"The Way It Was" Newspaper Column on Baker County, Florida History, 1980 part 1 File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Gene Barber (no email address), through Carl Mobley (cmobley@magicnet.net) USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. This file may not be removed from this server or altered in any way for placement on another server without the consent of the State and USGenWeb Project coordinators and the contributor. *********************************************************************** THE WAY IT WAS ------------------------------------------------------------ William Eugene "Gene" Barber, Artist, Instructor, Historian & Genealogist authored a series of articles for the Baker County Press entitled "The Way It Was". His articles covered all aspects of Baker County pioneers lives in a colorful, entertaining, as well as, educational manner. At an early age, Gene possessed the desire and ability to interview the 'Old Folks'. He was as talented in the use of the pen, as he is with a brush, choosing his words and expressions in a way to paint an exciting and interesting story. The following are but a few of his articles written in 1980. Contents: * Devil Enoch Roberts - Three Parts * Genealogical libray February opening * Olustee - Five Parts * Some papers pertaining to Philemon Bryan * The shooting at the frolic * So you want to dig up your Grandpa..... - Five Parts * The convict lease system - Five Parts * Some of the early holders of livestock in county * Random thoughts on randon subjects * The Herndons - Two Parts * Major David Moniac - Two Parts * Me and the 'Whip-poor-wills' * The Big Fair (in part 2) * The Historical Society - Two Parts (in part 2) * The Alachua Trail - Three Parts (in part 2) * Indian attack at Ft. Moniac - Two Parts (in part 2) * Jernigan in Orlando Moniac (in part 2) * POLITICS -- As they were...and will remain (in part 2) * The Mizell Family - Five Parts (in part 2) * Elder Bowman and the Church of The Brethren (in part 2) * The Fair as history.....and in retrospect (in part 2) * Levi H. Markley (in part 2) * Good stuff discovered looking for other facts (in part 2) * Hold on now....just one more word on the election (in part 2) * Remarks on religion-politics draw fire for this columnist (in part 2) * Who remembers Holy Land??? - Three Parts (in part 2) * Ghosts of Christmas past, not-so-long-past, to-come (in part 2) _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 3, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Devil Enoch Roberts - Part Two Although Enoch Roberts received some very bad (and understandably so) P.R. treatment after accidently killing his mother, history reminds us that he mostly earned his unenviable nickname "Devil" for his deeds and attitudes in later life. After his mother's death, Enoch's younger siblings were divided among their older married brothers and sisters. Young Enoch was taken to lower Baker County and reared by his uncle Nathan Roberts. He learned the value of a dollar under his kinsman's watchful eye, and, it was rumored, he also was taught the lesson of the razor strop. Enoch never spent on any but the necessities, and his austere economy, coupled with personal industry, slowly increased his little inheritance. As soon as he was of legal age, he married Martha Elizabeth, a daughter of William H. Parrish. They began housekeeping with a feather bed, fourteen head of cattle, a horse, and an old shucks saddle. Within a few years Mr. and Mrs. Roberts were tending cattle that ranged over Baker, Bradford (the part now Union), and Columbia Counties. Children began arriving, and there would eventually be eleven by the time Enoch died at age forty-two, with a twelfth on its way. The older children were put to work on the farm and among the livestock herds, saving labor costs. Some of the old-timers said that Enoch also operated a store in the vicinity south of Olustee- Sanderson and that it was in the store that he was first called "Devil." The late Richard Davis said that it mattered not how hungry a man's kids were, ol' Devil Enoch only sold for cash. Mr. Davis added that on the very few occasions Devil Enoch did sell on credit and the customer neglected to pay on time, Mr. Roberts "laid a whuppin' on 'eem." Mr. Davis and the late Mr. Clede Harvey related that Devil Enoch also owned a grist mill (sorry, we're going to change that to "grits" as Crackers have always referred to it). Enoch's grandson L.E. Addison has confirmed the mill's existence just off of Swift Creek Cemetery in Union County and that it was operated by Joe Brannen. The former gentlemen informed your writer that Mr. Brannen was instructed to take gold or a sizable amount of the customer's corn as payment. If the customer could not or would not pay so dearly, Mr. Brannen was instructed to tell him he could go home and grind the corn in his ______. The grits mill was destroyed by the big storm of 1896 and never rebuilt. Until recently parts of the timbers and pieces of the mill-stones could still be seen at the site. Other sources say these relics have disappeared (probably ringing somebody's petunia patch). Devil Enoch, not unlike most of his contemporaries, was inclined toward dipsomania. A Mr. McDonald said he once saw Mr. Roberts on a binge in Lake Butler displaying a hatful of gold coins. Others claim that it was only during these toots that Devil Enoch Roberts ever so much as showed the color of his gold. Mr. Roberts' gold cache was under the meat block in his smoke house. Although he trusted paper money less than his beloved gold he also kept it hidden and secure. He turned a front room ("living room" to the younger readers) center table upside down, deposited his paper currency in the hollow pedestal, tacked cowhide over the open bottom, righted the table and covered it with a floor-length cloth. Mr. Roberts lent money at ten percent and took a lien on his borrower's property. The transaction was always in handwriting (he said the borrower might drop dead the next day), and refused the gentleman's agreement handshake. If he was owed $100.00 and it was due on Monday, it was futile to show up on Tuesday with $99.00. . . Devil Enoch foreclosed without a second thought. If the borrower were one of those rare individuals who hoodoo-ed Mr. Roberts in a money-lending deal, it was best that he never showed anywhere at anytime. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 10, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Devil Enoch Roberts - Part three and A Memorial Devil Enoch Roberts was a paradoxical character. He toted a reputation for being a fearsome man but also was never known to have neglected his family's phyical well being or to have stolen anything that was not his (so stated his widow in later years). In addition to providing well for his family he brought home, about the year 1890, a small Negro boy named Tom Johnas and reared him. In the manner of most white folks of ninety years ago, Mr. Roberts did not provide sleeping quarters for little Tom in a main house but that seemed to be the only difference made. Tom was evidently privy to some of his benefactor's most cherished moments for he had seen Devil Enoch's hiding place for his gold. After Mr. Roberts died and his widow could not discover the main depository of the precious metal, it was young Tom Johnas who directed her to it. Tom Johnas eventually moved away, married, and reared and educated his family. As long as he lived he regularly visited the Widow Roberts. Some of the Roberts grandchildren often mused over the scene, many years later, of Mrs. Roberts in her rocking chair and Mr. Johnas on the porch step and wondered what were their topics of conversation. When Mr. Johnas died his head was in the lap of one of Devil Enoch's grandsons. The Roberts family turned out en masse for the funeral, symbolic of a side of old Devil Enoch few have remembered. --------------------- Mace A. Harris Feb. 2, '09-Dec. 10, '79 Lieutenant Colonel Mace Agnew Harris early appreciated the value of understanding the Cracker nature and preserving the heritage of an area and people so sadly neglected by the writers of history. He researched at considerable personal expense and-time the genealogies of the old established clans of north Florida and south Georgia. Born in Jacksonville into a Baker County family and partly reared in Baker County, married to the former Miss Willard Griffis of Georgia, father of Sara Harris Homer of Ocala, and died peacefully at his home in Orange City after tending to a civic function and duty was the outline onto which an interesting and dedicated life was woven. Colonel Harris served in the Army Reserve prior to World War II and during that conflict was an officer in the 165th General Hospital in France. After retiring he lived in Dade and Volusla Counties and was a working member of all the retired armed service organizations. He was active in several patriotic, historical, and genealogical organizations including the Baker County Historical Society. He held a state position with the Sons of the American Revolution and founded the John W. Starke Camp 1360 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. As an advisor to a number of civic and county boards, Colonel Harris was honored by the city hall of Orange City flying its flag at half mast for three days. Colonel Harris was a Catholic, and he loved his Hardshell Baptist heritage. He earned his bachelors degree in 1954 at the University of Miami. Colonel Harris never charged anyone for any historical and genealogical research he provided. He expressed a desire that his extensive library and files be given to the Baker County Historical Society's Genealogical and Historical Library after his death, and this writer just this week delivered the first of two sections to our local library. Soon almost every Crews, Raulerson, Padgett, and Griffis in the area will be able to visit our library and trace down his ancestry with little effort. Colonel Harris was witty, sincere, intense, sometimes very opinionated, more often very tolerant - and always brutally frank when frankness was necessary. He often began his telephone conversations to this writer by simply stating, "Gene, you're as wrong as you can be, and I sometimes think you're as crazy as Hell. By the way, how are you, Son?" But this writer will always remember that Colonel Harris bailed him out of some rough situations in '79 and, like the late gracious historian Mrs. Loyce Knabb Coleman, was always willing to share information with him. Your writer also will always recall that Colonel Harris once referred to him as a gentleman and friend. You Just don't get a better compliment than that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 17, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Devil Enoch Roberts - Epilogue The primary and most frequent response to our little series on Devil Enoch Roberts has been, "You ain't even started to tell it like it was!" And we started this offering in hopes of perhaps exonerating the poor ol' fellow. Indeed, the more we searched into his life the more we discovered we might have done him better if we had just permitted him to remain no more pubilcized than his neighbors had already done....we don't dare tell all we have heard. However, we'll try to do the best we can (did you have any doubts?) One of the stories has it that a certain Henry Walker (related to the Baker County family of that same name) was a killer for hire ($25.00 would get you a corpse quickly). Henry visited Devil Enoch one evening, and as the hour was late, Henry announced he would stay the night. Well, if you dear readers have followed our report on Devil Enoch, you can put a few facts together and understand the sudden wave of hesitancy and second-thinking that came over Mr. Roberts. After Walker had retired, Devil Enoch told his relatives and friends that he wanted to kill his guest. "Don't do that," they plead. "we don't want to be bothered by a mess and staying up all night for a wake." Devil Enoch must not have been all bad because he agreed to let Walker live. However, the next morning while the killer Walker and his host were at the water shelf on the porch Devil Enoch had a change of heart. As Walker turned to towel off his face, Devil Enoch shot him and covered the body with a sheet. At least he took thought of his household. .. nobody had to stay up all night for a wake. Some of the old-timers around the Lake Butler area confided that in 1896 Devil Enoch killed his brother John also. Some of the Roberts family say it never happened, but whichever it is agreed by all that Devil Enoch died as he lived - violently. There are two stories regarding Mr. Roberts' death. One has it that in August of 1899 he was shot down in the streets of Lake Butler. Devil Enoch supposedly stood his ground in the middle of the street, and his foe, a Mr. Richardson, had prudently taken cover inside a store building. Among the many rumors floating about since that tragic event was one that suggested Devil Enoch was also hit by shots from unknown, secreted gunmen. Another version says that Lake Butler couldn't keep a marshal because Devil Enoch did not approve of the office. The city fathers were reported therefore to have offered the badge to a passer-through named Phillips. Ignorant of the "baddest man in the world", Phillips accepted the job. Word got to Devil Enoch soon after, and he rushed into town to get rid of this newest upstart. Marshal Phillips backed into a store (later Mrs. Onie Pons' millinery shop) and blasted away at Devil Enoch (two versions here: (1) before Roberts saw him and (2) in the back). Cut down in his forty-second year, Devil Enoch Roberts' one man reign of terror was over. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 17, 1980 Genealogical libray February opening A collection of historically significant material that once belonged to the late Col. Mace Harris, a Baker County native who just recently passed away, has been donated to the Baker County Genealogical and Historical Library. On hand to view a portion of the collection last week were local historian Gene Barber and LaViece Smallwood, also a county native and well known genealogist in the north Florida and south Georgia region. "I'm very impressed with the quality and broad range of subjects displayed here. I'm proud that the county of my ancestry will have an outstanding library of this nature," commented Mrs. Smallwood, who is author of the popular Florida Times-Union column called "Out on a Limb" that deals with genealogical material. She has also written numerous profile sketches on county personalities which have been published in The Baker County Press the past year. Barber, one of the boosters of the genealogical section in the library and Baker County's foremost historian, is currently discussing the acquisition of other pertinent donations. He termed the material on hand there now "just a beginning" and indicated that the Historical Society has received "excellent encouragement" from the state toward the planning of a heritage museum. So far, the genealogical section on the second floor of the library on McIver Street has received numerous donations from citizens. Before the section opens on Saturday, February 16, a collection of New England histories and a file on black genealogies will be added. Barber, a fifth generation native of the county, was recently nominated for presidency of the Historical Society which now numbers 54 members. Applications for charter member status may be picked up at any meeting of the Society on the third Tuesday of each month or by sending a check for $5 during the year 1980 to Mrs. Joyce Milton Davis, Secretary, at Rt. 1 Box 1106, Macclenny 32063. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, Januarv 24, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The Union dead - Olustee - part one In March of 1887 two New York posts of Union Army vets wrote to the officers in charge of National Cemeteries asking (both copied as written), "...where the killed of the 115" Reg't N.Y. Vols in the Battle of Olustee Fla. were buried..." and "where the Bodies of those who was killed, and buried on the Battlefield at Olustee Florida, Feby 20" 1864, were removed to, and what National Cemetery they are now intered in..." In the interim ninety-odd years since those queries, a few other scattered gadflies have wondered about those bodies also. In THE WAR OF THE REBELLION: A COMPILATION OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES, published in 1891 by the War Department, is a report by Major-General Quincy A. Gillmore that lists the Union losses during that tragic battle near Ocean Pond as 1,800 men killed, wounded, and missing. Of course, many of those missing were dead in the quagmires of Cone's Head and Impossible Bay. Many were re-established in the West (after running away) or busily fathering a few Baker and Charlton Counties families who would later effuse about their noble ancestors' roles in the glorious conflict against the Yankee invaders. Several of the wounded would soon have to be entered on the lists of the ultimate sacrifices making perhaps several hundred dead United States troops in Baker County before the sun rose on the twenty-first of February, 1864. It was later reported that the known Union dead were transferred either at that time or removed to the National Cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina, after the war. Since the Federal army in its retreat abandoned a great portion of its necessary paraphernalia, arms, and wounded, it is highly unlikely they took the time to retrieve their dead (especially so since most of their dead were behind their enemy's lines). As for the Beaufort re-interments, there is simply no record of such there. Where have all the soldiers gone? There is a great probability that no less than one hundred twenty-five of those who wore the Union blue lie unknown, unnoticed, and embarrassingly, deliberately forgotten under the palmettoes near the battle monument...one of the biggest, if you will pardon the expression, cover-ups ever pulled by our Federal Government. In a report, dated 25 May, 1866, Lieutenant F.E. Grossman of the Seventh U.S. Infantry made a report for the Quarter Master in which he wrote, "The bodies of the Union Soldiers killed in the Battle of Olustee....were buried by the Confederates in such a careless manner that the remains were disinterred by the hogs within a few weeks after the battle, in consequence of which, the bones and skulls were scattered broadcast over the battle field. Under instructions from Col. J.T. Sprague 7th Infy. I proceded to collect the remains, to accomplish which I deployed a detachment of Co. B 7th Infy. on the battle field. "The men carried an empty bag cart into which they gathered all the human bones found over ground as they advanced. In many instances where portions of bones protruded, we removed the earth and disinterred all the bones that had not been disturbed by the hogs. In this manner and by carefully searching over an area of about 2 square miles, I collected two wagon loads and a half of bones. . . " (emphasis added by writer.) "I counted 125 human skulls among the remains....Records of the burial places of any of the Union Soldiers who were interred on or near the battle field, there are none... It is impossible to give even an approximate idea of the number of Union Soldiers buried on this battle field.... Several of the wounded were carried by the Confederates two miles back to their line of breastworks where they died and were buried by the roadside." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, January 31, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Official reports and legends - Olustee - Part II After requests from certain New York posts of Union Army veterans for knowledge of their fallen comrades' final resting places after the Battle of Ocean Pond, Secretary of War Redfield Proctor's attached note to the Official Records (see last week's column) Series 1, Volumn XXXV in Part 2 was forwarded to them: "The Union Military Station at Lake City, Florida, the 7th Infantry under command of Col. J.T. Sprague A.A.Q.M. ordered Lieutenant F.E. Grossman to proceed to the Battle field at a point in Baker County, Florida. (a second-hand note copied as received)." A few lines gave a condensed version of Grossman's report, and ended with "This closed this order of military control forever under Report No. 300.6 relating to a Union Soldiers Cemetery on the Battlefleld of Olustee, Florida." Secretary Proctor signed it and caused it to be included in the Official Records in 1891, evidently detertmined that the matter be forgotten and never brought up again. An historic first Your courageous columnist will, in these pages of your Baker County Press, defy a War Department directive and desire (you will note that if the Secretary was signing these reports and notes in 1891, he has been conveniently and safely dead, lo, these many years, and is unlikely to be ringing your writer's phone with threatening intent). Ghoulishly, we shall again ask the whereabouts of the poor fellows and dig up (poor choice of words) as much material on the subject as we can one hundred sixteen years Iater. Lieutenant Grossman's report gives credence, if not corroboration, to the old-time Crackers' claim that their ancestors buried on their homesteads and in Cedar Creek and Turner (old "Dinkins") Cemeteries the mortally wounded and diseased of the Union ranks who had been taken in in that strange humanitarian gesture so often performed in the past by civilized peoples toward their defeated enemies. A young witness and participant of the battle was Louis DuFour of Camden County, Georgia. He pointed out as late as the turn of the century the sites of lengthy shallow graves along the Tallahassee Road and Turnpike where he had helped inter the Union dead. A Lieutenant Fribley's burial at the battlefield (Official Records) was the subject of much correspondence and notes. His monument erected by his survivors has not been referred to by locals, and its chances of having wound up in the bottomless muds of Cone's Head or Impossible Bay during Reconstruction Days are rather good. The writer's great, great, great aunt Elizabeth Ann Barber, said to have been the first civilian on the battlefield, often said she had been retained by "some folks from up North" to regularly tend to a grave at the battlefield. She never stated the length of time, but added that she kept up the grave until the deceased's family's letters stopped coming, and even for a while beyond that. She described how she and her kids took the train to Olustee, either walked or hired a conveyance back to the battlefield, pulled weeds, shaped up the ground again, and had lunch among the graves" (note the plural). Her description of the area fits to perfection Lieutenant Grossman's report. Mrs. Barber herself buried one young officer from Massachusetts. He died while she held his head. We can surmise, but not know, that this young blue-coated lieutenant was the same who lay beneath the mound of Baker County earth she regularly, faithfully, and attentively reshaped. That many of the more than 2,800 casualties of both Grey and Blue were dead is testified to in a letter from Captain Winston Stephens of the Confederate Volunteers to his wife in Lake City: "I went over the battleground this morning on my way to camp and never in all my life have I seen such a distressing sight - some men with their legs carried off, others with their brains out and mangled in every conceivable way...I never want to see another battle or go on the field after it is over." If so many were killed and if so many were left in the sands of Baker County, where are the graves, and, above all, why were they deliberately forgotten? We think we found the answer in a report to his superiors by Lieutenant Grant of the Confederate Corps of Engineers (responsible for building the major intrenchments still visible at and around the community of Olustee): "As usual, they (the U.S.) posted their negro (sic) regiments on their left and in front, where they were slain by hundreds, and upon retiring left their dead and wounded negroes (sic). uncared for, carrying off only the whites which accounts for the fact that upon the first part of the battlefield nearly all the dead found were negroes (sic)." When you are a nation trying to justify a recent very unpleasant and unpopular war by re-writing the history books to say that you did it for the freeing and dignity of a race, and you, during a little battle down in far away Florida just misused several hundreds of that race as expendable beings, you might prefer to say, along with Secretary of War Proctor, "...closed...forever...," and that they never existed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 7, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Lizzie and the Yankee officer - Olustee - Part III Twenty-three year old Elizabeth Ann Barber was a mother of four, a guardian of two stepsons, and would grasp at any hope to find her husband. He, Isaiah by name, had gone away three years before in the armed service of the Confederacy. Letters had been infrequent, the last from South Carolina, and then there were none. Rumor had it there was to be a big battle between "our people and the Yankees over to Olustee." One of the men who was in Isaiah's unit but home recuperating from wounds, advised young Lizzie that Isaiah's outfit would probably be transferred to Florida for the fight. At the time, Lizzie lived south of the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad on the old Yelvington Trail, more frequently called in 1864 the "Palatka Road" or the "Alachua Road" (the Earl Knabb home sits almost on the exact site of the Isaiah and Lizzie Barber homestead). She knew of the Yankees' merciless foragings to feed their troops, and she directed the kids to bury the family's smoked meat in the thick woods of little Turkey Creek that ran behind her house (don't go digging in Mr. and Mrs. Knabb's backyard. First, they have every right to practice shotgun discouragement, and, second, those folks of which we write were Barbers...ain't none of them ever had anything). Lizzie lived halfway between two of the three east-west routes, but she was not spared a visit by the dreaded Union soldiers. The unit of Blacks stopped and while resting began to shoot her chickens for sport. She begged their commander, a youthful white lieutenant, to put a stop to the soldiers' fun, adding that being all alone with six children to feed, the chickens were necessary for their survival. The Yankee officer courteously assured the distraught Cracker mother that he did not wield war against women and children. He halted the shooting and ordered the men to dress the fowls for Lizzie. In gratitude she prepared several fryers and packed an ample meal for the officer to take to the battle, the battle in which he might be trying to kill her husband. The young New Englander with the very blue eyes took leave of his hostess and gave the order to march. No sooner had the blue-coated column disappeared than Lizzie gathered the children and provisions into her wagon and set out for her Hancock in-laws' home near the present Lulu. Even though they traveled far south of the Turnpike, shots from along its route were heard all night. At the Hancocks the beginning shots of the day's conflict were booming clearly across the pine barrens. Lizzie left the children at the Hancock place and traveled through the woods toward the sounds of the battle. She and her horse and wagon were impressed into service hauling ammunition from the railroad to the lines. As the boys unloaded her deadly burden, Lizzle loaded their rifles for them. When dark fell and the Federals were with-drawing toward their headquarters and hospital at Barber's Plantation (her father-in-law's home), the worn young mother began to search among tho dead and wounded for her husband. Isaiah's tall slender form was not found among the hundreds, and from every side came pleas for aid, ease, and water (she later, discovered Isaiah had been dead in South Carollna for several months). Lizzie stooped to give water to one, then another, and in that mass of prostrate humanity, blood's color obliterated all color distinctions of Grey or Blue, White or Black. In the dim firelight one frail hand lifted from a blue-jacketed officer. Lizzie knelt to offer a cooling drink and stared into the very blue eyes of the young New Englander who had so gallantly guarded her interests the day before. The failing soldier gave her his mother's address and asked her to empty his pockets and remove his religious medal to mail them to Massachusetts. And he begged for a Christian burial for his mother's sake. When he died in her arms, Lizzie no longer held an enemy. Until dawn, far from the concentration of stench and moaning, even as musket shots ended miseries, young Lizzie Barber tugged and scratched through pine roots and shifting sand to make a hole for the waxen, stiffening figure. She rolled the body in as tenderly as she could, mounded the earth with her hands, and offered a Baptist prayer for the departed Roman Catholic. We know there's one grave at Olustee among the pines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 14, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Re-enactments & relics - Olustee - part four The only