"The Way It Was" Newspaper Column on Baker County, Florida History, 1980 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.
The following are but a few of his articles written in 1980.
Contents:
* Devil Enoch Roberts - Three Parts (in part 1)
* Genealogical libray February opening (in part 1)
* Olustee - Five Parts (in part 1)
* Some papers pertaining to Philemon Bryan (in part 1)
* The shooting at the frolic (in part 1)
* So you want to dig up your Grandpa..... - Five Parts (in part 1)
* The convict lease system - Five Parts (in part 1)
* Some of the early holders of livestock in county (in part 1)
* Random thoughts on randon subjects (in part 1)
* The Herndons - Two Parts (in part 1)
* Major David Moniac - Two Parts (in part 1)
* Me and the 'Whip-poor-wills' (in part 1)
* The Big Fair
* The Historical Society - Two Parts
* The Alachua Trail - Three Parts
* Indian attack at Ft. Moniac - Two Parts
* Jernigan in Orlando Moniac
* POLITICS -- As they were...and will remain
* The Mizell Family - Five Parts
* Elder Bowman and the Church of The Brethren
* The Fair as history.....and in retrospect
* Levi H. Markley
* Good stuff discovered looking for other facts
* Hold on now....just one more word on the election
* Remarks on religion-politics draw fire for this columnist
* Who remembers Holy Land??? - Three Parts
* Ghosts of Christmas past, not-so-long-past, to-come
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 10, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Big Fair
Believe it or not Baker County is going to have a fair, replete
with all the good things and stuff that make such events memorable.
For those of us who bewailed the passing of the short-lived Pine Tree
Fests of the late forties and lamented the lack of follow-ups on the
spirit of the 1961 Centennial, here is our opportunity. The Fair can,
and must, become an annual opportunity.
The Executive Board and Committee chairs are representative of
the entire county, and, with the possible exception of your writer,
rather substantial folks. Among the most sparkling of the guiding
light is Ms. Pat Smith, County Extension Director. In their capable
hands, the Fair has gone beyond talk and is off the ground with only
three months until opening day.
It was heart warming to hear the membership's cheery chatter
regarding Baker County's first-ever Fair. However there is always one
old cranky self-styled fountain of knowledge in every gathering who
has to toss in a, "But it just ain't so."
This article quoted from the 22 November, 1918, Baker County
Standard tells the story: "Baker County's First Annual Fair opens this
A.M. Baker County Canning Club, Poultry Club, Corn Club, Pig Club, and
Singing will play an important part in our First Annual Fair. Prizes
given in all departments. Many handsome exhibits. Every home in Baker
County should supply an exhibit. Everyone should attend.
"Mr. E.M. Goodbread offers a scholarship to a Pig Club boy, also
several cash prizes to the Canning Club and Poultry Club winners. "The
Baker County Commissioners will give a scholarship to a Poultry Club
girl.
"Cohen Bros., the Big Store, Jacksonville, fifty yards of prize
ribbon, value $12.
"S.B. Hubbard Hardware Co. of Jacksonville, Daisy Churn for the
best exhibit of butter.
"Towers Hardware Store, Jacksonville, offer a Granit (sic]
Preserving kettle to the winner of the best display of preserves.
"W.F. Wells, one of Macclenny's hardware merchants, offers
several prizes to Canning Club members.
"C.L. Hodges, one of our wide-awake merchants, offers a pair of
shoes to a Pig Ciub boy.
"Many prizes, too numerous to mention, are offered by the three
nurseries of this county.
"Nearly every merchant in Macclenny is giving time, money, and
otherwise assisting.
"Baker County land is good land! Prove it! Baker County folks are
good citizens! So prove it by making this First Fair a good, clean
Fair and each year a better Fair.
"From Sunday's Times-Union.-
Promoting the interest of Baker County's First Annual Fair, Mr.
and Mrs. G.F. Cramton, Mrs. G.C. Rogers, and Miss Sessions, of
Macclenny, were in the city yesterday. This fair will be held Nov. 22
and 23 in Macclenny and will be largely attended, they report. A
number of events have been arranged for the fair and several well
known speakers are on the program."
In the same newspaper we may read of the surrender of the great
German fleet; of the Times-Union costing 5 cents per Copy and how much
may be saved by having it delivered; of an extra session of the
Florida Legislature relative to a bone-dry law; of the Baker County
State Bank paying 4% interest on time deposits; of an eighty million
bushel sweet potato crop in Florida; how to get thick, glossy hair
free from dandruff; and of the wartime death of W. Henry Reynolds who
signed his last letter to his mother, "...I will tell you the wonders
of the sea when I come home. I will close now. Write soon. From your
loving son."
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 17, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Historical Society
The first half-part one
Although this column is not the official organ of the Baker
County Historical Society, the two of us are involved in the same
business. The Society thinks it is about time for a semi-annual
recapitulation, and this column figures a couple of birds can be
killed with one stone by including it in this bit of history writing.
The Society is actually a year and a half old, but 1980 can be
considered its founding year. Under the guidance of charter president
George Taber and vice-president Juanita Lewis, the Society laid plans
for a membership drive and formulated long-range projects and goals.
The Sertoma Club, the sponsoring group, secured a charter for the
non-profit corporation, and in January of this year bylaws were
adopted.
From about a dozen paid participants at the beginning, membership
has exceeded 160, with that membership representing the breadth of the
United States, the length of the state of Florida, and the entire
county. The Society's first project was the acquisition of a pen and
ink drawing of the Battle of Olustee by H. Lee Evans. Reproductions
were made and may be ordered from the Society at six dollars each or
five dollars each when purchasing two or more, plus fifty cents
handling for each order. Sixty-four signed and numbered prints will be
available at fifteen dollars each the first of August. All sales
proceeds help defray the Society's expenses and provide funds for
future works.
Mrs. Emily Taber and her staff at the Baker Free Public Library
were graciously hospitable in February to offer the Society a room for
a nucleous of material which has since expanded into a well-stocked
genealogical and historical library. The Society's library-users'
register shows the research facility is being utilized by patrons from
throughout Florida and from out of the state.
Through the generosity of Reverend Asa Coleman and Mrs. Willard
Griffis Harris, the Society received a wealth of material in memory of
their deceased companions, Mrs. Loyce Knabb Coleman and
Lieutenant-Colonel Mace A. Harris, respectively. Portraits and
biographical sketches of Mrs. Coleman and Colonel Harris will be
displayed in the Society's new quarters in the fall.
Volunteer librarian Mrs. Pearl Ferreira organized an efficient
staff and committee who are securing books and material. Especially
needed, according to Mrs. Ferreira, is anything published or
unpublished, typed or handwritten, concerning the past of Baker County
and its people.
Sheriff Joe Newmans' fund-raising drive at the courthouse
collected $115.00 for library operations from the following: Joe
Newmans, Joey Dobson, Josie L. Davis, D.L. Griffis, T.J. Raulerson,
Earl Parish, Ben J. Fish, Joe Barber, Clois Stafford, Kenneth Roberts,
Joe Raulerson, and Archie Roberson.
Further contributions of cash and written material to the Society
library may be sent to the library in care of the Society at Post
Office Box 856, McClenny, and are tax deductible.
In April the Society sponsored a seminar on basic genealogy and
the history of the Crackers and their language. Times-Union columnist
LaViece Smallwood conducted the very successful sessions.
During the same month the Board of County Commissioners
unanimously agreed to permit the Society to use the old jail as its
headquarters, library, archives, and museum. Security work has already
begun at the new facilities, and the Society hopes to be in the
building before the end of the summer.
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THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 24, 1980
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Historical Society
Correction to last week's column: the price of handling and
mailing the Evans Olustee Battle prints is $1.50 not 50 cents.
In addition to maintaining a library and preparing to open a
museum and archives, the Baker County Historical Society has presented
programs, displays, and activities at its meetings (all open to the
public) which helped familiarize the membership with the area's past.
Among the most notable was Charles Lyle of Jacksonville and his scale
models of trains from history. Mr. Lyle's art work, a representation
of the McClenny depot, and his exquisite models remain one of the
Society's favorite.
Jim Macbeth, administrator of the Museum of Florida History in
Tallahassee gave the Society suggested guidelines for establishing and
operating a local heritage museum. The membership complemented his
talk and slides with a display of Baker County historical memorabilia.
Other meetings featured historical news clippings and maps pertaining
to the area.
The Society published a Book of Baker County Marriages, 1877-
1900 and sponsored the sale of Lawerence Maddock's history of the
Greene-Hill families of Baker County. Both are available at the
Society's library. A heritage tour handbook is also being compiled to
encourage and enable residents and visitors to acquaint themselves
with the historical features of the county.
The Society has taken a great interest in education, and at the
request of Principal Kirkland has set up a committee to assist in
including local history in the high school curriculum. Along the lines
of education, the Society has also undertaken the preservation of the
1961 Centennial film and plans to make copies of it for loan.
Charter membership in the Society at $5.00 is open until the end
of this year. A presentation of a charter membership to friends and
especially to young children who might display a future interest in
the past of their county would make an excellent gift. A brief
biographical paragraph is requested from each charter member. Please
write to the Society at Post Office Box 856, McClenny.
We wish to close this little half-year report of the Society by
quoting from its first newsletter from the president (who just happens
to be the same as your writer): "....The Baker County Historical
Society will not become a political party, an arm of any church, a
social club, or a petty cash fund, or personal crusading grounds for
any individual. No one will use the Society for personal
aggrandizement. Credit will be given where credit is due. The Society
will transcend pettiness and will not lose sight of its original
purposes and goals......"
This writer does not believe the Baker County Historical Society
is the best thing that ever happened to us, but he does contend that
the establishment of it and the Baker County Fine Arts Council
(another recent progressive development) is indicative of a maturing
process in our county that hopefully will not soon stop.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, July 31, 1980 page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Alachua Trail
Its antiquity and Georgia route....
The Alachua Trail was until the latter years of the nineteenth
century one of east Florida's most heavily traveled routes. It brought
pioneers and mail down from the Centre Village-Camp Pinckney- traders
Hill-Fort Alert area (all in the neighborhood of the present Folkston)
into central Florida and took Territorial Florida planters' products
and Indian traders back to the busy Saint Mary's River for shipping
and trading. In the 1840's into the '70's, stage coaches coursed its
ruts with mail and visitors for the east sections of Baker County.
The Alachua Trail is clearly traced on British maps, of the
American Revolutionary period, and there is ample reason to believe
the Trail's antiquity reached into the pre-Columbian past. Along those
unused parts now relatively left to nature, there is sufficient
evidence of wildlife traffic to suggest its ages-old purpose as a
regular animal migratory path.)
Mr. Burke G. Vanderhill, in his scholarly reconstruction of the
Alachua Trail in the Florida Historical Quarterly (vol. LV, nr. 4),
states, "Today....the trail is unmarked and generally lost to memory.
. . ." So true, yet one generation ago your writer talked with several
people who had traversed the Alachua Trail and knew its route as well
as most folks know their own home streets.
The late Jim (James Oliver) Rowe of McClenny often recalled for
this writer how the first of the Florida Rowe line, his grandfather
Edward Roger Rowe, "come down out'a Georgie by way of the Alachua
Trail....He stopped off above Brandy Brainch first....He tuck the
Trail Road (Alachua Trail Road, a loop that entered the edge of
McClenny and rejoined the main Trail several miles south of town;) and
come to McClenny."
Mr. Rowe also related how first his father Dave (David Hagin)
Rowe and then he worked at jobs along the Trail from "Nawsaw" County
to down below Gainesville. Mr. Rowe operated sawmills (his lifelong
vocation) at various places on the Trail, and it was in one of the
then large and bustling towns, Hampton, that he met his bride-to-be
Laura Jones.
It was Jim Rowe's father Dave who as a Baker County Commissioner
at the turn of the century proposed the Alachua Trail stretch in Baker
County be closed because of decreased traffic and increased expense of
upkeep. Mr. Plant had recently built his railroad through, and its
effects were more devastating than interstate 10 on U.S. 90. The Trail
was gone.
From Mr. Vanderhill's report we learn that the earliest known
date of a cartographic depiction of the Trail is 1748 on a map of
Georgia and parts of Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana by Emanuel
Bowen. It was shown originating in the "lands of Yamacraw and the
Yamassee" along the Altamaha (this Georgia river has spawned more
Baker County ancestors than all other ancestral territories put
together) and, as Vanderhill puts it, it terminated vaguely along the
Saint Johns River in Florida.
