Southern Greens

Finding Minnie

2013-05-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

I wrote a story a while back about the Mora family from Cortez, Florida. Joseph Augustine Mora was one of the earliest settlers in the area and had been fishing in South Florida since at least the 1870s.

Joseph Mora Plot

While I was in the Cortez area recently I went by the Palma Sola Cemetery to see if I could locate the graves of Joseph Mora and his wife Mary "Minnie" Hazel Mora. Minnie died in 1917 and Joseph in 1931.

I knew from newspaper and death records they were both buried at Palma Sola but there was no marker that could be found for them when a census of the older graves was done.

I obtained an old map of the cemetery from the Manatee Historical Library showing the original owners of the plots from around 1920.

The map showed Joseph Mora owned a plot next to my great uncle Nathan Fulford. The older plots have room for 8 graves.

Marker for Minnie and Ernest

I found the Mora plot and also a marker that had the name Minnie and Ernest on it. It is barely legible but you can see the names and the date of death says 1915 and 1914.

It was next to a round concrete grave cover that had the initials "MM" cut into the base.

Next to this was a small marker with just the initials "EM." Joseph and Minnie had a son named Ernest who died in 1916 so this must be his grave.

The one next to him with the MM initials must be Minnie's. The marker has the wrong year of death for both of them but it was probably put there years later.

Joseph A Mora Grave

Next to her is one without any identification just a concrete cover. I am pretty sure it would be Joseph's grave since all the others in the plot are from later years.

Birthday Cards

2013-05-16T04:30:00.000-05:00

I've written about my other three grandparents this year on their birthdays. Today would have been my grandfather Millard Fillmore Green's 133rd.

He was born May 16, 1880 and died on July 8, 1973. He was the oldest of twelve in the family of Andrew Jackson and Rebecca Oliff Hogan Green of Taylor County Florida.

I try to send birthday cards to everyone in my family but sometimes it gets difficult to remember to get them in the mail.

This is the card my grandfather received on birthday number seventeen in 1897.

"Dear Fillmore

Many Glad Birthdays is the wish of your teacher.

Eddie L. Morres"

"Your birthdays are milestones and you never know how many more are to be passed. Be sure that each one is on the right road to Eternity."

I tried to locate information about his teacher but haven't been able to find him listed on any of the census or lists of Taylor County teachers. My grandfather kept the card for 76 years.

May 16, 1935 card

He liked to celebrate the day and was unique in that he often sent cards or photos to other people on his birthday. He quoted or made up poems for the occasion.

He sent this card to my Dad in 1935 while he was living in Gainesville, Florida.

The photo is one he had taken on his 58th birthday in 1938. He sent copies of it to his sons who had all left Taylor County by then.

MF Green May 16, 1938

He lived all his life in Taylor County. I didn't come around until he was an old man so I never knew him as anything else.

From records and other folk's memory, I've found he held a wide variety of jobs. He was the County Census Enumerator from around 1905 to 1915 but it was just part time. He did both the Federal and State census. Florida conducted a state census in 1915 but all the individual family records have been lost.

He lived in the Shady Grove area after he got married and bought a 160 acre farm in 1907 but then moved the family to Perry in 1910.

He owned a General Store in Perry for several years but got in an argument with his partner and sold his share. He was listed as a clerk for Faulkner Brother's Store in Perry on his 1918 WWI draft registration card. On the 1920 census he was listed as the County School Attendance Officer. Raising five boys after his wife died in 1915 and making sure they all stayed in school, he was qualified for that job.

He had a Singer Sewing machine business in the late teens and early twenties and travelled around North Florida selling them out of the back of a horse drawn wagon. He would leave his five boys with one their uncles, Gene or Auley Rowell in Shady Grove when he was gone overnight.

On the 1930 census at age 50 he was listed without any occupation but on the 1935 census was listed as a gardener. He had a empty lot next to his house where he grew vegetables for the local grocery store. On his Social Security application in 1939 he said he was working at the City Billiard Parlor. From 1940 on he was shown as retired.

When they first moved to Perry the family lived on Green street. That house burned sometime around 1920 and he moved several times before he bought half a dozen lots and built rental houses on Sparrow and Robin Street.