major battle of the War Between the States that stained Florida sands will be commemorated Saturday and Sunday near Olustee under the sponsorship of the Florida Department of Natural Resources. A locally based group, the North Florida Historical Researchers Association, will add emphasis to the affair by presenting a relics and gun show this weekend in the County Agriculture Center. Fighting that derned war all over again. This particular battle of that particular war should be fought often (sham style, of course) lest we forget....that it was unprecedented in its conception, was political rather than strategic, and prefigured later authoritarian governments by erasing from record and memory perhaps two hundred souls. We refer you to past Olustee anniversary issues of The Press (we're certain you have them all reverently pressed between pages of your family Bibles) for the people and events of the Battle (you might have tossed them away but we unabashedly think they're still the best accounts of the conflict we've ever read). President Lincoln (the Great Emancipator, Honest Abe, Man of the People, etc.) was first and foremost a politician. A national election was coming up, and he was not overly confident about his chances of winning. The interminable war had become his "Jonah" and millstone about his neck. Men were refusing to go to war. Anti-war rioters were creating terror In New York City. And all but the industrialists and bigger farmers were tired of it all. When certain Floridian Unionists and opportunists bent the President's ear with how ripe their state was for plucking, he listened. Upon good report, so they claimed, Floridians were weary of the war (they were correct, but the Crackers were getting a second wind even in the face of impending defeat), the State's Negroes were eager to join the U.S. Army against their former masters (actually the Negroes were more eager to revel in the first freedom they had ever known than begin fighting for or against anybody), and that the State was fraught with U.S. sympathizers waiting for their opportunity to strike (most of their striking was in the form of indiscriminate hog stealing from Unionists and Confederates alike). The President figured it would be a great morale boost for the nation, not to mention its effects on the voters, if one of the Confederate States could be returned to the Union fold (nobody at the polls had to know that Florida had the weakest allegiance to the Confederacy of all the states and that she was the most vulnerable of the lot). He broke precedent and wrote directly to Union Major General Quincy Gillmore of the Department of the South to begin operations necessary for securing Florida. If a president ignored the military chain of command today he would find himself back home writing his memoirs and being interviewed as a private citizen by obnoxious little Englishmen. But in 1864 Lincoln didn't have witch-hunting television networks yapping at his heels hoping for higher ratings with a scandal hungry public (it all depends on PR and the media whether you make it into the history books as hero or villain). The Battle happened on the twentieth of February, and then it was over. It was bloody, an even bigger and sadder fiasco than Kennedy's Bay of Pigs affair, it was commanded on the Union side by an orders-ignoring, verbose gentleman and on the Confederate side by a kindly but inept weekend-warrior type, and it was completely unnecessary because the Union War Department surely knew the South was done except for the formalities and clean-up. "Why do people get dressed up in period costumes and stage past battles?" you ask. Well, this column answers with a silly, "Why not?" Clad in 1864 garb is no stranger than the inane throwback to the 1930's through '50's fashions that has been popular over the past few years (undoubtedly a masochistic wish since those thirty years produced the ugliest clothes ever in American history). Rushing through palmettoes shooting blanks at each other cannot be less intelligent than the current fad of war game popular among children and children above twenty-one (you've probably heard of these games - Bo-gar the Booger versus Spacie the Android, Grozout the Gross versus the Fairy Horde, etc.) Bunch of die-hard Southerners? Sorry, you'll hear about as many clipped Jersey accents among the mock troops wearing tattered grey as you will Alabama drawls. The new wave of Dixie-mania is bringing fans out in droves. Maybe, Just maybe, a very few are running around through the pines with thoughts in their minds of the 125 plus skulls collected and reinterred by U.S. Lleutenant Grossman in 1866 and of the rows of Confederates that lay on the railroad's south side and then forgotten. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 21, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The Monument - Olustee - final part Just like 116 years ago the woods around Ocean Pond and Cone's Head rung with cannon and gunshot. Now the guns are dead and the troops withdrawn to Sanford, Philadelphia, Birmingham, and Syracuse. The last Winnebago and Toyota-drawn artillery have pulled out, and Tom Cravy and crew can go to work getting the place in shape again. But unlike 116 years ago, the grounds are littered with Coke cups and Kodak wrappers. Then, after the real thing, the smell of gunpowder had been replaced with that of limbs and guts overlooked by the burial units. The morbidly curious were already picking through the gory sand. Hasty and careless interments of from six to eight were clustered on the railroad's north side. Several rows of neater graves lay on the rail's south. Overhead glided the ubiquitous buzzard. For the next two years after the Battle near Olustee, people would walk and stoop among the grave mounds, break out shovels, transfer the stained earth and melting bones to a box, and haul it away in tears. Fresh flowers were often placed on the graves on the south side. Mysteriously, flowers would sometimes appear on the north side. As time erased from minds the makeshift cemeteries, the weeds took over. Hogs had early begun to invade the burial grounds and root out the macabre feast lying but a few inches beneath their trampling feet. The graves on the south side were tended and protected, but within a few months the north side graves were but a churned mass of bare earth and the bones they yielded were scattered broadcast over acres of pine barren. United States Army Lieutenant F.E. Grosmann wrote, after inspecting the area, "...still I do not doubt that many a grave of loyal soldiers - leveled by winds and rains was passed by unnoticed and will probably never be found (he had already collected two and a half wagon loads of bones from on top of the earth)...The battlefield, I learn, belongs to Messrs. Price and Cox, owners of a sawmill erected immediately opposite to it. It is very poor land, and I think it unprobable that it will ever be used for agricultural purposes....this land can have but a mere nominal value." Lieutenant Grosmann described the perfect condition of the Confederate graves and recommended the U.S. Government take action to protect the resting grounds of the Union dead. He caused the collected bones to be placed into a twelve by eighteen foot grave. Around the mass grave he erected a white-washed fence, eighteen by twenty-seven feet, and around that the men dug a ditch for drainage. Under orders from Colonel J.T. Sprague, commander at Lake City, Grosmann built a wooden monument twelve feet high, painted it white, and inscribed quarter inch letters, painted black, on its four sides. "The Officers and Soldiers of the U.S. Army who fell in the battle of Olustee Feby 20 1864," was on the south side and on the west "Our Country," and north "May the living profit by the example of the dead." On the east: "Unity and Peace." _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, February 28, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Some papers pertaining to Philemon Bryan Philemon Bryan was one of those characters in the history of the wiregrass and palmetto kingdom to which almost everybody and his grandma could trace ancestry. Scion of a Revolutionary War soldier and the sire of a large clan, Mr. Bryan had accumulated a comfortable estate before he was called to glory. Today the Bryan family, which stretches from south Georgia and down into Florida in a wide arc, the inside lower part of which cuts across southwestern Baker County, is known as a peaceable, easy-to-get-along-with people. But a hundred twenty years ago, they had their problems. See if you can dig it out from the following legal jargon. "State of Florida, Hamilton County. Know all men by these presents that we Lewis H. Bryan and William I.I. Duncan, West B. Walker, Joseph A. Ellis, Joseph D. Bryan, William S.I. Blount, and William S. Bryan are held and firmly bound unto the Governor of Florida and his successors in office in the full sum of twelve thousand dollars for the payment whereof well and truly to be made we bind ourselves our heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns jointly and severally firmly by these presents signed and sealed this 10th day of February A. D. 1858. "The condition of this obligation is such that whereas the above bound Lewis Bryan has applied for and obtained letters of administration temporary or letters of curatorship on the perishable part of the estate of Philemon Bryan late of said County deceased. Now should the said Lewis H. Bryan well and truly administer, take charge of and account strictly according to law for all and singular the perishable part of said estate and render the same to the office of the Judge of Probate for said County then the above obligation to be void else to remain in full force and virtue. Approved and recorded February 10th, 1858. Henry I. Stewart Judge of Probate (signed by all mentioned above)." Some of the Bryan boys were not very happy about the manner in which Lewis was administering the estate and so six days later they petitioned the Judge of Probate, "...John Bryan, William I. Bryan, and William S. Roberts: said William I. Bryan citizen of the State of Florida and County of Hamilton and the said John Bryan of Columbia and the said William S. Roberts of Clinch County and State of Geo. heirs and distributees of the estate of Philemon Bryan late of said County deceased. "Respectfully show unto your honor that in the month of January last the said Philemon Bryan departed this life leaving considerable real and personal estate, consisting in lands, Negroes, stock cattle, hogs, horses, and chases in action (that might be "chosen in action"), and having the following heirs to wit, David R. Bryan, John L. Stewart husband of Leonora Bryan, Nathaniel Bryan, John Bryan, William I. Bryan, William S. Roberts husband of Sarah Bryan now dec'd leaving a son Lewis Roberts, Lewis H. Bryan, Joseph D. Bryan, William S. Blount husband of Sydney Bryan and Joseph A. Ellis husband of Nancy Bryan. "And your petitioners further represent unto your honor that said Philemon Bryan died intestate and that Lewis H. Bryan shortly or in a day or two after said decease, applied for temporary letters of administration and took charge of said estate and your petitioners aver that said administrator has not had said property properly appraised and is otherwise as they fear mismanaging said estate, and they fear if his letters are not revoked that he will so waste and mismanage the same as greatly to injure the distributees of said estate. "And your petitioners pray that the said Lewis Bryan may be required to come into court and make a full exhibit of all his acts and doings in the premises and deliver up his letters. And that his Honorable Court shall authorize some fit and proper person to take charge of said estate and appoint lawful and competent appraisers to appraise the same and when said appraisement comes in and is confirmed, notify all parties to come into Court and show cause if any they may have any why said estate may not be divided..." At about the same time this family dispute was taking place, the entire eastern half of Columbia County was being reworked into New River County. Three years later Florida seceded from the Union, and the upper half of New River County was taken away to become Baker County. And it hardly mattered who wound up with the bulk of Philemon Bryan's estate because that family's wealth, like so many others in the South, was swallowed up by the soon-to-follow Civil War and Reconstruction. The writer is indebted to Mr. Willy Bryan, grandson of Philemon, for lending us these papers. He is one of Glen Saint Mary's city fathers and is very knowledgeable about his family's history. