"The Way It Was" Newspaper Column on Baker County, Florida History, 1981 part 2

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                      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.

Contents:

* Ghosts of Christmas Past, not-so-long-past, to-come Conclusion (in part 1)
* Some comments on the past year (in part 1)
* Reminiscing with Paul Taylor (in part 1)
* The Militia of 1837 (in part 1)
* A Cracker Lexicon - Two Parts (in part 1)
* John & Mollie Crews (in part 1)
* When bombs rained on Baker County (in part 1)
* Names and views from behind those framed photographs - Two Parts (in part 1)
* Catholicism in Baker County - Three Parts (in part 1)
* Children of the Confederacy (in part 1)
* The Glen Centennial - Part one (in part 1)
* The Glen Centennial - Part two (in part 1)
* The rape of the Osceola Forest (in part 1)
* The Glen Centennial - A photo story
* The Glen Centennial - Charly W. Turner
* The Glen Centennial - 'The second Yankee invasion'
* The Glen Centennial - More faces from the past.....
* History of the arts here
* Glen in the 1880's
* The Glen Centennial - Conclusion
* A Baker County map of 1840
* Francis Marion Brown
* Cracker Manifesto
* Reminiscing at the Beaches
* Columns draw readers' ire
* Post offices in Glen St. Mary
* The demise of the front porch
* The demise of the front porch - conclusion
* The Okefenokee Swamp - Part one
* The Okefenokee Swamp -Part Two
* The Okefenokee Swamp - Part Three
* The Okefenokee (in part 3)
* No article this week [Sep 10, 1981] (in part 3)
* Rufus Powers grew up with Glen (in part 3)
* In the spirit of the Centennial (in part 3)
* The Glen Centennial - Appraisal and appreciation (in part 3)
* The Okefenokee Swamp - A resumption of the series (in part 3)
* People of the Okefenokee - The Indians (in part 3)
* The Okefenokee - The whites move in....and out (in part 3)
* The Okefenokee - Assorted legends, haints and boogers (in part 3)
* It's time to mobilize - Against strip-mining in the Osceola (in part 3)
* The turn of the Century (in part 3)
* Data from some old maps (in part 3)
* Thanksgiving feasts of old (in part 3)
* Looking ahead at Olustee (in part 3)
* Christmas 1981 (in part 3)
* To a mellow Christmas (in part 3)
* After 'The Day After' (in part 3)
* Potpourri of the year 1981 (in part 3)

_____________________________________________________________________________

   THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, April 30, 1981 Page Two

                      The Glen Centennial

                         A photo story

We'll divert from our usual format this week and give you a look at
some old photos in connection with the series on Glen St. Mary's
upcoming Centennial. Last week, the Glen Town Council voted to become
involved in the observance and we appreciate the interest. Below each
photo you will notice a cutline explanation on who is pictured and how
they fit into oldtime Glen. Next week, we'll return to our regular
format.

Thank you,
Gene Barber

Note cwm: seven photos ommited here.

_____________________________________________________________________________

         THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 7, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

            The Glen Centennial - Charly W. Turner

 Charly W. Turner was a native of New York and was a descendant of
New England stock. His wife Martha was New York Dutch. After a varied
and exciting life, Mr. Turner arrived in the Glen section in May of
1869. "Grandfather was looking for a nice place to buy and live",
mentioned a granddaughter over a century later.

 He constructed a small sawmill lumber house on the Jacksonville
Lake City Road (not to be confused with the separate and more
northerly Jacksonville- Tallahassee Road) which lay approximately on
the Lovers Lane and Smokey Road routes through the present Glen
Nurseries. This little house could be seen just south of the
Expressway on top of the clay cut on Road 125 until several years ago
(the writer's maternal grandparents were married there).

 That land was easy enough to acquire since It had been
confiscated from a former (and dead) Confederate, Isaiah Barber, and
was relatively inexpensive for one with U.S. currency and U.S.
sympathies. Mr. Turner was a veteran of the Mexican War, a retired
insurance agent for Aetna (he sold in the West and Southwest), a
former soldier in the recent Civil War, and, being somewhat thrifty,
he had amassed a comfortable sum with which to buy his retirement
home.

 Barber's widow Lizzie once remarked, "It is God's will that
somebody nice like the Turners bought the land rather than what we
could have had." Most of the land in the Glen area was controlled by
Mr. James Barnett, a lumber and naval stores operator south of Glen
and Sanderson. In addition to the Barber land, Mr. Turner purchased
the George J. Smith farm north of present Margaretta through Mr.
Barnett and lived there for a while in the 1870's.

 Mr. Turner was not a Carpet-bagger and had no time for those of
that ilk, but he was representative of the people who had just
trounced the Confederacy. Baker Countians had never, as a united
group, been overly keen on the ideas of separating from the Union, but
since the war there had been some understandable bitterness (we're not
tossing out any opinions of who was right or wrong in that conflict
but merely commenting on human nature). As a result, the Turners were
at first shunned except by the oldest families. He commented in his
dairy that the Mesdames Lizzie and Penny Barber and Mr. Jackson Mann
had called on them and had offered assistance and had been ready to
sell them livestock.

 Also in Mr. Turner's dairy was recorded that the 5th and 6th of
January, 1870, were the coldest days of the season and that the Glen
section burned up; that much of his garden and orchard stock had come
from New Mexico, and that his family attended Mr. Mann's church (now
Manntown Congregational Holiness but then Methodist).

 After a residence near Mt. Zion Church (now Turner Cemetery), the
Turners returned to Glen where he lived his last days.

 At the same time, or earlier, the related families of Walter
Drake and Ben Gurganus arrived in the Glen area, but both opted to
settle a little west and founded Newburg and Drake's Station on the
railroad, but it was the Gurganus home "Margaretta" (near the Turner
Mt. Zion home) that became the final name of the train stop.

 In 1875 James Hamilton Powers purchased land from a local land
dealer James Mott north of the present Glen (near the original John
Barber settlement of 1829). Mr. Powers was a restless gentleman who
had moved all over Charlton County, much of Nassau and Duval, but
reached his last and favorite home near Glen. On the land at the time
was a giant pecan tree, and he built his home under its outermost
branches.

 Mr. Powers remained there until his death in 1897 and is buried
on the original homestead. The pecan tree, one of Baker County's
living treasures, is still standing east of Road 125 and south of
Kirkland Branch.

 A Confederate widow, Mrs. Caroline Kersey Lauramore, moved to the
south Glen section in the 1870's and, due to her straitened
circumstances, hired herself out to retired sea captain Roger Vaughn
and his wife Martha as housekeeper. Mrs. Lauramore marveled at the
treasures of art and exotic bricabrac in the sprawling Vaughn house.
Of especial interest to Mrs. Lauramore were the floor rugs all through
the home (probably among the first floor coverings other than white
river sand in the county).

 The venerable Horace "Bruiser" Lauramore recalled his wonder at
the statuary, and a particular painting of a branch of oranges
remained in his mind for a hundred years. Mr. Lauramore, who just
recently passed away, spent the last many years of his life surrounded
by art of the most valued employee of Jacksonville's Cummer family and
Gallery.

 Captain Vaughn died, leaving a host of children named in his
honor and one very bitter, alcoholic wife. The unfortunate widow
Vaughn picked arguments with her neighbors, stayed in court, took in a
disreputable doctor and attorney, and then moved to Jacksonville where
the bottle took credit for her demise.

 The Vaughn Place is mentioned now by only a very few. Some recall
Vaughn's Wash Hole on the South Prong. Most know the farm as the
Eiserman Place, but before Mr. Eiserman and others like that
industrious gentleman arrived to remake the Glen area, we must
introduce the extraordinary George L. Taber, Sr, and the shrewd
businesswoman Theresa Tilton. But we shan't introduce them until next
week.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 14, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

       The Glen Centennial 'The second Yankee invasion'

 Since the re-discovery of Florida during the post-Civil War boom,
developers were founding communities faster than the map. makers and
tourist guide books could include them.
 Jacksonville and Saint Augustine were the state's tourist centers
in 1881 when the young George L. Taber arrived in Florida for his
health. He toured the countryside, detrained about an hour west of
Jacksonville, and fell in love with the area. He asked himself, "Could
I make a living out of the land?" Thinking back on his doctor's
prediction that he would probably not survive but a year or two even
in Florida's salubrious climate, Mr. Taber decided to give it a try.

 With the help of a local resident, Thomas P. Beath, George Taber
erected a log cabin, cleared land, set out fruit and nut trees,
established the Glen Nurseries and Glen Saint Mary. He issued his
first catalogue a year later.