He bought farm land when he was young that he rented out, so between them and the rental houses he always had money. He rarely spent any of it. He didn't have a car and heated his house with an old wood stove. He cut the wood for it himself even at age 90. He put a small kerosene heater in the living room a couple years before he died and it's amazing he didn't have a fire or get sick from carbon monoxide poisoning. He had a 20 year old wringer washing machine on the back porch.

He loved to quote bible verses, at least those that fit with whatever he thought important. He had strong opinions about politics and the issues of the day. I can still hear him saying: "Woe unto you lawyers! For you've laden men with burdens grievous to bear."

He wasn't shy about letting folks know how he felt. My cousin said Grandpa once told the wife of the Buckeye Paper Mill manager, who was wearing a mini skirt in the grocery store "lady looks to me like you jumped too far through that skirt."

He didn't trust banks, for good reason. In 1930 when the depression hit and banks started going bust the manager of the bank in Perry tipped him off that they were going to close the next day. My dad said Grandpa found him at Taylor County High School and had him withdraw his college savings. Doing so meant Daddy was able to start college at the University of Florida in the fall. Grandpa took out all his money that day too and wasn't quick to put it back in.

In the 1960s he and a friend of my Grandpa Fulford's, Albert "Gator" Mora had a running feud about which one of them owed the other money. They both claimed the other one had their money buried in coffee cans in the yard. I was the conduit of several of their extended conversations, each one telling me to be sure to tell the other that they wanted their money and they were going to come dig up the cans. It wouldn't surprise me to hear someone finds a couple of those cans in Grandpa's yard one day. If so I bet they find a birthday card in them too.

In Death Not Divided

2013-05-09T04:00:00.000-05:00

I've written several times about Capt. William Hawkins Fulford. He settled the area that is now called North Miami Beach, Florida. It was originally called Fulford. He is a 2nd cousin, several times removed.

New York Herald Tuesday, July 5, 1870

The City of North Miami Beach has been doing research on him for a while to document his life since he was their founder. The President of their historical society sent me an email recently which prompted me to do some more research on him.

In the process I came across this death notice in the New York Herald dated July 5, 1870. It reports on the death and burial of two of his children. I didn't know of them because they were born and died between 1860 and 1870. The census which was done every 10 years is one of the few ways to document children in a family from that era.

Birdie and Bennie died on the same day, July 3, 1870, I assume from disease. I found a Columbia University web page that listed all the epidemics in New York during the 1800s but there wasn't any shown for 1870.

The newspaper says they were buried in Greenwich, Connecticut. It took a while to figure out which cemetery. Their mother Mary Lent Fulford's family was from Greenwich and her grandparents, John and Mary Sackett were buried in the Second Congregational Church Cemetery in Greenwich. There are many other of her family members buried there. The funeral was held in her mother Abigail Sackett Lent's house in New York. I am pretty sure if they took the children to Greenwich they would have buried them in the Sackett family plot at the Second Congregational Church.

I sincerely believe, yes, very much so

2013-05-05T04:00:00.000-05:00

Today is my grandmother Ila Rowell Green's birthday. She would have been one hundred, twenty-six years old.

Ila Rowell abt age 15

She shares the birthday with both her father and my wife & shares her name with my sister.

Unfortunately she didn't make it anywhere near the century mark. In fact she was only twenty eight years old when she died on August 24, 1915.

She was the oldest child in the family of Seth David and Martha Williams Rowell who lived in the Shady Grove area of Taylor County Florida. Their youngest, another daughter, Mary Emma Rowell Grantham died at the same age. I wrote about that sad coincidence in another story.

Ila was seventeen when she married on January 8, 1905. Her first child, Alton was born a year and four days later.

She had six children and five of them, all boys survived her. My father was the fourth son and only three years old when his mother died. The youngest, Floyd was only eleven months old.

MF and Ila Green family abt 1911

She had one daughter which I didn't know of until I saw a reference on the 1910 census. It said she had three children but only two were living. Doing some checking I determined she had a daughter that had died soon after birth. The daughter wasn't listed in the family bible so I don't know if she had a name.