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 6, Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The shooting at the frolic Your old columnist was not brought up on tales of Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs with all their attendant violence. Instead, he used to be entertained by the old-timers with true stories of pioneering ancestors. And although he grew up deprived of whatever it is one is supposed to learn from fairy tale anthropopathyn he did develop a rudimentary sense of history and its lessons. The following narrative comes from three main sources - B.H. "Buck" Rowe, the late Jim-Robbie Rowe, and the late C.M. "Roe" Barber - and is edited for the sake of fitting neatly into this column space and to get rid of the dirty words that cannot help but creep into authentic Cracker historical stories (we might add right here that Mr. Buck Rowe did not repeat any dirty words in his relating). Edward Roger Rowe, hereafter referred to as "Pa," was a rough customer and had a bunch of boys not left in the shade along that line either. Like most Cracker clans they minded their own business and appreciated it if all others followed suit. They enjoyed a good frolic, and would even accept an invitation to a rail splitting if it meant a shindigging dance afterwards. And so sometime about 1868 or '70, Pa and his boys were at the Viney Thomas place near the present Brandy Branch Road north of Baldwin to assist in a rail-splitting and frolic. Sometime in the afternoon a certain Hershel Harris asked one of the Rowe boys - Dave - to borrow his horse in order to ride into Baldwin to buy whiskey. Harris had already been drinking heavily. Dave, believing that a man should not drive while drinking, refused the use of his horse, and Harris became angry (have you ever tried splitting rails while sober? Can't be too much fun). When another of the Rowe boys, John by name, had completed his rails late that evening (each man was given 100 rails to split), he went over to help Harris (Harris's motivation was winding down as his glow wore off). Harris talked roughly to John (this is where we edited out some of the dirty words). They had words (a little more ugly talking edited out here). That night at the frolic, Harris was calling figures, and as he called, he cut out the youngest Rowe boy (Asa, called "Acie"). Dave (remember him? He refused Harris the use of his horse earlier that day) flat out told him, "If you're going to call the figures, call them right. You've got no business cutting out the boy." Harris answered, "If they want the damned figures called, let the damned Rowes do it." Dave came back, "He's just a boy, but he's in the dance, and you'll call the figures right." Harris: "I'll call the figures how I want to. He's nothing but a boy; I'm a man." Dave: "There's other men here. Come on out." Harris went out ahead, reaching into his coat. John hollered to Dave, "Go ahead, you can whip him and the knife too." But Harris wasn't pulling a blade. Instead, he turned with a pistol and began shooting. Dave, thinking that his foe had been drawing a knife, stooped to pick up a piece of rail to even up the odds. The first of Harris' bullets killed John immediately. Pa received two shots, one just above his heart (after a long life of booze, fighting, and an occasional extramarital fling, it was claimed that this bullet finally fell into his heart and killed him). For all the trouble, and he helped cause it, Dave was superficially wounded in the knee. Harris jumped on a horse and fled (after all, he was outnumbered). When he reached the Saint Mary's River ferry (between the present sites of highway 228 and the Steel Bridge-Wilkerson settlement) ferryman Moates took him across. But when Moates learned that the Rowes were in hot pursuit, he remained on the opposite side of the river from them and refused to ferry them across. Harris went to a man's house for hiding, where he paced the floor all night. His host tried to reassure him by telling him the dogs would not permit anybody to approach the house. Harris continued to pace nervously and stated, "There ain't nothing that can stop them damned Rowes." It was rumored Harris went to Texas (everybody in trouble went to Texas in those days, meaning any place west of the Suwannee River). A few years later Dave was at a gathering of a picnic nature where he was told that Harris was there. He rode down the road on which Harris was supposed to have taken when he heard of Dave's presence. Dave spied a Harris-looking figure and approached him from behind (it might sound cowardly, but Dave remembered the quick-draw gun bit from years before). As he readied to jump, the figure turned and held out a maimed arm to show that he was not Hershel Harris but his brother. Harris was seen many years later in Miami, and it was coincidental that John's sons were also living there at the time. A contingent of Rowes converged on Miami for the purpose of settling the Harris problem once and for all but they missed him again. The old fairy tales always had morals tacked onto their tail ends. This historical narrative has one too, we suppose, and perhaps this is it: In case you spend sleepless nights wondering what's going to become of this younger generation, you might think on this....if they're not careful, they will turn out just like the older generations. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday March 13, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber So you want to dig up your Grandpa?......... Part One Nary, we repeat, nary a week passes that we are not asked these two questions: (1) "Where do you get all that information in your column?" and (2) "How do I go about researching my genealogy? " The first is easy to answer....we make it all up. We will go into historical research at sometime in the very distant future (we don't want to inform you of too much too soon 'cause we can't stand the competition). Bearing in mind that we are neither proficient in genealogy nor overly hung up on it, at this time we will offer some basic tips on how to start. "I've gone as far as I can go on my line," meaning one has just finished talking with one's grandma, does not at all mean one is up a stump but actually indicates one is about ready to begin. So, starting at that point, let's check out grandpa. Just about everybody has a grandpa, providing he was legitimate (oh, your family didn't do things like that? Baby, your age of innocence is about over). Grandpa usually got buried somewhere, maybe with a marker; was perhaps entered into the family Bible; maybe had a death certificate made out (in rural Florida, death certificates were infrequent until well into the 1920's); or, perhaps, he was entered into an undertaker's records (remember....very few undertakers in the rural deep South until the 1940's). For finding a hypothetical grandpa with seemingly no records, here is a possible route with clues that might help you in your own particular search. Let's say Mama was too young to remember Grandpa's death but remembers that Grandma said that it occurred the year of the big storm that blew down the bell tower of the Baptist Church. To ascertain the date, you can visit your local newspaper office or nearest library (we have a doozy here in the county that might surprise you with its contents) for a repository of old newspapers. Begin flipping through the years before your ken for likely big storms. You might even accidentally run across Grandpa's obituary while looking. Maybe you'll find an article regarding his death by shooting in the midst of another man's hog herd or in a compromising situation with a lady other than Grandma (which might explain why Grandpa was never talked about much at home). If no obituary can be found but you are armed with a list of likely big storms (you realize, of course, "big storms" represents any memorable events that act as research clues), you might contact the Bureau of Vital Statistics with Grandpa's full name and his possible death years, and for a nominal fee they will search their files. If found, the death certificate might contain a wealth of genealogical data, including his parents and their birthplaces. If the Bureau cannot help you, search among the oldtimers who live around Grandpa's burial place. You might be surprised to learn that even some old country cemeteries had a dedicated sexton who kept his own personal records of burials. If the sexton is no longer around or was never in existence, perhaps someone in the community has a cemetery plot map with the names of the deceased (and occasionally their death dates) penciled in. You can only find them by asking. Speaking of personal records, this writer's favorite personal papers were found over in Nassau County. A distant cousin, a cautious, terse gentleman who rolled his "R's" in a celtic brogue, brought out a handsome 1800's book on the proper use of manure as fertilizer with several names and dates penned in the wide margins. It was only after we had attended a few sessions of genealogy-crazed folks that we learned the significance of that particular incident....there is often a lot of that commodity spread around by those who misuse and abuse the study of genealogy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 20, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber So you want to dig up your Grandpa?.......... Let us say you have all your grandsires and granddams accounted for back to the second great of same, but at that point your county and municipal scarcity of records leaves you dangling. This column suggests you do what you should have done in the first place; pump and cajole the living for every scrap of family history they can offer. The records stand a pretty good chance of being in their repositories for years to come, but your relatives have no promise of being here forever. You could, of course, be called to Glory long before they, so, whichever goes first, gather the rosebuds of genealogy while ye may. When this very amateurish genealogist began his research thirty years ago, he knew of no other sources than elderly cousins and friends. Later, he learned from the professionals that information gleaned from people who lived and witnessed the very genealogies and histories he attempted to gather was not to be accepted as reliable. Now we've completed the circle, and the trend is to (1) realize the older folks have been passing on quite undeniably and regularly, (2) accept that the present older folks could go on the same route, (3) we better drain their minds of good stuff before they decide to hit that great and final egress, and (4) Just because they were born before the era of TV and MacDonald's doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about. This data was once called "traditional family tales" and was pooh-poohed. In our current trendy society the same data is renamed "oral history" and is the big hit and discovery of many professional historians and genealogists at the top. Be it recorded that this columnist never entertained many doubts that the sweet octagenarians he conversed with gave him the correct names of their grandparents. Interviewing these living treasures of history can be a frustrating business. After all, you being younger, are naturally so much smarter than they. When you see that lovey old couple, silver of hair, quietly rocking on their front porch, you just know they're busily living in the past and just itching to tell you everything they know back to two generations beyond Adam. They, however, prefer to talk about funny ol' Junior Samples, the Olympics, and "you reckon President Carter's going back in?" You must, by all means toss the word genealogy around a lots while introducing yourself to them and stating your purpose. The old folks might tell you as some have this one-time young amateur researcher and compiler: "We done got the food stamps," We was counted some years ago and don't see no need to be so again," and "Ma ain't never needed that kind of work. She had all her young'uns at home." That, dear Reader, is honest, legitimate ignorance. The stupidity often encountered is usually on the part of the amateur genealogist in not doing his homework and in not trying to relate to those folks who come from an earlier, more sensible era. Hints when interviewing the older generations: Always record the names of your ancestors just as they are given you, including nicknames. Don't decide on your own that "Ander" is really "Andrew" or that "Dick" is in actuality "Richard;" we Crackers often used as proper names what other sections call nicknames. You might, in your prissy manner of thinking, change "Maggie" to the more euphonious "Margaret" and later wonder why you cannot find her in public records. Could it be that her Mama and Poppa did name her "Maggie" at her birth? More hints: Old-timers invariably relate, in order of birth, boys first, then girls (we love to watch the ERA ladies cringe on this one). The youths who died in their minority, regardless of sex, are usually listed last, and infant mortalities are sometimes considered unimportant and are neglected in the listing unless you ask. The older generations remain tacit on the subject of insanity, thus precluding your search among certain hospital records, but are generally quick to offer data on the feeble-minded and physically afflicted (considered God's business and therefore nothing to be embarrassed about). Here are some items and sideroads to watch for and guard against, no matter who relates them to you. "Grandpa was in the Confederate Army." On the contrary, Grandpa often told Grandma that's where he was going. "A lawyer wrote Grandma a letter from England telling her that she had a big inheritance over there (a certain clue that your family came from England). Careful on this one. Around the turn of the century, this was one of the biggest flim-flams going. Grandma neglected to mention that the lawyer also informed her that he could take care of her interests for a certain large amount of money. About the only other con game bigger was the itinerant peddlers selling "genuine Stradivarius" violins among the country folks for five dollars (many of these are still around, zealously guarded and bragged on by descendants). Remember, these tales are told with the greatest sincerity and honesty. You must learn to separate the chaff from the grain, as it were, but never be so igmo-like to take it upon yourself to correct these older people if you expect to continue receiving family history data from them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, March 27, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber So you want to dig up your Grandpa?........ As a result of talking with older relatives and friends (just because a person isn't related to you doesn't mean he won't know more about your family than your kinfolk), you now are reasonably certain your g-g-grandfather came from Burke County, Georgia. These days you don't have to travel to Burke County, or almost anywhere else, to research. Those areas, by way of books and microfilm, can travel to you. Most large libraries, and a surprising number of small ones, have an historical and genealogical section in which you can find such printed sources as the census schedules, marriages, probates, muster rolls, deed book abstracts, pauper lists, etc. for many old counties. Surely, if your ancestor was around for any length of time in, let's say, Burke County, and if he was at least breathing, he'll be among one or more of those published lists. In addition to such lists of legalities, you will discover that certain dedicated (or real unbright) souls have withstood February's freeze-drying gales and the brokers of August to copy complete inscriptions from every extant gravemarker in every cemetery in certain counties. These are indexed alphabetically for your convenience. There will usually be from one to three histories of each of the older counties of many states. The better ones are indexed, and you can quickly run them down to check on your surname. Cautions: many local histories are not based on documented research. Many are full of their authors' imagination and editorializing. They are notorious for ignoring the non-rich, the outlying areas, and the families subject to the authors' prejudices. For instance, can you conceive of a Charlton County history that gives but a few brief lines or skimpy paragraphs to the Crews family? There is one. Add to the above negative points typographical errors and paucity of available source material in the olden days, and one can readily understand why such histories must remain as clues rather than documentation.when searching for your ancestry. Libraries don't bite. Some librarians bark a lot or either don't give out more than a grumble, but neither they nor libraries bite. You walk right in, find the first studious looking lady (or gentleman) sitting behind a desk, and state your purpose - genealogy (and pronounce it any way you want to). Then the goose chase begins. You will be directed to either a remote section cut off by stacks of books or to what used to be the washroom, and there you will find a pleasant little lady or kindly gentleman who explains that she, or he, is not the regular librarian but a fill-in (this columnist has personally viewed in thirty years of research but one genuine genealogy librarian, including the very nice one here at home). At this point, don't give the nice person a rundown on your pedigree unless part of it is pertinent to the nice person's aid to you. Reasons: (1 ) That smile belies her or his absolute disinterest in your genealogy since she or he would prefer to be telling you about her or his own: (2): You're taking up valuable time since you already know your pedigree, the other person couldn't care less, and the entire fifteen minute rundown is completely unnecessary. (3) The word will get out that you are a bore, and people will avoid you like the red mange. Then, there are the mail-order source materials. A genealogist friend or a nearby genealogy society can provide you with a list of publishers dealing in the subjects afore mentioned in paragraphs two, three, and four. Family histories are a big item with the history and genealogy booksellers. Like most other consumer products, the older (reprinted) ones tend to be much better done, the remainder range from excellent to "how-could-anybody-have-the-gall-to-sign-his-name-to-such-garbage," and all are overpriced (though be advised that ninety-eight percent of the compilers have lost a fortune in the productions). By reasons of inflation (feel free to read that as runaway mass greed), the sincere compiler's desire to at least defray a small portion of his expenses, and the individual greed of many of the new wave of genealogy materials-producers, the price tags for almost all mail-order resources are dear. Bear in mind, however, that few books on those lists have a price that will match the cost of gas needed for your Packard or Hudson to get to and back from a backwoods South Carolina county on your pilgrimage to secure your g-g-grandparent's marriage date. Speaking of marriages and ordering books, your local Baker County Genealogical and Historical Library, P.O. Box 856, Macclenny, has produced for $6.50 the book of Baker County Marriages, 1877-1900. That is a boon for local genealogists. It is the first official publication of the Baker County Historical Society and would make a dandy gift or souvenir for a history buff's collection. Order soon (they can't last much longer) from the library. The plot isn't much, but the list of characters is great ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 3, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber So you want to dig up your Grandpa......Part four In this decennial year we are made aware by the Federal Government, at the taxpayers' great expense, that it's time to be counted again. This census practice has been going on since 1790, and the resulting rolls are held in reverence by researching genealogists. If your ancestors were too poor or un-public spirited to be included on other records and documents, there is a great chance they are reposing among brittle tomes marked "Census Schedules." From the mid-nineteenth century on the schedules are filled with tantalizing bits of information such as "attended school within the year," "farmer," "idiotic." Before then, only the names of the heads of households are given along with the number of males and females residing in the house and a few-to-many-years span of their ages. Example: 2 females, 20 to 30 years (very frustrating). Some census schedules, especially for certain states, including Florida's 1850, are notorious for inconsistencies and contradictions with other schedules for other years. Many federal employees, temporary and permanent, back then were not unlike their modern counterparts; they had never struck a lick at a blacksnake before they were hired and did not intend to do much afterward except draw a regular paycheck. Therefore many census takers performed their duties in a perfunctory manner, adding conjectural and fabricated data to their reports and occasionally omitting families and entire neighborhoods (not to be confused with certain missing schedules destroyed by fire in later years). Many large libraries have microfilmed census schedules of their states or regions or can borrow from their state libraries the schedules you desire. The law forbids public perusal of recent schedules as a guard against invasion of privacy. It's a tedious task to reel through states and years, but practice makes perfect (and speed), and soon you'll be flying through the lists ignoring irrelevant names like a pro. If you've done your homework well you will undoubtedly be able to go to the correct county of the correct state, thus eliminating hours of eye-strain. What should you copy from the census schedules? Everything that pertains to the family you are tracing. Include the census schedule page and household number for later proof and possible re-checking, people of different surnames living in the same household (possible clues to in-laws), and neighbors (helps to establish exact residence of your forebears). Some quick notes made regarding other surnames you might be eventually interested in will come in handy to prevent much needless tracing at a later date. Whether from census, living relatives, or off a document in the judge's office, never neglect to record where each piece of information came from. Never guess, and always double check. Begin early to file, categorize, alphabetizer and any other "-ize" that enables you to keep your records intelligible and readily accessable. Keep a separate genealogical sheet for each family, but don't ignore biographical notes. Genealogy without biography is grits without salt. Soon, you will be able to construct that long-desired pedigree sheet, and you can then be as snobbish as anybody. . . .'cause you know where you came from. If all this has been confusing, your Baker County Historical Society will attempt to set you straight in a Saturday study, April 26, in the High School Media Center. You will learn how to become acquainted with your ancestors in five easy hours (that includes one hour discovering the new genealogical and historical library on McIver Street). Pre-registration and five dollars are required. Send your money and request for space to the Baker County Historical Society at P.O. Box 856, Macclenny, soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 10, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Digging up grandpa - Conclusion Your kindly old columnist used to enjoy genealogy. He whiled away many hours and dollars in its pursuit. He basked in the attention and admiration always tendered to those who dropped words like "pedigree, fore-bears," and "progenitors." But it was inevitable that in fad-conscious America ancestry-tracing would become a craze. These days, everybody's an expert on the subject. Everyone one talks with has ancestors who signed Declaration of Independences and Magna Chartas, fought with William the Conqueror and Robert the Bruce, rode over on the Mayflower (that says a lot for their ancestors' taste and intelligence), and was a noble warrior for the Confederacy. Such one-sided conversations make your humble columnist shrink. His noble ancestors whom he once bragged about - Obadiah Barber who rustled 100 head of cattle in one night single-handedly; the Chesser and Drawdy boys who upon deserting from the Confederate Army intrepidly crossed the wild Okefenokee to reach refuge and civilian life; Uncle Budder Johnson who was adulated for miles around for his brilliant, imaginative cussing and eccentricities; and Grandmother Thompson who self-sacrificingly continued an old age tradition among the ladies of her line by having an illegitimate offspring - pale by comparison. Now, dear Readers, a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic and grandparentology (i.e., two parents came from four grandparents who came from eight great-grandparents, who came from sixteen g-g-grandparents ad Adam...) will convince one that the discovery of a noble or notable among one's millions of forebears should not be counted as a great surprise. Likewise, a portion of trash back there will be uncovered, and the trash will outweigh the noble in a monstrous manner (the really "nothings" are the ones you should be proudest to find; they're the most difficult to ferret out among the ancestry of the shadowy past). The genealogist is not a horticulturist. He does not lop off undesirable branches, he does not twist and train the shape of his ancestry to suit his tastes and purposes, and. . .he does not fertilize. Which brings us to a subject dear to our pedantic heart - fabricated genealogies and family histories. These tedious bits of fluff perpetrated by the P.T. Barnums of the history world are not new, but the recent awareness of genealogy and American history has created a new wave of them, and some have proliferated beyond measure and dreaded expectation. They read very nice and exciting to the amateur genealogist, and he unwittingly passes them on by including them in his notes, thus insuring their growth and perpetuity. He is usually the same one who curses his predecessor genealogists for laying down contradictory and false data. Fabricated genealogies and family histories can often be recognized by their being too complete (who in the world can discover and know everything about everybody in his past?). There will be much interweaving with greater events, and there will be associations, even fancied kinships, with great historic personages. Descent from nobles and notables is big in bogus genealogies, and the lineage from them is almost always via illegitimate birth (who dares argue that point?) The bait of well-documented and generally accepted facts is always used (a practiced prevaricator always does his homework). The sources of information, when the compiler is finally cornered into divulging them, are (1) an ancient kin or neighbor who has gone on to Glory (and, incidentally, conveniently beyond your attempt at confirmation), (2) an old book which has since disappeared from the library where it was "discovered," and (3) from documents, records, and letters in possession of the compiler's family, who either jealously and zealously guard them against outsiders' eyes or which were destroyed by fire or some other act of God or by some unhappy family member. When a family history reads like a romantic novel, it usually is. Before adding information from a compilation which sounds a bit like these descriptions to your records, insist on more documentation than "interview with Aunt Annie Belle Stretchblanket, 104 years of age" or "from the unpublished memoirs of Mr. Abel Tophib who later lost his papers in the Johnstown flood." When the facts (we're using that term loosely) in a family history come from sources that all seem to be dead-end, incontrovertible, and hopelessly gone forever, it is wise to question mark them until you have researched and corroborated them with other findings. Do not, we repeat, do not quote them to anyone for any reason while you are proving them. If these romantic histories do turn out to be fabrications, never give them the dignity of arguing or mentioning them. Remember, each time you repeat an untruth you lend it a sort of credence. Unfortunately, mankind is adept at ignoring the confusion of truth and prefers to believe that which falls sweetly and excitingly on the ear. We prefer a glorious past and we shall probably pass on to our progeny the boloney described herein. With that, we shall let poor ol' Grandpa lie for a while. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 17, 1980 THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The convict lease system Part one-Chattahoochee Over the doorway of one of Spain's inquisition chambers was the less-than-cheery statement, "All ye who enter here, abandon hope." Beginning during the "Radical Rule" of Reconstruction and continuing through the early part of the twentieth century, all persons of any color, age, and either sex convicted for any breach of legality in the State of Florida knew only too well how that same dire announcement applied to them. Florida's first state prison (to this column's knowledge) was begun under Reconstruction Governor Marcellus Sterns in the old State Arsenal building at Chattahoochee. Conditions and most activities at that early penal institution were a bit beyond being described in a family newspaper, so we shall momentarily list only some of the nicer ones. A Union man named Martin was appointed warden to continue his residence there after his tenure as State Arsenal superintendent during the Civil War. In addition to paying him bonuses amounting to over $30,000 for accepting the charge, the State "gave" Martin all its prisoners, thereby substituting one type of slavery for that which the Union men had Just fought to abolish (according to the Union PR men). Warden Martin made a fortune working the prisoners in his vast vineyards and winery. He also had fun crudely playing at torture. He strung up some of the convicts by their thumbs until many were observed to have thumbs grotesquely enlarged and of a length equal to their fingers. The sweat box was not very imaginative; Just an air-tight, light-proof, very small box cell. Prisoners were treated to "sweating" for sometimes several days and nights. A few survived. Borrowed directly from the Spanish Inquisition was "watering." Reserved for the most obstinate and rebellious (and, incidentally, for known former Confederates), the convict was strapped down, a funnel forced into his mouth (who cared if a few teeth had to be sacrificed), and water poured in...and in...and in. A few survived that too. Deaths were frequent, and while the Reconstruction boys in Tallahassee fought and scrapped to bring Florida back into the liberal-minded, true democracy of the Washington of that time, Warden Martin had the Chattahoochie bodies (and some not quite yet bodies) tossed into shallow trenches. The Chattahoochie dogs and hogs were kept quite fat and sleek in those days. Governor Sterns was having difficulties keeping his government together in Tallahassee. The reconstructionist policies of the enlightened New England Yankee were just not taking hold in the ignorance-ridden Cracker state. In short, people began revolting against the circus in the state capitol and were scandalized at the revelations from the Chattahoochie prison. Because of public pressure and because he wished to be re-elected, Governor Sterns immediately effected a sort of compromise between the prison and a new idea called the "Convict Lease System." About half of the prison population was shipped off to central Florida where they were killed and maimed building a railroad between the St. John's and Lake Eustis. The balance of the convicts remained under the paternal care of Warden Martin. In the wilds of central Florida, the convicts were provided with no (repeat No) shelter day and night in rain, heat, or freezes. They were permitted to take a few short breaks to scour the woods for their own food... palmetto shoots, grubworms, and roots. They worked from long before light to well after dark, and in spite of their weakened conditions, were forced to trot everywhere so that all available time was spent building a railroad for a private business. For night time entertainment, the boss man often strung up a convict by his thumbs and made the other prisoners watch him die by firelight... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 24, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The convict lease system Some criminals and their crimes By admissions from several court judges, prisoner lease officials, and members of Florida's legislature, a Negro could be convicted of almost anything (a backlash from Reconstruction policies as well as good old fashioned hatred), so the great majority of the state's prison population was Black. Most Whites could make it onto the chain gang with no effort on their part if involved in homicide. Women, all colors, were in the minority but were made to work chained with the men and enjoyed the quality of doing any work demanded of the males. They were also kept in the same quarters with the men. The youngest convicted offender on record was Cyrus "Cy" Williams who was arrested as a mere toddler for horse theft. It was soon after the end of the Civil War, and the child was, in fact, the first prisoner received by the State of Florida - "Prisoner Number One." That the child was stealing the horse is open to question. He was too small to mount the animal and was scarcely able to answer questions about his act. He was not even old enough to wear pants, but was sentenced to twenty years in Chattahoochee State Prison. For once, Warden Martin's imagination was severely taxed, but the good Warden came through. He placed two bricks at one end of the stockade and gave the black baby two more. He placed little Cy with his two bricks at the opposite end and explained to him that he was to carry his two bricks to the others, lay down his bricks neatly, pick up the other two, bring them back to his starting place, and continue exchanging the bricks all day, from sunup to sundown. He was also warned that if he either failed to arrange the bricks neatly, broke one, or slowed down, he would be soundly whipped. A contemporary observer wrote of Warden Martin's invention of the unique task: "...certainly reflects credit upon his ingenuity." Meanwhile, the child grew up at the senseless labor and wore out four sets of bricks. Then, there was the case of young Maud Foster, a well-reared and educated lady from New York City. A bit on the spoiled side and somewhat bored, she and another young lady of means ran away to Cuba in search of the romantic life as read about in the novels of her time. They were soon disappointed and almost broke and endeavored to make their way north. In Key West, a slick handsome Latin wooed Maud and stole a valuable item of jewelry from her. She made a complaint to the authorities, and when she read the police document pertaining to her complaint, she noticed they had written up the young fellow's offenses as being much greater than they actually were. Another complaint was then drafted and Maude signed it. At the culprit's hearing the girl was asked if she had signed a certain paper which was shown her from across the way (the first and false one). Confused and frightened, she replied in the affirmative whereas she had not. Not unlike many courts of today, the culprit was soon the goodie and the real victim became the villainess and was convicted of perjury. Young Miss Foster was given prison stripes, chained, and kept in a convict camp near Hilliard in Nassau County in the midst of desperate men of all types. Her prison captain remonstrated her for giving herself to abandon and degradation while housed in the barracks with the men. "It made a bad woman out of her...," sighed the captain. Miss Foster gave the captain some rather explicit instructions on the placement and care of his preaching, and, upon her discharge, she became a lady of refined entertainment techniques in Jacksonville and Havana. Now, our dear readers are saying, "See, Harvey, it's just like all those TV shows and books about those courts down there in the South." But be advised, dear Readers, most of these inane convictions, especially that of the black child Cy, were not from those good ol' boy courts of the turn of the century but from those of the Reconstruction period operated or controlled by the advanced and deeper sensitivity of transplanted Northern folk. Other offenses similar to those which might (and only "might") bring convictions today were, "assault with intent to ravish," "calmly and methodically held him down and carved out his windpipe," "an infamous crime in which his own daughter was complainant," "shot five men to death in downtown Pensacola," and "beat his brains out with a chair." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 1, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The convict lease system Part three-the chain gang camps Life eased up a bit for state prisoners in 1877 when George Drew, a New Englander living in Suwannee County, became governor (the entire state waited for Baker County's votes in that gubernatorial race). He and a Democrat-dominated legislature recalled the convicts from the Lake Eustis area and placed them in charge of a Captain J.C. Powell in Suwannee County. The Chattahoochee facility was closed down, and its prison population leased out to a wealthy farmer in Leon County by the name of Green Chaires. The Chaires' convicts fared very poorly and were greatly abused, but the Lake Eustis gang thought they had died and gone to Heaven. Powell worked them for lessee Major H.A. Wise who was a merchant in Live Oak. Young Cy Williams, finally relieved of his brick-toting and the Hell of building railroads in central Florida, was among the Powell charges. Captain Powell was no shrinking violet. Fairly well educated, if lacking in refinement, he had "been around." But he later wrote that the sight of the cadaverous appearance of the men "staggered me." It took Powell almost a year to get the gang into a condition that permitted labor. In Tallahassee, laws were enacted for relative protection of convicts in the Lease System. Prisoners could not be worked before sunup or after sundown, and never more than ten hours a day even on the longest days of the year, Sundays were free. Pay and gain time for good behavior was instituted. Letter writing was allowed and regulations placed on food, sanitary conditions, bathing, and sleeping facilities. Cruel and unusual punishment was outlawed as well as unjust and too frequent applications of punishment. Whipping with the strap became law. There was one big fly in the ointment: no provisions were made to enforce the new Lease System laws. All depended on (1) the lessee and his sub-lessee being law-abiding and (2) the captains or convict bosses being humane. As a rule, the lessee and sub-lessee would be too far removed, physically and mentally, to be aware of camp conditions, and the captains would often be too calloused and warped to care. From the Journal of the Florida Senate comes some poignant testimony from the camp inmates: "They work us on Sundays sometimes but pay extra for it," "Don't get enough to eat sometimes, get meat and bread and peas and syrup sometimes, flour bread on Sunday, get no beef..." "...punishment is severe; brought the blood out of me last month...had one blanket for three men....slept on the bare floor (this testimony was taken in 1899 after the coldest winter in the then living people's memories... frost in Key West)" "They have been holding up on punishment expecting the committee (investigating team of state senators)," "Twenty-five to thirty licks is light punishment," "Grit in the bread; this morning it was full of kerosene oil (a common complaint at one camp)," "I am subject to fits and punish me and make me to (to work) when I have fits," "They are all the time cursing the men," "...am hungry right now." "All through the winter we slept on the naked floor and like to froze," "One of the men was sick with pneumonia; he was punished when he had fever on him; that was Friday; the next day they punished him again; and on the next day he died," "...had the hide beat off me." The testimony was interspersed with a few positive reports, some of the more articulate trustees going into great detail extolling the almost resort-like conditions at their camps. Further research explained their praises; some were brothers-in-law or cousins of the guards. Captain Powell was unable to explain the favored position of others with certain guards; just as he was unable to account for the arrival of some of his male charges attired in female clothes. There were in the early days of the Lease System four major industries that eagerly sought convict labor - turpentining, phosphate mining, big business farming, and railroad construction. Fortunes were gained and empires built, Florida opened up, and the state's economy initially boosted by cheap convict lease labor. And because of the whip, it was done efficiently. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 8, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The convict lease system Part Four The American Siberia or Fourteen Years' Experience in A Southern Convict Camp by J.C Powell, captain of the Florida convict camp, was published by H.J. Smith and Company in 1891 and was brought to the notice of this column by Mrs. Thelma Fish. It was reprinted in 1969 by the Arno Press and The New York Times under the series title Mass Violence In America. Captain Powell narrates his story of the prison lease system and its camps rather matter-of-factly and only occasionally moves to near criticism of the system. He saw the situation as being mostly correct, and the reader infers the good captain was relatively humane under the circumstances of the day. The treatment and attitudes toward most convicts of the nineteenth century is regrettable (the murders and rapes that caused the convicts' incarceration are regrettable too), but this column feels the reprint introduction is way out of line with its thinly veiled suggestion that the U.S. stands alone in history as a violent society. Taken in the context of world history, The American Siberia (we have reason to doubt that title was Captain Powell's choice) makes for interesting and provocative reading. We will now offer some bits and pieces from the convict lease camps' activity in and around Baker County. In the nineteenth century there was a family named Fry who lived in Baker and Columbia Counties, and it is coincidental that Captain Powell came into conflict with a young man by that name near the newly constructed Macedonia Church. Young Fry had been circulating tales of atrocities attributed to Powell, and Powell determined to put an end to the rumors. "One day, ....while working a squad near what was called the Macedonia Church, I learned that he (Fry) was at a neighboring house and sent a trusty after him. A man named Hurst was lounging near the church door." Hurst yelled to the trusty to inform Fry to bring his shotgun with him. Powell and Hurst had a heated exchange of words in which Powell threatened to whip both Hurst and Fry. Hurst picked up the threat. "Seeing myself in for it, I handed my gun to a guard and set to, not exactly according to prize-ring rules, but actively enough to soon leave me in possession of the field and put a stop forever to the murder story (referring to the atrocity rumors). Fry remained discreetly in-doors during the combat. Hurst afterward hired to me as a guard and made a good one." Major Wise of Live Oak operated at least two brick yards - Live Oak and McClenny. Three of his lease convicts escaped from Live Oak yard (from another guard also named Hurst), and headed east toward Baker County. "The case was quickly reported, and Major Wise, a guard named McIntyre, and I started in pursuit. We held the trail up to the vicinity of the town of Sanderson, near which it became obscure, and we concluded that several, if not all, of the convicts were in hiding thereabouts. Not far from the town there is a railroad bridge (between McClenny and Glen Saint Mary), and as night was coming on and it was likely that some of the party would attempt to cross under cover of darkness, we concealed ourselves close by and watched." McIntyre was left on guard while Powell and Wise went into McClenny for supper. For some reason McIntyre left his post and the three convicts slipped across the trestle and were surprised by Powell and Wise on their return from supper. They captured two named Reddick and Gomez and shot and wounded one named Love. "About two weeks later a rumor came that a strange man had died under mysterious circumstances in a house on the outskirts of the town of St. Mary's (Glen Saint Mary). Investigation proved that it was Love." This column doesn't think it would be in good taste to list too many names of convicts mentioned in The American Siberia, but sufficeth it to say we have filled in a few gaps in gathering the genealogies of local clans from information gleaned from Captain Powell's writing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 15, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The convict lease system Conclusion Anybody with a little pull and money could acquire a gang of slaves from the state of Florida during the period from soon after the Civil War into the 1920's. Turpentine farmers in this section and in West Florida, phosphate miners in the central state, and even Mr. Plant the railroad builder achieved their ends and made their fortunes (or parts of their fortunes) upon the blood and gore of the unfortunate wretches leased to them by Florida. Some, such as Plant, only had to provide quarters, food, and clothing of a nature called by the lawbooks as "adequate." This was no drain on their purses since the