The British were a great [sic] goals they first always surveyed
and mapped their new lands. Three years after they picked up Florida
in the 1763 international land swap, they caused a Florida survey to
be made by General DeBrahm. He traced the Trail and labeled it
"Latchokowae Path." A map by Samuel Savery three years later called it
"the Path from Latchahoa."
Mr. Vanderhill's location within its modern context has the Trail
leaving the Altamaha at a tiny mapsite called Doctortown northeast of
Jesup. It rambles slightly by way of Gardi and Pendarvis before it
enters Brantly County through which it takes a rather straight
direction due south. It was near the present community of Atkinson in
Brantly County that the afore-mentioned Edward Rowe was supposed to
have joined the Trail when he came from his native Darien to immigrate
to Centre Village near the Saint Mary's River.
At Camden County's Burnt Fort, the Trail made a sharp westerly
turn and then easily veered south again to the Georgia terminus area.
From there, the pioneers could take their choices of Florida routes -
Coleraine and the Kings Road, Traders Hill/Ft. Alert and Trail Ridge,
or Camp Pinckney/Centre Village and the Alachua Trail.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 7, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Alachua Trail
Part two: through Baker County
Mr. Vanderhill stated that as early as the appearance of the
entire Florida portion of the Trail on maps by Messrs. Vignoles and
Tanner in 1823, parts of it were already falling into disuse. However,
as late as this writing, certain sections are still being utilized as
graded county roads and even as paved secondary routes. Your writer,
picking grapes above Trail Ridge at the old Chesser place and driving
cows east of the Maxville Road, also traveled some parts of this very
ancient route.
From the Saint Mary's River to the vicinity of Hilliard, the
Alachua Trail wandered along with Kings Road (dating from the
Revolution according to some histories, and by others, from the
earliest years of the British occupation of Florida). The Kings Road
veered southeastward to Jacksonville (old Cowford), and the Alachua
Trail followed a crooked path southwestwardly to the more northern
Deep Creek (not to be confused with the Deep Creek between McClenny
and Baldwin).
That stretch of highway 121 in Nassau County closely follows the
old Trail from Deep Creek to Brandy Branch. Maps and documents from
the Second Spanish Colonlal Period labeled the Trail "Camino pare
Alachua," and show familiar surnames along and near its route -
Higganbotham, Mizell, Prevatt, Nelson, etc.
The next portion of the Trail remains only in memories. From
Brandy Branch it crossed the southern Deep Creek (between McClenny and
Baldwin) near the Baker-Duval line and joined the equally old Trail
Ridge. Mr. Vanderhill proposes that the use of the prehistoric sand
dunes ridge as part of the Alachua Trail prompted the name "Trail
Ridge." And it is very possible since no very early reference to that
name has been found. As a route, however, Trail Ridge was also shown
in the 1770's in the Georgia Bend concurrent in use with the more
eastwardly Alachua Trail.
Brandy Branch and the intersection of the Trail with the
Jacksonville-Tallahassee Road, called "Deep Creek Community" or "Big
Creek Community" were thriving areas of settlement as late as the 1864
Federal Florida campaign (there was among the writer's relatives,
until several years ago, a powder horn-turned- dog calling horn with
the address of Big Creek, Florida, intricately incised along its
length).
An old loop road known from 1829 left Deep Creek Community on
Trail Ridge (about 1 1/4 miles north of the present Trail Ridge
Community on US 90) and aimed toward the present McClenny. In 1917
this Alachua Trail ROAD was depicted on the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Macclenny (note the incorrect spelling) Quadrangle.
After the Trail Road left the Alachua Trail, it traveled
southwestward across Trail Ridge, skirted the southern edge of Barber
Bay and entered the old McClenny city limits approximately one block
north of the present US 90 (behind the Milton House). The Trail Road
was eventually straightened out to become part of East Boulevard, but
until the early part of this century, it wound about in southeast
McClenny through the Eldred Jones/J.J. Crews properties and turned
southeast across Willingham (Brickyard) Branch behind Powell Bluff.
Through the Bill Barber and Pete Johnson properties, the little
Trail Road ran and the forded a sandy intermittent stream called
Rattlesnake near the present Interstate 10. The Maxville Road (228)
was joined about 1/2 mile south of I-10 and they remained the same
route until the Trail Road veered south from Frozen Pond (no longer
around...a victim of clear-cutting and re-foresting) where it once
again became the Alachua Trail. The Trail then stayed atop Trail Ridge
through Trail Ridge Community (now Highland) and on to Kingsley Pond
where it left the Ridge for Wanton's Agency/Micanopy in Alachua
County.
The writer has an Eppinger-Russell timber land map on cloth of
the late 1870's showing the very crooked Alachua Trail through Baker
County, and it closely approximates some paper company roads found in
modern maps.
We refer the reader to Mr. Vanderhill's more complete report in
the Florida Historical Quarterly (April, 1977) for the remainder of
the Trail's Florida route. And we recommend to genealogists and
artifact hunters a thorough study of the route in tracing ancestors
and locating good hunting grounds, respectively.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 14, 1980
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Alachua Trail
Its antiquity and Georgia route
In 1881, two young gentlemen - Charles F. Barber and John O.
Thompson - were hired by the Commissioners to mark the Alachua Trail
and the Alachua Trail Road through Baker County. They were recently
married to the sisters Mary Elizabeth and Frances Eliza Rowe,
respectively (these three families, by-the-way, enjoyed complicated
kinships; the Messrs. Barber and Thompson were not only
brothers-in-law, but Mr. Thompson was Mr. Barber's uncle. And we are
certain that their wives' brother being a county commissioner at the
time had absolutely nothing to do with their getting the relatively
lucrative and easy job of marking the Trail).
A stack of lighterd mileposts incised with Roman numerals was
loaded into a high-wheeled cart. One of the cart wheels was equipped
with a wire that struck the cart loudly as it went around and, "....so
many of them revolutions," stated the markers' nephew Jim Rowe, "made
a mile. "
It just so happened that a third thoroughfare not included in the
commissioned job but evidently thought to be needing marking by Barber
and Thompson came out of Darbyville (McClenny) on approximately the
same route as the present South Fifth Street/ S228. Once again we are
certain that the facts surrounding the route - this time that the land
bordering the road belonged to the Messrs. Barber and Thompson and
kinsmen Commissioner David Rowe and MacDuff Barber - had so little to
do with the extralegal road marking that they scarcely warrant
mentioning.
Rumors of Darbyville becoming the site of a winter playground for
rich Yankees was becoming a reality. Neighboring Glen Saint Mary was
founded in the same year of the Alachua Trail marking, and that little
community's new hotel had recently opened its doors to the snowbirds.
The hotel's owner, Miss Theresa Cole, was reportedly raking in the
cash. If local developer Carr B. McClenny had his way, Darbyville
would be next, and the tourist cities of Jacksonville and Saint
Augustine, so unhealthily located near the coast, might have to close
down because of McClenny's competition.
The partnership of realtors Coloney and Talbot and Mr. McClenny's
colonization society was already in the planning and legalities stage,
and the City of McClenny (they knew how to spell it correctly) would
be born in 1883 (y'all have centennials at hand, McClenny and Glen
Saint Mary. Do you intend to do anything about it?). The subjects of
this little offering fully expected to get in on their share of the
Yankee dollars by having a major McClenny route go through their
lands.
The road that left the Alachua Trail Road and met the old
Yelvington /Indian Trail at Mrs. Todd Wolfe's present address went to
Maxville (settled earlier by a group of Englishmen), but the Duval
County portion was poorly defined and sometimes nonexistent (remember
the years Duval County's section of 228 lay as unpaved mud bogs and
sand hills while Baker's part was "the highway paved to nowhere"?).
The three routes were marked. The Alachua Trail was eventually
closed about the turn of the century. The Trail Road lasted until the
1930's, but the slightly unethically marked Maxville Road continues in
use as a greatly necessary racing strip and trash dumping ground. From
the number of beer cans and bottles, disposable baby diapers, porno
mags, mufflers, and bags of kitchen garbage daily and nightly
deposited there, this column proposed a name designation for 228
perhaps in conjunction with McClenny's upcoming centennial: " Red neck
Memorial Highway."
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 21, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Indian attacks at Ft. Moniac
South of Moniac is a little tributary of the Saint Mary's River
locally called "Jonnican." One map listed it as "Joaquin," and others
offered variants of that name. Some amateur historians whose
brightness equals that of your writer (that is, they do just enough
research to be dangerous but not always enough to be thorough and
correct) have proposed that the appellation is a play on the name of
one of its earliest settlers, John Canaday.
Truth is, one hundred forty years of Cracker pronunciation have
altered the name of the little creek from "Jernigan" to its present
form by dropping the "R" (not softening it a la Tennessee Williams'
plays and Gone With the Wind) and giving the "G" the typical
Anglo-Saxon hard attack of "K." The tiny stream is the namesake of
Captain Aaron Jernigan who farmed its banks prior to and during the
early years of the Second Seminole War (when he wasn't down the
peninsula chasing Indians.
Captain Jernigan was a neighbor and either brother-in-law or
cousin-in-law of Archibald Hogans, perhaps the earliest (or at least
among the earliest) settlers of the present Baker County.
The Jernigan's daughter Martha wrote her recollections sixty-
seven years ago of the perilous times near Fort Moniac during the
Second Seminole War when Bolech and Econchatti were terrorizing the
white settlers. The originals, transcribed as closely as possible by
L.H. Moore, are with the Orange County Historical Society (the
Jernigans relocated in Orange County, and Captain Jernigan is
attributed the distinction of founding Orlando).