 "The first settler at Glen St. Mary was Miss T.M. Milton Tilton,
in October, '82. She is the postmistress and the owner of a hotel
which she soon after built to accommodate the rapidly growing
population and the transient public. About 15 families have settled
there. It is situated on a south prong of the St. Marys river about
1/2 mile from the main stream, and on the Transit Railroad, one hour
from Jacksonville, from which place it can be reached at an expense of
$1.50."

 This was published in a Florida guidebook by Webb in 1885. Mr.
Webb goes on to say "Most of the land upon this town-site and nearly
all of the surrounding country for several miles each direction not
sold to other parties belongs to the Hon. C.B. McClenny, who is also
closely identified with the fortunes of McClenny, another town near
by.

 "New England, Kansas and Kentucky people are found there;
generally.

 "It is generally considered a good place in which to make and
save money. Talbott & Co., Jacksonville, Fla., are agents for the
lands at this point."

 Miss Tilton continually acquired land and, at the outbreak of the
yellow fever epidemic in 1888, was considered one of Glen's most
important landlord's. (landpersons?). Mr. Jesse E. Cole, no slouch in
the brain and Opportunity grabbing department, asked for and received
Miss Tilton's hand in marriage in 1888.

 She was Glen's second appointment to the office of postmaster (22
September, '83), following D. Lansing Skinner. She was re-appointed as
Theresa M. Cole on 20, April, 1887. After the fever epidemic, the
Coles slipped quietly from the Glen scene.

 By 1885, some of the Northern and Border State land owners, other
than those just mentioned, were Arabella A. Tilton, C.B. Tilton, James
Underhill, Charles and Lizzie Turner, Walter M. and, Lilly Turner,
Henry M. Gould, Aubrey Frink, Emma and Lawrence Hough, Homer G. Tabor,
and U.S. (Jr.) and Fannie Grant (does the last gentleman's name strike
a familiar note?)

 Mr. Webb, in the manner of most of those Northern writers of the
post Civil War period (and representative of the much self-touted
prejudice-free North,) totally ignored the host of Davis, Harvey
Rhoden, Alexander, Johnson, and Raulerson families who had begun to
drift south and east into Glen and its environs. In fact, Mrs. Webb
never listed a Southerner unless he had money, dismissed blacks as
un-noteworthy in a literary sense, and conceded a line or two to
females only when they were exceptional in business and wealth.

 (There...we've tended to our editorializing for the week. Just
relating history without occasionally lapsing into the didactic was
beginning to work on our nerves)

 Among the Glen hotel's (name not learned by this column) guests
were U.S. Grant (Jr.), Mr. Bradley, George E. Wilson, Messrs Coloney
and Talbott, and Dr. Horace Berry.

 Mr. Grant purchased land along the railroad right-of-way west of
Glen but sold out to George Taber, and Glen Saint Mary's brush with
the near famous was over before it began. Mr. Bradley was a famous
fertilizer manufacturer from Boston, and several of his relatives
continued to winter in Glen and McClenny for many years (some are
buried in Woodlawn.)

 Mr. Wilson was Bradley's employee and eventually established his
own fertilizer business in Jacksonville and became quite wealthy in
the central Florida orange groves. He also was instrumental in
developing Altamonte Springs when the Orlando area was opened by the
railroad.

 Mr. Coloney, a native of Virginia but an adopted son of Ohio,
came to Jacksonville for a recuperative visit and stayed. Mr. Talbott
was of Southern extraction but was born in Indiana He retired from the
United States Army as a captain after the Civil War and came to
Jacksonville due to failing health The two, as Coloney, Talbott, and
Company, became real estate agents for the town of Edgewood (now a
suburb of Jacksonville.) They later associated themselves with Captain
McClenny (supposedly some kinship among them) to sell Glen Saint Mary
and to plat out the city of McClenny in 1883.

 Dr. Berry was from Boston and was a graduate of Harvard (1871).
He owned a pharmacy at no. 9 East Bay in Jacksonville, and, according
to the economical standards of the 1880's, was residing in a house
reportedly constructed two years earlier (owned for many years by J.E.
Franklin and now the home of Hershel Mobley).

 Dr. Berry's claim to fame (an invidious honor in this case) was
to have brought the devastating yellow fever epidemic to Baker County
in 1888. It was said by the old timers that he took the train home on
an August Friday evening, as was his usual course, feeling ill. By
October of '88, five years to the month since his arrival in Florida,
Dr. Berry was dead, three Episcopal Churches closed forever, two
communities disappeared, Woodlawn and Manntown Cemeteries filled, and
the Second Yankee Invasion" of winter guests and recuperating and
retired residents was over.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 21, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

       The Glen Centennial - More faces from the past.

 No text, only pictures, including: "The entire Glen School,
1908"; "Picture Postcard, Copyrighted 1909"; "A Sunday outing and
picnic at Vaughn's Wash Hole about 1910" and "Picnic at the turn of
the century"

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, May 28, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

                   History of the arts here

 We will, on occasion, break sequence in a series to pick up on a
timely topic. Because of the county arts and crafts day this Saturday
in downtown McClenny, we shall interrupt our Glen columns and bring
you some notes on the arts in Baker County's history.

 Any people who have had to spend the greater portion of their
past taking care of their bellies and backs (typical of Baker County)
could claim little leisure time which to pursue the arts. Although the
arts did not flourish amid the adverse circumstances of their past, it
is to the credit of old-time Baker Countians that the arts did exist.

 Among the earliest of the literary arts here was some poetry
written by Professor George T. Swain, a McClenny post Civil War school
teacher. Professor Swain, a native of New Hampshire and a long time
resident of North Carolina, arrived in this county soon after the War
(incidentally, his brother Charles had been camped as a U.S. soldier
at Barber's Plantation prior to the Battle of Ocean Pond where he was
captured).

 Your writer knows of one existing book of Swain's Baker County
produced poetry, and he hopes to acquire it for the local Library.

 Shakespeare's plays were no strangers to many Baker Countians.
The porches of the McClenny Hotel served as stages for traveling
troupes of players in the 1880's. It was said that intermissions were
planned to coincide with the arrival of the train as that latter event
was of great consequence to the entire community.

 Since the town's cows were free to roam at will, especially among
the lush grassy mall adjacent to the railroad and the hotel, several
young lads were hired to wield shovels prior to every performance.

 Taylor School celebrated its "turning out" in 1913 with an
elaborate production of a Mid-summer's Night Dream.

 McClenny's grassy mall, sans cow stuff, was also scene of the
town's community band concerts at the turn of century. The writer s
grandfather and great uncle doubled as members of the town band and of
the Turkey Creek Nurseries Concert Band.

 The cultural heirs of the concerts and plays were Miss Jeter,
county music teacher of 1930's, and the lovely "Miss Fay" (nee
Matthews) Milton. We recall Miss Fay's stunning costuming and the
dramatic lighting and when the curtains got stuck they had to be
pulled across the stage by a grinning barefoot stage hand from the
fifth grade.

 Piano teacher Mrs. Clara Lott was responsible for a refreshing
innovation in music recitals in the 1940's. She used her front porch
as a stage, invited the young musicians' parents and friends to park
along her fence, and...Baker County's first drive-in piano recital.

 The late Eloise (nee Knabb) Milton, one of the brightest talents
to ever grace the cultural scene of this county, organized a community
choir in the forties.

 Dr. John Holt, our amazing and ever-young genius, could produce
an Easter pageant that would make Oberammergau sit up and take notice
(not to mention his accomplishment in oil painting).

 A dance school was conducted in the 1930's in the McClenny
Woman's Club, but the most notable pioneer in the dance, locally, was
Kathryne (nee Klein) Jones. A list of her former students would read
like a local's who's who. Her biggie contribution to the county's arts
history was her dance revue in 1953. It was star studded, memorable,
and backed with imaginative sets and costuming. Your writer made his
debut as an artist as set designer for the revue.

 Baker Countians have always been good craftspeople. Your writer
recalls the intricate and well crafted pine straw articles created by
the kids at Keller School under the tutelage of Mrs. Juanita Lewis at
the Pine Tree Festivals in the late 1940's.

 Captain Roger Vaughn had in the 1870's the county's first art
collection. He lived south of Glen Saint Mary, and his home was a
veritable museum.

 Close by, the founder of Glen and the Glen Nurseries George L.
Taber later gathered a fine collection of European art work. His son
George became an accomplished painter in oils.

 In the 1920's, a small caravan from Alabama drove into Baker
County, and at its head was Mrs. Minnie (nee Mitchell) Poythress, an
artist in the best academic tradition. She excelled as a china painter
also, and the historic Poythress House was a gallery for her
outstanding art and craft.

 The late Dexter Milton was probably the county's first fine art
painter. Self-taught, Mr. Milton produced several paintings in his
youth that rank with the best this writer has ever judged (and he has
judged many). Your writer was privileged to view a number of his
paintings several years ago, and he grieves that the man's talents
were never introduced to the world.

