"Once Upon a Lifetime: in and Near Baker County, Florida," book - v.2 (file 1/2)

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by La Viece Smallwood
(no email address), through Carl Mobley (cmobley@magicnet.net).

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                 Once Upon A Lifetime Vol No. 2
                In and Near Baker County, Florida

               By La Viece (Moore-Fraser) Smallwood
                          Copyright 1993

Copies available from the author complete with photos: Rt 2 Box 543
                    Macclenny, Florida 32063

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

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

* Lula Thrift
* Hardy and Carrie (Hogan) Rhoden Family
* Lillian Mae (Prevatt) Scoles
* Tony Givens & Janie Bell Blue Givens
* Sanderson and some residents who remember when.
* Olustee
* Coy Taylor/Gordon Taylor
* Lorene & Opal Raulerson
* St. George, Georgia Area (in file 2/2)
* Asa Coleman (in file 2/2)
* E. Ed Yarbrough (in file 2/2)
* Citizen of the Week - Introduction (in file 2/2)
* Lewis E. Covin, Jr. (in file 2/2)
* Sarah Canaday Fish (in file 2/2)
* Dr. John Watson (in file 2/2)
* Tillman and Nellie Dorman (in file 2/2)
* Duncan Rhoden (in file 2/2)
* George Lacy Dobson (in file 2/2)
* Andrew Jackson Mobley (in file 2/2)
* George Raulerson (in file 2/2)
* Kate Fullerton Wolfe (in file 2/2)
* Leafie Ola Bryant (in file 2/2)
* Verdie Fish (in file 2/2)
* Lucious Combs (in file 2/2)

_____________________________________________________________________________

                             Lula Thrift
                          Georgia Bend area

     In the curve of the Georgia Bend Lula Thrift still lives in the
house her late husband built for her in 1919. It cost him $25 to
build. She has lived in this section of Charlton County all of her
life, watching people and years come and go.

     "As far as the world's concerned, it's just as sweet and good as
it ever was, but it's the people that lives in it, honey," she said
looking me square in the eye.

     The petite little lady that always wears an apron, even to
church, had lots more observations to make about life today. "There's
dope, and all that drinking and this old hippie hair. HO! No 'siree,
that's not for me. I'm just plain old-fashioned and that's all there
is to it. I talked to my children and told them just how us old people
were brought up. And they best heed it," she said. "It was a sight
more peaceful back in the days of my family."

     When Lula married the man she loved in 1915 at the age of 16, she
thought she knew all that was suppose to be to marriage.

     After all she could cook anything a man and a family would want
in a clay cooking fireplace or on a wood burning stove. She could sew
clothes, make curtains and homemade underwear, wash dishes, do any
work needing to be done on the farm like plowing or weeding, or
growing any type of food. She could tend to children, wash clothes by
beating the dirt out with a long stick, then boiling them in a wash
boiler sitting on a hot fire out in the yard until the dirt floated
away in the rinse water she hauled and put in heavy wash tubs. She
knew about ironing thick denim overalls with heavy cast irons that she
heated on the wood-burning cook stove and the long flowing dresses and
petti-coats the women wore. She could chop wood, grow flowers, sweep
the yards clean with her thistle broom. She could make home made
mattresses out of cotton, feathers, moss or cornshucks. She knew how
to scrub her floors with river sand until the old wood planks would
shine like new. She could make candles for their light, make homemade
soap for their wash day, tend the sick with herbs from the woods. She
could even sing and pray. So what else was there?

     "My mama never told me anything about men, for if she had of I
probably never would have gotten married.

     "I didn't know what I was stepping into. I thought I was marrying
for love. I just pure loved the man. I didn't know what else I had to
do. I didn't know about -well, you know, sex. Nobody knew nothing
about such things like that in them days," she said.

     "Mama kept all such stuff like that away from us children," she
said. "All she'd ever tell me was that if I ever done anything wrong
when she got through with me I'd be sorry. But she never told me what
wrong was. I'd ask her and she still wouldn't tell me. After I married
and found out what it meant it was too late, for I'd done jumped in
the fire."

     The 82-year-old-widow of Nathan Thrift chuckled. The fire
crackled in the fireplace next to her cane-back rocking chair while
she reminisced in the comfort of the cozy home Nathan lovingly built
for her in 1919.

     "You know how much this old house cost?" she said. "Twenty-five
dollars. That's all, but honey, it's home and I love it. Why, Nathan
hauled the lumber on an ole mule and wagon from the sawmill. it ain't
nothing but fat lighter wood, honey, but it won't rot away as fast on
us and the termites won't eat it at all. It'll be here a lot longer
than me," she said.

     The small compact home where she has lived for more than 60 years
is nestled beneath towering pecan and gallberry trees.

     "We paid 75 cents apiece for them and Nathan set them out to
shade us when we moved here," she said.

     Glass window panes now replace the original wooden window
shutters and insulation keeps the house much warmer than before.
Modern bathroom plumbing is successor to the outdoor wooden privy. But
the old wood-burning cook stove still graces her kitchen.

     To the right and left of her within a block or two are the modern
homes of three of her five children. One son, a bachelor, still lives
at home.

     Gone is the house down the road where "Miss Lula" grew up.

     "It just plumb rotted away, honey."

     But memories of the old clay fireplace where she helped prepare
three hardy meals a day remain.

     "Poor Ma. I think she finally did get her a little two-burner
wood stove," she said.

     "I miss Nathan, I really do. He's been gone about 35 years now,
but I loved him. You see, honey, it was a good thing I did, too, for I
didn't know about all them other things."

UPDATE:
Lula died at the age of 87 years old May 26, 1987. She is buried with
Nathan in Oak Grove Cemetery, along with two of their sons Forest and
Woodrow. Bufort, Francis and daughter Daisybelle (Mrs. Francis
Williams) live in the vicinity of the old homeplace on Ga. Rd. 185.
Lula's parents were John Newton (born Dec. 28, 1851 an Sally (Arnold)
Sands born Feb. 16, 1861. Their children were sons, George Washington
born July 17, 1889, James (Jim) born March 10, 1898, Mamie born July
14, 1896, died Nov. 22, 1898, Lula born Feb. 10, 1899, Spencer born
June 30, 1903, Ellen born June 26, 1905. Some members of this family
are buried in a secluded wooded area in unmarked graves almost
directly across the road from the old homestead of Lula and Nathan.
The overgrown area has been owned in the past by timber companies, but
now is owned by Clyde and Mamie (Thrift) Sands who protect the burial
plots with a fence. At this writing, known burials in the cemetery
were those of John and Newt Sands, Salley, Spencer and Felton Sands.
The one time community cemetery was also the burial place for members
of the Batten and Drawdy families. Outside the area, but near the
homesteads are two babies of George W. Sands (no names or sex., known)
and three babies belonging to the James (Jim) Sands families, one girl
and two boys, unnamed. one child was buried in a shoe box and another
was in an ammunition box according to living relatives. Mamie Sands
remembers attending the funeral of Spence. Aaron Thrift once burnt the
woods and the wooden markers depicting the grave sites were destroyed
in the fire.

Nathan was the son of Joseph 0. "Jode" Thrift and Caroline Raulerson.
Joseph 0. "Jode" Thrift was the son of Leroy J."Pomp" Thrift and
Zelpha Hogan.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                         HARDY RHODEN FAMILY
                            Cuyler Section

     Hardy Rhoden was a determined young man when he went courting
Carrie Hogan. He would walk as far as he could through the dense
woods, and when he got to the big river he would take his clothes off,
hold them up over his head, walk across, put them back on, to court
Carrie. She was 13 and he was 23 when they married amid the peach
blossoms in the yard of her parents Joshua and Rosetta (Rhoden) Hogan
in 1900. The first of their 13 children was born the following year.
The couple left a family legacy that vividly endures in the lives of
their descendants. Celebrating and keeping family together was
important to their parents, say the children of Hardy and Carrie. So
they often meet and remember how life use to be for them and their
parents back in the early days in Baker County.

     In September of 1992, the three boys and two girls surviving from
Hardy and Carrie's family were: Fred, Belle (Bennett-Coleman), Edwin,
Joshie and Ellie (Lauramore). Gone from their family circle are Lillie
(Taylor), Lossie (Johns), Vallie (Johns-Crews-Taylor), Ethel (Johns),
Violet (who lived to the age of three), Rosa (Taylor), Mertie (Crews)
and Paul (killed in an auto accident at the age of 19). Meeting in the
home of Ellie, the group reminisced of a time gone by. One of the most
vivid memories they enjoy talking about is the time when they would
gather around the fire place with their parents and other siblings,
shelling peanuts to be used in planting next years crop.

     "Peanut shells would be this high," laughed Ellie, measuring up
to her waist.

     "Yea, and I remember Papa sat in a chair on one side of the
fireplace spitting his tobacco and Mama sitting on the other end
spitting her Buttercup snuff," said Fred. The children said they
seldom got to eat the peanuts, so a big treat was when their Mama
would let them roast a few after the shelling in the hot coals from
the fireplace. To this day they remember the delicious roasted taste
and enticing aroma from that experience.

     "They'd let us youngins' eat the shriveled up peanuts that were
not good for planting," reminded Belle. They all shook their heads in
agreement remembering.

     Joshie said he vividly remembered a time when his Mama made an
exception and parched him some peanuts in the oven. He promised not to
tell his father. "But" he said, "when daddy walked in I got excited
and started shouting, 'daddy we didn't parch any peanuts!! We didn't
parch any peanuts!!'"

     Daddy... they say... was very strict. He never spared the rod to
spoil a child. They dared not disobey his rules, and he was known and
respected as head of the house. "But oh how I loved that man," said
Ellie. The others nodded in agreement.

     "Our mother was the heart of our home, and we thought she was
perfect," said Belle. The others agreed. They said their parents were
good Primitive Baptist.

     And they remember the big church meetings.

     "Papa would kill a whole beef," said Ellie. "There were so many
people to feed and they'd make sure no one went away hungry."

     *Yea, and Mama would kill chickens by ringing their necks,"
quipped Edwin. "Dozens of them."

     "I wrung a chicken's neck one time and it just got up and ran
off," said Belle.