"this the 14 of nov 1913/ Jernigan in Georgia during Seminole
attacks: I was born the 14 of Feb 1839/ the same year on August 19 the
neighborhood had gathered to gether at Fort Monaack and was attacted
between sunset and dark by the Seminole Indians/ they commenced fire
on us/ the first gun was fired shotting cousen Eliza Patrick right
through the root of her tongue which happened a few minutes after
sundown/ she died at the coming of daylight next morning leaving three
little children all boys and the one only little over three months
old. (Billy and Jimie and Gophe was what there grand moth called them
as she had to raise them) they moved her out of the house where she
was shot down in to a larger house where my Father told them they must
all go if attacted by the Indians/ so they crowded in to that house/
she looked at my Father and tried to say babie enough they knew what
she had tried to say so my Father went to the house where she was shot
an got her babie to where she could see him/ there was one man killed
by the name of Davis (weighed a bout two hundred pounds) / three
little boys killed and houses all burnt down/ only the one we were in
did not burn/ the Indians put the pots and all of the salt they could
find in the wells/ I remember my mother had an oven she said the
Indians throwed in the well/ we went to my Father house and people
build a Fort a round it for protection/ I do not remember just exactly
when mother lottd me when it happened/ but there was a family bye the
name of Raulersons/ the man would go over to where the regular
soldiers was station and play cards and when he would go home late at
night his wife would tell him he would come home and find her dead
some time, that she could hear the Indians whistling around their
every night when she was tending to the cows (as they had a big bunch
of cattle) and her husband told her it was rabbits whistleing/ she
told him he would see/ so one night he heard the guns and he was at
the soldiers station one mile from his house/ so he went with a crowd
of soldiers and there was a branch to cross and when they got to the
branch they met his two little girls and the soldiers was so scared
they like to have shot the two little girls/ the Indians had done
killed Mrs Raulerson and told the girls if they did not run they would
kill them/ Mr. Raulerson wife was dead and infant babie lieing in her
arms in a gore of blood nurseing it dead mother/ they robed the house
and took all their feather beds and emtied the feathers all over the
place/ and they took every thing they had in the house and destroyed
all/ they never left them one he garment/ but there was a large goard
hold about a bushel set under the bedstead full of rags and in the
bottom of that was three hundred and fifty dollars in silver that and
his three little children/ mother said he would walk the yard and cry
with his babie in his arms and tell what his wife had said to him/ the
babie was very young"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, August 28, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Indian attack at Ft. Moniac
Part two
One hundred forty-one years ago this month, sixty-five Indians
attacked Fort Moniac in the northeast corner of the present Baker
County. Although the following narrative is in part repetitious of
last week's column, Martha Jernigan goes into more details of the raid
with it. It is called "Jernigan in Georgia, Account #2":
"My Father Captain Aaron Jernigan was a brave soldier/we lived in
Georgia in the time of the Seminole Indian war in the 1839/on the 19
of August the neighbors had all gathered to gether to Fort Monaack and
was attacted bye the Seminoles Indians/that evening fired on us
killing cousen Eliza, leaving three little children-all boys-Billie
and Jimie and Goph who lives at Nockatee Fla (that was what there
grandmother called them as she had to raise them)/there were persons
kelled that night: a Mr. Davis (mother said he weighed a bout two
hundred pounds) and three little boys and the houses all burnt/only
the one we were in/the Indians put all the salt in the wells and all
the pots too/my Father had planed for all of the people to go in to a
certain house if attacted, so when Father heard the first gun he told
mother to run, the which she did/she taken brother Moses in one arm
and me in the other and Father taken brother Aaron and his gun/and my
sister, the oldest one of us, she run/she said she could hear the
bullets whistle bye her head like hot tar from a torch/mother was shot
a cross the n side of her rist (could not use her hand again for six
weeks)/brother Aaron was shot on the elbow of his left arm the same
night/the bullet rang ranged round the elbow and did not brake the
bone/he was from the 29 of march tell the 19 of August over four years
old when he was shot bye the Indians/ mother said his shirt sleeve was
full of blood/she said she was a fraid he would bleed to death before
day light/the scar was there to his grave/he lived to be seventy six
years old/there was seven bullets holes through my mothers skint/there
was sixty five Indians at For Monaack that night/there was an old man
ruun of and hid/he found an old log burned out un the under side/he
crauled undern that and lay there all night and the Indians went a
long side of the log / he said he could have put his hand on them as
they went off; but he said he was a fraid to breath/my Father had two
horses/they taken both of them and kept them three weeks be fore he
found them/they had side lined and hobbled them with raw hide strings
tell they had cut the skin off to the bone/when he found them he taken
some men with him: uncle James Hogans Mr Nathan Norton is all I
remember the names of but he started with fifteen men to follow the
Indians through the oakafanoke swamp or catch them/it was in
August/they all gave way but Father and uncle Jimie and Mr Norton /
they over taken the Indians after following of them all day through
the swamp and mud and water/they scalped two and they would not go in
the thicket after the third one as was nearly night/well they had stay
there all night in the swamp as it took all day to go so they had to
stay tell day light next morning so as to see there way out/I will
come back to Fort Monaack where I started/if it had not been for my
Father (he was a brave man or soldier from what my uncles and aunts
told on said they would all have been killed that night on the 19 of
August 1839)Father when he got them all in the house he had told them
to go in he locked the door and gave aunt zilpha the key and told her
to put it in her pocket and so she did and a way in/the she said if
she could she would take old aun Lucie and Mania and get out of there
her two old colered women, but she did not remember haveing the key
tell Father told her to feel in her pocket/he told them to all lie
down flat on the floore and some lay down in a plate of butter/but
there was a school house near bye/they were a destroying the books and
one great big Indian was he was a leaning a gainst a tree holding a
torch for the rest to light the books to burn them/my Father took
delibert aim at him/at the crack of his gun he fell and they took him
up and left with him/they are not like bye me oh/Mr. Raulenson was
over at the Fort with the soldiers a playing yes playing cards a card
playing when he heard the guns that killed his wife and he could not
call it back then she was gone never more to return/to sad in those
days/my mother said she just motion her hand to us children and we
would be quiete so quiete you not known there was any children on the
place/she was a fraid of the Indians/oh yes they went to uncle Arches
and poured a keg of honey out on the ground destroyed all the contents
of his smoke house nothing left the the ruins/they followed them sixty
miles after they had robed Mr Raulenson house (find one piece of a
garment at a time they had riped them all to pieces and drop one piece
in a place)/the night of the 19 of August when they attacted us they
whooped the Indian war whoope all night long and yelled to the top of
their voices/mother said it was enought to make the cold chills run
over any one to hear their screames and srills cries all night long /
sad indeed/"
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 4, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Jernigan in Orlando
This, the last of Martha Jernigan's three writings concerning her
family in frontier Florida and Georgia, describes pioneer life in the
present Orlando area. Some of the families, especially the Patrick
family, lived on the site of Walt Disney World. Today, when visiting
that fantastic amusement park you will see not a vestige of the tough
existence of those Florida pioneers. What you might see instead is a
mock up of a supposedly old West territory..... another case of the
American habit of overlooking acres of diamonds in our own backyards
in favor of searching for something much less real and rewarding.
-----------------------------------
"my Father move to Florida in 1843 his cattle and two colored men
and old white gentleman/ and in Janury 1844 he move mother and us
children/we had seven hundred head of cattle/our nearest neighbors was
at old Fort Reed in one mile of Sanford/my Father settled the place
two and a half south of orlando owned bye Mr. overstreet now/ Mr
Arthur Quinn and Dr. Algner Sidny Spear lived at Fort Reed near old
Mellon ville (now called Sanford)/ well we were hear a mong the
Indians a gain, but we certainly had the fat of this part of the
land/we had fat deer and all we could use/Father bring five big fat
Dee once, and other times big fat turkeys when he would shoot
them/they were so fat they burst open on the breast/I seen mother have
a large dish pan full of dried turkey breast and fish at our own will
we raised sweet potatoes and cane, made twenty two or three barrels of
sugar and a plenty of syrup to do u / raised some rice corn and cotton
pumpkins, would without end, water mellons and musk mellons/and when
we killed a beef it was fat (and we killed one every two weeks and
sometimes oftner)/the fat we got out of them was soft like lard/we had
to put it up like lard/we got from forty eight to fifty pounds out of
every one we killed/there come a man from Apopka one time/he wanted a
beef / Father penned an eight year old steer/ he told man he could
have him for fifteen dollars or would kell and dress for him two cents
a pound/well he says Mr Jernigan you dress it for me and I will pay
you for it for I dont know any thing a bout it/so he did/brought
sixteen dollars and seventy five cts just the quarters of it/in 1849
we were Forted up from the on the the North side of conaway right a
gainst the Pininsular from the Indians/there was Mr Marston his wife
and eleven childre Mr Lee his wife and six children Mr Lowery and four
in family cousen Davis his wife and two children Uncle Wright and aunt
Nellie with four grandchildren Uncle Wiloby Minshew and his wife and
eight children uncle James Jernigan his wife and ten children Father
and mother eight of us children besides they an orphan boy the
raisd/we had two colord family a bout six in each/oh yes Mr Pool and
wife and five children and old man Daniel Thomas and his with twenty
of darkes built an addition to the end of our Fort to them selves/does
any of you hear to day know how a Fort is built/well there was three
companies of regular soldiers stationed at Fort Gatlin and one company
of voluteers/we were that Fort twelve months/so then scaterd out to
our homes a gain/we had plent of varments such as bear tigers wolves
wild cats and such like/we had nine bull dogs/I have seen seven big
wolves come right in front of the house a bout 2 o clock and the sun a
shineing bright and rase with there feet on a high log in a bout two
hundred yards of the house and howl but our dogs did not notice
them/they never went out/they were/I have three otters run through the
woods in big day time/well Father and uncle Isaac took there dogs and
chased a Tiger nearly all in hearing distance of house/the dogs treed
in the after noon they shot him an killed him he measured nine feet
from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail/he was fat (he had
been eat our pigs and mabe some calves)/well my Father killed a bear
that we got eight gallons of oil out of and the meat was fine/well we
sold beef cattle to drovers that would drive them to Savannah Ga or
Charleston S C/one time mother sold Mr Harvey Dudly two hundred beef
steers all eight years old/he paid her fifteen dollars a head for them
/ Father was not home so mother away went on and attend to the
business when he was a way/so Mr Dudley sat down in the cow pen gap
and paid mother three thousand dollars and must to have had fifty
thousand left/he had the most money I ever seen at one time in my life
had a large pair of Saddle bags stuffed full up/orlando was woods and
the deer and turkey a feeding where orlando is now/well I knew the
first little log house that was ever built in orlando out pine poles
with the bark on them/it was a bout twelve feet long and eight wide
and I had to stoop to goin at the door and there was a counter on one
side and a few cigar boxes set onit with some candle in them and box
of tobaco and a barrel of whiskey in one corner that was in 2853
[sic]/we got to two and three bushel of milk every morning made chees
and churnes every morning/we had milk and butter an cheese and cream
(and that stewed with some venison or turkey was fine)/we only had one
quarrel with two old women while we were in the Fort/they quarreled a
a half hour/one of them had a butcher knife and the other a fire stick
but they never got nearer than twenty or thirty feet of each other/one
was Mrs Marston and the other one Mrs Lee/well I stop for fear I weary
the people/
* Paper transcribed as closely to the original as possible, some
capital or lower case letters in doubt. 4-29-80 LHMoore
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 11, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
POLITICS
As they were...and will remain
Nothing ever struck so telltng a blow for the argument for
absolute monarchies as have politics in a democratic republic.
Unfortunately, when politics get really warmed up in a small rural
county the scene is usually nothing less than a one-ring circus.
When your writer was very young and going through the romantic,
impressionable stage peculiar to youth, he was strongly attracted to
entering either politics or acting (there isn't much difference
between the two). Verbalizing his thoughts to a certain pair of local
State legistors he was "put onto a good thing" in the form of a fine
gentleman aspiring for the state senate. The gentleman was elected (in
spite of your writer's support), re-elected, climbed toward the top,
and, the next thing we knew, he was politically dead because of
alleged unethical practices.
Your writer jumped onto the candidacy of another state man. It
took his opponent's local representatives about ninety seconds or less
to totally destroy your writer and his candidate. We tried a governor
candidate. He did well in the county, but he was smeared out
completely state-wide, the winner taking everything in the first
primary.
For some reason or another, your writer was never again asked to
locally work for a state candidate.
During the course of one of these campaigns, a gentleman we had
long respected sidled up to us at a Saturday speaking and explained
that the great number of votes in the such-and-such families could be
swung, but he would need "some money" to pull it off (another death
knell for your writer's age of innocence).
There were the local leeches with their bogus donation petitions
and the "you got fifty cent fer a leetle drink?" types. We recall one
particular petition-toting lady and one particular lanky half-high
gentleman who were magically ubiquitous....at every polling place at
the same time.
Saner heads advised us that people who sold their votes would
take your money and vote however they wished. In later years, we
tested a few of these vote-sellers and discovered many don't even get
inside the polling place to vote in any direction. We strongly suspect
the majority of those who could be influenced by the so-called key
person or candidate's money often get no nearer the voting booth than
the "line up with hands out" area.
In the fifties we recall our almost total slate of candidates
vehemently promising "no integration" no matter that most of the
offices being contested had absolutely nothing to do with instituting
or stopping social change. Some of us could not reconcile those
promises with their sharing the same fruit jar refreshments on
election eve with the people they had sworn the Saturday before to
"keep in their place."
And we fondly remember the local orator and perennial candidate
who spoke in behalf of a "gubernational" aspirant.
Then there was the "deestrict" chairman who tardily arrived at a
rally just as the last candidate was speaking (the party chairmen
acted as masters of ceremony at the rallies in their own voting
precincts). But he handled it well. He climbed on the back of the
speaking truck and asked, "Anybody else got anything to say? Nope?
Well, reckon that's about it."
Where were the rally-integrity folks twenty years ago when the
speakers for a state candidate who was related to the majority of the
local populace were permitted to extoll their man's virtues for a half
hour or more but your writer, attempting to tell good things about the
opposition, had his coattails tugged at the end of three minutes?
We spoke on stumps, flat bed and pick up trucks, and on store
porches. There were no voting machines, and votes were tallied well
into the next day. Disgruntled paranoids, living in the past, walked
around the polling places with pistols stuffed in their belts. We made
dozens of trips from precinct to precinct to "observe" and Heaven only
knows what we were supposed to observe, or what we were to do if we
observed something.
Everybody's political posters looked alike---black block letters
on a standard white cardboard printed at The Press. State races were
different in that each sported a color and the candidate's photo. Very
few signs were put up and most had melted away by the middle of summer
(we voted in the spring; much more intelligent weatherwise.)