This family photo from about 1911 shows her and my grandfather, Millard Fillmore Green with sons Alton, Bryant and Lester. Bryant and Lester got stuck in the dresses. It's the only photo I have of her as an adult. Many in the Rowell family have red hair but her's looks dark.

She died of heart failure, or at least that is the story that has been passed down and was reported in her death notice. Her father Seth died young also, at age 46 and with her sister's death at age 28 maybe there was a heart problem running in the family. Her brother Auley was only 45 when he died in 1935. None of her children had any inherited health problems so I guess they were lucky at that.

This faded newspaper clipping about her death was in my Grandfather's papers when he died in 1973. It talks of her being in better health so it must have been known that she had been sick for a while. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Perry, Florida.

Her concrete grave marker had worn out and the name was no longer legible after almost 60 years so my grandfather bought a new marble one about a year before he died.

June 29, 1930

I came across this letter written on June 29, 1930 by my uncle William Bryant Green. He was in the Navy at the time and wrote it to his aunt Eva Green.

Eva was living in Manatee County Florida, teaching at the one room school in Cortez, Florida. It is six pages long and talks about his life in the Navy, troubles that two of his brothers were having and later his doubts about God.

Growing up in a house with five boys and no mother was not easy and his father was strict. I am sure they were struggling to make a living in Perry, Florida two years into the Great Depression.

This small section of the letter is reflecting on the loss he still felt because his mother died so young. He was six years old when his mother died and fifteen years later writes:

"I often wonder if things would have been different if mother would have lived. I sincerely believe, yes, very much so."

Looking for Negatives

2013-05-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

Urchie Chadwick Ellis (1866-1910) was my 1st cousin, several times removed. His father David was the brother of my great great grandmother Mary Ellis Fulford.

U.C. Ellis House Wilmington, NC

On his death certificate his occupation was listed as photographer and it showed his home address at 116 Church Street in Wilmington, North Carolina. I decided to google the address and found that his home had been preserved and listed as a historic structure by the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

The plaque on his house reads:

"Queen Anne style cottage built for Urchie Chadwick Ellis (1866-1910), photographer; and wife, Eliza Winnifred Tindall (1866-1945)."

U. C. Ellis had a photography business and must have been pretty good at it. I've found his name online credited as the photographer for many photos of people, school groups, local buildings and even street scenes that had been made into post cards.

Finding photos of relatives from the 1800s is very unusual so having a photographer in the family could be a valuable resource. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in his immediate family to know if any family photos have survived.

Having a name like Urchie should make him easy to track down so I'm hoping to find some negatives soon.

Mac Henderson

2013-04-24T04:00:00.000-05:00

I visited the Parrish Cemetery in Manatee County Florida recently and saw markers on the grave of William Malcom Henderson and another one nearby for "Florence and baby Wm. Jr." I decided to do some research to find out who they were. I figured they were relatives because they were near the Lundy family graves.

Mac Henderson (1897-1919) was my grandmother's first cousin. His mother Mary Emma Lundy Henderson was the sister of my great grandmother Ida Lundy Wilson. He has a short but sad story.

Mac married Florence Verna Emlaw on May 16, 1917 in Winter Park, Florida. His step-brother Charles Robert Lundy had married Florence's sister Gladys Emlaw three years earlier.

Fifteen months after their wedding Florence and the baby William Jr. both died during childbirth in Brooksville, Florida. The wife and baby were brought to the cemetery in Parrish, Florida to be buried.

Three months after his wife and son died, on November 1, 1918, Mac committed suicide, shooting himself with a pistol. In this age of gun control frenzy, I'll just repeat what a family member told me about this story. He said that 43 years later Mac's brother Ralph was shot and killed with the same pistol. I haven't been able to confirm this yet.

Mac's grave marker, done many years later has the wrong date. Someone put the day he and Florence were married as the date of his death.