     "I wanted to help kill'em but I didn't want to hurt em'," said
Fred laughing.

     "Mama started preparing food on Friday for the big meeting," said
Belle. "Everything you could imagine."

     The night before the big meeting their parents would invite the
revival ministers and their wives and many others to their home for
preachin' and singin'.

     "Back in those days we'd read a verse of the song, and then sing
another verse," said Ellie. "They called that something but I can't
remember what it was."

     They remembered the time their daddy put a hundred dollars in the
collection plate by mistake thinking it was a twenty. When he
discovered the fumble he went to see the preacher and got his money
back.

     They lived in the Cuyler section of the county in a big two story
house with a fireplace that furnished heat. They cooked their food in
a wood-burning cook stove, and used candles to see by. They never felt
deprived of conveniences even though the house had no bed room
closets, and they had to use nails or door knobs to hang their
clothes.

     "I remember very well when we got our first remodeling," said
Edwin. "We went from a one holer privy (out-door toilet) to a two
holer. Now that was something."

     "And remember when we got our first bath tub?" said Belle, "Daddy
set it up in a room. We didn't have any running water but we thought
it was so pretty and the sides so slippery we'd play in it."

     As children they grew up happy and had lots of fun. They had the
regular get-togethers with friends and neighbors.

     "We'd have cane grindings, candy pullings, peanut boilings and
frolics," said Ellie.

     "And remember our first radio and how great it was to hear the
Grand Ole' Opry?" asked Edwin. "It had a dry cell battery."

     Belle said she heard her first radio broadcast on a car radio.

     The family had food in abundance, everything a farm could
produce.

     "Mama would cook breakfast and pack daddy a five gallon lard can
to take with him to the woods to work. It'd be packed with, sweet
potatoes, bacon, turnip greens, grits, biscuits and cornbread and
every thing else you can think of," said Ellie.

     "Yea, and daddy would bring that lard can back filled with
honey," said Belle.

     "Daddy believed in working, working all the time, even when we'd
take a lunch break after working in the fields hoeing. He'd be saying
'while you're resting ya'll go shell some mill corn, or pull up those
weeds, or go stack that fodder," said joshie. They remembered hauling
water from the river in buckets to water their sweet potato plants.

     "The only time we'd eat breakfast after daylight was on Sunday"
said Joshie, "because every other morning in the week you were out in
the field sitting on a plow waiting on the sun to come up!"

     "It didn't matter how young or old you were, you worked," he
said.

     "We'd bury our water in holes to keep it cool while we worked"
said Edwin.

     "Mama would put her crawling babies at the end of a row to play
while she worked in the fields," said Belle, "and the babies would
crawl around in the dirt and be so dirty. Mama made their diapers from
flour sacks."

     "Daddy worked so hard I'd see rings of pure salt on his shirt,"
said Ellie. "When he killed hogs he'd kill as many as 12 at a time."

     "I remember we had flour sack underwear," said Fred. "And the
girls slips were made from flour sacks. I remember Philsbury's Best
stamped on the back of them."

     "Some of that flour sack material was so pretty and made
beautiful dresses," said Belle.

     When the children got sick the parents seldom took them to a
doctor. Instead they had a shoe box full of remedies.

     "If you sneezed you'd get a dose of caster oil," Joshie said. "If
they put a little coke in it you could tolerate it better," reminded
Fred. "And I remember they'd add a little turpentine to work on the
kidneys and caster oil for the bowels."

     "What was it they called it?" someone asked.

     "Regulators," came the answer.

     "Remember the Black Draught?" Everyone squealed. "It tasted
terrible, but they believed those laxatives would cure anything," said
Joshie.

     "Well they do make you feel better," quipped Fred.

     At night the family would sit on the front porch and listen to
music they played on the wind-up phonograph. There were no phones.
Courting was usually done on the porch or at the water shed where
there was more privacy. At least that's where Floyd Bennett courted
Belle.

     "Yea, when Belle would get up and go to the water shelf that was
Floyd's cue to follow," said Fred. Everyone roared with laughter.

     The children said they lived a good life and were taught to be
honest and respectful.

     "Yea, daddy would put a hurt on you if you did anything wrong,"
said Joshie.

     "I remember going to town with daddy once and he looked over at
me and noticed I had my lips painted red with lipstick for the first
time," said Belle. "He told me my lips looked like a fox's tail and I
never put lipstick on again."

     The family traveled to church with a horse and wagon. The
children would put a blanket in the wagon and look up at the stars as
they rode home. That seemed to be one of the fondest memories they
shared.

     They remember the winter weather being so cold cows would freeze
to death. "And all the heat we had back then was from the fireplace,"
said Edwin.

     "We had soft feather beds to sleep on and every morning, by lamp
light, we had to turn them over to make them up," said Belle. "Yea,
and you'd better not sit on it once it was made either," added Ellie.
"Our beds had white spreads with beautiful hand embroidery over the
pillows."

     And said Joshie, "We didn't go swimming back in them days, we
went washing." Some of the names they remember were the Noah Fish Wash
Hole, the Sweat Wash Hole and the Whirl Wash Hole. The latter had a
dangerous swirling effect and was deep, dark and dangerous. They were
called "wash holes" because that is where most people in those days
went to bathe.

     "When we didn't bathe in the wash holes in the river, we bathed
in the wash water on wash days," said Edwin.

     Their mother washed clothes in a large iron boiler and after she
had scrubbed the clothes she would put the children into the boiler
with the wash water to bathe.

     As the family reminisce they find great pleasure in remembering
the days of their youth.

     They thought of the time when their father was first learning to
drive a car. He hit a wagon, knocked down the railing fence and was
hollering "Whoa, Whoa, I said damn it whoa!" He never learned to drive
too good, they agreed. Their mother tried to learn to drive but never
succeeded.

     Their father, who was the son of Hansford and Nancy Rhoden died
in a car accident when he was age 66. Some of the family think he had
a heart attack or stroke. Mother Carrie lived to old age. Both are
buried in Taylor cemetery.

     "I tell everyone we had a good life," said Fred. "And I can tell
them why because we were all taught to work.

     "And we were taught to treat our fellow man like we want to be
treated," said Belle.

     "That's the secret. We survived in the toughest of times, and we
were happy. There's no poverty in this country, it's plain laziness,"
said Fred.

     Gone are the days when they all sat around the fireplace together
shelling peanuts for seeds, the hard work in the fields planting and
harvesting the crops, the old time church revivals, sitting on the
front porch listing to phonograph music, swimming in the wash holes,
and countless other recollections. Gone from the scene that is, but
still living vividly in their memories. It is a rich heritage money
cannot buy, nor time can fade away. A legacy they hope to leave to
their children and children's children.

Footnote:
Hardy Rhoden was born September 3, 1878, and died January 5, 1944.

Carrie Hogan Rhoden was born Nov. 17, 1887, and died Feb. 11, 1970.
The couple have 51 grandchildren, 101 great-grandchildren, 122
great-great grandchildren and four great-great-great grandchildren.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                     LILLIAN MAE PREVATT SCOLES:
                     Taylor/Glen St Mary, Florida

     It is often said, "They're made of good stock," and if I had
describe Lillian Mae Prevatt that is probably at least one of the
things I'd say along with a lot of other accolades.

     She's 92 years young, tends her own home, (where she has lived
since 1941) does her own cooking, laundry, house cleaning ("don't want
nobody else cleaning my house, but me!"), rakes her own yards and
until recently, burned the leaves. "Now adays I'm afraid I'll fall in
the fire and can't get up," she said in a January 1993 interview.

     Lillian tends her chickens, and there is a good reason. Her
husband of more than 52 years told her, "Never get rid of your
chickens for they'll be company for you." Robert Scoles died October
24, 1980.

     The whimsical lady with a twinkle in her eye barely looks her
age. Her once flaming red hair has slowly faded into grey. Her smile
is infectious. She loves talking about the past.

     She was one of 14 children born to William Kell Prevatt and Mary
Lou Combs on a farm in Taylor, Fla.

     If we were poor, or lacked anything, we didn't know it," She
said. "We never missed a meal. There was everything we needed right
there on the farm and we had plenty of it".

     Her siblings were Lola (Johns), James, William Morgan ("called
Judge because he always thought he knew everything,") Jessie Johns,
Elsie (Rhoden) (Frank Combs), Ruth (Combs), Annie (Harris), Charles
Leon, Maggie (Harvey) Prevatt, Eva (Gainey), John Lessie (who died at
five years) and Cleo (Stafford).

     Two of her sisters, Maggie and Annie, share a room in a
Jacksonville Nursing Home. Lillian visits them often.

     And there is always talk about 'yesteryear' and how things used
to be.

     "Our main crop was cotton," she said speaking of the farm. "We
had a couple hundred cows and hogs. All us children worked in the
cotton fields, milked cows, fed chickens and hogs. Most everyone left
home around 14 or 15 for other work or to get married."

     Lillian attended school at Bluff Creek School which went about
the seventh grade. It was a one room school house with about a dozen
kids in each class. Some of the class mates she remembers that
attended were Lettie Thomas (Hogan), Lou Bennett Laughton Conner,
Minnie Altman (Combs), Robert Knabb and Lizzie Knabb (Chisholm). She
finished school at the age of 14 with about a seventh grade degree.

     "And that was pretty good in those days because we only went to
school when we didn't have to work."

     Her parent's home had three bedrooms, "and we slept 2 to 3 to a
bed, had plenty of handmade warm quilts and a roaring fire in the
fireplace to keep us warm in the coldest of winters," she said,
smiling.

     "My parents were strict Primitive Baptist. Daddy was a deacon. We
attended the Sweat Church. It was called that because a family of
Sweats lived up on the Hill, but now it's Oak Grove Primitive Baptist.

     "We went to church in a mule drawn wagon and we knew when we were
late cause you could hear the men a singing most a mile down the road.
We thought it was beautiful. The voices were so strong they'd drown
out the women."

     Recreation was playing with brothers and sisters, "sometimes
after dark when all our chores were through," she said. "We went to
the river to bathe, or sometimes we'd wash in the wash tub. If we
weren't too dirty we just washed our feet at night in a foot tub, but
sometimes we'd get dirty - it was dusty working in those fields, you
know."