Then, there was the one temptation to not vote that your writer
suffered through on many occasions--the long lines of cacophonous
females, violating the election laws; from the sidewalk right up to
the door of the polling place, ramming those offensive little cards in
the face of voters. " Remember my man!" they screamed, and your writer
usually did remember their man, but not in the manner they wished.
Yes, politics were funny in the old plays; not at all
(tongue-in-cheek) llke they are today.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 18, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Mizell Family
Part One
In Winter Park's beautiful Leu Gardens there is a small burial
plot holding the remains of a man born in the vicinity of Fort Olustee
and Fort Alligator, squatted in an old Spanish fort in Key West, was
appointed first sheriff of Orange County, and was gunned down by
orders of this writer's third great grandsire. He was Dave Mizell,
member of a long-time and large family that stretched from the
Carolinas into south Florida. He was born in his father's heavily
stockaded farm home in 1833. Within two years the stockade became
important to neighbors as they flocked there for refuge during the
long Seminole War. Mr. Mizell's biographer Steve Fussell states the
young man grew up amid interesting characters, tough pioneer families
and rangy backwoodsmen.
Mr. Mizell's aunt Nancy Tippens and her family, except little
daughter Cornealia, were killed during an Indian raid as they made
their way from the Georgia Bend area toward the Mizell fort. The death
and burial of the Tippens family was the occasion for beginning Baker
County's South - Prong Cemetery.
Regarding another tragic incident, we quote Mr. Fussell from the
Central Florida Scene magazine: "During one such attack, a neighboring
rancher's family was overtaken by a large band of warring braves
within sight of the stockade's safety. While horrified settlers
watched, the family was brutally murdered. One by one, they were
beaten with tomahawks and impaled on spears. An infant girl was the
last target of the savage tirade. One of the braves held the child
high, perhaps so that the settlers inside the walls could get a better
view of her. He then flung her high into the air, raising his spear to
impale her as she dropped. But the baby let out a terrific wail of
laughter, loud enough to be heard behind the walls of the stockade.
The brave, startled, immediately dropped his spear and caught the
infant before she hit the ground. He placed her beside the mutilated
body of her dead mother, and the group ran off into the woods. The
child survived and was past 80 with children and grandchildren of her
own before she died."
This latter story was widespread and popular among the older
heads of Baker County, and the survival of the baby daughter to grow
up, marry, and have children parallels that of the former. Little
Cornealia Tippens was reared by her relatives, the Sparkmans, and also
lived into her eighties.
The story goes that Dave's father, also named David, grew weary
of the overpopulated section near the present Lake City and decided to
move to wilder country farther south. For a while the family lived in
old Benton County near Wanton's agency (the terminus of the old
Alachua Trail as recounted in the BCP recently), now among the lakes
of the Micanopy area.
He soon grew tired of all the new settlers filling the country
between Gainesville and Ocala (more properly, between Newnansville and
Fort King), and Mr. Mizell, Senior, cast his eyes south again. With
the end of hostilities in 1842, former Seminole land opened to
settlers who would claim and improve large acreages for each
dependent. New counties were being cut out of Monroe and Dade, and
opportunities to be in on the groundfloor of the newly emerging
counties, as well as vast stretches of cattle-grazing lands (not to
mention several herds of Indian cows and horses), drew the Mizells and
other families still farther south.
Some of Mr. Mizell's biographers either did not know or did not
wish to open old wounds, but they en masse omit mentioning that the
senior Mizell had difficulties getting along with his neighbors and
carried the reputation (unproved but still carried) of cow-stealing.
Being connected to both major families involved in the allegations and
having done considerable snooping among older wags, this writer is of
the opinion that the allegations were not without some justification
but that the entire matter smacked of the pot calling the kettle
black.
One of the Pearce girls, Mary, a relative of the Mizells, later
described the journey to south Florida (anything south of Newnansville
was "south Florida" in the old days): "It has got so hot, and we all
thought it might be on account of our being so far south. It was dry,
and there were flies and gnats, and we children would take turns
getting out of the wagon and walking in the deep, hot sand. I guess
our water had spilled, or maybe we had given it to the team. Soon we
were all walking, and thirsty, and leading the team.
"It started to rain, and we camped. We had to cook in the rain.
Next day, all day it rained and the woods were full of water, with the
awfullest, deepest holes in the roads, and the horses were falling
down. Then everything stopped. Father said, 'This is it. We're here!'
"There was not one house! Poor Mother, we all gathered around her
in the wagon trying to keep her dry and warm. It had turned cold then.
She told us, 'We haven't seen a house or a person for a week, so don't
let yourselves get sick. There aren't any doctors' here.'
"Sister Sally was one year old that day. It was Christmas Day,
1858. "
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, September 25, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Mizell Family
Part Two
The David Mizell family settled land on the bank of Lake Rowena
in what is now Winter Park. They had no sooner constructed their log
cabin when their fears born of the cries for secession and war came
true - Florida and her southern sister states separated from the Union
and declared war against the United States.
The Mizells of central Florida, like so many other Crackers, were
not in favor of the Confederacy's actions; but when the battles were
imminent, the young men went to serve the new nation. One of the older
brothers, John, was commissioned a lieutenant in the Seventh Florida
Infantry and was captured by Union forces during the battle of
Missionary Ridge. David never saw battle but was stricken with cholera
en route to Savannah. Their brother Tom was killed during the battle
for the city of Richmond.
David's wife drove her wagon up into Georgia to bring her husband
home. Some of the family later said that a doctor had recommended a
warmer climate near the sea and a diet of fish and vegetable broth for
the remainder of Dave's life. Angeline loaded Dave and their one child
back into the wagon and headed for the coast. It isn't known how long
she stayed there with her sickly husband and her child, but Key West
seemed to fit the bill much better. She purchased a sailboat and
removed them to the Keys.
Key West was in Union hands and probably was relatively free from
battles. There in an abandoned Spanish fort Dave recuperated and
another child was born (ever notice that no matter how sickly a man is
the babies keep arriving?). Some of Dave's enemies later said that it
was while he was in Key West that he made the deal whereby he would be
appointed sheriff of his home county when the war was over.
For reasons never mentioned in family circles, Angeline set sail
for Florida's lower east coast and landed her family near Cutler Ridge
in the present Miami area. The soil was poor to non-existent and there
was little market for fish in those troubled times and in an area
where anyone could catch his own, but east coast pines grew abundantly
and Angeline set up a pitch plant to supply naval tar to passing
ships.
The business proved lucrative. Many a ship and small boat sailed
into Biscayne Bay for her product. However, a Union gunboat, said to
have been angered by Angeline's high prices, set fire to her plant.
The south Florida experience had proved to be no more a picnic than
north and central Florida so the Mizells sailed up the coast for home.
The war, incidentally, was over and so were David's chances of
being re-conscripted into the Confederate Army. The United States
quickly removed Florida's government and instituted a reconstruction
form of politics. Many Florida counties had Blacks and imported
Northerners appointed as sheriff, but the Reconstruction Government
chose David Mizell for Orange County. Florida had many pro-Union men
before the war, but for some reason or another they were mostly
ignored except for a distinguished few.
Stories of Dave's derring-do have circulated and grown throughout
central Florida over the past century. Whatever he might have or not
have been, Dave Mizell was a loyal Reconstruction man. In spite of his
descendants' tales that he took the job of sheriff to protect his
fellow former Confederates, he was never known to have sided with them
even when history and all contemporary circumstances proved them
morally and legally right. The man was no fool and was well aware from
whence came the butter for his bread.
John Mizell was appointed judge of Orange County; and, as put by
many citizens of the area, "they had the people right where they
wanted them."
---------------------
A couple of weeks ago our column carried the word "paranoid," and it
prompted one of our lady readers to write us a correction. Well, dear
Lady, our dictionary agrees with yours that the word is indeed
"paranoiac," both noun and adjective, but our lexicons seem to be out
of date. Through popular usage (or misusage) the former form is what
modern dictionaires want us to say. And, yes, we are well aware that
the word is misunderstood and misused by the vast majority of the
public.
Not wanting to sound defensive or even "paranoid," we remind you
that even if we are a graduate of old McClenny-Glen High (pre-cursor
of Baker County High School), we do occasionally get around and
sometimes even manage to know a little something.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday October 2, 1980 Page two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Mizell Family
Part Three
After the Civil War, cattle were scarce and in great demand. All
over the South, and especially in the central Florida area, cow
stealing became big business. The Mizells and their allies, the
Basses, accused the Barber family and their allies of illegally
rounding up other people's stock. The Barbers in turn claimed the
Mizells were sweeping the woods clean of cattle under the guise and
protection of the law.
Exorbitant taxes were imposed on unreconstructed Floridians such
as the Barbers (originally, as members of the old Whig party they had
been opposed to secession but, when it happened, cast their lots with
the Confederacy and held out against the United States government
after the war). Most were unable to pay the taxes and believed them
unjust. Judge John Mizell directed his brother Sheriff Dave to collect
in cattle. When Dave "collected" out of Mose Barber's herd he was
told, "If you ever enter my herd again, Dave Mizell, you'll leave
feet-first."
Mose Barber, a part-time resident of Baker and Columbia Counties,
was up to his neck in debt and court cases as he tried to hold
together his little central Florida empire in the face of
insurmountable odds. He lost still another of the court cases and
Judge Mizell demanded the Sheriff to collect court costs from Mose.
Sheriff Dave knew Barber's finances almost as well as did Barber and
realized that instead of getting money he would have to once more
visit Mose's cattle herds.
In the meantime the Orange County courthouse, like hundreds of
others in the South, burned to the ground with all its records. As in
other parts of the South, the unreconstructed Bourbon-Democrats
accused the Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, and Blacks of the deed. The
Reconstructionists naturally returned the accusation. The destruction
of land and court records proved beneficial to both sides in many
cases. The county, much larger then than now, divided into bitter
sides, and many were ready to join in the feud when it began.
In early 1870 an Orlando farmer named Bullock approached Sheriff
Mizell with a bill of sale for cattle from the Barbers but which he
could not collect. Mizell and his brother Morgan and twelve year old
son Billy headed for south Orange County (the present Osceola County)
to force one of the Barbers (either General or Champion by name) to
deliver up the cows to Bullock.
When they reached Bull Creek near the present Kenansville, they
were ambushed. Sheriff Mizell's killer was never found but a local
Barber sympathizer named Needham Yates later claimed credit for the
deed and impilcated Mose Barber as his hirer. Morgan returned to the
Mizell homestead 75 miles north for help and left young Billy to guard
his father's body against the wolves. Billy held to a floating tussock
in the middle of the stream all night long clutching Dave's body.
Billy said that his father's last words were that no one seek
revenge for his death, but Dave's brothers and relatives scoured the
countryside for Barbers, killing every one they found. Any captured
were shot rather than saved for trial since they were certain the
majority of the populace, wanting to be free from the Mizell power,
would have been sympathetic to the victims.
Mose Barber returned for a short while to the north end of the
State to dispose of the remainder of his Florida holdings, and, saying
good-bye to his Baker County relatives, departed forever from the
state. The Mizells, meanwhile, regrouped their power and soon had the
central part of the state in their hands. And, by-the-way, they proved
to be a most enlightened political family, today commanding the
respect and admiration of their fellow citizens.
The body of Sheriff Dave Mizell was brought back to the shore of
Lake Rowena to rest under a sycamore planted by his mother when they
first arrived in the present Winter Park area. Later on, a lot of
folks in that section said, "Orange County lost the first and last
sheriff it ever had when Dave Mizell died."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 9, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Mizell Family
Part Four
Long genealogical lists are often confusing and, to anyone whose
name is not included, usually boring. But in our obtuse and obstinate
way we are going to give you a list anyhow.
Sheriff Dave Mizell, the subject of our past three offerings was
a son of David and Mary Pearce Mizell. The latter David was born in
1809 in Bulloch or Camden County, Georgia. His wife Mary was a
daughter of John and Ann Cain Pearce and was born in Washington
County, same state. Mrs. Mizell's Cain family was an old English and
Spanish Colonial Florida family, having lived in the present Nassau
County area before Florida's transfer to the United States.