 And your writer, once so presumptuous and bold, envisioned
himself as an artist. He saw other kids with special interests happily
pursuing their chosen fields in the local public schools, but nothing
was offered to would-be artists. But the forward thinking of
Superintendent of Public Instruction L.L. Dugger and his Board
remedied that situation and announced in 1960 that school art would
become a reality. Your columnist instituted school art and worked
himself to a frazzle with almost no funds except his own.

 A small core of us began feebly at first to bring art shows to
the public in the mid sixties. These exhibitions grew fitfully into
sidewalk shows amid a few McClenny merchants' gripes about having
their windows blocked by "them pictures."

 Mr. Milton turned to sign painting. Mrs. Poythress puttered about
in her flowers. Some have gone on to the ultimate great studio. Some
of us have simply burned out. There is a new generation to whom we've
passed the brush and palette. In Baker County, the arts will continue.

_____________________________________________________________________________

     THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS Thursday June 4, 1981 Page Two

                 THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                      Glen in the 1880's

 Since Glen St. Mary's founding in 1881, it had grown to such
proportions by 1885 that the Board of County Commissioners set up a
committee composed of Charles Eiserman, W.H. Congleton, H.L. Reed, and
George L. Taber to examine and divide Districts One and Three
(Sanderson and McClenny, respectively) for the purpose of creating
Glen District Five.

 The description of the new precinct was as follows: "commencing
at the County line on the south, the east line shall be the Range line
dividing 21 and 22, running north to said line, until it intersects
the South Prong of Little St. Marys until it empties into the St.
Marys River. The west line shall be the Middle line of Range 21 and
running from the Bradford County line on the South until it intersects
the St. Marys River on the North."

 For a number of years, the residents of the east county had
agitated to have the seat of county government transferred from
Sanderson to the newer and busier community of Darbyville (McClenny).
In early 1886, a vote was held, and Glen went for the courthouse
removal 30 to 12. The Glen precinct Inspectors were Isaac B. Mann,
James M. Strickland, and George L. Taber.

 Some interesting sidelines to the vote were (1) Mr. Mann
represented the earilest known settler of Glen (J. Dan Mann). Mr.
Strickland represented the after-the-war Southern settlers as well as
having moved onto the land once settled by Glen's other earilest known
settler (John Barber), and Mr. Taber was the gentleman who founded
Glen, and (2) Walter A. Drake of Margaretta-Drake's Station rode to
victory in the State Assembly on the coat tails of the Courthouse
removal since he was very vocal about favoring it.

 A Glen resident (and husband of the town's first resident after
its official beginning) Jesse E. Cole tackled incumbent David H. Rowe
for State Assembly in 1892 and was soundly trounced. Neither were
natives, but Mr. Rowe had lived in the county for 20 years as compared
to Mr. Cole's 10 years residency.

 In that same year native M.G. Berry "walked all over" Northerner
J.E. Chamblers for Glen's Justice of the Peace. In 1896, Glen and
McClenny were the only two precincts to fulfill the election laws
properly, and because of irregularities among the other precincts,
that year was decided "no election" by the State Canvassing Board.

 No one in Glen qualified for the local constabulary in 1904 and
1906. A new citizen of Glen, but not of the county, was Tom C. Carrol,
a Confederate veteran from South Carolina. He was unopposed for Clerk
of Court in 1904, and he later moved to McClenny. Glen resident
William Roy Simmons won a heavy victory that year for Superintendent
of Public Instruction. Ander Townsend of Kentucky and a Glen merchant
was elected as Glen's county commissioner over native H.M. Sweat. Mr.
Townsend later was chosen as chairman of the Board. Brantly Fraser won
handily over his opponents for Glen's representative to the School
Board.

 In 1908, a newcomer to Glen, Wiley Hicks, bested his opponents
for Glen's seat on the County Commission. It was said that his
constituents were afraid of not voting for Mr. Hicks. Mr. Hicks,
by-the-way, was a great-grandfather of popular country singer Mel
Tillis. Brantly Fraser was returned as School Board member, and Henry
Davis won over George Weeks for Justice of the Peace.

 Some of Glen's residents who were paying taxes on town lots in
1883 were Jonothan D.B. Andrews, Charles Eiserman, Mary A. Gould,
Eliza Hastings, Henry B. Holmes, and Theresa M. Tilton. In the area
around Glen, some of the most extensive acreages were owned by James
M. Baker (for whom the county was named); Abraham D. Cole; Charles
Eiserman; Florida Land and Improvement Company of New Jersey, Inc.;
Florida and Mortgage Company, Ltd.; Florida Railroad and Navigation
Company; Fannie C. Grant (daughter-in-law of President U.S. Grant);
James M. Strickland (a giant of a lumberman who always wore red
suspenders); Sir Henry Reed (he designed the modern British Navy); and
C.B. McClenny.

 In 1886, Charly Turner sold out his plantation near Turner
Cemetery and moved back to Glen where he spent his last years.

 In the spring of 1888, Glen was chosen as the prospective site of
two estimable ventures the Baker County Refrigerating Company, Inc.
and the Glen Mary College (don't know why the "Saint" was dropped).
The yellow fever epidemic of that year's late summer aborted both
projects.

 Some of the teachers in the Glen school in the last years of the
nineteenth century were James H. Congleton, W.R. Simmons, L.A. Duncan,
J.R. Groover, J.R. Plympton, M.G. Berry, and Georgann Berry.

 Soon the twentieth century was going strong. There was an attempt
to make Glen a part of the twenties' Florida land boom, but most
Northern folk preferred the more lower peninsula's clime. The great
building period to house the influx gave impetus to the Glen Nurseries
through the demand of landscaping material, and the locals were
indirectly affected by the boom.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 11, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

               The Glen Centennial - Conclusion

 Although this is the conclusion of the Glen Saint Mary series it
is but the beginning of the Glen Centennial. The Town Council voted
unanimously to commemorate the community's first one hundred years.
Tentative plans call for a big opening fling this fall and a joint
town and nursery beautification effort in the spring of '82.

With the indulgence of our kind readers and the permission of our long
suffering editor, we shall frequently devote a small corner to Glen,
its story, and its celebration.

 But now, we return to our narrative.

 By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Glen was
receiving its second flow of Northern colonists, this time not for
winter residency but for full-time living.

 Representative of the new influx was a young family from Chicago
who detrained late one night. There were four-the father, a
gentlemanly native of Virginia and a very capable bookkeeper; a pretty
young mother with a babe in arms; and a tiny girl most unhappy at the
prospect of entering a new life in the wilds of Florida.

 The excitement of the long train trip could not compensate for
her homesickness. She peered into the darkness of the little town and
could see but one feeble light. She got sand in her shoes; an
unfamiliar circumstance with her, and although that occasion has since
been attributed with charming powers to bring the visitor back to
Florida, the little lady was most distraught and begged to go home.

 Although the little girl was the apple of her father's eye and he
no doubt had some misgivings at the unpromising view before him, the
die had been cast and the family stayed.

 This writer is most thankful that they did remain. If our readers
have noted a marked improvement in the mechanics, grammar-in-general,
punctuation, and spelling in our little weekly effusions, it is
because that young lady grew up to be not only the mentor and advisor
to literally thousands of Floridians but also is the columnist's right
hand and frequent savior. Her name is Miss Karlie Tyler.

 Mr. A. Miller surveyed and mapped the town in 1911 and lettered
the map's title and legend in characters that were to soon represent
the Art Deco movement and the modernistic thrust into the twentieth
century.

 Mr. Geitsey, the principle realtor, named the streets in the
manner of most Northern developers for the communities (in this case,
the upper midwest) where most of his prospective buyers lived. A few
thoroughfares honored U.S. presidents and a couple of streets paid
homage to Glen's primary horticultural products - orange and pecan.

 Through Mr. Taber's influence, many realty pamphlets were sent up
North, and the buyers came. Not in droves, but in a small and steady
stream. As in the days of the conquering tribes after Rome's heyday,
this second gentle and industrious invasion was absorbed and almost
completely Crackerized by the very people they were supposedly
replacing. Many who could not succumb to the ways of the lower South
returned home.

 There was a recrudescence of Ku Klux Klan activity in the decade
of the twenties, and Glen was the apparent Klan center of Baker
County. The Klan's membership was swelled by the new Northern
citizens, and all the night raids were not directed at the black
community. Many a white gentleman believed guilty of family neglect
and abuse was taken to Trail Ridge and treated to a flogging.

 In light of the public's current lax attitude on those subjects
and the bleeding hearts' undue concern for the civil liberties of the
perpetrators of dastardly acts, the vigilante movement of those days,
as seen in the perspective of time, doesn't seem like a wholly
repugnant idea.