I'm Still Part Redman Deep Inside

2013-04-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

John Richard Dunham was the first cousin (3x removed) of my wife. He was born in 1871 in Lamar County Texas and died in 1955 in Springtown, Oklahoma. His connection was his mother, Annie Pittman Dunham (1833-1917) who was the sister of my wife's great grandmother Nancy Pittman Lawrence. The family has passed down a story of an Indian connection on the Pittman side of the family.

John Dunham's Affidavit

This was one of the interesting tales my wife's aunt Frances Wright Lawrence shared. Frances enjoyed researching family history and one weekend she and my wife drove all over middle Tennessee looking at old cemeteries. Frances told the story that someone had told her, that Nancy Pittman's mother was a Cherokee Indian. Several years ago another Lawrence family researcher shared with me copies of the 1907 Guion Miller application that stated how exactly the family was traced back to the Cherokee tribe in Tennessee.

At the time the paperwork available was barely legible. I recently obtained copies of the entire file which includes several affidavits with more details.

Rejection notice

John Dunham filed the paperwork trying to obtain some of the benefits the government was giving to Native Americans. The Guion Miller application included an affidavit from his mother Annie.

Annie claimed she was enrolled as a Cherokee in 1866 at Tahlequah, Oklahoma which was the Capital of the Cherokee Nation.

According to the Cherokee Nation tribe web page: "The Guion Miller Roll is a list of Eastern Cherokees who applied for money awarded in 1905 because of a 1902 lawsuit in which the Eastern Cherokee tribe sued the United States for funds due them under the treaties of 1835, 1836 and 1845. Claimants were asked to prove they were members of the Eastern Cherokee tribe at the time of the treaties, or descended from members who had not been affiliated with any other tribe. Guion Miller, an agent of the Interior Department, was appointed as a commissioner of the Court of Claims to compile a list of claimants. He made an extensive enrollment of the Cherokees in 1907 and 1908."

John Dunham and wife

My wife did a dna test several years ago to trace her family tree and it showed about 1% of her dna identified as Native American. Maybe not a lot, still more than mine or Elizabeth Warren's, the US Senator from Massachusetts. But it wouldn't give my kids the right claim to preferential treatment on government jobs.

John Dunham's application was denied because he couldn't prove his mother had been enrolled. They didn't have any papers and there was no record of her name on the official list.

There were a lot of people claiming to be Cherokees who weren't at the time and also a lot of Cherokees who didn't have any paperwork to prove who they were.

On John's affidavit someone has written "Slight indication of Indian Blood." above his signature. I don't know, he looks more like a Cowboy than an Indian in this photo.

Annie Pittman Dunham's Affidavit

Although I stole the title of this article from the old song by Paul Revere and the Raiders, it would've been interesting to have done a dna test on John to see what it could prove. Still the papers are a valuable insight into the family history.

300

2013-04-10T04:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I posted article number 300 to this blog. I don't know that I expected it to reach that number.

According to Google statistics there have been 42,198 page viewers. The most popular story, from the number of people who've landed there, is about a cousin's experience testing Gas Masks during WWI.

Colonel William Wyatt

2013-04-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

I wrote a story recently about William Wyatt who lived in both Tallahassee and Manatee County Florida.

At the time I didn't know why he was called Colonel since his military enlistment records showed he was a Captain.

I've since found this newspaper article that says he was elected Colonel of the 7th Regiment, Florida Militia in 1836 but never actually served as such. He was away on business when he was chosen and by the time he got back someone else had been given the job in his place.

September 24, 1836 The Floridian and Advocate

I've also learned he was the great great grandfather of my aunt's lifelong friend Mary Lou who lives in Bradenton.

Jesse Goodwin Saunders

2013-04-05T16:00:00.000-05:00

Jesse Goodwin Saunders is pretty much a mystery. On the 1910 census, my aunt's future father in law, Julian Washington Riddick was a teenager living with him and his wife, listed as their adopted son.

Jesse Saunders Patent

Jesse Saunders was born in Virginia on July 11, 1863 and died in Lake Park, Lowndes County Georgia on August 19, 1927. He married Mamie Saunders in 1886. She was born in Georgia in 1865 and died in Lake Park, Georgia on October 23, 1934.