The elder David moved to Baker-Columbia Counties section in the
late 1820's and established a fortified settlement which became a
haven for neighboring settlers during Indian attacks. From this fort
near Alligator Village (Lake City) he moved around 1836 to the
district of Wanton's Agency in the present Alachua County. He was
elected Justice of the Peace there in 1848 and to the County
Commissioners Board in 1849.
He returned to Columbia (that part now Union) in time for the
1850 census, and, after his father (also named David) died in that
same census year, he headed a Mizell exodus to central Florida (this
is where we came in during Part I).
This David's parents were David, born about 1775 in Saint
Matthews Parish (Effingham County), Georgia, and Sarah Albritton.
Sarah was a daughter of John (Revolutionary Soldier) and Abbey
Albritton. The elder David was previously married, but this column has
not learned her name.
The elder David was a citizen of Camden County by 1800 and was
elected a lieutenant in that county's militia in 1801. After the death
of his first wife, Mr. Mizell moved to Bulloch County where he
remarried (to the above-mentioned Miss Albritton) and was elected
captain of the forty-ninth (Bulloch) Military District.
During the First Seminole Indian War he returned to Camden,
living near Traders Hill, and served with his older sons under Major
Bailey in the Camden Militia. The dean of Georgia genealogists Folks
Huxford states this David died in 1850 in Camden. Some descendants
number several notable politicians and financial people among them.
The Pearce family was among the largest clans in neighboring Union
County. The Moodys of Clay and Alachua are well known. The Sparkmans
of the Tampa area contributed much to the state's economy. And the
deaths of David's daughter Nancy and her family prompted the beginning
of Baker County's South Prong Cemetery in 1838.
The last discussed David was son of Charlton Mizell who was born
sometime between 1740 and 1750 in North Carolina. Charlton married
Elizabeth Everett, born in 1764 in Tyrrell County, North Carolina. She
was the daughter of Joshua and Sarah Everitt (Everett). It is unproved
but possible that the Joshua Everett of Tyrrel County who mentions his
father Nathaniel in a March, 1754, will is the same as Elizabeth's
father. The Nathaniel Everett mentioned was born at Kendrick's Creek
in either Maryland or North Carolina in 1707. He and his wife Mary (or
Elizabeth) lived on a plantation in Tyrrell County.
Charlton and Elizabeth's off-spring were Charlton, born 1773,
N.C. (remember this one and we'll get back to him later); David
(already discussed); Joshua, died about 1842; John; and Sarah, born
about 1780 and married a Brown.
Charlton, Senior, and Elizabeth moved to Effingham County,
Georgia, immediately after the Revolution and to Camden soon after
that.
Historian Herbert N. Mizell, Junior, of Panama City, Florida,
reported that Charlton was a son of Luke, born 1680, and Susannah
Smithwick Mizell (sometimes spelled "Meazle"). Susannah was either a
daughter or granddaughter of Hugh Smithwick who arrived in Albamarle
District, North Carolina, in 1664. Luke Mizell witnessed in 1714 a
transfer of 200 acres of land on North Carolina's Morattuck River from
Edward Smithwick to William Meazle (Mizell). Another testator William
Charlton, a magistrate of much popularity, was probably the one for
whom Luke's son Charlton was named.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 16, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Mizell Family
(Conclusion)
Luke and Susannah Mizell's children were William, Charlton N.
(already discussed), Edward B. (1730-1819), John, and Mary (1723-1738,
married Edwin Collins). All were born in or near the present Edonton,
Tyrrell County, North Carolina, where Luke had moved prior to 1703,
Susannah's brother, by-the-way, donated 70 yards square of land in
Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1702 for the reputed first church in
the Carolinas (book W, Registration of Deeds, Chowan County).
Luke was a son of Luke (1653-1694) and Elizabeth. The elder Luke
was a son of Luke (1614-1673) and Deborah. Luke I came to the colonies
in 1635 with Thomas Grey and settled in Virginia (one reason the
Barbers never cared for the Mizells is that the Mizell family arrived
in America thirteen years earlier than they.)
From there back we only have bits and pieces. Whether it is this
family or not, we learned that an early English family named Moselle
(and its many variations) descended from an immigrant to Great Britain
from the beautiful Moselle River valley of the present France and West
Germany (that area also blessed us with one of the world's treasures -
light, sprightly, white Moselle Wine). The old Cracker pronunciation
of the name "Muh-zel" is much closer to the European river name than
that now used by some of the later more affluent generations -
"My'-zel".
It should be mentioned here that some of the Mizell historians
claim the family is descended from French protestant settlers in the
Carolinas. We shall just report all findings and proposals and let our
dear readers remain confused or take their choices of histories."
Now we ask our kind readers' indulgence as we return to the
Charlton Mizell, Junior, born in 1773 and brother to the grandfather
of Orange County Sheriff Dave Mizell. Charlton, Junior, was married in
1798 in Camden County to Mary Blount, a daughter of Redding and Lucy
Harvey Blount.
Redding Blount was a son of Jacob and Barbara Gray Blount of North
Carolina. Jacob was reputed to have been the father-in-law of the
legendary pioneer of Spanish Florida Sam Worthington (ancestor of
Baker Countians and for whom Worthington Springs was named). There is
a record of gifts of a slave and some personally (personal property?)
from Redding to his minor daughter Mary in 1798, and Charlton Mizell
was named as trustee. Before long, Charlton married the young Mary and
received a fair start in life with her gifts and dowry.
Redding's wife Lucy was a daughter of Miles Harvey and his
unknown second wife.
From the Honorable Folks Huxford and Charlton's descendants we
learned the names of Charlton and Mary's children, all born in Camden
County. They were Elizabeth, born in 1800 and did not marry; Joshua
Everett, born in 1801 and married Letitla Ray Paxton; William "Billy,"
born in 1803 and married Liza Ann Nelson; Mary Ann, born in 1806 and
married (1) James M. Paxton and (2) unknown; Jackson, born in 1813 and
married Elizabeth Lang; Rebecca, born in 1816 and married a Jackson;
and Jehu, born in 1819 and married (1) Martha and (2) unknown.
Charlton, Junior, died about 1840 at his home in Camden County
near the Satilla River.
Many of Charlton, Junior's descendants became valuable members of
the political and economic communities of Camden, Charlton, and Nassau
Counties, but none were as colorful and memorable as was son Billy.
Uncle Billy was born on the Satilla, and, on New Year's Day, 1835, he
married Liza Ann Nelson of Nassau County, Florida.
Liza's father is believed to have been William "Billy" Nelson, a
settler on the Florida side of the Saint Mary's River during the
Second Spanish Period. His Spanish grant of 640 acres was near Mill's
Ferry, and he held it from 1817 until the territory's acquisition by
the United States. When making his claim for his Spanish grant under
U.S. laws, he and his testators claimed that the land contained
several buildings erected by Mr. Nelson and that the land was kept
under continuous cultivation. Mr. Nelson had also remained loyal to
the Spanish Government during the so-called Patriots' Rebellion a few
years earlier. The Nelsons are buried at Mill Creek between Brandy
Branch and Hililard.
Billy and Liza Mizell's children were Joshua, Josiah, Robert,
Isaac, Louvilla, and Amanda. Robert "Rob" was also called "Blind"
Mizell and was reputed to have been the best fiddler in Charlton and
Baker Counties. Much of his life was spent in the Moniac-Baxter
section. Louvilla married a neighbor, George Washington Garrett. She
died in rural north McClenny after bearing Mr. Garrett four children
including the late Mrs. Elizabeth "Lizzie" "Sweet" Garrett Thomas of
McClenny (her home was torn down to build the Citizens Bank driveway).
Uncle Billy settled more places in Camden and Charlton Counties
than any other single pioneer. On record are more than 30 sites in an
area from Buffalo Creek on the north to the bottom of the Big Bend on
the south. He once moved to Florida by mistake and learning of the
truth of his residence promptly packed and crossed back over the river
to Georgia.
He seemed to enjoy breaking new ground, making it his life's
vocation. When he found a buyer for his homestead, he loaded up family
and belongings and searched out unsettled land. His wife and children
accepted the frequent moves by horse cart.
His biographer Alex McQueen said Uncle Billy never made much
money from his sales or trades but was thrifty (a trait among his
descendants).
Uncle Billy Mizell's often expressed desire to be buried under an
oak tree (after his death of course) was carried out by his family.
His last homeplace (later called the James L. Johns place) was on
Sparkman Branch just above the Saint Mary's River and a few miles from
the present McClenny. Nearby was an oak ridge and under a spreading
oak within sight of Florida the body of Uncle Billy rests.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 23, 1980
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Elder Bowman and the Church of The Brethren
Elder A.D. Bowman was a son of Abraham - and a grandson of
Daniel, both ministers in the Nettle Creek congregation in southern
Indiana. While still a young man he moved to Muncie and experienced a
call to the ministry.
He moved in 1902 to Wenatchee, in the state of Washington, and,
about 1915, Brother Bowman relocated to Hawkinsville, Georgia. If he
performed any mission work for the Church of the Brethren, there is no
record.
In the twenties Brother Bowman moved to Baker County where
several other Brethren and Brethren sympathizers had already taken up
residence. These Brethren were mostly from Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas,
Illinois, and Indiana, and were generally of German descent. Most
worked on the Glen Nursery, and others had been lured to this
"tropical" area by promotions of land dealers and advertisements
placed in north and midwest newspapers by the Glen Saint Mary Nursery
Company.
Whether they were all Brethren or not is open to question, but
some of the notable families and individuals were Elserman, Ventling,
Marquette, Geitgey, Walden, Frank, Sparks, Tyler, Scoles, Jernigan,
Schnabel, and Hume.
It was the consensus of the native-born Crackers that these new
citizens were hardworking, thrifty, and ... peculiar (your writer begs
you to read on before getting too upset). For instance, "Them Germans
didn't mess with nobody, and they'd work their fool selves to death,"
observed some of the older heads. "They'd pay you what they owed,"
offered another, "and you'd better pay what you owed them." He then
added, "But they never owed nobody."
They mostly met with the Baptists, for their religious ancestry
had common beginnings with that sect. A goodly number of the Brethren,
however, began to fear the Glen Saint Mary Baptists were becoming a
bit loose in their doctrines and were behaving too amicably with the
popish Episcopalians and Methodists.
The Clay County Church of the Brethren was a bit inconvenient for
the Baker County Brethren to attend because of distance, but the
ministers of that body were asked to come to Glen Saint Mary to help
establish a church for the Baker County people.
The work began with a series of evangelistic meetings during
which several locals were added to the Brethren fold by conversion.
Heartened by such auspicious beginnings, the Glen Brethren requested
that they be organized into a church.
The desired organization was effected June second, 1929, with
A.D. Bowman, Elder; Walter Fisher (a licensed minister); one deacon;
and sixteen lay members. A.D. Crist of the Clay County Church was
chosen as presiding elder, and the membership elected to call
themselves Glenside Church. Elder Crist, by-the-way, later worked in
the Tampa area where his daughter married a gentleman named Otis Dewey
Whitman. This Mr. Whitman is better known as "Slim" Whitman whose
vocal renditions of Indian Love Call and Rose Marie have been
thrilling ladies for almost three decades.
By 1930 the Sunday School enrollment had reached 58, and the
church membership was 30 in 1931. Glenside efforts moved well until
1933, and Elder Bowman continued as pastor. But in 1933, Elder Bowman
moved away. Differences arose which seemed to be insurmountable among
the members, and in 1941 the Church of the Brethren in Baker County
was disorganized.
Elder Bowman lived in Lakeland for a while and was a member of
the Brethren's District Board of Religious Education. In 1938 he moved
to Mapleville, Maryland, and in 1941 to Hagerstown, Indiana, his
boyhood community. He remained there until his death about 1958.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, October 30,1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
The Fair as history....and in retrospect
The first Baker County Agricultural and Home Fair is now history.
That protracted festive function recaptured the spirit of our
Bicentennial and Centennial celebrations, the Pine Tree Festivals of
the late forties, and our turn-of-the-century county fairs. Will this
recent effort, like all those other successful ventures be doomed to a
one-time stand and fade into oblivion?
"No," you say. This column, observing the precedents set in our
history, offers, "Well, we hope not."
