CHARLTON COUNTY, GEORGIA, BIOGRAPHY Lydia A. Stone Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Walker Winge [barbarawinge@yahoo.com], courtesy of Robert L. Hurst. SOURCE: THIS MAGIC WILDERNESS: PART I & PART II, Robert Latimer Hurst, 1982, Brantley Printing Co., Waycross, GA, pp. 24-29. DREAM HEIRESS Some people inherit dreams and do nothing; others build empires. Lydia A. Stone, known as the “Queen of the Okefenokee,” built an empire on the dream left her by her father. William Smith felt it his duty to join the other men in volunteering to repel the Indian invasion. He learned there was an encampment near the Great Swamp in South Georgia. So the school teacher closed his books in 1836 and traveled to the cypress wasteland. Little did he know that he would become one of the permanent settlers at the small military outpost, later to be named “Racepond...” Many tribesmen resented leaving the green, alive country for a barren, dead prairie. When the United States attempted to enforce the removal entente, the Second Seminole War, which was to become the most costly of the three conflicts, flared forth in 1835. The renowned warrior Osceola is credited with adding fuel to the already smoldering flame. He and a band of rebellious braves murdered Chief Charlie Emathia, who was preparing his people for emigration, and General Wiley Thompson, the U. S. Indian agent at Fort King… After the Seminole conflict in 1849, the former educator purchased two 490-acre lots from the government for the total sum of ten dollars, and Smith and his young wife Sarah, settled on Cowhouse Island on the edge of the great Okefenokee, Besides making strides toward taming the wilderness, the managed to rear five children, without realizing that tow of them were to become legends in their own time. Lydia Smith was born on the “Cowhouse,” June 27, 1864. The most important thing in her life would be the dream: to mold from this marsh-land something to be proud of, to erect a living monument to man’s conquest of nature. And conquest could be Miss Lydia’s keyword… With only a cow and a sow to begin adulthood could amass a million-dollar fortune from a swampland? In an interview in 1928, the simple-living millionaires told her formula for success: “When I was a girl, my pappy gave me and my sisters a cow and a sow apiece and told us if we would look after ‘em we could make some money. Before the year was out, I made a few dollars off’n mine and had saved every penny of hit. After another year I made ‘nough to buy forty-five acres of land. I got hit dirt cheap. And as soon as I could save a little money ahead, I would buy some timber land; until now I own near 30,000 acres.” But all was not as easy going as the “Queen” relates. The Okefenokee could become devilish. Like her father before her, Miss Lydia knew the “Trembling Earth” had to be harnessed. Bear and wildcat preyed on her livestock. Fertile fields had to be plowed tame. Timber must not remain idle. And there were those who felt that they could take advantage of a mere woman. So Miss Lydia Smith would not be a “mere” woman. Her sex would not hinder her from accomplishing the dream. When one is truly dedicated, this devotion tends to erase all other interest. “I never went to school but six days and the pity of hit is, I didn’t lurn anythin’ in them six days. But a man ain’t livin’ that can outfigger me.” All witnesses agreed that this woman’s self-education in the fields of economics, business, timber, and cattle placed her in as powerful position as the Indian chieftan, Osceola, who once had roamed this area. Her loyalty to that childhood dream allowed the swamper very little time for anything else but her land, which she talked about constantly and expanded continually until the entire Racepond community was “ Miss Lydia holdings…” By 1895 timber was being overcut with no consideration for conservation being taken by many of the ambitious men who wanted quick wealth. The sawmill owners would have their workers cut the cypress from the lot; then they would abandon the plot. Miss Lydia, then 31, understanding the faulty method, capitalized on it by purchasing the barren land for under one dollar an acre and by letting the timber grow wild. Sometime she paid taxes on property deserted by other settlers . Some have falsely claimed that, a ruthless business woman, she homesteaded land by moving on an acreage and remaining there until it was legally hers. However, sources indicate that Miss Lydia occupied only two homesites; one on Cowhouse Island and another at Racepond. Not uncommon in the early part of this century was the woman-dark hair securely bunned and bonneted in a man’s black felt hat; long