Jesse and Mamie had a small farm outside Lake Park. He hadn't always been a farmer though as I found a record of him being appointed the Postmaster for Alexanderville in Echols County, Georgia on November 24, 1886.

I'm not sure why or how Julian Riddick came to be living with them. His father, Julian Fraser Riddick had died in 1903 but his mother was still alive and he had a lot of other relatives in Washington County and Panama City, Florida he could have gone to live with. How did he end up in the small Georgia community of Lake Park near where I-75 is today?

Julian's father was born in Virginia so it is possible Saunders was a family friend or relative. I haven't found any connection yet. Julian listed Lake Park, Georgia as his home town on census, marriage records and his military enlistment papers so he must have considered the Saunder's farm as home.

Jesse Saunders Death Certificate

I did find another record for Jesse Saunders which is interesting and maybe will help my cousins out down the road. He filed a patent on May 29, 1906 for an "Apparatus for Distilling Turpentine." It looks like a new and improved still that cooled the turpentine spirits before it could evaporate away or leak out of the wooden barrels.

Jesse and Mamie never had any children of their own so Julian Washington Riddick may have been their only heir.

I don't know if anyone is still using his still or if it ever had any monetary value. If so, then my cousins owe me a finders fee for anything they collect from their adopted grandfather's invention. You don't see a lot of people collecting the sap from Pine trees anymore so maybe the petroleum substitutes took over before Jesse could make any money on his idea.

Crash and Burn

2013-04-01T05:30:00.000-05:00

Today is my Dad's 101st birthday. He was a prolific photographer. The one who recorded almost all the family events. He bought an 8 mm movie camera in 1950 and as a result we have movies of grandparents and great grandparents and many of our birthdays, holidays and vacations up until about 1970.

Capt. B.C. Green and 30th Bomber Group Crew

Before the movies he took photographs. During his military career, that spanned parts of four decades, he took photos or had them taken of himself, so that you can really follow along with what he was doing in pictures.

Toward the later part of WWII he was in the US Army Air Force 30th Bombardment Group, Seventh Air Forces stationed in the Pacific. They were hopping from one island to another, setting up airbases closer and closer to Japan.

During that time he was no longer flying but was the Ordnance officer in charge of the bombs and munitions for a Squadron of B-24 heavy bombers. This photo was taken on some unknown Pacific island with his crew. That is him in the middle of the 2nd row with the hat.

He took many photos of wrecked planes, both American and Japanese during the war. The Japanese, leftover from when they took the islands back or shot down during raids and the American those that crashed on landing or were blown up during Japanese air raids.

B-24 Bolivar in the Pacific with 30th Bomber Group

I recently read the book Unbroken about an Olympic runner who was a B-24 copilot. His plane crashed in the ocean and he was held as a POW by the Japanese for several years. My son in law gave me the book for Christmas. It had grim statistics of how many B-24s crashed during the war, having nothing to do with combat. The B-24 had a larger payload and bigger fuel tanks than the more well known B-17 so it could go farther, faster and drop more bombs.

It also had the reputation of being difficult to keep in the air. Although the military called it "The Liberator" the men who flew it gave it the name the "Flying Coffin" and "Flying Boxcar."

One of the few photos of a airplane that wasn't wrecked in Dad's album was this one with the name Bolivar painted on the side. I assume the men in the photo were part of his crew. I decided to google the name of the plane and that told me why he had taken and kept this picture.

The B-24 Bolivar, Serial number 42-72994 was part of the 30th Bomber Group. I don't know if it was in his squadron when the picture was taken but they must have felt some ownership by taking the photo. Dad was in all five of the squadrons of the 30th Bomber Group at some time during the war so I'm sure the plane was assigned to his crew.

Bolivar crashes in Los Angeles

The Bolivar was so famous it was sent home in 1944 to help raise money on a War Bond Tour. It had been flown on 81 combat missions with three different flight crews. As such it was a very unusual veteran of the Pacific, unheard of among B-24s. The record for a B-24 during WWII was 114 combat missions for a plane in Europe but I suspect flying over the Pacific ocean upped the level of difficulty. As far as I can tell The Bolivar had the record for combat missions in the Pacific.