The time lapses between festive affairs of county wide
involvement add emphasis to our above statement. From the county fair
to the Bicentennial celebration, four years; between Bicentennial and
Centennial galas, fifteen years (we are aware that calendar and
history controlled this lapse, but there were other good things during
that time needing celebrating); back from the Centennial activities to
the last Pine Tree Festival, thirteen years; and it was about forty
years or so from the old county fairs to the short-lived Pine
Fests....not a good record.
We don't include homecomings and school carnivals because they
involve but a certain segment of the county population. And we are
sorry to have to exclude the very few fetes given for our heroes and
loyal public servants due to a sad lack of general interest.
We Baker Countians are possessed of a peculiar trait; once we
tardily get into the types of county-wide activittes which are
everywhere else accepted and practiced as normal, we seldom fail to
make them such laudable, even superior, successes that we seem to see
no need to repeat them.
Your writer has mused long and often on the why's of our strange
attitude towards celebrations and county-wide involvement. We have not
come up with a reason, but we believe we can offer some clues by
listing a few attitudes, actions, and problems from the recent fair
that parallel the past big fun times.
Every past big activity has had one person or two willing to
dedicate full-time work and evangelizing to gain public support and
interest (Pat Smith is a prime example of a drum-beater for the fair).
All too often these folks look behind them and see no one following.
They eventually burn out without the refueling of public enthusiasm
and we have to wait until a new leader is born or inspired.
There was in all the past big events a sufficient number, albeit
a tardy sufficiency, to handle the job, but these workers were also
left with all the unpleasant details as well as the bulk of the labor
(note how the faithful who accepted, guarded, and answered questions
about the fair exhibits for six days and nights were also the ones on
duty in the late hours Saturday and on Sunday afternoon to break down
the booths and hand back the entries). Work horses finally give out
and it takes several years to grow a new crop of them.
In the past there were always the perennial committee folks who
reveled in being on committees and boards and being considered as
advisors and consultants. Somewhere along the line these good people
failed to get the word that as long as they held down committee
appointments they could also put in a few hours of actual duty here
and there. Your recent fair was not without its fair share of
perennial committee folks. These people can do more to make interest
soggy than three days and nights of constant rain.
It, did, indeed, warm the cockles of this old writer's heart to
hear exclamations of, "isn't this wonderful?" "Look at what we can
do," "it's the best county fair I've ever been to," and "I've been
seeing people I haven't seen in years."
Your writer has heard these effusions before and still watched in
vain for follow-ups.
We are not being negative; just cautious. We strongly recommend
to the Fair Associatlon that they accept the lessons from history and
guard against flagging interest. We further urge the Association begin
as soon as possible to plan for 1981; work now while the problems and
successes are warm in our ears and fresh in our eyes. We suggest
lopping off dead wood and replacing sitters with doers. And last, but
certainly not least, begin now to cast your eyes about for more
spacious and convenient quarters.
The fair can enable us to salvage our failing county-community
spirit. This column challenges you, the Association and Fair-attending
public, to make the recent fair the first of an unending chain of
many.
See you at the Fair.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 6, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Levi H. Markley
Levi H. Markley was buried in Baker County's Manntown Cemetery in
1878. To this writer he was a fascinating enigma for years. By chance,
your columnist met through the Baker County Historical Society Mrs.
Gloria Johns Glines, who just happened to be a great-granddaughter of
Mr. Markley. She has been kind enough to supply us with the following
Information.
"Levi H. Markley joined the Union Army 17 September, 1861, at
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and gave his age as 24 years. He was a
Sergeant in Company D, 104 Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry.
"On 24 December, 1861, he was appointed second lieutenant. On a
muster-out roll headed Hilton Head, South Carolina, and dated 30 May,
1863, is 'this officer is promoted to a 1st Ltcy. in the 2nd S.C. Vol.
to fill an original vacancy by appointment from Col. James Montgomery,
2nd S.C. Vol. by authority from the Secy. of War.'
Lieutenant Markley was on a muster roll dated 30 April, 1863, and
headed Beaufort, South Carollna. On another muster roll for May and
June, 1863, is the notation, 'promoted to captain June 12, 1863, in
2nd South, Carolina Vols.' (Mrs. Glines adds that a notation on a 24
August, 1863, leads her to believe that the 2nd S.C. Volunteers later
became the 34th US Colored Infantry (Quick research bears her out, and
we remind the reader that the United States Army placed white officers
over any Black troops during the Civil War).
"A roll for May and June, 1864, states, 'sick in Genl Hospital,
Beaufort, S.C. since 25th June, 1864.' The other muster rolls
mentioning Captain Markley give only dates.
There is a letter written by Levi, headed Jacksonville, Florida,
September 11, 1865, where he is asking for a leave of absence of
thirty days, '...to visit my home in Pennv. I have not been home in
four years and have not had leave of absence since in the service. I
joined Army on 18th of April 1861. Served through the three months
service and enlisted for three years Aug 20th 1861. I have been a
Commissioned Officer since Dec 24th 1861. I have only been off duty
five days on account of sickness since in the army. My affairs at home
are in a precarious situation and have not received my attention for
more than a year. This is my third attempt for a leave of absence.
Very Respectfully, Your Obedient Servent, L.H. Markley, Capt 34th US C
Troops.'
"On November 17th, 1865, an extension of ten days is requested
for the following 'leave of absence for twenty days with permission to
apply for an extension of ten days is granted to the following named
officer: Capt L.H. Markley, 34th USCT by Com of Maj Gen J.G. Foster,
Chas Mundee Asst A. Gen.' Levi is believed to have been in
Gainesville, Florida, at the time of this request (from Military
records received from US Archives, Washington, D.C.)."
In addition to Captain Markley's military career data, Mrs.
Glines offers the following biographical material: "L. H. Markley was
listed on the 1870 census for Bradford County, Florida.
"Levi Markley and Araminta Prescott were married 26 December,
1872. On the 29th day of May, 1876, Araminta Markley and her sister
Evelyn H. Prescott bought some property from Levi H. Markley for $250
(Bradford County Courthouse, Starke -Deed Book A, Page 191).
"Annie E. Markley, only child of Levi and Araminta, was born on
the 28th of January, 1878, in Starke, Florida. She married Everett E.
Johns of Starke who was killed in line of duty as acting sheriff in
Fernandina, Florida, on December 6, 1905. Annie and Everett had three
children: Everett Markley, state senator and president of the senate
shortly before his death; Thelma, married Aqulila Williams; and
Charley, the colorful good friend of the rural north Florida counties
and acting governor of Florida.
"Levi H. Markley died on the 31st of August, 1878, and was buried
in Manntown Cemetery, south of Glen Saint Mary."
This column still asks, "Why in Baker County?"
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 13, 1980
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Good stuff discovered looking for other facts
Your writer has always been a tangent person. For instance,
whenever he is looking up a word in the dictionary, he seems to get
completely off the track by becoming fascinated with other words and
their definitions. This week's offering is the result of just that -
odds and ends from our past found while researching other subjects.
We had always wondered about Mr. Mack Monk who was buried in
Woodlawn Cemetery. Just recently, while checking out some death dates
for a family history, we came across the reason for his death. The
undertaker, Mrs. Corbett, reported, "gun shot wound in head." In the
same column, a Ms. McKinnie of Baxter had as her report, "shot. Don't
know any particulars."
There were no election returns from Baker County in 1866. It
seems nobody knew how to conduct an election, and the returns were
tossed out by the state canvassing board.
Aunt Janie Hicks Tillis (grandmother of singer Mel Tillis) began
life in nearby Clay County 102 years ago, lived most of her life in
Baker County, and cast her first vote in Pahokee, Florlda, at the age
of 86.
General Robert E. Lee was born after his mother had "died." His
mother, Ann Lee, was given up for dead in October of 1805. For several
days she lay in state in the home and in the family mausoleum. The
sexton heard her faint cries for help, and after his initial fear (do
you doubt his fear?), he rescued her. Fifteen months later she gave
birth to Robert E. Lee.
Neighboring Maxville was reportedly settled by Georgians in 1828.
The Jacksonville-Tallahassee road portion known as the "old Plank
Road" once charged a toll. Later on, the newer route adjacent to the
railroad was referred to as the turnpike or pike road because of a
similar charge.
Sister Mary Ann of the Catholic faith once ministered to the
soldiers and the people of Olustee after the big battle at Ocean Pond
in 1864.
The community of Baxter was named for George S. Baxter. Mr.
Baxter owned a home in Olustee which is still standing.
After the devasting fire in Jacksonville in 1901, many of the
city's refugees fled to Baker County.
The infamous pirate Louis Aury, who once took over Fernandina in
the early 19th century, delivered and sold black slaves in the Georgia
Bend area along the Saint Mary's River.
There were three doctors (who will remain nameless in this
column) who were run out of Baker County for improperly contributing
to the re-populating of the county after the Civil War. It is reported
that many of the ladies were saddened by the local males' poor
attitudes toward the good doctors' bedside manners.
The majority of the Rhoden immigrant-ancestors came from.
Ireland.
Racially-mixed marriages were not at all uncommon in post-Civil
War Baker County, especially in Darbyville.
The city of McClenny was platted out on the site of a huge cotton
field which lay north of the railroad.
In the 19th century, Baker County moonshine was made with
homegrown ingredients such as cane syrup, honey, and corn.
A certain gentleman named Walker often hired himself out for
killing at a bargain $25.00 per completed job. Although his
headquarters were in Union County, he is supposedly to have taken a
few orders for the Baker and Charlton areas.
And before anybody gets any ideas from the last item, we shall
close out this gossip column and begin rummaging through our files for
other good stuff to use at a later date.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 20, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Hold on now....just one more word on the election
We are certain that our kind readers have heard all they could
possibly wish about the recent national election, but this column
believes that not all observations and studies have been exhausted.
For instance, isn't it marvelous how an election and the Great
God TeeVee can work together to turn a few expressions into cliches in
the space of fifteen minutes ("a comfortable margin" and "riding on
the coattails," for a couple of examples)? And our fears, we
discovered, are justified; somebody has been peeping in to see how we
vote. Otherwise, how does the TV commentator know that less Blacks
voted for Carter in this election than the last? And who's been
snitching on the Jewish vote?
Then there are the polls; incorrect, misleading, and manipulated.
For weeks the pollsters told us that Carter was a politically dead
man, then just this week informed us that actually he wasn't whipped
until a very few days before the voting. Do you really intend to
continue believing those people? Do you really intend to continue even
reading them?
Those same vacillating polls have joined up with the news
commentators to explain to us ignorant folk just exactly how and why
Carter was defeated and who did it. This column cannot believe any of
them observe history and current events, and we further cannot accept
that anybody bested Jimmy Carter outside his own liberal camp. Let's
face it, the man has not done a bad Job (it was the media that accused
him of being a weak leader and told us of the negative attitudes
toward him by other nations); the liberals whipped themselves and he
just happened to be among the wrong camp. Grandma used to say at
hog-killing time, "Let the hide fall with the hair," and Mr. Carter,
plus a few sincere and valuable liberal members of our legislative
body were bits of the unfortunate hide.
There were some very positive thoughts and experiences to come
out of the recent election. For one, it seems many more people at the
ground level are becoming aware of the Electoral College (though Lord
knows if they went to 12 years of public school they had to have heard
of it at least twice). It also seems that this incongruous institution
within our democratic system might be becoming unpopular concurrently
with its emergence into the grassroots eye. This column believes one
more national election will see a hue and cry at the horizon against
the College.
Another good thought is that in many parts of the nation the
voting public turned out in record numbers. Have you, by-the-way, ever
contrasted Baker County's laudable voter turnout record with our
neighbors'?
But . . . we have some fears. One is, being aware of every
western society's overacted and overzealous reaction to every action,
we are afraid that the liberals' heedless spending might be replaced
with an ultra-conservative indiscriminate and vengeful slashing of
some very necessary and beneficial programs (another case, perhaps, of
"Let the hide fall with the hair").
May we state emphatically here, and from experience, that not all
Conservatives are members of the Ku Klux Klan and not all Liberals are
Communists. Our second, and greater, fear arises from the gleeful and
gloating attitudes of the so-called "Moral Majority," those folks who
thunder from Christian pulpits in a very unChristlike manner, those
folks who admit on national media that they lied and that "it was
unfortunate" that they did so, those folks who toss out thinly veiled
threats and then deny them faster than Saint Peter ever did between a
cock's crowing.