 Most Glen Klansmen tossed off the sheets when directing their
violence toward blacks. There are the all too-well-known stories of
the anti-black signs at the town limits in those days, the train
conductor's orders to pull down the shades and lie on the floor in the
segregated black cars as they passed through Glen, and atrocities and
retributions too gory for telling here.

 There was never the great anti-Catholic attitude in Baker County
and Glen as was evidenced in other parts of the country, especially
the Midwest. In fact, several of the new Glen citizens were Catholic,
and a couple hinted that their move to Glen had removed them from
unpleasant circumstances up North. Some of the Catholics placed their
faith into a state of dormancy until a more convenient time and others
grew to like their new-found religion at the other end of the
emotional spectrum-the Holiness Movement of the twenties-and remained
in those churches for which Glen was becoming famous.

 Out on the Nursery, women were being hired, a breakthrough for
women's rights in the late twenties and early thirties. It was said of
Mr. Taber that his Quaker background came through and, in the words of
several old Crackers, "that he was against everything." He firmly and
fatherly watched over the morals of his help, it is said, but now the
truth can be told...there was hanky-panky going on at Glen Nursery
(and on Mr. Taber's time too, but never in his eyesight).

 Glen and the Nursery rearranged the population of the area with
many families moving there from the Georgia Bend, Cedar Creek, and
Sanderson. Little by little, the Glen as known by this writer in his
youth emerged and evolved. He roamed the lanes, ate cookies in the
Franklin Post Office, visited with Aunt Dolly Padgett, and sat on the
porch with Grandma Mag to watch the traffic go by on U.S. 90 (and,
incidentally, to watch Glen truly become part of the twentieth
century).

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June 18,1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

                  A Baker County map of 1840

 One of this column's frequent bits of advice to amateur history
researchers is there is no such thing as incontrovertible evidence;
logically conclusive.

 Many of them, guileless and gullible, retort with, "but my
findings are documented," or, "It's on record," or, worse yet, " my
data is based on conversations with my grandmother." Starting with the
last: Grandmas can and will lie. As far as records and documents go,
they are the products of human beings, and, as such, as liable to the
same faults and failings.

 We Barbers, it is said, will argue with sign posts. Well, sir, in
the case of the 1940's mileage markers between Glen Saint Mary and
McClenny, it paid to do so. In those days one could travel two miles
from McClenny to get to Glen, but it took three miles on the same
route to get back.

 Take the case of the highly touted Florida Indian War maps of the
nineteenth century now used so much for substantiation. Many were
dependent on hearsay for their cartographic information and often were
very wrong.

 A signal ability of local historical researcher Dicky Ferry is to
uncover data that seem to knock holes in accepted histories. He found
in the National Archives a rare collection of those Indian War maps.
Dated April eighth, 1840, and written at Fort Moniac, East Florida,
the officer's name and rank are both illegible.

 "Alterations- 1. Boundary line altered, placing Fort Moniac in
Florida. 2. Hogan's Ferry located. 3. Fort Taylor located. 4. Ocean
Pond and Station located. 5. Oulusta Cr. lengthened in order to cross
Alligator Road near Ocean Pond. 6. Cedar Creek named. 7. Goldbys
located and road leading therefrom to Elvington's Ferry, meeting Black
Creek Road to Ft. Moniac: (illegible) also road to Fort Moniac on west
side of the St. Mary's, 8. (illegible) from Alligator to Jacksonville
a road and not a trail.- 9. Elvington's Ferry located. 10 Moats
located. 11. Position (or portion) of Thigpen's in (size?) (as?) to
junction of branch and big creek altered - and also roads in immediate
vicinity thereof."

 The accompanying map was copied as faithfully as possible. Our
readers should be aware that this is a map of corrections, and that
there were more settlements and roads than are depicted.

Note cwm: Map omitted here

_____________________________________________________________________________

   THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, June, 25, 1981 Page Two

                 THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                     Francis Marion Brown

 Baker County's Brown family is old in America, having been
established in Camden County, Georgia, and British East Florida since
before the Revolution. Confederate Hugh Brown was a planter in the
North Prong section well before the War Between the States and lived
in the old blockhouse built by James M. Burnsed. His son Colquit's
long tenancy in the historic structure lent it the name - the Coll
Brown House - by which it is better known now.

 Of all that family who distinguished themselves in their chosen
fields, none has received a more efulgent account than that accorded
Francis Marion Brown in the Encyclopedia of American Biography.

 "Pioneer citrus grower in Dade County, hotel operator and former
postmaster of Miami, an authority on the Florida everglades and their
possibilities and a developer of Florida's resources, the late Francis
Marion Brown helped to effect the improvements in Miami and the Miami
area which make the city one of the foremost in the South today.

 "He was born in Baker County, Florida October 18, 1881, and died
in Miami, January 27, 1929, aged forty-seven years. The span of his
life was short, as measured by the average; yet in that time he
accomplished more than usually is done by a man in much more lengthy
period of endeavor. He was a son of David Chappel and Henrietta
(Hatcher) Brown. His mother, who died when he was seven years old, was
a native of Traders Hill, Georgia, member of a house old in history of
the Southland. His father, who died in 1898, was a planter and man of
means, influential in the community of his residence, in Baker County,
Florida. He was a veteran of the war between the States, and gave to
his son, Francis Marion Brown, a valuable heritage of courage and
vision, which helped materially to mould his career successfully.

 "Francis Marion Brown received common school education at DeLand
and New Smyrna, Florida, got the balance of his true education through
experience, and early went into the field of active business which
claimed his attention for the rest of his career. He began work on his
brother's farm near DeLand, where he learned of citrus cultivation.
When nineteen he came to Dade County, and as a pioneer resident here
worked at tomato cultivation, for himself. Still later he worked in a
store belonging to his brother in Dade County, removed to Jax, worked
there in a wholesale grocery establishment, and when twenty-three
became identified with the firm of Baker and Holmes, of Miami. For
seven years he worked with this organization as a salesman, selling
groceries as wholesaleman, and in 1914 was appointed postmaster of
Miami, under President Wilson's administration. He served in this
office until 1919, and while incumbent erected the Pershing Hotel,
1918. This was at that time the only first class commercial hotel
property in the city of Miami. He dealt widely in realty, and was
markedly successful in business up to time of his death.

 "As early as 1923, Mr. Brown made the statement that drainage of
the everglades for commercial purposes south of the South River Canal
and east of the Miami Canal could be effected. It has been to the
benefit of the area served. He was most familiar with the everglades,
having hunted there with Indian guides many times. Mr. Brown's
thorough knowledge of the nature and productivity of the everglades
soil prompted him to buy thirty acres of muck land approximately
eighteen miles from Miami, fronting on the Miami Canal and immediately
adjoining the upper works of the Pennsylvania Sugar Plantation. He
planted the whole of it to oranges and avocados, putting out 1,382
trees of the former and five hundred and eighty of the latter. Later
he purchased a full section of land about five miles west of Davie, on
which he set out 37,000 orange trees and 6,900 avocados, but during
the hurricane of 1926 this grove was practically destroyed. Mrs. Brown
is planning at this writing (1929) to replant part of this grove. Mr.
Brown's success in cultivating everglades demonstrated what could be
done in a section theretofore considered nearly worthless. His
practical ideas, and the demonstrations thereof, will go down in the
history of the reclamation program of Florida as important and
decisive factors in the extension of agricultural acreage in the
Commonwealth.

 "...A self-made man, he had attributes which endeared him to
associates. Sympathy and charity and honor were his outstanding
characteristics: he was kindly, helped the Seminole Indians in every
manner possible, helped the needy, oppressed, and halt; and became one
of the city's outstanding figures in works of good. He was especially
considerate of older people and of children. He lived a life clean and
honest, and his memory is perpetuated through the facts of a replete
career of accomplishment. He was always very liberal to his family."

 CORRECTION:(last week, we thought we had a very good line with
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INCONTROVERTIBLE EVIDENCE: logically
conclusive, perhaps, but not incontrovertible." Somehow an entire line
was dropped rendering our very good sentence two degrees the other
side of stupid-sounding. Heaven knows we endeaver to be lucid, but
some weeks nothing seems to work out right.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 2, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

                       Cracker Manifesto

 This week's column marks the sixth year of our weekly effusions
in the Press.

 Your writer will never acquire enough professionalism to cease to
be amazed that he has lasted so long at this project. Some of the fuel
for his endurance has been reader response; some good, some...not so
good.

 Among that response has been a singularly perplexing and
irritating comment that goes something like, "You really told these
people." Your writer feels led to expound on that a bit, and to do so
he will (1) drop the affected editorial "we", (2) offer a few personal
revelations, and (3) launch into his all-too-frequent didacticism.

 I am one of "These People."