Someone in Washington D.C. thought it would boost bond sales for folks to be able to see and touch an aluminum clad hero so they sent The Bolivar home.

Flying in Southern California turned out to be more difficult than the Pacific. The Bolivar crash landed on November 10, 1944 at Vultee Field in Los Angeles and was trucked to a scrap yard. I figure Dad heard the story of what happened to the plane, although he was still on a Pacific island at the time and kept the photo all those years to remember how his guys helped keep it flying.

Time to order that DNA test

2013-03-28T13:35:00.001-05:00

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William Irwin

2013-03-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

William Irwin was my wife's great great grandfather. He died on February 28, 1865 in Ellis County, Texas.

His grave marker in the Waxahachie City Cemetery gives his age as 85 years 7 months, so from it you can figure he was born in July of 1779.

William Irwin's granddaughter Louisa married Allan Bethel Hall in 1864 in Smith County Tennessee and her daughter Lassie married Eli Lewis Lawrence twenty years later.

William Irwin was born in Virginia but moved to White County Tennessee by 1812. He is shown on a militia list for Captain Townsend's Company that year and was in White County up until after the 1840 census.

By then his wife had died in Tennessee and he moved to Texas with his younger daughter Vetura and her husband Jonathan Erwin Prince. Vetura's family moved from Tennessee to Arkansas in 1847 and then to Dallas County Texas the next year. They eventually settled on a farm outside Waxahachie, Texas south of Dallas.

He is listed on the 1850 census with Vetura's family in Ellis County Texas. By 1860 he was 81 years old apparently living on his own. The James Petty Apperson family was shown in the household on the census but that may be a recording error and they may have been next door. William Irwin was listed as the owner of land valued at $3.500 and personal property at $3,500 on that census so he had his own place. He died five years later and was buried in the Waxahachie Cemetery.

This photo of him late in life was sent to me by another one of his granddaughters who lives in Texas.

Travel for a Cure

2013-03-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

William Wyatt (1791 - 1850) was one of the earliest settlers in both Tallahassee, Florida and what is now Manatee County, Florida.

His grandson William Dudley Wyatt married Nancy Elizabeth Rawls, my grandmother's first cousin. I'd seen his name before in information a family member shared with me but didn't think much of it until many years later.

He has an unusual story. He was born in Maryland but moved to Florida soon after the Spanish left. He was listed on the first Florida census which was done in 1825.

1826 Florida Election Returns

Wyatt originally owned a small tavern in Tallahassee and in 1824 built The Planters Hotel on the northeast corner of Pensacola and Adams streets.

He chose a good spot since the Capitol building was built across the street from the hotel in 1828. His hotel became popular with politicians and the locals. Prince Murat held his going away party there in 1830.

It was the first brick building in town and one of the few structures that survived the fire of 1843.

In 1966 during excavation for the "new" Capitol building in Tallahassee the crews uncovered the remains of the original hotel. They found 30 chamber pots, "two privies, a deep well, old coins and odds and ends."

In 1826 Wyatt was elected a member of the Territorial Legislature. This election return from St. Marks which in now in Wakulla County shows him ahead by one vote. He had six votes and his opponent William McComb had only five.

Letter to Governor Duval

When the Capitol building was being planned he made a proposal to the State to construct it. Since he had built the only brick structure in town and owned a brick making business, you would think he'd get the job. Nope, they choose someone else and he filed a complaint over the decision because his bid was $9,000 less.

The Florida Archives had this letter he wrote to Governor William Duval on April 22, 1828.

Florida had only been part of the US for 6 years but political deals had already made their way south.

Floridian and Journal May 11, 1850

In 1835 he commanded a company in the Florida Indian Wars. He was called Colonel in these newspaper articles from May 1850 but the enlistment and service records showed him as a Captain in the 3rd Regiment of Florida Volunteers.

My great grandfather William Rowell was a Captain in the Florida Mounted Militia during this same time. The two men were about the same age and moved to Florida about the same time.

Floridian and Journal May 18, 1850

In the late 1840s Wyatt moved to what is now Manatee County, Florida and built a sugar cane Plantation.