This column cannot accept that the course of America was altered
in the fundamentalist congregations of America, but should that
segment be convinced they were responsible....watch out, America.
Until World War I, more people had been slaughtered in the name of God
than for any other reason. It was dedicated Christians who
methodically tormented wretched heretics during the Inquisition. It
was sincere reformed Christians who accused their neighbors and
relatives of being in league with the Devil and publicly set fire to
them. It was a group of good Baker County Christians who verbally
crucified in a most vile manner a minister and a young mother.
We fear not the religious charlatans and demogogues, but we fear
the misplaced trust put in them by millions of devout church-goers and
Christians. Christianity has traveled a lengthy, varied, and wandering
path since the base of the young man who simply advised us, "Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God, the
things that are God's." More and more, we are seeing the gradual,
perhaps now accelerating, intermixing of Caesar's pockets with God's.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, November 27, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Remarks on religion-politics draw fire for this columnist
Your columnist has been sorely romped on and raked over the coals
by a few who apparently took umbrage with his thoughts and effusions
in last week's article. Perhaps we should be reminded that (1) one who
gives a word of criticism or warning about a religion and religious
people is not necessarily God-less; (2) some who have done so (Jesus,
Savonarola, and Martin Luther for starters) are in a league this
humble columnist cannot even aspire to; (3) nowhere in last week's
offering did the writer put down spiritual, moralistic professors of
the Christian faith and those who live the words of Jesus Christ, and
(4) being strongly influenced by old-time, genuine, classic Baptist
thought regarding, complete separation of church and state, he
continues to stand with his convictions.
Your writer thought he had risen above ugly remarks; and, when a
couple of gentlemen who labeled themselves ministers of the gospel
explained rather strongly that the fires of Hell would be too good for
him and the radical/liberal likes of him (we had always thought of
ourselves as being quite conservative), he should have said, "See
there; my case rests." He, instead, retired to the sanctuary of his
old family house to lick his wounds and gather up his pearls.
Some years back we removed a wall from the old house and
discovered a cumulative cache of articles lost or secreted behind a
chimney over a period of ninety years. Because of the find's
historical value and its coincidental seasonal timeliness, we thought
we would locate the box into which we had placed them and list the
articles.
There were two rat-chewed boxes of Atlantic Parlor Matches,
manufactured by the Diamond Match Company (not unusual for the
vicinity of a fireplace). Close by was a metal ventilated flat box
that once held Banquet Hall Little Cigars from the M. Foster Company
of New York (evidence of one of the writer's great uncle's secret
vices?) The purchaser was warned, "See that the stamp is not broken."
Of a much later period came the remains of a cardboard Lucky
Strike package dressed in pre-World War II green. Inside were two
pieces of corset hardware (the writer well recalls his grandmother's
awesome-looking corsets hanging in the downstairs closet).
Speaking of hardware, there was also a handsome hinge from an
icebox lying in the dust. Perhaps to take care of the resulting cough
from the secretly smoked Banquet Hall Little Cigars were the throat
lozenges still wrapped and packed inside their metal box marked, "This
package contains twenty ergoapiol (Smith) capsules."
Three bottles were included. One was marked "extract," one
contained some foul smelling stuff (the Crackers' asfidity"?), and the
last was (shame!) a whiskey container. The writer was reminded of his
grandfather's chronic stomach illness when he saw the Adams peppermint
pepsin tutti frutti gum for indigestion and dyspepsia. The wrapper
assured the reader that "one tablet of this pepsin tutti frutti will
digest 25000 grains of meat."
One empty wooden thread spool and several assorted buttons, three
bits from some carpenter's tool box, and an ax blade were among the
inventory. There were the remains of an 1890 advertisement from the
American Baptist Publishing Company offering a year of Bible studies
for as low as fifty cents per year. And, of course, there were the
usual marbles as are found in every home in the country, providing the
home has a lad in it.
Wrapping paper from the store of F.J. Pons, Jr., Agt. advised the
potential customer that Mr. Pons gave down weight and full measure. In
case anyone ever wondered when the good old times were, Mr. Pons' ad
can offer some clues since he said, "The good old times are coming;
They sure are.'!
A wadded piece of onion skin paper nestled in the bottom of the
box; and when its almost illegible hand (must have been written by a
Barber) was deciphered, it proved to be a memo: "fruit from Gasque,
nuts from the yankee, turkey at (illegible. Rhoden?) or Davis, Aunt
Judy to dress birds, grind corn, pick up Ollie's trunk, wire money to
Rousseau at Tallahassee, money for joint Thanksgiving service," and
under the cryptic, "no chitlings (chitterlings) for Hodges," was this
conditional offer of gratitude, "God be thanked if this thing don't
cost me a fortune."
We would like to know that the note-writer's hopes were realized,
and we trust that our readers will take some time to recount the
positive experiences and friends of life during this holiday season.
Happy Thanksgiving.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 4, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Who remembers Hold Land???
The Big Dream-part one
After the censures following your writer's comments on the recent
national election, he figured it prudent to never report on any
historical event younger than the parting of the Red Sea. However,
neither you nor he allowed as how he would stick to such a rash
decision, and the reader is invited back in time for only a short
distance - less than a decade - to the nebulous and confused
beginnings of a big dream for Baker County.
The fantasy began simply enough; in the reflected tinsel glow of
Walt Disney World's opening in October of 1971, a local real estate
dealer asked his coffee break partners if they had heard the
ridiculous rumor that a major tourist attraction might settle on Baker
County as its site. Within a week more fodder was added to the
coffee-drinking rumor mill. "Hear tell it's pretty definite that
they're looking at Baker County." A few laughs, and the tale slowed
down a bit for a few weeks.
Early in 1972 the attraction had a theme and a name - Holy World,
USA. The incredulous locals were not certain whether they should laugh
or ignore the latest bit of gossip; Holy World indeed. The initial
remarks were predictable: "Couldn't have picked a more unlikely spot."
"Can't think of a place that needs it more." "Bull stink."
But the rumors were persistent, and the fact that a few
intelligent people had stopped smiling and had begun to discuss the
attraction's potential impact on the county made some of us listen
more intently. Folks, we had business people, millionaires,
financiers, and reverends catching and passing on the Holy World fever
(but you won't find one person alive today who will admit he gave it a
serious thought, and some eye you suspiciously and deny they ever
heard such a rumor).
By the summer of '72 the fantasy had picked up more speed, and
for a people long reputed to be above and beyond vagaries, the idea
was miraculously accepted. Dick Hagood of the Florida Times-Unlon
wrote on the 4th of July, "Sanderson - Strictly unconfirmed reports
have it that a giant attraction may be in the making on 60,000 acres
just south of this Baker County community." Mr. Hagood's repeated
caution that the reports were unconfirmed went largely unheeded, and
the public saw, not the possibility, but the proof in print. The news
article added that as many as 3,200 personnel may be required to man
the operations and that Liberty Mutual Insurance is, according to the
reports, underwriting at least a substantial portion of the cost, for
which no estimate was made.
At the end of July of that same year, Bob Cloaninger of the
Jacksonville Journal gave the reading public quite a spread on the
question, "Is Baker County the 'Promised Land'?" and even included a
photograph of nearby Palestaine Lake to permit some of us to believe
the little lake south of Olustee might have been named by either a
far-sighted person or a mystic.
Mr. Cloaninger's article, like the others, reminded the readers
that it was still a rumor and that, "To date there have been no
official announcements from any source about the proposed tourist
attraction - somethinq residents of the area say would rival Disney
World." From just where Olustee and Sanderson residents received their
information regardinq the coming attraction's size and importance is
still a moot point.
The late Claude Fraser, the unofficial mayor of Olustee for many
years, stated, "It's the real McCoy." Mr. Fraser added somewhat
ruefully, "I'd hate to see Olustee get overcrowded. I like living here
in the country. If I wanted to live in a city I'd move to Jacksonville
- or maybe New York City.
The Journal article said, "Many businessmen in the two
communities - both have a population of less than 300 - are already
forming plans for expansions, if the dream materializes." Mrs. Zella
Brannen figured she could enlarge her cafe from its two tables, if it
(everybody was now referring to the coming dream as "it") came, and
storekeeper Mr. L.C. Roberts laconically informed the reporter, "I
guess if they build it we'd
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday December 11, 1980
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Who remembers Holy World???
The Big dream-Part Two
The Baker County Press picked up on the Holy World rumor in early
July of '72, but it didn't have to; rumors sufficient to misinform and
confuse everyone were flying around the coffee shops, the schools, and
over supper tables. Even the skeptics were softening.
The rumored cost of the giant tourist attraction reached $200
million and above. The area involved between Olustee and Sanderson hit
27,000 acres. From the initial few thousand jobs supposed to be
created (much more than the total amount of Baker Countians willing to
work), Dr. Don Castleman, that shadowy figure associated with the
dream, announced to someone who relayed to the Press that a University
of Tennessee study predicted 43,000 jobs would be filled as a result
of Holy World.
Castleman's associate Richard Maddux dropped the name of Billy
Graham, and Castleman hinted at President Nixon's turning the first
spadeful of dirt in the fall.
It was being said that every landowner at and near all the
interstate highway exits had been approached by major motel and
restaurant chains (there had been, in fact, some contacts years
before, but not for Holy World business). Also rumored was that the
smaller landowners everywhere in the area had banded together to hold
land prices up to their asking.
Castleman announced to the newspapers that the construction loan
had been approved, and a new flurry of mini-hysteria began. One large
development firm in south Florida sent a representative to Baker
County to learn particulars, and his presence here soon had an
imaginary construction firm unloading earth-moving equipment south of
Sanderson. Every time a few hunters, woods riders, or the merely
curious were seen, more fodder was heaped onto the rumor mill.
A representative of a major Jacksonville concrete company claimed
he was out viewing the land for his boss and had actually seen the
plans for phase one. Land prices were supposedly sky-rocketing. Some
were saying the local hospital authority had begun a series of
meetings to try to determine how best to cope with the unprecedented
boost in population. The projected yearly revenue from Holy World had
reached 105 million dollars. Two of the county's real estate dealers
(every family did not have its own real estate broker in those days)
expressed enthusiasm in an August 10th Press article. George Rhoden
had been contacted by the officials of a large motel chain and Ray
Odom by several out-of-staters regarding available properties. Both
agreed, however, that Holy World had caused no immediate effect on
land prices which had already jumped in recent years anyway.
County Commissioner O.C. Horne in that same item was elated: "I
think it would be the greatest thing to ever happen to Baker County."
Development Commission official Inez Burnsed stated that her unit had
made no specific and official moves but were ready to act when
necessary.
Holy World even crept into politics as one supporter for a
particular candidate for sheriff wrote to the editor of the Press that
it was doubtful the incumbent sheriff could handle the job after Holy
World hit the county. One Sanderson resident could only comment,
"Well, there goes the hunting."
Most everybody was favorable to the coming economic boom, but
even more of the citizenry expressed reservations about the impact.
Commissioner Roy Harvey spoke for most of the county when he
cautioned, "It's great, but you'd have a big problem with law
enforcement....You'd have people moving here just for the jobs, and
that could be a big problem."
Finally, Castleman was, located and questioned. If there were any
doubts about Holy World, his enthusiasm and convincing verbal plans
smokescreened them from most area minds. A Los Angeles firm was
designing Noah's Ark and Jonah's whale to transport visitors to the
Garden of Eden. Biblical figures would be computer-operated to make up
to 24 motions per second. There were to be 20 to 25 major attractions.
With all those sugarplum thoughts of money in our heads, we
hardly heard Dr. Castleman's basic premise for Holy World: "Learning
God's word can be fun." But a few folks had begun to sniff the air;
there was a faint odor of something rotten in Denmark (or Holy World).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday, December 18, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS - Gene Barber
Who remembers Hold World???
Part three-conclusion
Of the three landowners being dealt with for the Holy World site
- Southern Resin and Chemical, LaBeuna Farms (the Knabb family), and
Owens-Illinois, only 0-I was reported to be tight-lipped and exhibited
reservations. The first two, according to the news media, early agreed
to sell Castleman their portions of the 27,000 acres supposedly needed
(valued at an estimated $500.00 per acre).