state also paid them to keep the prisoners out of its hair. It's pretty dern easy to today see why some folks are sitting smug within financial empires (and they range from monopolistic down to down-right petty and funny). But every dog has his day, the worm will turn, and the sun doesn't always shine on the same dog's rear....some convicts got back at the system. A group of six Crackers, including a couple of relatives of this writer, from Brevard County were railroaded to Captain Powell's Live Oak camp by way of a mock court in the wilds between Orlando and Cape Canaveral. The State was later embarrassed that it had received prisoners from a bogus Judge and jury composed of henchmen from some of central Florida's largest cattle barons (Mizells and Basses who helped decimate the Barber population of central Florida in the nineteenth century). The State was eventually more embarrassed when the men were tardily released and went home to renew a decades old feud and took time to slap around, for good measure, a few of their unfavorite guards at the Live Oak camp. In those days, almost anybody who was in trouble wired Uncle Charly Barber of McClenny for aid. Not that he was that well liked (and not adulated at all), but Senator Barber had a reputation as the man who would stop his own breathing if it meant he could help somebody else, even the undeserving. His Brevard and Orange Counties cousins appealed to him, and he made a detailed investigation on his own. He was appointed to the Chair of the Joint House Special-Committee to visit the convict camps, and on the nineteenth of May, 1899, he and his committee reported to the President of the Senate a rather unpleasant run-down of the State's Convict Lease System camps. The Committee visited camps as far west as Washington County and as far south as Citrus. It was discovered that many of the men and women prisoners were living in conditions and on food that was actually sub-standard for animals. Filth was the big fault with unusual and overabundant punishment running a close second. A representative remark was, "Your committee found a deplorable condition of affairs at this camp, and cannot present in language the true situation....we found a system of cruelty and inhumanity practiced at this camp, that it would be hard to realize unless it could be seen and heard direct." The State, eager to please the big businessmen from the North who were opening the peninsula with their rails and mines, did not go so far as to abolish the Convict Lease System, but the several recommendations made by the Special Committee were accepted and positively acted on. The convicts' situation improved to such a degree that although many had died during the old days of the system, a prisoner's murder years later was regarded by the public as shocking, and a halt was finally put to the Convict Lease System of Florida. It would be an incorrect inference to believe the writer is a "bleeding heart" liberal for 100 percent of the prison population then or now. Perhaps Florida's nineteenth century Convict Lease System is too refined and kind for mass murderers and those who methodically plan murders and for those who relegate their own children and parents to a chained tortured life and for those who physically abuse children and the aged and for those who throw sticks at mangy yellow dogs who are only asking, as another of God's creatures, for a bit of food and love. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 22, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Some of the early holders of livestock in county In a letter written in 1864 Private Woodford of the United States Army commented on the multitudes of pigs in the eastern and central sections of Baker County. He claimed that their noses were the largest parts of their bodies. A year later the Jacksonville Times reported that, contrary to a popular rumor, cattle were plentiful in post-war Florida, the woods being full of them. The article added that some brought $15 a head. Baker County was, at that time, one of the state's largest swine and cattle producers. Because of an outbreak of cow rustling during Reconstruction days, Florida stock owners began to register their marks and brands with their Clerks of Courts. Baker County lost its early registrations during a courthouse fire in 1877, but the list from that time on exists. A portion of the marks and brands owners and their dates of registration is given here. R.W. Cain, 1877; Richard Osteen, 1878; Nathan D. Pease, 1879; Sarah Jane Daugharty, 1879; John O. Thompson, 1879; John Sapp, 1880; Noah Davis, 1881; J.C. Williams, 1881; B.H. Rowe, 1881; A.W. Rowe, 1881; Robert L. Rowe, 1881; Aaron Dowling, 1881; William J. Raulerson (this name was crossed out at Mr. Raulerson's request and the name of Elizabeth Raulerson written in), 1881; James D. Dowling, 1881, Aaron Dowling, 1881; Isaac Davis (transferred to R.L. Davis), 1882; Louis Perkins, 1883; Henry Givens, 1883; Mrs. Lydia Summersil, 1883; Oscar Powell, 1883; Han, Dugger, 1884; E. Dyess, 1884; Eliza Dinkins, 1884; Jerry Parks, 1885; W.H. Rouis (Rewis?); 1885; Andrew J. Green, 1885; J.H. Raulerson, 1885; Alfred Roberts, 1887; John Jones, 1887; James T. Jones, 1887; Amelia Dees, 1887; W.H. Yarborough, 1887; H.G. McPhearson, 1888; Elizabeth C. Altman; 1888; J.E. Rowe, 1889; Mary A.E. Dyess, 1889; Joseph Eddie Combs, 1890; D.H. Rowe, 1890; W.H. Durrence, 1890; C.E. Bumpus ("I" added after name by recorder James D. Chalker), 1890; J.B. Rhoden, 1890; J.O. Bessent, 1893; Mary V. Blair, 1891; Leonilla Pierce, 1891; Matie I. Hatcher, 1891; D.C. Griffing, 1891; Georgian Durrence, 1891; Louis H. Hogan, 1891; G.C. Brown, 1891; M.J. Rosier, 1892; Riley Rhoden, 1893. These were some marks and brands registrations from the county's formation in 1861 until the fire of 1877 which were not re-recorded, and some folks Just never got around to it at all. As the railroads began pushing south toward year-round pasturage and open prairie land the cattle industry followed. Baker County's description as "cow country" began to fade, and she turned to naval stores and timber production. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 29, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Random thoughts on random subjects When this column was being written it was one of "those days." We had planned to reprint a story about Baker County's first fair held back in 1918 but couldn't find the Baker County Standard from which it came. We had just added another year of age and another ten years of arthritis and indigestion. It had been weeks since we had received any communications inspiring us to research and discourse upon any particular subject (we would almost welcome one of those 7 A.M. nasty phone calls or requests for information not accompanied by a stamped envelope). To this cumulative pile of cheer we added, "nobody ever reads this stuff anyhow." Seeing as how time, tide, and Tuesday deadline wait for no man or his inspiration, we fetched out a file folder marked "random thoughts and questions regarding sundry subjects." Penciled in on the backs of envelopes, napkins, and receipts was enough material to keep a whole slue of folks angry for at least a couple of days. About all this has to do with history is that most of it came about during our searches in that field. Questions and thoughts: Why do we spend hours searching for and paying exorbitant prices for other people's discards and call our activity "Antique collecting?" Ever notice that when the term "new and improved" is added to a product it means another definite downward cut in its quality? Why do customers who know they're going to pay for their groceries with a check never even begin to look for their check book until after the clerk has given them the total? Why do they never have their check cashing card in hand or even on their persons? Doesn't it seem that a mighty high percentage of the excess speeders on the highways almost always display the bumper sticker "55 - it's a law we can live with," are in a State DOT vehicle, in some kind of Federal Government car, out of-uniform with his wife and kids in a police car, or exhibit the word "clergy" on the tag? How come one never sees the "clergy" symbol on anything except a Cadillac or Continental? What is Steve Martin's purpose on TV? Surely the time allowed him could be better spent in a comedy program. Why are laundromats usually as empty as an artist's wallet but look like a setting for a gospel sing when your writer decides to do his bi-monthly wash? Why do we complain about what a U.S. President has caused or hasn't done when if he had the powers we ascribe to him we would yell even louder that no one person should be so powerful? How can the networks possibly give dignity to the complaints about irritated nasal passages of college students in the northwest U.S. while people are ruined or dead? How could we lend dignity to the nationwide report by even discussing it? Why must we be continually subjected to the editorials on the reasons for the current inflationary period when we know that, pure and simple, its causes are greed on the part of the manufacturer and supplier and the greed and stupid economics on the part of the consumer? How come we won't believe the raw, honest truth can be anything but negative and insulting? Ever noticed that no one is considered an expert unless he's from at least 50 miles away? Why do we think we've made character-destroying gossip clean by starting it with, "I don't believe it, but...."? Ask a man to name the community's most successful people, and he'll never list anybody who isn't financially rich. Why is it that the very rich presidential candidates direct their core campaign toward the poor? If they were that concerned, surely they could use that campaigning money better by adding it to their own resources and coming down here and distributing a few big bills among us. Ever notice the anti-draft candidates are the ones who'll never have to worry about their kids being hauled off to war? Ever wonder why and how the poor, minorities, and anti-draft people can continue to allow themselves to be exploited and manipulated by those candidates? Do you realize there are still people in a so-called civilized society who still permit their children to play with the telephone, dialing a bunch of numbers at random at 6 A. M. and slobbering gibberish into your incredulous ears? Can you believe that after millennia of civilizing, there are members of the human race who will take a dog to the vet to be killed, or, worse yet, haul him out onto a distant highway simply because the unfortunate creature's breed just happened to slip out of popularity (after all, one who is in the know, would never be caught dead walking an Afghan when Poodles are in)? Would you believe pillars of the church would throw lye or boiling water on a stray cat? Ever notice that in spite of it all, the sun keeps coming up, the rain keeps falling, the mockingbirds keep right on sassing? Seems something or somebody is mighty tolerant and forgiving. Local history resumes next week. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 5, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The Herndons..... (William Zopher) One of those old time Baker County families that moved in, exerted great influence, lent some of its members to local legend-making, and then completely disappeared by name from the county was the Herndons. From the county courthouse, conversations with some of the older heads, and expecially from the research of Robert Herndon of St. Augustine come these notes on what was once a widespread and popular clan here. One of the first of the name to immigrate to the present Baker County was William Zopher Herndon. He was born in North Carolina about 1804. His wife Amelia Ann was a South Carolinian whose maiden name was either Freaux or Frohoucks. Although there were other contemporary William Herndons moving about in Georgia hoping to confuse later historians, it is believed this particular William was the one found in Appling County in 1820, Emanuel County in 1830, and in Ware County during the 1830's and through the next decade. About 1842 he brought his family across the territorial line into old Columbia County. Some thought his first residence was in the Lake Butler area (and it did later become a strong Herndon area for a few years), and others believed he first settled at a logging camp which later became Long Pond and then Sanderson. While in Ware, William enlisted in Captain Levi J. Knight's Independent Company of Lowndes County for a term of service from August to October, 1838. Like so many of the Georgia soldiers, he liked what he saw down in Florida and decided to settle there. In the late 1850's he was a resident in the Sanderson area, tending to the spiritual needs of the local Methodists. As a minister of that faith, he performed marriages throughout the countryside and helped found the Olustee Methodist Church as early as 1844 and sometimes supplied in Mann's Church on the South Prong of the Saint Mary's River (that congregation renamed themselves Mount Olive and is now known as Manntown Congregational Holiness). The Herndons had at least eleven children and possibly two others who are known only by family tradition but without further proof. The first born was the legendary Urban Cooper Herndon. He was born in 1830 in Appling County, married Mary Jane Sweat (a daughter of Abner and Rebecca, formerly of South Carolina), and died from complications resulting from a stabbing received (1) while investigating a case at Sanderson or (2) during the infamous Baxter Rebellion of 1904 (take your pick since both have been proffered rather vehemently by old-timers). Matilda Caroline was born about 1832 in Emanuel County, married Thomas Williams, and died in 1898. John Reynolds was born in 1834; married (1) Eliza E. Sweat (sister of Mary Jane?) (2) Jane Combs, daughter of George and Mary Ann; and died in 1905. John was a long time Justice of the Peace and county Judge in Baker County. His McClenny home on South Fifth Street has been saved and is now being beautifully restored. Elizabeth was born about 1838 and married Noah Browning. William Henry Harrison was born about 1841 in Ware County and married a Mills from near McClenny. While Harrison's brothers Urban Cooper and John R. were members of the Confederate Army, he enilsted in the Union Army, serving in Florida's Second Calvary. Mary Ann was born about 1842 in Columbia County, Florida, as was her sister Sarah J., born about 1850. Mathew Raiford was born about 1853 in Columbia, married Mary Appalonia Whidden, and died in 1929. Thomas Jefferson was born in 1858 at Sanderson, married Elizabeth Brannen, and died in 1928. Two sons died at childbirth, and two other possible children were Martha, who married Jim Worley, and Rebecca, who married a Browning. In late 1800, William moved his family to Polk County where he was listed on the 1861 tax roll and performed several marriages. Throughout the Civil War period he served as a Methodist minister under Bishop Capers. He died at Homeland in 1865, and his wife followed him in death in 1884. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 12, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber The Herndons Part Two - Cooper and John The subject of last week's columnn William Zopher Herndon, had two sons who were among the molders of modern Baker County. They were Urban Cooper, known variously as Cooper, Coop, and U.C., and John Reynolds, referred to as John or John R. Both were brought to the present Baker County area by their father's move from Georgia about 1842. From his father's home near the present Sanderson, Cooper went to Jacksonville to enlist in Edward T. Kennedy's Company of Florida Militia during the undeclared Third Seminole War in south Florida. He returned to the newly formed New River County (now those counties of Baker, Bradford, and Union) to marry a daughter of one of the area's largest and, then, wealthiest clans-the Abner Sweats. Cooper and his wife Mary Jane had Just settled down to house-keeping when the War Between the States broke out, and in 1862 he enlisted in the Confederate Army. He served in Company D of the Eleventh Florida Infantry and was wounded in Virginia. As a result of the wound he was recuperating at home in Sanderson at the close of the war. John served in Company I, Eighth Florida Infantry, in the Confederate Army and participated in most of the major battles in Virginia. Their brother Harrison, living in the Polk County section, enlisted in the Union Army, and the old-timers claimed that most of the Herndons were long-time Whigs, initially opposed to the severing of ties with the United States (not at all unusual among Crackers and Mountaineers). Both Cooper and John threw themselves into the Confederate cause when conflict and, eventually, defeat were imminent. And both returned home to Baker County determined to aid in the recovery of their adopted home. Cooper was elected sheriff after Reconstructlon, and John was chosen by his fellow citizens to be their county Judge. Cooper held the office of sheriff for several years at several times and held the distinction of being Baker County's only sheriff until Shannon Green to live beyond the age of thirty. When times were rougher than usual and no one could be persuaded to accept the star, Cooper Herndon came out of retirement. He and his brother Judge John Herndon were often accused, especially by die-hard Republicans, of "having a good thing going" while they practically ran the county. Others knew that it would take a couple of strong-willed men in those particular offices to keep the frontier county in line, no matter that the boys did exert considerable, and sometimes undue, force and influence. John's first wife was Eliza Sweat, probably a sister of Mary Jane, and his second wife was Mrs. Mary Jane Williams, a daughter of George and Mary Ann (nee Lowery) Ellerbe Combs. He and Cooper moved to McClenny just prior to the courthouse removal from Sanderson (they being fully in accord with the transfer). John purchased one of the houses built by Northern immigrants close by the new frame courthouse and was instrumental in securing the land for the county next to his house for the eventual erection of a more permanent brick structure (now the county library). Cooper built just a few blocks toward the south from the courthouse. John died in 1905 and was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery near McClenny. His widow Jane operated a boarding house immediately south of the new brick courthouse well into the 1920's. She fed inexpensively and was blessed with almost a certain flow of customers from the adjacent county building. Cooper died in 1908, the year the brick courthouse was constructed. He also was buried in Woodlawn. Several others of this family became well known outside the county, and in the 1940's and '50's, U.C.'s hamburgers were considered a Baker County institution, but to this researcher one statement regarding one member of the clan keeps returning, "You didn't mess around with that Coop Herndon." _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 19, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Major David Moniac Updated and rewritten American histories tend to focus in and spend more time on official government maltreatment of minorities than on relating history, good and bad. And surely there is no way to clean up the death march imposed on the entire Creek Indian nation; the slavery of Negroes and Ameridians; and the inhumane hunting down and forced transporting of the Seminoles from their various Alabama, Georgia, and Florida homes. The positive race relations in our history are too often buried among the egregious ill acts of whole peoples by the United States bureaus and agencies and the various states' militias. An outstanding incongruity of the nineteenth century was the methodical almost total destruction of the Creek Indian nation while permitting one of that number to graduate from the military academy at West Point and allowing him to quickly rise to the rank of major. Had Major David Moniac of Alabama not been killed in the heat of battle against his recalcitrant Seminole and Creek brethren at Florida's Wahoo Swamp in 1838, he might have set a precedent in U.S. history; judging by his rapid upward moves in officer commissions, one might easily suspect that the major would have soon been General Moniac. Yes, Moniac, Georgia, was named for an Indian; in a manner of speaking, that is. Before we get into that, we feel we would receive a certain indubitable, perverse pleasure by saying in regards to the several communications we have received from a representative number of our readers telling us of the naming of that particular community (Moniac), "Dear Representative-Number-of- our - Readers, you're full of bulloney." One must not guess and mess with the facts of history but should strip away the fantasies, order official stuff from Washington City, and lay the gospel truth out on the table. Lately, Dicky Ferry of McClenny presented us with photocopies of the pension claims of Major Moniac's widow Mary as filed in the State of Alabama's Baldwin County. And the commissions of Major Moniac and the fort which bore his name are all matters cf record. No where among those voluminous six score years old documents did we find that David Moniac was a wild Seminole chief living in the fastness of the Okefenokee, ever sat around having tea with local Crews and Canaday clans, knew Osceola by anything but hearsay, or ever laid eyes on the site of the little community that is now his namesake. From these papers and other sources, we discovered that Major Moniac was living in Alabama (exact site or sites not yet known by this writer); was relatively wealthy before the Creeks' lands and cattle were taken from them by the Georgians; graduated from West Point Military Academy; married a Creek woman named Mary (maiden name initial "D") on the twentieth of October, 1828; and had two children, Margaret J. (nee Moniac) McDonald and David Alexander Moniac. Even a casual student of Florida history knows that old Moniac community was not originally Georgian but was established on Florida soil in 1838. We don't intend to publish the exact site in hopes of discouraging loot-collectors from converging and hauling away bits of priceless history to flea markets (don't get us wrong; we talk not of gold and silver but early nineteenth century military accouterments). The fort's existence was short, but its name remained on some maps until the late 1850's. Evidently not a lot of action was seen there during the Seminole War but post returns indicate that a great number of units stopped there on their ways toward the lower territory. One report lists the death of one hapless soldier on the road from Fort Alert (Traders Hill) to Fort Moniac by being thrown from his horse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 26, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Major David Moniac Part two One paper from the Adjutant General's office written in 1852 states, "David B. Moniac was mustered into service at Fort Mitchell, Ala., Sept. 1, 1863, as a Captain in the Regt. of Mounted Creek Vols; promoted Major Nov. 15,1836, and killed at the head of his battalion in the action of the Wahoo Swamp, Florida, Nov. 21, 1836. The undersigned was Adjutant of the Creek Regt. which was mustered into service of U.S. for 12 months, and has a genuine knowledge of the above facts..." William Sizemore, friend and neighbor of the Moniac family, declared under oath, "...has long known the present Mrs. Starke (Moniac's remarried widow) of Baldwin County, late Mrs. Mary D. Saunders and formerly the wife of the late Major David Moniac who died in Florida an officer in the Creek Volunteers - that he was well acquainted with the said Major Monac (sic) - living in this neighbourhood (sic) and knew of this marriage to the present Mrs. Starke, late Mary D. Saunders who of his having by her two children named Margaret J. Monaic (sic) known Margaret J. McDonald that he recollects about the time these children were born, Margaret J. Monaic (sic) 1829 was born about 21 of September Alexander D. Moniac was born about 20 of January 1833...." Moniac's widow deposed that her late husband entered the military service on the 19th of August, 1836,- was promoted to the rank of major on the 15th of November, 1836, and died on the 21st of November, 1836. She further claimed that his remains were laid to rest with the honors of war at the "Battle ground of major Dade beside those officers who fell in that action..." She gave her marriage date to Major Moniac as the 20th of October, 1828. She said her son Alexander was three years of age at the time of his father's death and that her daughter Margaret Jane was seven. The widow's marriage to Thomas Saunders of Baldwin County, Alabama, was listed as having taken place on the 23rd day of January, and the year 1838 is also written in. Mrs. Moniac-Saunders later married a Mr. Starke, and her minor child Alexander was placed under the guardianship of A.J. McDonald (perhaps the husband of Margaret Jane). The children received pension benefits until their majority, and Moniac's widow received approximately $12.50 per month for each month she remained a widow until she married Mr. Starke in about 1841. We would like to point out that if while reading the quoted depositions given by witnesses and participants in securing the Widow Moniac's pension, you noticed some inconsistencies, we wish to remind you that these were declarations made by human beings and recorded by human beings; records are often wrong. Yet, many researchers will accept anything on paper in a government office, especially if it is over a hundred years old. We wish to further point out that Moniac, Georgia, was not legally and originally named for Major Moniac, but that it was Moniac, Florida, that received the honor. How did Moniac Community slip across the river? To begin with, after the fort was abandoned, even before the end of the Seminole War, the entire northeast area of the present Baker County was referred to as Moniac section. In time the very nearby strip of Georgia Bend was probably included by the locals in that nebulous community. When the timber companies began to build their railroad and establish stops along its route, the nearest stop to old Fort Moniac became Moniac Station (no matter that it was a couple of miles away in Georgia). And so in time it was like a game of musical chairs and fruit-basket-turn-over in that neighborhood. Moniac, Florida, replaced Hogans' Ferry which had replaced the Spanish colonial days Pine Log Crossing Place. Moniac crossed the river, and in its place came Baxter. Moniac, Georgia, replaced Mizell's which had in turn replaced Malphus' Ferry which was sometimes called "the Fort" or Canaday's Place. At this point your writer has become confused, and so with his usual didactic closings will just suggest accepting historical documents with a grain of salt and too-slick colorful traditional tales with out-and-out disbelief, and maybe an appropriate monument to Major Moniac from his two namesake communities might be in order. _____________________________________________________________________________ THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 3, 1980 Page Two THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber Me and the 'Whip-poor-wills' Nostalgia time again. Not being a television watcher or one who seals himself each evening into an air-conditioned, hermetic retreat, your writer is often lulled to sleep by the whip-poor-wills' calling. He doesn't care about their distinguishing differences from chuck-will's-widows as argued by some erudite folks; he just knows that their summer sounds have laid pleasantly on his ears since his infancy. Long before the old Maxville Road was paved and years before the courthouse clock chimes were drowned out by traffic sounds, he recalls a stand of pines that stretched eastward from the old frame house and caught the dusk breeze with a soft purring whistle. Wisteria combined its heady scent with that of freshly scrubbed cypress flooring. The rocker started, usually furiously. The porch floor boards answered. The young mother holding the puny child wasn't much on lullabies, but she whistled a mean Alexander's Ragtime Band, My Blue Heaven, and Bringing in the Sheaves. There was always a discussion about the whip-poor-wills, punctuated with an occasional slap at a mosquito that dared upset the summer's orderly evening ritual. Pop would come home. Lamps were lit and supper spread. Maybe there was a walk across the creek to grandparents, watching the milky way and lightening bugs become one comforting but puzzling spectacle. Maybe we just stayed home until the world was very dark, listening to the whip-poor-wills. The whip-poor-will is constant. He calls, and then I'm free, From cursed chill at the instant His summons thrills and warms me. Come, old Friend, from summers past, So established in my soul; Your's the voice that ever lasts, Stirs, wakes, and again I'm whole. Warm night breeze brings the sound, My fluttering ache then dies. A calm friendliness is found, Another whip-poor-will replies. I'm returned again to summers old, Secure and pleased I rest; My mind, released from dreadful cold, Again is whip-poor-will blest.