Unfortunately he didn't live long after that. The articles say he went to New Orleans, LA for medical treatment and died on the way back, aboard the Schooner William R. Pettes.

The 1850 census for Hillsborough County Florida listed him on the Mortality Index, dying as a result of Diabetes. These indexes were done every 10 years along with the census and only listed those who died within one year of the census. It is unusual to actually find someone you are researching on them.

The death notice says the boat stopped at St. Marks and Wyatt's body was taken to Tallahassee. He was buried in the Old City Cemetery in Tallahassee but there is no marker there.

To travel by boat from Manatee County to New Orleans is over 500 nautical miles. I've been in the Gulf of Mexico, out of sight of land, on fishing trips and it's not a good feeling, especially when a summer storm comes up. On a sailboat in 1850 you can figure it was a long trip.

I found a reference to another distant relative who went from Virginia to New Orleans about the same time for medical treatment and he died while there.

I'd like to find out what kind of medical facility or physician NOLA had back then that would entice people to travel such a distance for a cure.

Eleven Dollars a Month

2013-03-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

Today when someone is discharged from military service they receive a DD 214. You know the name of the form if you were in the service or like me involved in making funeral arrangements for someone who was.

When my Dad died in 2001 I had to send a copy of his DD214 from 1960 to the office at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida to arrange for the Military Honor Guard at his funeral. Thankfully he left a copy with his papers in the safety deposit box, I suppose knowing it would be needed.

Back in 1862 the Confederate Army just used a payment ledger to handle discharges. This is the form that was filled out on September 21, 1862 when my great great grandfather Joseph Ruel Rowell was discharged from the 2nd Regiment, Florida Infantry Battalion. He enlisted on July 13, 1861 in Jacksonville, Florida. When he was discharged in 1862 it was because he was over 35 years of age, considered too old at that time for the military.

The Southern Army soon discovered they needed everyone, not just the young so they started taking the old men. Joseph Rowell only stayed home a few months. He enlisted again on March 5, 1863 in the 11th Regiment, Florida Infantry and served until the end of the war. He was at Appomattox Court House when General Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865.

This discharge statement showed that as a Private in the Confederate Army he was paid eleven dollars a month, with a separate allotment for clothing and rations.

He went back home to Shady Grove in Taylor County Florida after the war. My great grandfather Seth had been born there in 1858. Joseph Rowell died in 1896 and was buried in the Fellowship Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in Madison County Florida.

Another Birthday

2013-03-08T04:00:00.000-06:00

I decided to recognize all my grandparents this year. Both sets had birthdays in the same month. My mother's parents were both born in March and my father's parents were both born in May.

Today is my Grandpa Fulford's birthday. He would have been One Hundred and Ten.

Walton "Tink" Fulford was born March 8, 1903 in Cortez, Florida to William Thomas and Sallie Adams Fulford.

Tink Fulford 1952

He was a commercial fisherman from the time he was old enough to climb on the boat until he died. He had his own boat and crew before he could drive.

Those who were in his generation or the next say he was always fishing or thinking about fishing. For me and my cousins that was OK because he took us with him. It was always an adventure.

Albert "Junie" Mora, now in his eighties started fishing with Tink when he was a teenager. He said everyone in the area wanted to be on Tink's crew because they knew he was going to catch more fish and make the crew more money. There was a waiting list. They had to "sign the book" and wait until someone else got sick, quit or got fired.

They had to wait out all the family members too. Tink had a big one and many of them fished with him.

He didn't have to worry about the grand kids taking his spot though. It was normal for younger crew members to only get a half share. If you were family you got half that. So on payday I was paid a half of a half share. My cousin who works as an engineer designing cars in Japan would probably say that is the same as a quarter share. The complex nature of higher math used by commercial fishermen isn't taught in school. Most of them in that generation didn't graduate from high school and many like my grandfather dropped out before the sixth grade. They understood the math necessary to compute when the tide was coming out, how deep and fast the water was moving, how bright the moon would be and how much net and where it should be put it in order to catch a boat load of fish.