 I was delivered by the colorful country doctor, E. W. Crockett,
at my great-grandfather's home in rural south McClenny ("when" is none
of your business) as a sixth generation Baker Countian, a ninth
generation Floridian, and a 12th generation American. I had no known
ancestors to arrive on these shores after the Revolution, and none
were known to have been citizens of any colony or state above the
Mason-Dixon Line. Most were Teutonic and Gaelic.

 There cannot be more valid credentials for a Cracker than these.
But this background and beginning did not make me more of a Baker
Countian than any other resident, by nativity or adoption. But let
there be no mistake; I am one of what some of you refer to as "these
people"

 My ancestors fought in every war participated in by this nation
except those with Mexico and Spain. Among my forebears were clergymen
of the Church of England; one of the first doctors in the colonies; a
personal representative of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell; a
legislator and horticulturist of note; and a prime supplier of
foodstuffs to the Confederate Army.

 But, alas, I cannot claim credit for anything that happened
before the day I was born. And none of these people make me more of or
a better Baker Countian or American. Lest I present my background as
being too lily white, let me add that my ethnic ancestry includes some
Mediterranean and Semitic groups, Amerindians, and a few hints of; the
Heaven only knows what sort.

 There were those in my ancestry who sided with the Tories during
the Revolution. Some of the men in my background disapproved of the
dissolution of the Union and sat out the Civil War in hiding. as
deserters and dissenters.

 All of my Baker County forebears arrived in this county area
after somebody else. They were among the very earliest and also among
the last, but, none were first.

 None of which makes me any less a Baker Countian or contributed
to my being an "outsider", a term as offensive to me as "these
people."

 I had an ancestor who is reputed to have gambreled an Indian and
flayed him alive; another who single handedly rustled one hundred head
of cattle in one night; one who owned sixty six human beings as slaves
and who regularly whipped his boss slave for infractions before they
were committed; and a woman who gave her baby to a passing stranger.
There were those who fought with their fists to the death, stole corn
from widows, made and drank illegal shine, and one who was captured
three times during the Revolutionary War by the British and was
refused exchange by the Continental Congress after his forth capture.

 I am pleased that I cannot be legitimately blamed for any
incidents that happened before the day of my birth. And none of these
people made me any less a Baker Countian and American.

 I first heard a regional slur when l was fifteen after the first
ten minutes of my first period class of the first day I attended a
northern school. The band director said, "We'll play 'The American
Suite', but we're going to leave out 'Dixie'. Those people are so
stupid they don't deserve to be called Americans." I've been rather
sensitive to such remarks since.

 Most intelligent people are good-naturedly tolerant of rib-poking
about hick towns, city slickers, Southern accents, and Yankee twangs,
but some of the diatribes I've been hearing for the past fifteen years
are veritable spouts of poison.

 Innocent sounding, even bearing the earmarks of keen perception,
is this often heard comment: "Just look around in this meeting. How
many county people do you see here? We're all outsiders. That's what's
wrong .with this county."

 I believe that observation is sadly simplistic, off target, and
closely kin to the truth in ways not realized by those who uttered it.

 On the one hand, you have a large segment of the county
population only one generation away from hunger. They don't have time
for your meetings; they're out enjoying the first prosperity they've
ever known (much like your ancestors did when they made the transition
from hunger to prosperity). On the other hand, you find a continuing
small thread and core of natives who have tried to urge and lead the
others along, but the leaders are no more. We must raise up a new crop
of leaders, and we probably won't see them until our society has
settled down onto a plateau following our new found prosperity (don't
let media scare you about hard times; the public is spending harder
and faster than ever on what they've always dreamed about).

 Baker County is at another of her transition periods; this time
from rural communities to cultural and intellectual pursuits and
possibly to her first true and lasting economy boost. She won't get
across the threshold with a people divided and polarized.
 After the Revolutionary Boy had cast the die of independence, Ben
Franklin sagely remarked, "We must all hang together or we shall all
hang separately." l think I can safely borrow from the old philosopher
to say that if we are to achieve success in any of our ventures in
this county (downtown re-development, Chamber of Commerce, arts fests,
historical preservation, continued educational upgrading, and improved
living conditions for all citizens), we must all hang in there
together as Baker Countians or we shall surely hang separately as
"outsiders" and "these people."

_____________________________________________________________________________

    THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 9, 1981 Page Two

                 THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                  Reminiscing at the Beaches

   As your columnist is seasonally wont to do, he is taking the sun
and salt air on the strand. It is a sweet respite he sometimes sorely
needs this escape to our primeval aquatic existence.

   Your writer has had a long association and love affair with the
Jacksonville Beaches. It was on the Boardwalk during World War II that
he was introduced to hotdogs-on-a-stick (now called
"corndogs"...degenerate relabelling) and frosted malteds (since
renamed "soft-serve ice cream"...yuchh!), and he spent a trillion
dollars in the penny arcade. Various relatives lived at the Beaches in
the past, and, naturally, he lived with them until he wore out his
welcome.

   The next time your writer gets rich he's going to buy a place
there.

   Your columnist's grandfather Barber, indubitably the world's best
teller of tales, used to regale his impromptu audiences with stories
of annual cattle drives to the seashore for pasturage in the salt
marshes. Then, there were the long drives home before the cows "came
down with the salt sickness."

   He told of panthers roaming the powdery dunes and leaf-canopied
hammocks. Once, thinking he had seen a particularly big hog coursing
through the sawgrass, he investigated and discovered instead a
particularly big panther. Poorly armed with only a revolver but
greatly armed with the knowledge of a panther's remarkable abilities
of running, leaping, and eating people, he chose to quietly snd
quickly retreat.

   Some members of one of Baker County's old families - the Alex
Williams - early decided to identify themselves with the Beaches.
Their successes proved that McClenny's loss was the Beaches' gain.

   Taking our coffee after our morning five mile constitutional, and
while the wavelets lap at the bulkhead, we are given to reflecting on
the similarities between the two communities of the Jacksonville
Beaches and McClenny.

   "Similarities?" you might well ask. To which we respond with a
whole raft of paragraphs on the subject. For instance, the
Jacksonville Beaches and McClenny (Pablo Beach and Darbyville,
respectively) are about the same in age, and, as noted in the
parenthetical comment, experienced name changes. In the past, nobody
mindful of his health, would haved lived year round by the seashore,
and we have heard woefully often, the plea, "Lord deliver me from ever
having to live in McClenny." But look at the two now...busting out at
the seams, so to speak.

   Both were, at some points in their pasts, believed to be economic
Utopias, and both have known economic bad times.

   Both the Jacksonville Beachs and McClenny have blighted
downtowns, and both have know the frustration and delay of
re-development.

   Both communities have been blest with more than their share of
that hoard who descend on a town and seem to live magically without
employment but who, in spite of myriad infirmities, lack of education,
and social deprivations, can roll off the names, addressss, and hours
of every local, state and federal hand-out agency and program in the
area. That still probably would not be beyond toleration, but they
just don't do anything with their collective personal appearance to
help decorate either place.

   Both the Beaches and McClenny are bedroom communities for the
city of Jacksonville. Both communities experience an economic problem
with many of their Jacksonville commuting residents leaving nothing in
their bedroom communities but some taxes and a few dollars spent at
convenience stores and fast food chains. But many of the bedroom
communities people demand the same, or better, health, emergency,
educational, and police care that they used to receive in
Jacksonville.

   And so the combination of "sorry types who could not care less
about the harm they cause to community and the good people who
unwittingly and innocently help create a frustrating situation can
begin to lose for us good residents and potential good residents.
There will be a void. Voids are always filled by something. Let's hope
the filler will not be undersirable.

   Your writer sees the problems easily, but the answers come a bit
slowly.

   And as we sip our way through the sundown behind us, and as the
last rays of the day illumine the toes on our up-propped feet, we gaze
out onto the beach now cleaned by the receding tide. The golden tips
of our toes are being transferred to the upper stories of piled-high
clouds.

   Now dark sets in. A few lights out at sea are answered by kids on
the beach with left-over Fourth sparklers. A sweet little ol' lady
takes the time to bid us a good evening.

   We figure that all we've been thinking about is too weighty for
the moment. While we have it made, we're just going to enjoy it and
let somebody else tend to these matters.

   But isn't this what got our communities into their predicaments
in the first place?

_____________________________________________________________________________

         THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 16, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

                     Columns draw readers' ire

   Your columnist is not possessed of the facility to stir up a
hornets nest even if he sat on one, but sometimes he, just by making
known some simple observations, can draw the ire of a reader or two.
Seems like our last two effusions did not quite "geelawses" with some
folks.