     The family grew their own rice, taking it to the mill for
thrashing after they'd beat it on a board, and caught the kernels in a
sheet. They made their own brown sugar by cooking cane syrup down low.
Then they'd put the sugar in bags and let it drip until it died into
sugar. They would cook clabber until the whey came to the top and the
cheese went to the bottom. They'd hang the clabber in a bag on the
clothes line and let it drip until it made cottage cheese. They made
their own butter.

     If the children got ground itch her mother would put the child's
foot in a bag of clabber to 'cure' it. Her mother would boil a spring
weed called Jerusalem Oak and give it to the children for a spring
tonic.

     "And it was so bitter," she said.

     "Mother wouldn't let us eat raw sweet potatoes. She said we'd get
worms." Her family didn't get worms, but some families did, she said.

     "They wouldn't even feed the small raw sweet potatoes to the
hogs, saying they'd give the hogs worms, too, " said Lillian's son
Robert as he listened to his mother. "They'd have to cook 'em first."

     Lillian was living with an older sister Maggie Harvey when she
met Claude Scoles, a native Ohioan, who stopped by Glen St Mary to
visit his retired parents. He decided to stay awhile and they got
better acquainted. When his parents moved back to Ohio, he did too,
and they corresponded. In a year he, and his parents, returned and
they married.

     When I married him, my sister was moving to Jacksonville and I
needed a place to stay and I figured I needed my own home, so I
married him on March 3, in 1927."

     "Did you love him?" I asked.

     "Well I reckon I did, we lived together for 52 years," she said.

     "And they got along so good," smiled her son Robert as he
listened to his mother talk.

     Their home was a small three-room house back of the barn on the
Glen St. Mary nursery. They combined their money and bought furniture
from Mr. Matthews in Macclenny. Lillian was 27 years old and had a
good job as a supervisor with the nursery. She owned a brand new Model
T Ford. Claude took over Lillian's job at the nursery because he
wanted her to stay home. They started their family right away. Their
oldest child, Joyce Jean born March 4, 1928, died when she was two and
a half years old.

     "What did you all know about sex in those days, anything?"

     "No, honey, we just had to learn about it ourselves ... those old
timers wouldn't talk about it to us. I think my older sister said a
little something to me but it wasn't much. We got along just fine
though."

     Lillian's parents sold their farm and moved to Macclenny. Her
mother died in 1933 and her father in 1937. They were buried at Taylor
in the Taylor cemetery.

     "The roads were unpaved and we had a special wagon to take them
to the cemetery. They had a nice handmade casket, and in those days
they had to be buried the next day. We had no funeral homes like
today, and no vaults, just a casket, but they were nicely lined by the
women in the community. The family and friends followed the
horse-drawn wagon with the casket to the cemetery in horse and wagons
on country dirt roads.

     In those days, the women got together and made a white dress for
the women to be buried in. The men were buried in whatever they wore
everyday, like overalls. She said very few men had suits back then. A
special cloth was made to cover the faces of the dead.

     "You know, like it says in the Bible that a special cloth was
placed over Christ's face."

     "It was beautifully made, they'd take scissors and cut the
material to look like lace ... we called it notching."

     In 1961, she underwent surgery to have a growth removed from her
throat. The doctor accidently cut a nerve that paralyzed her throat.
Today she uses a device attached to her throat that allows her to talk
miraculously.

     "The doctor said he had numerous patients with the same kind of
operation that can't talk, and he was amazed that I am able to." she
said.

     She stays busy and enjoys her children when they drop by. Son,
Wendal Warren, born on November 14, 1931, lives in Jacksonville and
keeps in close touch by phone in addition to visiting often. Her
daughter JoAnn Patricia (Younger), born May 14, 1933, comes to visit
weekly, and son Robert Lynn, born on December 14, 1935, visits her
daily.

     She has three grandchildren: Shirley, Danny and Robert Craig, and
four great grandchildren: Robert "Bob", Christy Marie, Patrick and
David.

     "I've lived my life for the Lord, and I know beyond anything else
that He hears and answers my prayers. That's a comfort to me all the
time. I'm real contented knowing that."

     With a twinkle in her eye and an impish smile she said,"I only
have one real problem now and that is the older I get the less I can
remember."

_____________________________________________________________________________

                TONY GIVENS AND JANIE BELL BLUE GIVENS
                      Ca 1980 SANDERSON, FLORIDA

     On State Road 229 one mile north of Sanderson, Tony Givens and
his wife of 60 years, Janie Bell Blue Givens, pass away the time
sitting on the front porch of their little community store chatting
with passers-by.

     Known as "old timers" in the community, the county natives like
to talk about the good-ole days.

     Or was it?

     "Those were walkin' and talkin' times," the two say of the
turn-of-the-century days in Sanderson. "Yep, we'd go into Sanderson
and spend the day meeting up with our friends and relatives," said
Janie Bell. "The town didn't have a rest room for us colored folks but
the railroad peoples had some toilets we could use if we needed them
during the day."

     "Or we could always go in the bushes," spoke up Tony.

     "We'd usually buy us a loaf of bread, a slice of cheese and a
bottle of soda water to eat during the day," said Janie Bell. "Back
then the bread weren't sliced like it is today and we'd have to tear
it off in hunks."

     "Yea, and soda water was only 5 cents a bottle back then too,"
said Tony.

     The couple has one child, Eloise Rewis, a local school teacher.
They have three grandchildren.

     "My child minded me too," said Janie Bell. "Children today don't
mind no more."

     Tony and Janie Bell say they remember when people helped to raise
one another's children.

     "If I was at your house and did something bad your mama could
spank me and when I'd get home my mama would give me another one,"
said Janie Bell.

     "Yea, but if you hit someone's kid today you'd get shot," added
Tony.

     "Back in them days you wasn't allowed to dispute an older
person's word," Janie Bell said with conviction and approval.

     Tony Givens was the son of Tim Givens and Patsy Young.

     "Mama took sick and died when I was nine and papa died when I was
16," said Tony. "My oldest sister raised us youngin's," he said.

     Janie Bell was the third child of 14 children born to Eva Stuart
and Frank Blue, both Baker County natives as were Tony's parents.

     "Me and Janie Bell went to school together and always knew each
other," said Tony. "Her daddy wouldn't ever let her go to a frolic but
we'd see each other at school and church."

     Janie Bell was 15 and Tony 20 when they were married.

     "My parents were real poor people and the house they lived in
with their 14 children was only one large room," she said. "We cooked
in one corner of the room and slept in another. A fireplace was in the
middle of the room. our mattresses were made out of moss from the
woods, and several children slept in one bed feet to feet."

     "Yea, I had my own home to take Janie to when we married," Tony
smiled proudly.

     "I didn't know he was a man and he didn't know I was a woman
until we married," Janie Bell said as proudly.

     "What you mean?" said Tony sitting straight up in his chair. "I
knew you was a women 'cause I use to hug and kiss you."

     "Well I didn't know you were no man," his wife insisted.

     Janie Bell said that while her husband made a living cutting
cross ties, she took in laundry.

     "I'd do a whole white family's weekly laundry, washin' and iron'
for 50 cents," said Janie Bell, explaining she used wash tubs, and a
rub board out in the yard, and flat irons on heavily starched clothes.
It took days and sometimes a week to complete a load of clothes. Water
was hauled from a well, or hand pump to wash and rinse the garments.

     "Wasn't no use to ask for no more money 'cause that's all you'd
get," she said, adding that she still had the large flat board she
used as an ironing board during those days. Most of the time she did
the laundry at her house, but then there were times she would go to
the "white peoples houses."

     Sometimes she said she was paid off in old clothes that had been
worn out by her customers.

     "I needed the 50 cents more but they'd say that's all they had."

     Tony had his share of work woes.

     "Sometimes I'd be in the swamp cutting cross ties for fifty cents
a day when the water was frozen over with ice," said Tony. "I gots
rheumatism today 'cause my feets would be so frozen," he said.

     There was no use telling the "boss" you couldn't work. They had
ways of making sure you worked sick or not said Tony.

     Many people died.

     "Back in them early days if you died you had to be burd that same
day," said Janie Bell.

     "Yea, they'd put 'em on a coolin' board out in the middle of the
house until the coffin got made and people would walk behind the mule
and wagon carrying the coffin to the cemetery," said Tony. "Even if it
was raining we'd have to go bury them that day. Most them old people
like my parents have no markers and I don't even know where my family
is buried."

     "I knows where mine are buried at," spoke up Janie Bell.

     The Given's couple said they feel that Christmas is everyday now.

     "I remember all we use to get would be one big stick of
peppermint candy and it would be broken up in little pieces and
divided among us children," said Janie Belle.

     "They done took the Spirit Out of Christmas now days," said Tony.
"Back then you looked forward to having a turkey on Christmas. Now you
can have a turkey everyday. I'm tired of turkey," he said, "I can eat
it anytime I want."

     Both Tony and Janie Bell enjoy reminiscing with old friends who
drop by their store or talking with new people who move into the
community.

     "These days are much easier on us," declared Tony. "We were the
first colored people out here in the quarters to have electric
lights."

     "Our lights ain't never been cut off either," said Janie Bell
with pride.

     What about the men who say they went to the moon?, I asked. "Do
you believe they did?"

     "I believe they went to the moon 'cause they brought back some
rocks and things," affirmed Tony.

     "I'm still wondering 'bout it," mused his wife.

Footnote: 1993 Janie Bell died April 21, 1984. Tony, age 93, still
lives in their little home by the side of the road greeting his
friends and enjoying his daughter Eloise and children and
grandchildren. He still enjoys voting privileges and was the oldest
voter in Sanderson in 1992. He was born July 2, 1900.

