md. Herman N.
Justice, Nola Queen Mann md. Ahtee D. Breeden and Funston Mann md. (1)
Lola Brannen 7 May 1932 and (2) Hazel Richard on October 31, 1940.

SMITH FAMILY RECORDS OF HAZEL RICHARD

Albert Smith, born in Ga. Feb. 22, 1870. He died July 26, 1953. Moved
to Palmetto Fl, then Raiford. Was a sharecropper. Settled in Baker
County. Married Mary Elizabeth Johns from Raiford. She was born March
1, 1863, died Dec 10, 1936. They are buried in Sapp Cemetery, Raiford,
Fl. Their three children were Loucrease, Rosena and Charlie all born
Baker County. Loucrease married James Field Mann, settled in Baker
Co., Charlie married Gertrude Addison, from Raiford, settled in
Sanderson, Rosena married Joseph Richard from Raiford and settled in
Lake County at Okahumpka until 1940 then moved to Raiford Fl.