   We suppose we shall postpone this week's planned (and right good
we thought) bit of nostalgia for some comments on some readers'
comments. It would be redundant to review those columns, because if we
had a few readers who were unable to understand simply-stated,
unambiguous, and fair quality English a couple of weeks ago, we doubt
they have had sufficient time and opportunity to have acquired the
skills to do any better by now.

   In answer to the first received criticism "You're trying to say
the troubles of this county are caused by those of us moving in."

   We remind our readers that we said nothing of the sort, but were
stating that all the ills of the county are not attributable to those
born and reared inside Baker County.

   This column has for six years reviewed the past and heritage of
our county and during that time gently chided the native born (and the
almost native born) for their foibles, their frequent lack of self
respect attacks, and their all-too-often periods of self-satisfaction.
Why, then, would a couple of columns on the backs of our adopted
citizens be construed as unfair and over-balanced?

   The native born do not, can not, and must not bear the onus of
guilt for a county divided and static.

   We also state to our critics that it is a prejudice of the most
simple minded sort that categorizes people according to the accident
of their birth places. In this writer's travels from the banks of the
Yukon to the banks of the Danube he has had demonstrated to him most
emphatically and dramatically that no region holds a monopoly on
ignorance or on intelligence.

   One parting shot: this county has been in operation for 120
years. Somebody was minding the store before you came, and the job was
being done, not always first-rate but always against overwhelming
odds, by a proper and workable coalition of natives and adopted
citizens.

   There were also a couple of diatribes against our Beaches article
(a clever way we thought of slipping in a jibe or two at community
disinterest). One gentleman asked, "You think you got all the answers,
don't you?" We thought paragraph 14 had been lucid enough on that.
Another fellow sneered, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

   We hesitate to lend dignity to the latter terribly original
question by answering it. We fear that the puerile equating
intelligence with amounts of dollars in one's possession is, but not
restricted to, sadly overworked Baker County thinking.

   Using the premise that intelligence cannot be deposited in the
bank or invested in the money market, we ask: If you're so smart how
come there are no recreational parks named in your honor as the donor?
Where are the children's wings of the hospitals with your name on
them? Why aren't there libraries, an art gallery, history museums in
our county named for you? No boulevards renamed for you due to your
generosity? Didn't you know that in addition to mountain and lake
homes, trips to Vegas, and luxury cars, money also buys honor,
memorials, and respectability?

   In other words, it's now time for those of you who have made your
money here in this community to return it in the form of investments
which will never bring much back to you in the form of cash.

   Have you ever thought of lowering your rents on your downtown
business buildings, taking a sacrifice in order to salvage the
downtown? It's unbusinesslike, of course, but why not try lending out
to beginning entrepreneurs at interest lower than the going rate to
help them get started. You made yours by being prudent, so you're not
going to invest in a loser.

   Consumers, shop at home, and keep the money stirring in the
county. And, shopkeepers, give your potential customers a reason to
shop at home by not charging them extra for the privilege of doing so.

   No, critics, this column doesn't have the answers, but we cannot
understand why those who equate smartness with money haven't
understood that the more money moving about for everybody means more
money for everybody. And we have difficulty understanding why they
haven't gotten together and pulled their county out of the economic
slump.

   And to our final critic, yes, we shall get back to reporting
history.

_____________________________________________________________________________

     THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 23, 1981 Page Two

                   THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                   Post offices in Glen St. Mary

   Mr. Robert Robinson, former postmaster of Glen Saint Mary, is an
accomplished researcher in history and genealogy, and he sent us the
archival material upon which most of this column is based.

   Glen Saint Mary was less than two years old when an application
for a post office was accepted by the United States Post Office
Department. D. Lansing Skinner, late of Michigan, was the applicant
and, as of 3 February, 1883, the community's first post master. Mr.
Skinner made out his form on 12 January, 1883, (one cannot accuse any
federal agency of acting that quickly today).

   In large print the application insisted that the name of the
proposed post office, when written, would not resemble that of any
other post office in the United States.

   The site description of the Glen facility was in the southwest
quarter of section 36, township 2 south, range 21 east in Baker
County, Florida, directly on the route from Jacksonville to
Tallahassee.

   Mr. Skinner said that mail is carried on the stated route seven
times a week and that delivery to Glen would not increase the travel
of mail one way each trip. The railroad Was named the Florida Central
and Western.

   The nearest post office on the same route was Darbyville three
miles east. Sanderaon was six miles west.

   In answer to a question about nearby streams Mr. Skinner said
that the Saint Mary's River was six miles north and the Little Saint
Mary's was three quarters of a mile east.

   His post office building stood on the north side of the track
near, or in, the station (the answer is ambiquous). Mr. Skinner
answered, "stop here", to the question of the distance from his
facility to the nearest station where mail is regularly dropped by the
train.

   C.B. McClenny, Darbville's postmaster, attested and affirmed it
all.

   Glen's population was given as three hundred: Penciled on the
margin was, "Answer carefully and return with a petition of citizens."
What wouldn't your columnist give for a copy of that petition while
Glen's centennial is upon us.

   An accompanying map shows the road from Darbyville to Sanderson
making a high curve up by the old defunct Barbers' Station, down to
just north of Glen, and then in a low erratic curve northward to the
old Margaretta (Gurganus) and Drake Plantations, and finally to
Sanderson.

   From Glen a road (the remainder of the Jacksonville-Tallahassee
route) led north westerly toward old Johnsville-Taylor Plantation.
South of Glen, the route branched west into and around the Glen
Nursery and then due south to Johnstown (not to be confused with
afore-mentioned Johnsville in Baker County above Taylor). After the
southerly route crossed the Little Saint Mary's river at Manntown, it
forked one route going toward Maxville and Highland and the other
toward Johnstown.

   Shortly after (22 September, 1883), Miss Theresa M. Tilton
(reputed to be the first resident of Glen and was the owner of Glen's
first hotel) was appointed postmaster. She was reappointed four years
later as Mrs. Theresa M. Cole.

   Henry H. Slayton was postmaster from 1889 to 1896. James A.
Daniel received the appointment in '98, George M. Weeks in 1900, and
Samuel Bass in 1909.

   Mr. Bass filled out a form in 1915 supplying the following
information: the nearest river was the Little Saint Mary's, the
nearest creek was Powers, (Kirkland) Branch one mile north, the
nearest post office on his route was Macclenny 2 1/2 miles east, and
the nearest west was Sanderson, and the closest post office not on his
route was Sapp, Florida, 10 miles southeast.

   Sam Bass' store housed the post office and was 75 yards south of
the track. It stood a little south of the present Franklin house and
store building on the corner of south 125 and the railroad.

   Jesse Earl Franklin was appointed 1 October, 1919, and remained
in that position for about 40 years, hauling persimmons to the fall
markets, keeping the minutes of the Glen Baptist Church, and
accumulating rental property within the town.

   Mr. Frankiln described his post office as being 250 feet
southwest of the Seaboard Airline station and one block south of the
nearest United States highway. He informed his superiors that he
received mail by rail and rural route from all parts of the United
States and some foreign countries.

   The Franklin store and post office remained in operation (the
store with limited inventory) until the end of the fifties decade when
a new facility was built on US 90, Mary Chesser Hurst (now Rhoden)
post master.

   The old rambling two story white frame structure that housed the
Franklin store and post office for so many years will live again
during the Glen Centennial Celebration, September 24 through 27, as a
museum.

_____________________________________________________________________________

         THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 30, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

             The demise of the front porch - Part One

   After the Fourth of July, summer always seemed to be nothing more
than a languid interlude to be tolerated until the final big doings of
Labor Day.

Afternoon trips to swimming holes and an occasional late watermelon
were cooling respites. Another simple pleasure, under-rated and now
almost forgotten, was to pass the doldrums season sitting on the porch
watching the world drag sweatily by.

   Most houses of olden times in America had at least one porch.
Some of even the most modest sported two. Some not considered
elaborate at all had three-front, back, and side. And many fine homes
were possessed of wrap-around porches on both, or more, floors.

   Hotels in the South would as soon have omitted the clerk's desk
as the porch. Even business establishments offered porches for their
patrons' comfort.

   Porches were not restricted to America, but they were practically
an American institution.

   In middle class and low income America, the gentlemen retired to
the front porch after supper in lieu of spending time with their
cigars in the drawing room. More business and political transactions
were probably made on front porches in Victorian and early twentieth
century America than in offices.

   Speeches were made from front porches of homes and stores, and it
is only a generation since Baker Countians heard their Democratic
Rallies emanating from store porches.

   Assassinations on porches were so frequent in some parts of early
America as to almost be commonplace. In Baker County almost a score of
the unfortunate fatal incidents can be counted with ease, if not
comfort.

   The porch was utilized for making home-made ice cream, the super
sweet, icy kind that was full of fresh peaches, real vanilla, or
expensive canned pineapple. It was served, in non-matching bowls and
dishes and gave gluttonous kids headaches from eating too fast.