His three grandchildren are Patricia, Carolyn and Virginia. His great
grandchildren are: Craig, Bethoria, Charmaine, Cardell, Covey, Juan
Tinisha, and Chinnitta.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                     SANDERSON AND SOME RESIDENTS
                      WHO REMEMBER WHEN.....1983

     In the center of Baker County, 12 miles west of the county seat
of Macclenny, on a two lane stretch of U.S. 90 lies a fascinating
segment of the Florida frontier. First called Newburgh\Newberg as
early as 1856, no legend survives to relate the reason for that name,
but Newburgh was changed to Sanderson Station in 1859. The little
logging camp settlement was permanently named Sanderson in honor of
Jacksonville attorney John Philip Sanderson in 1869. Long time
residents pronounce it "San-er-son" and proudly call their quiet
comfortable haven home.

     Passing through Sanderson today is no problem. The road stretches
east and west with no sign of traffic lights at either of the town's
two intersections. The way out is as easy as in. Strewn along either
side of the narrow asphalt highway for a quarter of a mile, more or
less, are a few scattered conveniences, a town bar, restaurant, beauty
salon, one sizeable grocery store and a few rustic dwelling houses.

     The little town was once the bustling county seat of Baker
County. Local residents say the town's promising future was shattered
in 1877 when officials shifted the seat of government eastward to
Macclenny in the wake of a raging fire that totally destroyed the town
hall and left the county's official records smoldering in ashes.

     The once thriving frontier metropolis soon declined as one by one
the town's major businesses either collapsed, or relocated, with the
eastward movement.

     Most town residents are three and four generations removed from
the original town settlers whose reasons for coming to Baker County in
the first places is obscure history. The area was at one time a part
of five counties: Duval, Alachua, Columbia, Suwannee and New River,
before the State Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, the
existence bill of 1861.

     In the beginning, settlers migrating south into the wet swampy
region were loggers and turpentine people tapping into the area's rich
natural resources. Adventurous land squatters and pioneering farm
families who slowly filtered into the sparsely settled community did
so from the east and west avoiding the almost impassable and
treacherous Okefenokee Swamp that lay in their way.

     Some Civil War soldiers who once trekked through the heart of
Sanderson on their way to the one and only major battle Florida had,
the Battle of Ocean Pond, or the Battle of Olustee, (depending on who
you talk with), left their impressions of Sanderson penned in their
diaries and the letters they mailed home to their families.

     "Our destination turned out to be Sanderson about 50 miles west
of Jacksonville," wrote First Lt. Tally McCrea, a former West Point
roommate of Gen. George Custer. "It's a spot the men call 'camp
misery'" he noted in a diary entry on February 5, 1864. McRae, who
served with the 1st U.S. Artillery troops under the command of Gen.
Seymore, was later wounded in both legs at Olustee and survived to
become a Brigadier General after the war.

     Scrawled in the diary of Leonard Peck, Co. G, 7th. Connecticut
volunteers on Friday, February 5, 1864, was this impression.

     "Had a chance to look around. This Sanderson is not much of a
place, a few houses and a good railroad depot. The business of the day
was killing hogs," he wrote.

     Early Florida descriptive records say that traveler's venturing
into the piney woods of Sanderson often come upon huge-wheeled,
ox-drawn carts carrying cypress logs to the lumber mill just out of
town. The workers carry lunch buckets usually filled with cornbread,
black-eyed peas boiled with white bacon (salt pork), and a jar of cane
syrup. After the peas and bacon are eaten, the cornbread is dipped in
syrup held in the bucket lid. Greens and bacon, "poke" chops and
beans, biscuits, boiled sweet potatoes, rice and cowpeas provide
variety.

     But to town residents, and even to those who have moved away for
whatever reason, Sanderson is now, and always has been, a place to
proudly call home.

     "Why, no better people in the world ever lived than these people
who came out of this neck of the woods," said A.L. Ferreira who
returned "home" to Baker County after 38 years of service with the SCL
Railroad.

     Ferreira said his grandfather, William Daniel Mann (whom he
called Pa), once owned a large commissary in Sanderson and served
Baker County in the Florida House of Representatives so admirable in
1891 that he was reelected without qualifying or seeking office.

     Sanderson's new modern post office building now stands on the
spot where the Mann's big rambling frame home with the circular
banister porch and spreading sycamore trees once stood.

     "Why, you could sit on that porch and see everything that went on
all over Sanderson," he said.

     "When it began to get dark Pa would wash his feet in what they
called a foot tub out on that porch. Ma (grandmother Jane Green Mann)
would wash hers next, then the oldest child right on down to the
youngest would wash theirs, using the same tub and water. That's when
we young'ins knew it was time to go to bed.

     "Once a week we'd go to what they'd call a washin' and we'd take
a bar of soap and go to the creek. I guarantee when you washed with my
Grandma's homemade lye soap you were clean ... no doubt about it."

     Sanderson didn't always have its own doctor and Ferreira said the
town's people often relied on their own ingenuity.

     "Times have really changed," he said. "My children would just as
soon die as wear an asafetida ball hanging round their neck like the
one my mama insisted on us children wearing every fall. My, it stunk,
wouldn't nobody come near you, but mama said it would keep any kind of
germ or cold away from us youngins if we wore it all winter.

     "To this day I can see my mama pointing to this big old iron
wagon wheel leaning up against the fence and instructing me, to file
on it some and bring her the iron shavings. I did and she gave me a
spoonful with a dipper of water. I guess I must have taken it for a
week or so," he said. "Can you imagine people doing that today? We
were never sick though," he added.

     Because Sanderson is not an incorporated town, no official
records exist as to the present day population.

     "But a lot of people live out in those woods even though what we
refer to as down town has dwindled," commented Sanderson post mistress
Bethel Johns. She is a descendant of the Mann family like Ferreira.

     Seventy-four-year-old Sanderson native and former County
Commissioner Roy Harvey agreed.

     "Yea, a lot of people that left here years ago to go into the
city and work have come back to Sanderson to retire, but then a lot of
them who sold their farms and went away couldn't buy them back when
they returned," he said.

     Roy said there was a land boon in 1925.

     "Property went sky high around here and sold for $5 an acre. That
was a big price back in them days when people like daddy were used to
getting 50 cents an acre. Of course, it's $3,000 an acre these days
(1983)," he said.

     He remembers 120 acres of land being sold to Paul Mann for
$1,600, and 640 acres to Mr. Burnett for $10,000 that included a
tractor and a two story home. Today, he said, at $3,000 acre that
would bring $192,000.

     He said his grandfather bought 50 acres for .50 cents an acre and
thought that was a lot of money.

     Roy served as a popular County Commissioner for 28 and a half
years. His average salary for those years was $50 a month. He was born
on the 3rd of October 1909 to Baker County natives A.J. and Lula (
Harvey) Harvey. They lived on a farm north of Sanderson.

     "My daddy never drove a car in his life," he said. "He was still
walking into town to buy his groceries when he was 78 years old. We
didn't think nothing of that back then.

     "Why, it's just been in the past few decades that we've had
electricity in these parts," he declared. "I remember the first car I
saw coming down the road. Why, I hadn't ever seen anything more than a
kerosene lamp and I thought surely you could see as far as three miles
down the road them lights were so bright. I'll never forget it!"

     Roy remembers that until the past few years Sanderson was always
busy with lots of activity on Saturdays.

     "That was the day people bought their groceries and picked up
their mail. Most everyone either walked or drove a mule and wagon into
town, tied up the horses beneath a big shade tree, and went shopping.
There was always an old dog hanging around that would catch you if you
went to the wrong wagon," he chuckled.

     The Saturday morning train brought a churn of ice cream packed
securely in dry ice, he said, and one of the first persons to sell it
from the depot platform was "little Joe Dobson" who in later years
served the County as Clerk of Court for 32 years. "It was two dips for
a nickel," he remembered. "And oh was it good!"

     The train also delivered a barrel of mullet fish packed in ice.
They sold three for 25 cents. We were just as astounded to see the
ice. You just didn't see ice very much because there was no
electricity, therefore no refrigeration.

     "In those days cattle roamed all around, slept in our yard, we
couldn't have a flower or nothing. Then came the fencing laws.
Everyone was upset but we had to learn to live with it and learned to
like it. We had 300 head of cattle that had been able to graze
anywhere, but they had to be penned up when the fencing laws went into
effect. Daddy had all our cattle branded when they roamed the woods
and no one had ever bothered ours.

     "The cows and chickens furnished all the fertilizer needed for
our crops. We didn't buy it like people do today.

     "When I was growing up, recreation in Sanderson was hard to come
by. When we courted, if you want to call it that, we had to sit in the
front room with our mamas and daddys. Back then it wasn't no trouble
for a girl or a boy to walk five miles more or less, we didn't think
nothing of it. Nobody had a car and was lucky if they had a horse or a
mule."

     Roy and his wife of almost 50 years, the former Gracie Davis,
reared six children ( Bonnie, Barbara, Belle, Roy, Jr., Richard and
Rita) on their little home place north of Sanderson.

     "Sanderson has been a good place for our family, wouldn't have it
any other way. Sure, times were hard, but it made us strong. Me and
Gracie are proud of our family backwards and forwards and in between,
and we're mighty proud all of that movement has been right here in
Sanderson."

     Tommie Fraser, also a former county commissioner for the area, is
now a retired third generation Sanderson merchant and who was once
Roy's brother-in-law, agreed.

     "Most people around here charged their groceries annual until
they sold their tobacco crop," he said. "We'd total up the grocery
bill on a paper sack with a pencil. I didn't buy an adding machine
until 1947," he said.

     Tommie said he had about 150 credit customers. "My daddy, (Thomas
Brantly "Tom" Fraser) ran a grocery store in Sanderson during the
Depression and times got so hard people couldn't pay for their
groceries, so they ate up what groceries he had, on a credit, and he
didn't have any money to pay his bills with. So when they couldn't pay
him, and he couldn't pay the wholesaler, he moved out about three
miles from Sanderson for a season and went to share cropping to keep
us all from starving. All he had when he left the store was a Model A
Ford and he gave that to the wholesale grocery house on a debt he
owed. We had exactly nothing."

     Tommie said that when his father died in 1974, at the age of 91,
a moving tribute from a former customer of those days was published in
the county paper. It read in part. "Depression days were hard on many
of your families. Where would the seed come from for a simple garden
to feed your children. Don't think a very old gentleman passed away
and that's all. Please remember a part of our history has been laid to
rest. In some cases, without his help, you could have possibly never
come into existence."