black full skirts topsy-turvy over the back of a white horse; white apron clasped around her waist- riding over her island. Stopping here and there, she would survey her herd of over 600 head of cattle and, if necessary, round them up “better’n any cowboy” for shelter from a storm. her booming commands to her many hired hands sounded over the countryside with much the same results as a marine sergeant drilling new recruits. The year 1903 found a slight change in the forester. She had fallen in love with a Mr. D. Gordon Stone, one of her employees… She was married in an iridescent silk dress, a creation painstakingly made by an expert seamstress, but it appeared that this extravagance was all the pomp the Okefenokee monarch desired… It appears that her first husband just stayed around the house to Clean or to help the cooks in the big rambling house on Cowhouse Island… Twenty-three years after her marriage to Gordon Stone [1826[, Miss Lydia, 62, buried her husband in the High Bluff Cemetery beside William and Sarah Smith… Childless but a lover of children, Mrs. Lydia Stone must have wondered what would happen to her empire after she was gone… She had been watching one of her hired hands, a diligent and conscientious worker, move about the land with the same forceful tenderness and understanding that she and her father had shown in creating their paradise out of the wilderness. His plowing was straight; his crossties were the correct length and weight; he knew how to face a “b’ar.” J. Melton Crews, 21, became engaged to Mrs. Lydia Stone, 63, the next year they were married… Her “business” was two thousand acres north of Racepond, two large farms, a tract of land south of the community, and the nine-mile-long, mile-wide Cowhouse Island. “My timber ain’t idle neither. The railroads are always after my crossties, and I git a good price for my turpentine and resin. I will have full six hundred head of cattle this year, besides crops ‘nough to feed a whole army…” Her young husband, whom she lovingly called “Doll Baby,” understood her desire for exactness in business. He did not find it strange for the woman, now approaching seventy, to want to go to Jacksonville to market her crossties, to Brunswick to sell her naval stores, or to Waycross to dispose of a load of beef… She looked on her young husband more as the son she never had, some say. It has also been stated that she would seat him in her lap, rock in the old rocker on her front porch in Racepond, and sing to him. As gossips talked about the “ol womern and th’ youngun,’ she made Melton grow his hair long and a beard; this appearance in red hair, she thought, would make him look older. Tragedy struck when Melton was accused of killing Layton Hendrix. Crews maintained that the death was an accident. He saw a man breaking into the house next to his; so he shot him in the side of the hip… J. Melton Crews’ reputation was against him. The community saw a man who drank too much and was “just plain mean.” Besides that, the shot didn’t kill Hendrix, he bled to death… The trial, conducted in the Charlton County Courthouse, ended with The verdict “twenty years of hard labor on the chain gang…” While planning her moves with her lawyer, she would visit the young Man on visiting days to cheer him. She even hired a restaurant to cater His meals. Her realization that he must be released came on one such visiting day when she saw the exhausted prisoner locked in a wooden stockade, his naked back scarred by whip marks and insect bites. The warden explained that his punishment came from fighting. She vowed she would never see him in that condition again. A few days later, the warden was shot just outside a local tavern. Rumor spread that Miss Lydia’s kid killed the warden… The next story, repeated over and over, is that the determined wife, along with her lawyer, journeyed to Atlanta. Ten thousand dollars was the price she would pay a high official for “her boy’s” release. A meeting was arranged for all parties involved, and a check changed hands. “Doll Baby,” having served seven months of a twenty- year sentence, got into the car with Miss Lydian and the lawyer. Her next mover was simple, she cancelled the check… The “Queen of the Okefenokee” died at her Racepond home on January 4, 1938; she was laid to rest beside her parents, a sister, and former husband. And the tallest monument in the cemetery was erected to the unschooled woman who once, very simply, stated the chief rule of finance; “I always said I could make five dollars out of every one dollar I could get my hands on. I believe anybody can if they’re careful and not afraid to work.” And her estate of over a million confirmed her philosophy.