   There was always the irritating soul who spent a great deal of
time banging a spoon into the bowl to soften the frozen delicacy. It
was always somebody like an aged, widowed great-aunt who couldn't be
reprimanded, and we kids wondered why the trouble of cranking that
dern churn if Auntie so-and-so was going to beat her ice cream to
death to melt it down again.

   Pinder bilin's are unequivocally among America's great
contributions to the world's gastronomic and social Halls of Fame,(you
say you don't know about "pinder billn's"?). Pinders refused to be
ready for scratching until the hottest, most sultry days of summer.)
Every grain of sand encountered tenaciously clung to sweaty arms,
neck, back, etc. But the heat, discomfort, washing, and watching the
backyard washpot fire were soon forgotten amidst the absolute orgy of
overeating when pans of the steaming, salty succulent legumes were
passed around.

   "What are pinders?" you ask again. Well, in the throes of the
following night and day's bellyaches, one couldn't care less that
pinders are called by less enlightened persons, "peanuts."

   Sitting on the front porch was an open invitation for passers-by
to stop in and sit for a spell. Strangers were invited to step back to
the rear porch and refresh themselves at the watershelf.

   Screened in east and north porches were called "sleeping porches"
and were appreciated on still hot nights. It meant that all bedding
had to be aired in the sun the next day, but it was worth it.

   And on a rainy night, sleeping under a tin roof on the side porch
was closely kin to residency in heaven itself.

   Fastidious Cracker mothers never allowed any sleeping on the
porches but the family. The dog might be permitted under the steps,
and the cat often chose a secret but breezy spot behind the potted
fern. The Cracker father joined them after dinner (dinner to Crackers
was, as it was to old time Continentals, the noon meal) on the edge of
the porch for his hour nap.

   In the country and often in the suburbs before the zoning laws
sent them out, there were the chickens, always unwanted on the porch.
They left their calling cards, so to speak, and that called for a pan
of water, a broom, lots of shoo-ing, and an occasional ugly word.

_____________________________________________________________________________

         THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 6, 1981
                    THE WAY WAS-Gene Barber

            The demise of the front porch - Conclusion

   Furniture and paraphernalia on porches were predictable. On the
front porch were rockers (turned upside down and leaned against the
wall to keep dogs off when the family was away or retired for the
night); a glider or swing (or both); touch-me-nots, Boston and
asparagus ferns, wandering jew, and coleus in reclaimed graniteware
pots and slop jars; a flyswatter stuck in the groove of the novelty
siding and behind a window facing; a switch over the door for bad
kids; and a fan or two, compliments of a funeral home or insurance
company, sharing the window facing depository.

   Back porches for the reasons that they were more utilitarian than
for leisure were usually furnished with straight (or stool) chairs and
benches rather than rockers. The switch, fans, and flyswatter were
also standard on the back porch.

   A watershelf, complete with bucket (its type depended on how rich
the family was), graniteware or gourd dipper (don't let anybody kid
you; gourd dippers made the water taste funny), basin (remember the
mandatory feet washing before bedtime?), and ugly misshapened bar of
soap; a cracked and wavy mirror on the wall; a community comb tucked
in with the keen switch; and sack towel on a peg complemented the
furnishings on the back porch.

   But since the back porch didn't pass as soon as its front
counterpart, we shall leave it and review the reasons for the demise
of the front porch.

   Until the post war boom and regular employment of the fifties,
most Baker County homes (in fact, 95 percent plus) were of the
cabin-shanty or shotgun types with a scattering of double pens left
over from the nineteenth century. All had front porches except those
which had finally fallen off from age and neglect.

   Then out of better houses and snazzier gardens came the brilliant
idea to convert porches into sun porches, Florida rooms (whatever the
heck that means), TV rooms (we're always building rooms to house that
hypnotic Cyclops, but he always winds up in our living and dining
rooms), and "that extra space for today's modern family." Next, the
same power companies and cooling manufacturers who are now waging: a
campaign via the news media to get us to cut down on energy use,
easily convinced us that the American people deserved more comfort.
within a few summers nobody but a few die-hards sat on porches
(by-the-way, this writer would as soon the power companies save the
expensive energy savings campaign and apply the savings to his
electric bill).

   Then, there was the increase in crime. People threw up their
hands declaring that to sit on one's front porch was to take one's
life into one's own hands. Many of these same self-styled frightened
folk think nothing of taking off jogging alone on empty stretches or
going weekly to some of Jacksonville's big centers of shopping,
purse-snatching and rape.

   We entered the wild-eyed "let's build a house" fad ($500.00 a
month payments make it a fad that one can't shake loose). Plans for
split-levels, entertainment centers, solariums, saunas) etc. left no
room or cash for porches. Besides, the home designers (they used to be
house plans drawers) informed us that porches were unnecessary .and
tacky, and a real gaucherie.

   Two of our most effective family social and learning centers were
the fireplace and the front porch. There we learned stories of our
family, cultivated a sense of humor, sharpened our folk lore, and just
remained closer.

   The Arabs drove us back in the beauty of the fireplace. Maybe
they will now send us down to the local building supply for a load of.
porch-constructing material.

   Since we began putting this column together last summer we have
been seeing more folks moving back out onto the front porch. If this
signals the revival of the porch, it could be the greatest thing to
happen to America since peanut butter.

_____________________________________________________________________________

    THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 13, 1981 Page Two

                   THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                       The Okefenokee Swamp

                             Part one

   Stretching northward from upper Baker County into the counties of
Charlton, Pierce, Ware, and Clinch is 600 square miles of another
world. In the past some called it simply "the Swamp", the Big Swamp",
or "the Big Water." The Creeks knew it as "the Terrible Land", "Land
of the Trembling Earth", and Living Ground." Some historians present
compelling evidence that Spanish and French explorers knew of the
swamp prior to 1600 and called it on their maps "the Lake of The
Apalachee." Since 1763 there have been found in excess of 90
variations of the now standardized name "Okefenokee."

   In 1539 Hernando de Soto and 600 men with horses and swine
marched northward through the peninsula into a swamp so immense they
spoke of it afterwards with wonder and superlatives. It is now
orthodox history that the morass his chroniclers wrote of was the wide
swamp of the Withlacoochee River, completely ignoring the travel
times, directions, and land descriptions involved and recorded (but
settled orthodox historians are good about things like that).

   A Spanish map of 1542 shows the swamp surrounded by forts. Tales
were taken back to the Spanish court of giants who protected the
unique watery country, and, in fact, the late Tom Chesser of Charlton
County reported viewing seven-foot, plus, human remains uncovered by a
team of University of Georgia archaeologists (Mr. Chesser, acting as
guide, agreed to permit the burial mound investigation on his land
only if the skeletons were undisturbed and carefully recovered).

   Some researchers have suggested that Narvaez also visited the
edge of the great swamp as early as 1528 but refused to enter. Le
Moyne, the map-maker and artist who resided for a time at nearby Fort
Caroline included a "Lacus Aquae dulce" on his 1591 map of the
territory that corresponds with the Okefenokee, and many historians
once believed that his data came from the Narvaez expedition
narratives.

   The surveyor De Brahm, in his British Majesty's service in the
mid 1700's, described the swamp as famous and renowned, and therefore
probably based his adjectives on well-circulated knowledge of the
Okefenokee. He also mentioned that the race inside the Okefenokee
could not be subdued by the Spaniards or other Indians.

   Other years the great swamp was mentioned in documents or drawn
on maps were 1582, 1675, and 1752. It was at this time that a
recognizable form of the present name was used, and since 1763, well,
we refer you back to paragraph one.

   Many Florida and Georgia historians refused to accept that the
Okefenokee was known to Anglo-Americans until the mid eighteenth
century but have no difficulty believing that Moore of South Carolina
on his slaving expeditions among the Apalachee and Timaqua Indians
skirted both sides of the swamp. The principal trails and paths he
used laid in close proximity to the Okefenokee. Governor Moore had to
know something about the swamp in the early years of the 1700's.

   It was the English who, soon after their settlement of the
Georgia coast in the 1730's, visited the swamp and began to name the
features they found there. The low floating islands they called
"batteries" (resembling the low hunting boats popular with the
English). The large high land areas became "Islands", and the smaller
hammocks were known as "houses".

   Since 1763 the Okefenokee with one of its name variations was
found on every map of any consequence. Bartram wrote of the swamp
using some of the appellations from antiquity "Lacus"and "Marais."

   Around 1744 Traders Hill was established, complete with
fortifications against the Spanish and newly arriving Seminoles from
the Creek tribes to the west. With Traders Hill (near the present
Folkston) came the Cracker element and our first no-nonsense
knowlededge of the Okefenokee.