     "Mr. Tom" had helped her family during this trying time and the
sacrifice had not been forgotten.

     "That's just typical of how all the people are around here, said
the retired merchant. "They have always looked out for one another."

     Tommie's son Al is a merchant in Glen St. Mary. He and his former
wife, Lillian Davis, reared four children in Sanderson: Judy, Al,
Cyndy and Jeff.

     "I doubt you could move any of them away from their raising, they
all love Baker County, and have especially sentimental feelings about
Sanderson. Their great great grandpa Thomas Jefferson Fraser settled
here in the 1850s."

     Eva Mann has been a merchant on the southeast corner of
Sanderson's main thoroughfare for 56 year. When she and her late
father, Arthur Raulerson, opened for business in 1927 they inherited
the town's lone phone.

     "For more than 30 years it was up to us to deliver the phone
messages that came into Sanderson rain or sunshine," she said. "We
delivered messages and telegrams when the boys were wounded or killed
overseas in the war, or when there had been an accident or death.
People really relied on us to get the messages to them, and they knew
something, usually bad, had happened when they saw us coming. We
walked to deliver the messages before we got a car, or either we rode
the horse. Sometimes we even had to close the store to go when only
one of us was around."

     The service was free, she said, and would be today if the
circumstances were the same. "We wouldn't have ever even thought about
charging. Most people didn't have phones until the 60s."

     "Sanderson's really just the same as it's always been," she said,
"except for the few modern conveniences we have now such telephones
and electricity."

     "Just about everyone has a phone and electricity now!" she
smiled.

     She remembers some special things about ole timey elections in
Sanderson. For example, "the Satchel Men" who came around during
election time.

     "These men had money in their satchel and they'd pay you to vote
for their list of politicians," she explained. "The way it worked was,
they'd give you the list of names and tell you to ask for a certain
person inside the polling places. That person was called a poll
watcher and he would help you vote if you requested it because back in
them days lots of people couldn't read or write. After the poll
watcher showed you how to vote for all the people on the list, they'd
go to the window and motion to the satchel man. When you'd come out of
the polling place you'd get your money cause the satchel man got the
signal everything was OK." "Ms. Eva" remembers something else too.

     "Lots of people would wait around uptown until their vote was
bought," she said.

     Eva's husband, Thomas Orson Mann died in 1944. Their two
children, William Thomas (Buck) Mann, and Faye ( Mrs. Eddie Nettles)
still live less than a mile from her with their families and share the
land of her inheritance.

     Grace Roden, a Sanderson native, doesn't live in Sanderson
anymore, but visits her relatives there often. She remembers how
Sanderson used to be more than half a century ago. As a child she
remembers she could stand on the main street and see all over town.

     "Almost every house was that of an uncle or aunt," she said. "No
one had electricity, indoor plumbing or cars."

     The sandy streets of Sanderson were not paved and the main source
of transportation was by horse and wagon. "And," she said, "about the
only excitement was when the morning and afternoon trains passed
through the town, sometimes stopping long enough for the big steam
locomotives to fill up with water from the water tank located on the
edge of town."

     The one telephone in town was located in Arthur Raulerson's
general store. The Raulerson family delivered all messages.

     When her mother, Adeline Fraser Mann, was 28 years old she died
10 days after giving birth to her sixth child.

     "I was the oldest" she said, "and my sister Mabel and I did the
cooking on a wood-burning range."

     Grace's daughter Adeline married a Sanderson boy, Ralph Newton.
She remembers growing up there when recreation was considered a walk
along the railroad tracks on a Sunday afternoon picking wild flowers
with other young people.

     "We had fun being together," said Adeline.

     Grace said she quit school to marry Celester Cobb, a classmate.
He died six years later with pneumonia. Her sisters, Mabel and Ruth
helped her raise her two small sons, Bernard (Bunchie) and Gene, and
daughter Adeline.

     Grace moved away to Jacksonville when she met and married James
L. Roden, a mattress salesman, but she said that Sanderson will always
be the place she calls home.

     One thing Sanderson native (John)ny Jackson (Bunk) Dugger(son of
John Dugger) remembers about Sanderson is the moonshine industry.

     "If you wanted something to eat you had to make moonshine," he
said. "Back in them Depression days you couldn't even buy a job if you
wanted one."

     Bunk said he made lots of moonshine, "barrels of it!"

     "Why, you could see smoke rising up out of them trees just most
anywhere in them woods," he said matter-of-factly. "Everyone just
about was a making it. I hauled barrels of moonshine from them woods
by mule and wagon."

     "Now, I don't mind talking about it and you telling about it if
you don't think they'll come and get me."

     "Who? The law?" I asked.

     "Yea, don't reckon they will now, it's been a long time ago. Just
go ahead and ask me anything, I don't care," he said.

     He can't remember how much money the moonshine brought him.
Instead, he remembered that he sold most of his 'shine to a Georgia
man who'd come get a load and trade him sugar for it.

     Bunk was also a farmer, saw mill worker and dairy employee.

     He knows just about everyone in Sanderson, he says. Talking to
him at his home three miles north of Sanderson, the robust man looked
like a typical farmer. Roosters crowed in the background as if it were
just getting daylight instead of late in the afternoon.

     "What year were you born?" I asked him.

     "Don't rightly know," he replied. "I'll be 92 next Monday, you
can figure it up I reckon." We subtracted 92 years from 1983 and came
up with the year 1891.

     His father, John Dugger, who gave him the nick name of Bunk, once
gave his grandfather's negro slave a home in their cotton house after
his grandfather died.

     "Use to the people in Sanderson could be mean, especially to the
negroes. I'm glad all that's changed. Use to if a negro came to
Sanderson wearing a hat and didn't take it off someone would shoot it
off. I remember when three negros were killed over at Dan Mann's
store. I'm glad that things have changed, that they can eat in
restaurants because that saves a lot of trouble. Wern't no use in the
way they were treated anyway."

     Bunk Dugger married Martha A. Wiggins and reared three children
from her previous marriage, William J. Crews, Jr., Rosie Crews Harvey
and Shirley Crews Harvey. (The girls married brothers). The couple had
one child together, John Jackson Dugger, Jr. His first wife died and a
daughter from that marriage was killed when she was about 20 years old
while working in a negro barber shop cutting hair.

     The Sanderson sisters are well known and well loved in the area.
They are the children of Daisy (Fraser) and George Dobson. Their five
brothers, George Wilber, Donald, Joseph, Ray and James are all dead,
but Eunice (Burnett), born in 1907, Mattie (Roberts) in 1908, Gertrude
(Bevis) in 1912 and Edith (Keller) in 1916 still live within
seeing-eye distance of one another.

     Three of them, Eunice, Mattie and Edith reminisced with me.
Eunice taught school (mostly) in Baker County for 38 years, Mattie
served as Post Mistress in Sanderson from 1945 to 1972 and Edith ran a
service station combined general store from 1946-1964. Gertrude, who
worked at Northeast Florida State Hospital in the clerical department
until her retirement, lives on Main Street where she can look north
across the railroad tracks that run through town and see the homes of
her sisters.

     "The sisters" as most folks refer to them, are most known and
loved for their charitable ways. When Mattie and Eunice became of age
their parents had them baptized on March 18, 1918 into The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) along with two of their
brothers Wilber and Donald. ( All members of their family are LDS).
Their devotion to the church's teachings limited their remarks to
anything that even hinted of a risqué or demeaning nature.

     But "the sisters" admit the town's reputation in the early days
was bad.

     "There were factions, and families would rise up against families
in feuds," they say. And things could get dangerous, even in town.
They remember when a white man named Lacy Green and a negro man by the
name of McCrae shot each other and died right on Main Street. And they
remember when three black men were taken to the river and hanged.
They've forgotten "what for."

     When Mattie became post mistress in Sanderson, her starting
salary was $100 a month or $1,200 annually. When she retired in 1972
she was making $14,000 a year. In "the olden days" she would sit in
her car, (or stand) twice a day, rain or shine, by. the railroad
tracks waiting for the 10 a.m. morning "mail" train going west and the
5 p.m. train going east. There was a mail crane on the north side of
the tracks that would snatch the mail bag quick as lightening as the
non-stopping, fast train rumbled through town. If the trains were two
hours late, Mattie could return to the post office and send the mail
out the following day. When roads were washed out from heavy rains she
remembers the mail was delivered by boats.

     Edith remembers how it was with blacks in the early days.

     "They couldn't come in the front door of restaurants, had to go
around to the back and hope to get something to eat. I don't think
there was a place for them to eat or use restroom facilities from Lake
City to Jacksonville. It didn't seem fair because we took their money,
which was as good as anyone's money but that was tradition then and
that was the way it was."

     "Yea, even if they worked for you, the blacks had to come in the
back door and leave by it" said Mattie. "And they sat in the kitchen
to eat never in the dining room."

     Both said they were glad when things changed for the blacks.

     "We called the older blacks 'aunt' or 'uncle' out of respect,"
they said.

     "Sanderson is quiet, friendly and more widows here than anywhere
else," laughed Edith.

     The 'sisters' are most proud of the "little Mormon Church" built
in 1929 for $1,500 on land donated by Mr. W.D. Mann. That is where
they spent their happy years serving God with their family and
friends. Their brother Joe was born directly across the street from
the church. Today the building has been converted into a small
residence and the sisters travel to Macclenny where a large new
edifice stands on Hwy. 228.

     They are best known for always having a big pot of chicken and
dumplings, bowl of turnip greens and delicious homemade cakes and pies
to take to the homes of the sick and ailing or anytime there is
"dinner on the ground." They are called "the best cooks in town."

     Gone are the early Sanderson pioneers. Many of them lay beneath
the soil in unmarked graves, their names now have passed into oblivion
and their lives can only be imagined. Few records are available as to
their daily lives and activities, but one thing is for certain, they
are revered, and their footprints are still visible in the sand of
time around Sanderson.

UPDATE: A.L. Ferreira died on June 4, 1987. His good friend, Joe
Dobson, died February 14, 1993. Both are buried in Manntown Cemetery.

Roy Harvey died September 6, 1987, and is buried in Cedar Creek
Cemetery south of Sanderson.