Castleman frequently tossed out the possibilities of alternate
sites looking better, and the public could read between the lines that
some of the potential sellers were getting "antsy" and that the
project might be less than holy (in fact, "hole-ly"). It was reported
that the Knabbs and Southern Resin, evidentally tiring of Castleman's
dilatory tactics, demanded a decision from him. He, as usual, promised
an announcement soon. The announcement never came, but the promises
continued until the following February.
On the twenty-second of August, Castleman - the enigmatic
overseer of the attraction project - was at long last reported to be
in McClenny. He tossed a giant monkey wrench into the gears of high
hopes by announcing free land had been offered in south Florida. On
the thirty-first, in a small Press article, Earl Knabb said a decision
was expected before the first of the following week. Shortly after, in
a Times- Union interview, Knabb stated, "I think that as far as this
area is concerned, it is over with."
Then somebody somewhere decided that perhaps Castleman was,
indeed, playing games with the landowners, the news media, and the
public. Castleman, when being pushed for definite answers, was "out of
town." His associate Richard Maddux declined to divulge Castleman's
Nashville, Tennessee, address (one of the reporters found it anyway -
a modest house). Maddux refused to give answers and referred further
questions to a Chicago attorney. Only problem was....he wouldn't name
the attorney.
Don Castleman - a chaplain of the Tennessee House of
Representatives and a church minister - had done, as revealed by
investigative work, some religious evangelizing but was more involved
in public relations and promotional work of a secular nature.
One of Castteman's 1964 projects - a Tennessee tourist attracting
trailer - had caused "...a mild explosion in state government." It
seems the Tennessee state officials had become concerned about
Castleman's role as an agent of the state in making purchases for his
project and in soliciting advertisement for the promotional scheme.
The entire complicated matter became a fulsome situation to some
state officials, and the morning newspaper, the Nashville Tennessean,
reported the entire story, which is too lengthy and involved to repeat
in our limited space.
Back in Baker County, it was revealed that Holy World was
entirely without local and state approbation. "We've never heard a
thing. It sounds kind of flimsy to me," commented Circuit Court Clerk
Joe Dobson. The state also denied any knowledge of the proposed
multi-million dollar attraction.
The Jacksonville institutions which were said to be the
financiers of Holy World also emphatically or snickeringly denied even
having heard of Castleman. One spokesman stated that his firm had "no
prejudice against sex, race, or religion," but that it did "have a
prejudice about money."
Owens-Illinois' caution regarding the Holy World proposal was
likely well-grounded (that outfit didn't get to be truly big stuff by
being taken in by slicktalkers and disingenuous dreamers). The
Castleman project was probably never closer to building a
multi-million dollar go-ye-therefore-and
-have-fun-type-place-and-bring-us-all-the-profit than your
unimaginative writer has of building a rocket to Saturn.
Despite the published investigations of Castleman's background
and inconsistencies, he hung in there, announcing first one site, then
another. In the Press the last mention of Holy World was buried low on
page one: "Latest Word On Holy World - Nothing Much." Then we were off
to heavy politics, hunting, and the state's order to evacuate the old
Jail.
A lot of questions were raised by Holy World. This column isn't
prepared to side step any slings and arrows, so we shall be prudently
silent with explicit answers. We will go as far as saying that our
research has not proved or disproved Castleman's sincerity, but it
seems Holy World never even made it to any drawing boards. We
discovered there was a fifth columnist and local dispenser of rumors
who we suppose hoped to greatly profit as Castleman's prophet (that
is, he hoped to be remembered when Castleman came into his financial
kingdom...or was Castleman hoping to benefit from our fifth
columnist's machinations?) 'Nuff said.
Holy World did not just fold its tents and steal away without a
trace. Besides helping to loosen up century-plus holds on land
(already selling at a high price since the late sixties), a Holy World
Grocery sign remained for a few additional years on Interstate 10 to
puzzle tourists and rub salt into the wounds of those who dared dream
too strongly.
This column proposes the official declaration of an annual "Holy
World Day" in Baker County. We can barbeque a few dates, dress up in
our burnooses, have speakings on the banks of Palestine Lake, and
fondly recall the big dream and its tantalizing promises of Soloman's
riches (but not his wisdom) for us all.
Totally Unrelated Note:
We were privileged Sunday evening to attend in Roosevelt Mall the
Jacksonville Symphony and Chorus presentation of Handel's Messiah
(even Khomeini would have to get goose pimples during the famous
chorus and all through the third part). The Symphony, Conductor Willis
Page, the Roosevelt Mall Merchant's Association, and all the
co-sponsors are to be thanked and commended. Bringing the arts to the
people is a continuing pet project and hope of this writer.
Although your writer's old critical ear was almost totally
pleased with the performance, we must relate that the majority of
whispered plaudits about us were for the tenor Nell Retzlaff. We
suggest you keep this young man within your eyesight and earshot, and
do include the Jacksonville Symphony-Roosevelt Mall Messiah in your
1981 holiday schedule.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, Thursday December 25, 1980 Page Two
THE WAY IT WAS -Gene Barber
Ghosts of Christmas past, not-so-long-past, to-come
There are few books I read for pleasure, and I re-read most of
them annually. All of them influence me to some extent, but I think
Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" did more than its share a couple of
evenings ago.
I closed the little book, adjusted the blanket control, pulled my
old knit cap a bit lower on my balding head, rearranged 73 pounds of
cats snoring at my feet, and settled in for another very long, very
chilly night. A dying lightered knot fire danced its orange patterns
on the ceiling and encouraged me toward slumber with a lullaby of
gentle popping.
Hardly had I dozed off when I was aware of a presence, quite
uninvited, in my cold attic room. Faintly illuminated by a dull
fluorescence was a rotund nebulous being, jolly of countenance. Holly
was twined throughout the hoary locks and sprigs of the same trimmed a
voluminous cloak.
"Who the heck are you?" I growled.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," laughed the ponderous
poltergeist.
"I don't believe it," I flatly declared. And before I could add,
"you're putting me on, Old Timer," we were whisked away, or something,
because I was no longer in my chilly attic room with 73 pounds of cats
lying across my feet. I found myself in a cheery setting of Victorian
furniture and the trappings of an old fashioned Christmas.
The unmistakable scent of chestnuts and pecans parching among
coals wafted from the fireplace. Smilax and holly laced the staircase
banister. A spicy gumdrops tree sparkled on the library table. A cedar
heavily laden with the fanciest ornaments imaginable filled a corner
of the setting.
"I feel at home here," I informed chubby ol' Ghost of Christmas
Past. "Odd....I feel quite odd."
A plump laughing lady who was dicing fresh coconut in an
enamelware dishpan on her shallow lap had a vaguely familiar
appearance, and the grandfatherly type peeling an orange for a
spindly-limbed kid was likewise tugging at my memory. The skinny
little boy was laboriously drawing away with stubby pencils on the
backs of envelopes. A floor model cathedral radio whined and spit the
Andrews Sisters vocals of "Jingle Bells" and the "Beer Barrel Polka."
"I surely like this place," I whispered. "I can't put my finger
on it, but this scene is...in fact," I gasped, "this is my
grandparent's house; And there's some of the family coming in from
Jacksonville....Aunt Lil with the fireworks, my uncle bringing in a
whole stalk of bananas. There's a crate of oranges."
My ghost guide reminded me of what I already had figured out.
"This was your Christmas of long ago when you were most happy. These
were the Christmases of mechanical hopping birds, wooden soldiers,
ribbon candy.."
"Of surprises in the little silver cups on the tree," I
interrupted. "Of rings in the toe of my hanging sock. And of melted
candy in the toe of my sock, too." I turned to the spirit and asked,
"Why did you bring me here?"
My ghost-host pointed a pudgy spirit finger toward the big
laughing grandmother. "She won't be here next Christmas. And the hefty
uncle who reads funny books to the little boy on the floor will
someday be gone shortly before a Christmas. And the grandfather who
sings funny songs and tells wonderful stories will go soon after
another Christmas, and...."
"I don't want to hear anymore. Let me get back to my old attic
room with the 73 pounds of cats."
"Okay," spoke the specter, "but it takes maturity to fondly
remember other times that we think are better, and to make them a part
of our lives rather than to dote on them. And we must accept the fact
that nothing remains the same, and to make that a part of life, too,"
he intoned.
"Hmmm," I intoned right back. "These folks' passing will be a
part of the process whereby my life and direction are molded, right?"
Before the old smiling apparition answered, the light dimmed, the
scene faded, and I was again in my attic room with the dancing
firelight and 73 pounds of cats across my feet. I snuck out from the
covers to peek downstairs (the same downstairs I had just visited with
the ghost. Nothing. Nobody. Just a few easels in the dark. Old GOCP
had split and sent as his replacement one sorry aspect of ghostianity.
A gaunt ghost if ever I had seen one.
Void of expression, he beckoned me to follow (do you have a
choice with a ghost?). We swirled high above frosty-tipped cypresses.
I yelled, "Where are we going? And who are you?"
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Not-So-Long-Past, and don't talk so
much," answered the soaring spook. I think he was definately rude.
We settled, and none too quickly, into a gosh-awful
setting...big, open, junky, and colder than the proverbial well
digger's lower anatomy in Minnesota. Artists' easels were haphazardly
spaced about, partially painted canvasses hung at every degree except
horizontal and vertical, and a little black and tan cur sweetly snored
in a tattered overstuffed chair. Huddled before a skimpy fire was a
rather morose looking figure.
He stared into the tiny blaze and bit his lip a lot. "Boy,"
observed I, "he's got one heck of a nervous tick."
"I wouldn't talk if I were you," snapped my ghost-host.
"He seems sad, Not-So-Past. What's his problem?"
"For one thing," offered ol' GOCNSLP, "his mother's recent death
is fresh on his mind. He's only two days away from Christmas, and he
has nothing in the way of spirit and spoondookiks with which to
celebrate. He's cold because the little fireplace is ineffectual in
this big crack-ridden house. He's beginning to feel a little bit
hungry and just the teensiest bit sorry for himself."
"Aww," quoth I, "all he has to do is call the gas company to make
a delivery, and he can surely eat with relatives. And as far as the
Christmas spending goes, that isn't necessary anyhow."
The Ghost of Christmas Not-So etc. rolled his eyes upward in
disgust. "He could call the gas company if the telephone had not been
disconnected for non-payment. The most salient result of an artist's
income is a poor pay record, and a poor pay record precludes the
delivery of heating gas. He is too proud and refuses to admit his
pilght to his relatives."
"He could get a job, you know," I suggested in a somewhat flip
pant tone.
"I wouldn't talk if I were you," replied my cranky guide. "He
does have a job; he just doesn't always have work. He has driven his
ducks to a poor market by choosing to remain in his home town, but he
has faith that it will someday pay off for his community and for
himself."
"Kinda puts me in mind of a grade B movie, Ghost-Bubby, what with
him sighing, and all. I'll bet Stella Dallas and Charlie Brown would
be green with envy at the delicious misery and paranoia he's suffering
through. But wait...he has company. Who is that breathless lady
rushing to his door?"
"We'll call her Lois, but he will soon call her blessed. And if
you will be less verbose, you will hear for yourself the nice lady's
request."
"I'm desperate," she began. "I've been trying to get John to tell
me what he wants for Christmas, and he finally let me know just a few
minutes ago that he'd like one of your paintings. I know it's late,
but can you do something for me?"
"See," I nudged the ghost (one doesn't nudge foggy-figured
spooks, I suppose,) "that's the way with people who get lower than
whale droppings because things don't always go their way. Not only are
there others with problems as big or bigger, but by helping them,
everybody's situations improve."
"I wouldn't talk if I were you," spoke my spectral friend. "He
will work all night to stretch, paint; and frame the lady's picture.
Tomorrow he will have heat, a tree, and he will make his annual
delivery of goodies and junk to a few kids who wouldn't know about
Christmas otherwise. When Christmas comes, he will be exhausted but
happy."
I wanted to question further, but we were above the rooftops and
soon I was deposited under my 73 pounds of cats.
Sleep was not yet mine to embrace. A tiny giggling fuzz ball
perched on my toes and formed into a mere stripling of a ghost, lad.
"Oh, no. Not again," I moaned. "And what are you the ghost of,
Wraith-Waif?"
"I," it trilled, "am the Ghost of Christmas Perhaps to Come."
To be continued, and until then, do have a happy, peaceful and
friendly Christmas.