_____________________________________________________________________________

    THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 20, 1981 Page Two

                   THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber

                       The Okefenokee Swamp

                             Part two

   Last week, we mentioned that the English traders and settlers
named the low floating Islands of the Okefenokee "batteries" because
they resembled their low hunting boats, but we neglected to further
inform our readers that the name for these low hunting boats was
"bateau." The same boat, in design if not in materials of
construction, was used by the last resident of the swamp as late as
1958 and was still called a "bateau."

   The people of the swamp have been varied and have evidently been
in that rich area since it was first habitable. Historians and
cartographers of antiquity are in disagreement whether the earliest to
have contact with European discoverers were Timuqua, Apalachee, or
Guale Indians (there seemed to be little difference between the
three).

   Some anthropologists believe that there was a definite language
and cultural link between the three major peoples - Timuqua,
Apalachee, and Guale and some of the people of Central America,
especially of the Yucatan Peninsula. In addition, it is now accepted
that there was a similar link between these people and the great mound
builders whose residence stretched from upper Georgia through the Ohio
valley. In other words, the Okefenoke people were part of the poor
relatives of one of the most advanced cultures in the Americas.

   It was apparently only rumors and fabricated tales that any of
the ancient people ramained within the fastness of Okefenokee when
Col. Moore of South Carolina killed and enslaved what was left after
the Spaniards' benevolent enslaving and partial eradication in the
name of God. As late as the end of the eighteenth century, William
Bartram (regarded as a sacred cow by most historians, but much of his
writing is considered not worth a diddly by this writer) promulgated
the story with his "daughters of the sun" story.

   Tha Yamasees, probably related to the aforementioned English
writings as being situated along the maritime provinces of Georgia and
Florida. The Spanish claimed had been neighbors of St. Augustine in
the mid 1600's and had retreated to Georgia after a disagreement
between the two. The Yamasees said that they teamed up with Moore in
the early 1700's to help extirpate the remaining Timuqua and wound up
in the Baker County and Okefenokee area as a scattered group. They
were pushed into the great swamp during the first Seminole war and
later joined their kinsmen, the Creeks and Seminoles, in their
struggle against the white settlers.

   Just interior of and scattered among the Yamasees were the
Uchees. Thought to have lived originally in upper east Georgia, the
Uchees were a particularly dark people and fierce beyond description.
One of their last survivors, Uchae Billy, was killed during the Second
Seminole War in east-central Florida.

   Billy claimed he was from the Okefenokee, and two historians of
note gave the Uchees residence as being along the St. Mary's River.
One, John Filson, was more specific in 1793 with the sites of the fork
of the St. Mary's and the head of the St. Johns River (this was the
Little St. Johns which later became corrupted into Suwannee). If
Filson was correct, the Okefenokee was home also to Uchees as well as
Yamasecs.

   A number of historians, contemporary writers, and even the
contemporary Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins stated that the Shawnees
also lived in or near the Okefenokee. It was not unusual for Indian
tribes to move hundreds, even a thousand miles, in the old days. An
old Shawnee from Ohio swore that he had been born on the Suwannee
River near the sea and he was able to describe the area before he
returned there in the early 1800's (it might be wise to mention here
that in spite of the books and movies to the contrary, Indians are
human and will also lie).

   During and after the Creek and Seminole Wars of the teens decade
of the nineteenth century, the Okefenokee received a new flow of
Indian settlers including a group of wandering rather primitive
Cowetas. The Cowetas were generally disliked by everbody, including
their Creek kinsmen. They proved to vexatious to their Indian and
white neighbors around the swamp by stealing horses and anything else
they could get their hands on.

   The Cowetas are listed in a report in 1828 as camping south of
the Okefenokee, and they are the only Indians by name this writer has
heard of in local traditional tales. Although all Indians were
supposed to have been removed from the Okefenokee by the end of the
Second Seminole War (some historians say they were gone by 1838...
bull-ony), the writer's Chesser and Hicks ancestors spoke of Indians,
Cowetas by name, in the area as late as 1876.

   The writer's grandfather Snide Chesser told of being taken into
the swamp by his Indian babysitters, and his sister, the late Molly
Crews, could speak an Indian tongue. The writer accepts this as
authentic not because they were relatives but because ot their lack of
education and knowledge they could not have manufactured so convincing
a tale or invented an Indian language.

   This writer is convinced that the last Indian inhabitants of the
Okefenokee were the Coweta branch of the Creek Indians. And when the
last of them drifted out of the swamp via Trail Ridge and were last
seen disappearing into the rising sun on the railroad, Ol' Okefenokee
had seen the end of a residency of a race who had known its beauty and
security for perhaps 10,000 years.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 27, 1981
                  THE WAY IT WAS-Gene Barber

                The Okefenokee Swamp - Part Three

   For one who has been desperately trying for years to write a
history of this county, the lack of historical writing heretofore on
the subject has been nothing less than appalling (it would be more
correct to say that we have been both writing and re-writing because
of the loss of our first manuscript due to vandalism; a subject we are
certain our readers have long tired of but which still seems to
frequently and inconveniently crop up in our craw, especially, when
the book's delay is still considered to be the fault of the writer).

   However, we have been amazed throughout the past couple of years
to discover that there lies in dusty tomes, manuscripts, and records
proof that the sands and swamps of Baker County have ..been tread by
Europeans and Americans for a known two and a Quarter centuries and
very likely for perhaps as much as two hundred years beyond that.

   In a fascinating book by Albert Hazen Wright on the subject of
the Georgia-Florida Frontier- The Okefenokee Swamp Its History and
Cartography Volume I we have found leads to little known maps and
writings long ignored by modern historians which, ,when. weighed by
our first hand knowledge of the swamp and its environs and from
traditional tales by the old-timers and their ancestors, have been
useful in the extreme.

   This book is, as are most of the older effusions on the subjects
of the big swamp, and southeast Georgia, considered among the rarest
of the, rare. We strongly recommend. it to anyone interested in the
history of this area. We decline to give credit to our lender to
protect him from having to be bothered from borrowers who might not
return it. The P.K. Young Library of Florida History. at the
University of Florida, Gainesville, and some of the largest libraries
in our neighboring state of Georgia presumably have copies.

   But back to our narrative, continuing from last week, the swamp
was often visited by both white and Creek hunters in the last half of
the 1700's. Almost all the writers and cartographers who treated the
southeast United States and Florida referred to the Okefenokee as
renowned and celebrated. Most of them held that the Saint Mary's River
emerged from the swamp and many of them correctly depicted the Great
Bend of the Saint Mary's and included most or all of its prongs
(usually called "branches" in those days). Bear in mind that these
map-makers and geographers were, correctly or near correctly telling
the world about the present Baker County and its environs before and
during the American Revolutionary War, a time when many modern
historians prefer to believe that our area was untrodden by any but a
few transient Indians.

   The present Moccasin Branch was known in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries as "Alligator Branch" (or "Creek"). Hog Pen
Branch was "Ellicott's Creek" (for the man who surveyed and
established the international boundary between ,the United States and
Spanish Florida.) Ellicott's Mound was represented sometimes as being
"Mound A" and "Mound B", with "A" at the junction of Cedar Creek with
the Big River.

   The Moniac section was "Hogan's Bridge" (or "Ferry") in, the
1840's and 1850's. In,1814,. however, the same .was called "Pine Log
Crossing Place", and before that, "Elilicott's Monumeet."

   Several of the maps showed the Okefenokee extending far in to
Florida and the several Baker County topographical features mentioned
above as being part of the great swamp.

   In 1823, Charles Vignoles mentioned a few sawmills in operation
on the upper branches of theSaint Mary's River when he treated .the
Okefenokee region. Charles Darby wrote in 1821 that Trail Ridge rose
in the Okefenokee and extended south for an unknown distance and that
its hillocks were unwooded and destitute of water.

   Dr. William Baldwin, stationed in Saint Mary's, Georgia, and who
was a celebrated botanist of his day, wrote in 1814 that he had come
within 12 miles of the head of the Saint Mary's River and the
Okefenokee Swamp and had found a country vastly more rich in plants
than on the seacoast of Florida and Georgia.

   Hardly had the transfer of Florida from Spain to the United
States begun when the U.S. started surveying out a cross-peninsula
canal (ancestor of the one still lying dormant amidst controversy and
descendent of one spoken of in George Washington's. administration).
The Canal Commissioners thought the Okefenokee and the Saint Mary's
River could be used for the purpose. In 1818 near the junction of
Cedar Creek with the, main Saint Mary's, an atlas placed
"Commissioner's Encampment.". Historically the Okefenokee and Baker
County are one, and we could continue for pages with these intriguing
bits of intertwining data. We shall instead leave this subject and
introduce our readers to some very interesting characters when we
return next week.