John Jackson (Johnny) nick-named Bunk Dugger died October 2, 1985. His
wife Martha died March 8, 1985. They are buried in Cedar Creek
Cemetery north of Sanderson.

According to official records, Sanderson was named for John Philip
Sanderson who was elected to the Florida Secession Convention of
January, 1861, from the 16th Senatorial District, of which Duval
County was a part. He lived in a historic home at the corner of Ocean
and Forsyth Streets in Jacksonville, which was burned in the great
fire of May 3, 1901. He became president of the Florida Atlantic and
Gulf Central Railroad in 1857, was a prominent attorney who also ran a
dry goods and provisions business in Jacksonville. The road was
completed from Jacksonville to Lake City in 1860, and according to
Florida Place Names published by the Federal Writers Project of
Florida, the village of Sanderson, in Baker County, settled in 1859,
was named for him. He bought the Ortega section of Jacksonville in
December 1857 from Asa and Austin Moore and his heirs sold Ortega to
the Jacksonville Ortega Town Company in February 1902. John P.
Sanderson is last listed in the 1871 Jacksonville City Directory, but
his wife Marion H., is last listed in the 1905 directory. John P.
Sanderson's illustrious life is listed in many publications in the
Florida Room Collection of the Jacksonville Public Library for further
research and study.

He once entertained at a reception for General Robert E. Lee when Lee
visited Jacksonville on April 14, 1870. He was born in. Vermont in
1815.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                           OLUSTEE FLORIDA
                           Interviews 1993
         A.G. ST. JOHNS AND VONCEIL (DOBSON-FRASER) ALVAREZ.

     A.G. St. John and Vonceil (Dobson) Fraser Alvarez have been
friends for 74 years ... in Olustee. They played together as children,
started school together, and remember Olustee in unison as "a place we
are proud to call home."

     Long before the two of them were born in Olustee, Indians roamed
the area and used the beautiful serene and crystal clear Ocean Pond
lake as the setting for their home sites. The name Olustee may be from
Creek oklusti ("blackish"), or from Hitchiti oki ("water") combined
with Creek luste ("black"). There is also Olustee Creek that rambles
through Columbia and Union counties meaning "Black Water Creek."

     Be that as it may, Olustee was also once a fort during Florida's
territorial days as well as a Methodist sanctuary mission at one time.

     What the two good friends remember, in their first
"recollections" about Olustee, is that it was once a bustling, busy,
and active community with hotels, mercantile stores, a pecan farm,
large homes they called mansions, sawmills, flourishing turpentine
businesses, cattle ranching with cows, cows, and more. cows, some
brought in by the federal government to fatten up and make "corn Beef"
from.

     Some of Florida's most illustrious citizens had influence in
Olustee in the late 19th century.

     One of them was Henry Dyess. When ole man Ezekiel Dyess's wife
died he buried her in the front yard and said "when she comes up I'll
be sittin' right here waitin' on her". Thus began the Dyess cemetery,
a small plot, with mostly Dyess kin, located south of U.S. 90.
Vonceil's mother is buried there. Her first husband, Homer Blitch, was
related to the Dyess family.(He and Anna had three daughters: Lattice,
Virgie and Homie. Anna and second husband, Johnty had two children,
Vonceil and Johnty, Jr.. Johnty Sr. is buried in Swift Creek Cemetery
over in Union County.) There is also an Olustee Cemetery where the
"old timers," are buried. So are Vonceil's first husband Claude Fraser
and her only child Barbara Ann (Mrs. Amos Rhoden).

     Many of the early area trailblazers were Pre-Indian War settlers
and Civil War Veterans, and those who came for the town's sawmill and
cattle industries. They were the Colemans, Finleys, Mikells, Arch
Johns, Isaiah Dobson (Vonceil's kin), Isaac Dopson, Cobbs, Bryants,
Herod Raulerson, Hance and John Alford (my kin), Jim Pearce, Westers,
Brannens, Raulersons, Beasleys (A.G.'s family), Boyds, Wiggins,
Tanners, Pearce, Johns, Mikell, and on and on.

     The railroad arrived in 1858. They established timber companies
and bought more land and timber rights. Eppinger and Russell (later
Fletcher) were the largest company and they acquired timber land for
10 cents an acre. Another was Hilton and Dodge. Most of the time
timber was taken to Jacksonville for milling. AG. and Vonceil remember
when "the Yankees" moved in and set up mills around Ocean Pond and
built a railroad way out into the lake where acres of the pond's
cypress trees were harvested.

     "They had a rail car (tram) that went out in the lake on the
tracks. We called it 'the dummy! Masses of huge cypress logs were cut
with the steam-powered saws." said A.G.

     "It was a big business," said Vonceil. "The timber companies
built a floating bath house with one room for boys and one for girls.
We could put our swim suits on and dive off the platform into the
lake. It was crystal dear with a white sand bottom, she said. "But no
more, the government's ruined just about everything there is around
here."

     "I use to drink water from Ocean Pond until it got so polluted
from the industry and of course later with power boats," said A.G.
"Believe it or not it was 99.9 percent clear at one time."

     "There was a juke down there at the lake too," said Vonceil.
"We'd go down there sometimes on Sundays to eat dinner. I think my
daddy sold 'em moonshine too."

     "Almost everyone had a little wooden boat tied up on the lake,"
remembered A.G. "No one bothered it either, and when you wanted to go
fishing it was always there."

     "There were lots of blacks in the community working in the
sawmills and turpentine distilleries," remembered Vonceil. "There were
rows and rows of their little homes. They stayed in their quarters
most of the time because they had commissaries to buy their supplies,
but when the women would come to town I remember that they always had
a handkerchief with them. They kept their money tied up in one end and
a straight-razor in the other to protect themselves. There were times
when they used them too," she remembered.

     The Cason family was one black family in the area that the two
friends remember the most and for good reason. Ole Aunt Laura Cason
Austin (Mrs. Caesar) delivered both of them. Vonceil on July 13, 1918,
and A.G. on December 5, 1918. They both say she delivered every baby
in Olustee for more than 50 years.

     "Her descendants have a big reunion every year," said A.G. "They
come from all over the United States, some driving Jaguars, Mercedes
and other expensive cars. The reunion lasts for a week."

     "I think she charged about $5 to deliver a baby, or whatever you
wanted to give her," said Vonceil.

     As far back as the two friends can remember, Olustee had no
doctor.

     "Someone would just go up to Sanderson and get ole Dr. Blanton,
if they had to have one in an emergency," said A.G.

     "Well, he'd give everyone the same thing, that ole white salve,
and it'd cure anything," said Vonceil.

     "And we'd use Watkins liniment, that was good for just about
anything, too," said A.G.

     Then there was a huge pecan grove. A.G.'s daddy worked there.
Daddy was Audley Gordon St. John, Sr. His mother was Nella Mae
(Beasley) St. John.

     "They were pretty straight-laced people," said A.G. "They were
honest and hard-working."

     At one time, A.G. said four stars were placed in the window of
his mother's home. They represented the four sons she had on active
duty during WW 11. They were A.G. Jr., Elmer, Ernest, and Franklin.
Elmer and Ernest are dead.

     George Alfred Beasley, A.G.'s grandfather, was married to Maggie
Tanner. Their son, and A.G.'s great grandfather, Jefferson Froy
Beasley, fought in the Battle of Olustee (or some folks say Battle of
ocean Pond). He was married to Mary Boyd.

     "He died when I was 10 years old, but I remember his long flowing
white beard," said A.G. Vonceil remembered him too.

     A.G. and Vonceil recall when there were large stately homes built
in the pecan grove.

     "We called them mansions," they said.

     "My daddy drove a team of mules and sprayed the trees," he said.
"The pecan farm was owned by the saw mill people."

     "When it was abandoned we used to go there, everyone in Olustee
did, and get pecans," said A.G.

     "Yea and the government came in and cut the trees down and
planted pine trees," quipped Vonceil.

     "They call it controlled planting," explained A.G.

     The two friends remember the big hotel in Olustee. It had a
restaurant and a large fountain with ice cream and cokes. There were
lots of rooms upstairs where some school teachers and other boarders
lived. The town had lots of buildings in those days.

     They remember their two story clap-board school house before the
larger brick one was built in 1928.

     "Our book was a Primer about Baby Ray," said Vonceil.

     They remember that at recess the boys played on one side of the
school and the girls on the others.

     The upstairs of the school was used for the Masonic Hall except
for one class room and only children in that class were al]owed to go
up stairs.

     "And they didn't have to worry about us going up there either, "
said Vonceil. "They scared us to death saying that a goat was upstairs
and it would get us if we went up there. I wouldn't have gone for
anything and let that goat get me. I believed them."

     "I did too," chimed A.G.

     "They were real strict with students back then," said A.G.

     Their principals at various intervals were Harold Milton, Johnny
Burnett and Giles Bethea. Estelle Beasley (Boyd) was one of their
teachers. Lelia Dopson was another.

     There was no electricity, or indoor plumbing when they grew up in
Olustee. And Vonceil remembers when she saw her first radio. Bill
Thompson from Lake City brought over a battery operated one and showed
it off to Olustee residents.

     "G.P Beasley couldn't figure it out because there was no wires to
connect it to anything," laughed A.G.

     Planes were an oddity when they flew over head. Everyone stopped
to gaze. Most people traveled by horse and wagon, the roads east and
west, north and south were unpaved. Occasionally a traveling carnival
would come to town and set up a merrygo-round. That was fun and
exciting they said.

     Vonceil lived in downtown Olustee. Her parents were Johnty Knight
and Anna Gincy (Dorman) Dobson. Anna ran a small grocery, scooping up
10 cents worth of grits and 5 cents worth of corn meal for customers.
Vonceil cut plugs of tobacco for 5 cents a plug. Apple, Blood Hound,
Brown Mule and Bull Durham. Gasoline was 10 cents a gallon.. The
gasoline was pumped by hand and had a glass top measuring container
that set atop the pump.

     Every gallon was marked by lines and you pumped until you gave
the amount of gas the customer ordered. Tobacco was sold in cans
(Prince Albert the most popular) and the cigarettes hand rolled.
Johnty was in the cattle business. Her grandfather Elijah Dobson and
his wife Mary Jane Roberts grew cotton and were large land owners. It
is said that Elijah owned more cows that anyone else in the state.

     There was a drawback to living in downtown Olustee like Vonceil
and her family. When draught hit the west, the government bought up
all the cows they could locate, especially in Texas, and shipped them
to Florida. One stop was in Olustee and Vonceil remembers the terrible
racket they made, especially in the night, bellowing and clopping up
and down the cattle cars and long ramps that led to the holding
corals. They were poor, undernourished, pitiful cattle that arrived
starving for water and feed and would stampede down to the lake for a
drink of water upon arrival ... those that survived the trip that is.
They died by the hundreds, said A.G. and Vonceil. Those that lived
through their ordeal were placed on the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration (FERA) Ranch, which maintained feeding stations
throughout the forest for the cattle. They were kept until they could
be fattened up and shipped to Jacksonville's slaughter houses. There
they became corned beef which was doled out to the needy by the
government. Vonceil's memories of the cattle ranch are vivid.

     "Some of the cattle were dead in the cattle cars when they
arrived," she noted. "it stunk, you just can't imagine how bad."

     "They would burn the dead ones, and that stunk too," said A.G.

     "And they used to have huge cattle dipping vats for the worms and
ticks on them," said Vonceil.

     "I can't stand the thought of corned beef to this day," she
lamented.

     The two friends remembered, too, when the white-hooded Klu Klux
clan members held big rallies in Olustee. They had big barbecues, and
Vonceil remembers the huge wooden barrels of homemade lemonade.

     "All us children would go and get the lemons out of the discarded
barrels that had soaked up the lemonade. They were so sweet and good,"
she said.

     "The clan did do some good," said A.G. "Sometimes when a man beat
his wife or children the clan members would pay him a visit and give
him a stern warning. It usually straightened him out."

     The friends believe if "the government hadn't bought up
everything around here, Olustee would have amounted to something."
Gone is the large hotel, the cattle corals, the saw mills, turpentine
businesses and the hordes of cows and hogs that once sprawled all over
the small town-and who ofttimes slept all night in the middle of the
road. Today there is only one church, one store, one log cabin lunch
room restaurant, one welding shop and one lawn mower repair shop. A
few houses, mostly the descendants of early settlers like A.G. and
Vonceil, dot the landscape.

     The government bought up all the land, and created the Osceola
Forest, they said.

     "Today you'd have a hard time buying any land around here, even a
lot," said A.G.

     "Most of the farmers just sold out and left," said Vonceil. "And
I never dreamed I'd ever live between two prisons," she noted. "But if
we had land those persons working in the prisons would buy land in
Olustee and live here and help build it up. There is just no land to
be had except for what the government owns."

     The two friends went to Sanderson for a higher than eighth grade
education. Vonceil quit in the 11th grade to marry dashing suave,
Claude Fraser from Sanderson, and they ran a general store in Olustee
for four decades plus. Their only daughter, Barbara Ann (Rhoden) was
killed in a car-truck accident near Lake City. She left them two
grandchildren, Mark and Amy. Vonceil, pretty and petite, looks only
half her age. many say she is a timeless beauty. I agree.

     A.G. graduated from Sanderson High School in 1936, but finances
kept him from college. He spent three years working in the CCC Camp
and later achieved a 30-year outstanding and illustrious career with
the navy of which 17 was spent as a Chief Petty Officer on various
ships and stations in the medical administrative field. He spent nine
years as a commissioned officer, three of those years as
administrative officer of aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. He married
Phyllis Eileen Graham of Auckland, New Zealand. She died in 1979.
Today, he owns the lovely brick home that Vonceil and Claude built
before Claude's death. It is filled with meaningful relics and
collectibles, including about 30 branding irons. Two of them once
belonged to Vonceil's daddy and granddaddy. A.G. is known for his
honesty and integrity and support of community and country. He is an
all-American, and one of a kind type of fellow. Of all their friends
and classmates, only Vonceil and A.G. remain in Olustee. The others
are either dead, or have moved away.

     Back in 1972 there was a rumor that Olustee was going to become
"The Promised Land." it was actually a "Holy Land" tourist attraction
with massive financial backing that would erect buildings and scenes
of holy relics as described in the Bible. The project was estimated to
be about 60,000 acres in size and built on the shore of Lake
Palestine, a 900-acre lake about seven miles south of Olustee. But
that's all it was, a rumor. Lots of citizens, round and about,
believed it. Claude Fraser had already planned to enlarge his small
grocery store and so had Zelia Brannen, who operated a small cafe in
Olustee at the time. Mary R. Croft operator of Croft's Place, a
combination grocery store and tavern said she'd remodel if the
attraction came.

     "I wish they'd do something to build Olustee up," she said at the
time.

     L.C. Roberts, who helped in Stone's Store in Olustee, owned by
his son-in-law, said it didn't make any difference to him when the
rumors were flying. "I'm getting too old for it to matter!"

     Two miles east of town the ground was once soaked in American
blood where Florida's one and only great and mighty Civil War battle
took place. Though it is a story in itself, homage should be paid to a
young pioneer couple, John and Elizabeth Brown, who with their three
year old son Jesse moved onto the site in later years and began
tilling the spot where John had fought and shared grief in the battle.
John and Elizabeth's twin sons were born on their homestead along with
other children. And long after his parents' deaths, Jesse conducted
tours for the returning veterans who came and stood silent where the
fury had occurred. Some took away minie' balls and artillery relics.
In 1909, the State of Florida acquired the spot and in 1912 erected a
monument commemorating "the place."

     Today, a museum renders tourist a glimpse into the past not of
Olustee, but the famed Battle of Olustee or as some say, Battle of
Ocean Pond. And thanks to several preservationist organizations, many
renovations and improvements have been made to the site.

     And annually their hard work is appreciated even more. Stories of
the celebrated battle have been told repeatedly as reporters and
historians search for new material to report. Of all the narratives
I've been told the one by my late historian friend John DuFour stands
out most. His father, Louis DuFour, fought in the battle and kept an
explicit journal. He also related many personal graphic accounts of
the famed battle. An example is how many of the soldiers were missing
arms and legs due to the battle. He said that women from nearby
communities came to care for the wounded on the battlefront. They
helped bury the dead for two or three days as well. In describing the
graves, Louis DuFour told his son that the graves were shallow and as
many as seven and eight Yankee soldiers were thrown together in the
same pits at the same time.

     "Later, the hogs got to rooting around in the shallow graves,"
DuFour told his son. In the following years passengers on the railroad
line going through the area complained that the right of way was
filled with bones and skulls.

     The government sent an agent to investigate the matter. The
officer reported that two large wagons with human bones had been
collected. He reported that he had buried them all in a common pit and
related that he erected a 12-foot high wooden marker over the burial
site.

     DuFour, who died in .1922, never forgot the explicit details of
the horror.

     The scene of the abandoned bodies and wounded bothered him
greatly. In his diary he penned, "If President Jefferson Davis and
President Lincoln could see this massacre and all this tremendous
suffering, they'd stop the war and wonder if hate really runs this
deep."

     (if the remains of these men were ever dug up and sent to a
federal cemetery, as many were in later years, there is no government
cemetery that has ever produced a receipt for the bones from the
Battle of Olustee. Historians in Baker County have tried in vain to
find evidence.)

     Though it may be small in size, Olustee has become mighty in
fame. Each year the re-enactment of Florida's only civil War Battle
grows larger and more celebrated. Overnight thousands swarm into the
little community, set up camp, re-fight the battle and move on. So
maybe L.C. Roberts sums it up best, "most residents are probably just
getting too old for it to matter anymore."

_____________________________________________________________________________

                      COY TAYLOR/GORDON TAYLOR:
                      Taylor Community May 1979

     The reddish-black water flows jubilantly around the middle prong
of the little St. Marys River and laps gentle waves upon the white
sandy shoreline.

     The little community of Taylor, Fla., rallies early. A gentle
breeze blows through the virgin timbers. It's Sunday, and like
generations before them, residents prepare for the 10 a.m. services at
the Pine Grove (Taylor) Church.

     With few exceptions, the Taylor community is about the same as
when most of the residents' forefathers settled the land more than 50
years ago.

     Modern automobiles have replaced the mule and wagon, electric
lights the oil lamps and candles, modern tractors the hand plows, but
many things remain the same.

     "My grandfather was the first settler in these parts," proudly
proclaims the Rev. Coy. Taylor, pastor of the New Congregational
Methodist Church. "That's where Taylor got its name ... from my
grandfather Gordon Taylor."

     Traveling "as Abraham of old," teen-aged Gordon Taylor set out
from his North Carolina home with a caravan of friends and neighbors
in the mid 1800s searching for a better way of life.

     The weary cart-train travelers - alternately walking and riding
their way onward under primitive conditions - finally settled in
southern Georgia, somewhere in the northern part of Ware County.

     Young Gordon soon met and married Eliza Lee, the daughter of
Needham Lee, a pioneer setter in Black Creek, north of Blackshear.

     I`n a few years, the young couple and their four children (later
increased to 11) moved to a place on the south side of the Okefenokee
swamp. They settled in the northern part of Florida (Baker County)
near the middle prong of the little St. Marys River, the community now
known as Taylor.

     "Grandpa cleared fields and planted crops to feed his family,
building his home from logs," said Coy. "About that time the war
started and he went off to serve in the Confederacy."

     Gordon Taylor later returned to his family and the Taylor
community. Before long, other settlers moved in to share the Taylor
bounty.

     "Families such as the Dowlings, Williams, Combs, Harveys, Crews,
Bennetts, Conners and Davis's came first," he said.

     Intermarriage among the settlers brought them together as one big
family.

     "Almost everybody out here's kin to somebody," he said with
pride.

     Gordon Taylor's reputation for honest and righteous living was
known throughout the community. He prospered.

     "With the help of his children he built a grist mill, cotton gin
and general store, used also as the post office where mail arrived by
horseback," Coy said. "He also ran a saw mill, 'cause at that time
there was a lot of yellow pine timber."

     As the community grew, so did the need for organizing. A public
cemetery was established. Today more than 1,000 graves exist there.

     In 1880, the Pine Grove (Taylor) Church was established. Gordon
Taylor was a charter member, leading the choir and teaching Sunday
School.

     The church withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in
1881, because of what was felt was tyrannical and oppressive
discipline from the South Georgia Conference. A church government
based on congregational principles was founded, retaining the same
faith and doctrine of the M.E. Church, South.

     The first article in the constitution of their Book of Discipline
reads: "This church shall be called the New Congregational Methodist
Church and all churches in her connection shall be congregational in
their system of worship."

     Near death in 1902, the aged patriarch called his children near.

     Gordon Taylor's great-grandson, the Rev. Paul Taylor, later wrote
that his grandfather asked, "Who shall take my place in the work of
the Lord and help carry on the work of Him that has saved us?" Gordon
Taylor's two sons, Tom and William, then pledged to continue the work
as set out by their father, he wrote.

     The Rev. Coy Taylor, the son of William is currently pastor of
the approximately 106 members of Pine Grove Taylor Congregational
Methodist) Church.

     "I was born and raised up here in this community with these
people. I preach their funerals, perform marriages, and baptize 'em
when they're ready to give their life over to God."

     Baptism takes place in the tea-colored waters of the little St.
Marys River.

     "Sometimes a visiting preacher baptizes, like when we have a
revival, or sometimes I do," he said. "A few months ago we baptized 27
on a freezin' cold day. My, that was a beautiful sight. I kept callin'
for more to come down to the waters. When they finally stopped coming,
I said to the revival preacher, "Here baptize me again," and he did.
"It was a beautiful sight to behold, a glorious feeling."

     In 1956, the original 75-year-old church was moved and a large,
modern 40x6O concrete block building was erected. It is presently one
of the 15 of the same faith in a district.

     Each church within the district has an annual meeting, at which
time communion is taken following a feet-washing ceremony. Delegates
from each church are elected to be present for each conference.

     As president of the district, Taylor and his wife of 39 years,
the former Doris Cowart, also from Taylor, try to attend.

     "We have two days of meetings," said Taylor, "and dinner on the
ground both days." (Dinner on the ground means delicious
country-style, home-cooked meals served picnic style on the church
grounds.) "They're always held on weekends," he explained.

     The annual meetings are looked forward to by each church member
with great anticipation of a spiritual revival within each person.
Communion bread is unleavened, baked by the women of the church.

     Following the 11 a.m. Sunday service, dinner is served on the
ground. That afternoon, communion is passed by those especially
appointed by the church to do so. Feet washing follows, commemorating
a 2,000-year-old ceremony initiated by Christ, Taylor said.

     "In the scriptures it's recorded that Jesus washed his disciples
feet and told them that they should wash one anothers feet. It's a
form of humbleness toward each other," he said.

     "Keeping traditions-the same as their forefathers-is what keeps
the community together," Taylor emphasized.

     "Even when people find it necessary to move away from the
community, they usually belong to a church within our district, and
we're often all together for our meeting and revivals.

     "Annual family reunions are faithfully held," he said, "by the
different community families. With just about everyone kin, well, it
just naturally keeps us all together, spiritually and physically."

     The community of Taylor, like the beautiful and serene St. Marys
River that flows through her bosom, just keeps on rollin' just keeps
on rollin' along. Very peacefully.

_____________________________________________________________________________

                             THE SISTERS:
     Lorraine Raulerson-Reynolds Stokes and Opal Raulerson Taylor
               Taylor, Georgia Bend and Macclenny areas

     When Lorraine and opal Raulerson were growing up in the Moniac,
Georgia-Taylor-Florida, sections more than seven decades ago, little
did they realize the pleasure they would have recalling the incidents
and memories of a life they once considered humdrum. The two women
were the oldest of 12 children born to George Raulerson and Alma
Knabb.

     I washed more diapers for my mama," said Lorraine. "Everytime we
found out mama was going to have another baby Opal was going to leave
home."

     Mama made us get up before daylight and cook breakfast and opal
would go back to sleep on the kitchen bench," said Lorraine, laughing
as she recalled the memory. "It wasn't so funny then," she admitted.

     While their parents worked in the fields growing crops to feed
their large family the smaller children were kept safe in boxes (that
served as play pens) beneath large shade trees near-by.

     "Me and Opal would fight and papa would try to make us make up by
kissing. I'd kiss, but Opal wouldn't, so papa would whip her," said
Lorraine.

     Both women roared with laughter.

     School, they said, was a two-room structure 2 1/2 miles from
home. Their lunch bucket was usually filled with sausage, sweet
potatoes and biscuits. "Anything we had," they said.

     "We had to walk to school, and most of the time I had to carry
Opal on my back because she'd get the foot itch," quipped Lorraine.
"And I will never forget the worm test we had at school," she said,
quivering at the thought "I never had 'em but Opal and James (their
brother) were the wormy ones. We had to take the medicine at school
because the teachers were afraid the parents wouldn't make the kids
take it at home. Everybody that took it got sick and then were fallin'
out like flies. I just knew all the youngins in the school were going
to die. A turpentine truck passed by the school and we stopped it and
loaded up all the sick kids for home."

     The sisters laughed again as they reminisced.

     "At one time we had an elderly blind man that stayed with us and
he'd try to help feed the smaller children, miss their mouth and poke
potatoes in their eyes," they recalled, anew at the memory and
agreeing that their blind friend was good at rocking them to sleep.

     Besides Lorraine and Opal, there were Pencie, Macel, Herbert,
Myrtice, Kathern, T.J., James, Vilas, Sara Lillian and Gedone.

     "All us kids were not enough for Mama and Papa. They took in
boarders, grandparents, and needy friends, neighbors and relatives,"
they lamented. "Yeah, and all us kids were always bringing somebody
home with us. We'd sleep four in a bed and on the floor," said Opal.

     "I've killed and cleaned as many as six chickens at a time to
feed us," remembered Lorraine.

     "Mama would beg pea seeds from people where she'd visit and then
send me and Opal out to plant 'em. We'd dig a big hole and plant 'em
by the handful in one place trying to get rid of 'em," said Lorraine.

     "Yeah, and they'd all come up in one place and look like a big
flower pot" laughed Opal.

     "Opal was always good at fixing hair," Lorraine recalled. "We'd
use the kind of curling irons you'd hold over a lamp to heat."

     "We've scorched our hair many a time trying to be pretty," Opal
said.

     "I remember one time we went to a dance at Simon Green's house on
the Georgia Bend..and Opal wore a pair of high heeled shoes with
socks. I was kind of ashamed of her," Lorraine said, smiling at her
sister.

     "Guess I didn't know any better," Opal responded.

     Both women were quick to praise their parents, who eventually
settled in Macclenny.

     "They were the best in the world. They'd do anything for anybody.
Everyone loved them and knew if they needed help they could come to
Mama and Papa," they said.

     The sisters agreed that their mother was a natural wit and lots
of fun to be around.

     "It's even funnier now to look back on some of the things she
said and did," they said.

     "Once Mama told Sara Lillian if she went to that beach in
Jacksonville and got herself 'drownded' she was going to whip her."

     "Another time we brought Mama in to Jacksonville to shop. Some
ole man was passed out on the sidewalk and Mama stopped and asked him
why he didn't get up and go to work. Mama couldn't understand people
sleeping in the daytime and not up doing something."

     "Nobody better not ever tell me I wasn't taught to work,"
declared Lorraine. "I've done more than my share."

     The sisters agreed they possessed a valuable heritage.

     "They don't make people like our parents anymore," they avowed.

     Both women vividly remember their maternal grandmother, Sara
Knabb, who lived with them while they were growing up.

     "Grandma would put T.J., James and the smaller children all in
the syrup kettle out in the yard for a bath. She'd build a fire under
it to warm the water and their little feet would burn as it got hotter
and hotter. They'd all start cryin' and she'd whip them trying to make
'em be still."

     "Yea, we'd get to wash in the house in a number two wash tub,"
Opal added.

     Lorraine quit school at age 15 and married her childhood
sweetheart, William Hollis Taylor.

     "I thought the world had moved out from under me when she left
home," said Opal. "We were really close."

     In 3 1/2 years, Lorraine returned home. A child from the marriage
had died.

     "We weren't nothing but youngin's," said Lorraine of her
marriage.

     Meanwhile, Opal had married Herbert Taylor and moved from home.
Lorraine returned to school where she met tall dark and handsome
Lawrence Reynolds, and once again quit school to marry. She was 20
years old.

     "I thought Grandma Knabb was going to give her everything we had
when she married," said Opal.

     In 1946, Lorraine and Lawrence, together with Lorraine's parents,
formed Raulerson and Reynolds grocery store that became a Macclenny
landmark. (Today the Senior Citizen's Center is in the location).

     Opal and Herbert lived in Jacksonville.

     In June 1953, Lawrence suffered a massive heart attack and died
on the way to a hospital in Jacksonville. Graduation exercises for the
32 seniors at the then Macclenny-Glen High School was postponed until
after the funeral services in respect for the couple's only son,
George Windle, who was a member of the graduating class. Several years
later, Lorraine married Roscoe Stokes and moved to Canal Point,
Florida. That marriage lasted only a few years before Stokes died and
Lorraine once again became a widow. Lorraine returned home to
Macclenny, and in 1977 lost her only son, when he suffered a heart
attack.

     Meanwhile, Opal's husband died and the two sisters moved together
in the home of their late parents.

     "We don't like to dwell on tragic times," said Lorraine, who
inherited her mother's quick wit. "It really doesn't do any good. Opal
and I remember the good times, the fun times, like Opal, do you
remember the time Mama..."

FOOTNOTE: Lorraine still lives in the small white frame house that
once belonged to her parents at 145 North College Street in Macclenny.
Opal, in failing health, is now a resident of a nursing facility in
Jacksonville. Lorraine is watched over by her family of brothers and
sisters who visit often. The family is extremely close and share a
bond of love that is unique in today's society.

UPDATE: Opal died March 24, 1993.
Lorraine died May 14, 1993.
Myrtice died May 10, 1993.