Junie said Tink would fish from 12 o'clock midnight on Sunday till noon on Saturday. He always took Sunday off and the crew liked that because they knew they would be off at noon on Saturday until Sunday at midnight. He said many Saturdays Tink would take the boat out by himself or with the kids and grand kids saying it was a boat ride but he was really looking for fish. That way he would know where to take the crew the next night.

Junie told a funny story about a time in the 1950s when the market for selling fish was slow and Ralph "Pig" Fulford, Tink's son who ran the fish house told his Daddy that he was cut off, they wouldn't buy any fish from him until it got better.

Tink owned the business and was mad that his son would cut him off. Tink called Junie and told him to get the crew together and go out after dark and gave specific instructions on where to fish. He said "be sure you don't come down here until after dark because if Pig sees you he'll cut you off." Junie took the crew out and they caught 45,000 lbs of mullet. When they unloaded them on the dock the next morning, Pig was mad and said "you can't bring fish in, I cut you off." Tink was there and told Pig he was cut off but Junie hadn't been cut off. He said Pig started calling buyers and sold the fish before noon. Tink said he knew Pig could sell them. He had never been cut off in his life and wasn't going to start then.

Tink Fulford mending net 1954

My mother's cousin Thomas "Blue" Fulford says Tink was more of a father to him rather than an uncle since his father died when he was three. He started fishing with Tink when he was ten years old.

Blue tells how in the 1940-50s when they were running big Stop Netting crews there was fierce competition between them. Tink always wanted to catch the most fish. Sometimes he would "hog" the other crews by tricking them out of a spot if he knew there were a lot of fish there.

It was understood that if a Captain had a boat anchored in an area the other crews had to stay away. On Saturday all the crews would pull the cotton nets out of the boats and let them dry on the spreads over the weekend to keep them from rotting. If you saw a crew pulling out their net you knew they were done for the week. Tink would have his crew pull out the nets but tell them to stay around the dock. They would wait for the other crews to pull out their nets and leave and then he would pull his nets back on the boats. They would go out and anchor one of the boats on the spot Tink wanted so they would have it later when they were ready to fish.

This picture from 1954 was taken by a Tampa newspaper photographer but it wasn't necessarily staged. Mending net is what he did on days if he wasn't fishing. He gave me his old white hat like the one he is wearing in this photo the summer before he died. It was his dress hat, not for fishing.

Bradenton Herald
September 24, 1965

"Tink" Fulford, Pioneer's Son, Dies At 62

Walton "Tink" Fulford, 62, of Cortez died Wednesday, Sept 22,1965 at Memorial Hospital. Mr. Fulford was born and lived all his life in Cortez and was the son of the late Captain William T. "Billy" Fulford who was a pioneer settler in Cortez.

Tink and Mark 1959

Captain Fulford came to Perico Island in the 1880s from the eastern coast of North Carolina, near Moorehead City. He met and married Miss Sallie Adams of Moorehead, N. C. in Florida and their first daughter, Mrs. Dora Adams, now 75, was born on Perico Island. With his brothers, sisters and family Captain Fulford moved to Cortez in the early 1890s, which was then named Hunter's Point, later changed to Cortez.

Mr. Walton Fulford owned and operated one of the largest fishing fleets on the west coast of Florida and shipped fish all over the eastern part of the country. In 1940 he opened the Fulford Fish Company in Cortez. He was a member of the Cortez Church of Christ.

Survivors include his widow, Mrs. Edith Wilson Fulford; four daughters, Mrs. Mary Green of Tallahassee, Mrs. Belinda Porterfield of Montgomery, Ala., Mrs. Irene Taylor of St. Petersburg, Mrs. Anna Dean Riddick of Hollywood, Fla.; three sons, Ralph M., Wayne W. and Gary D. Fulford all of Cortez; four sisters, Mrs. Dora Adams, Mrs. Grace Guthrie, Mrs. Sallie Moore, all of Cortez, Mrs. Bessie Henning of St. Petersburg and 13 grandchildren.

Funeral services will be Saturday at 10 A.M. at Griffith - Cline Funeral Home with Olin Hastings, of Oneco Church of Christ and Charles Geer, of Cortez Church of Christ, officiating. Burial will be in Skyway Memorial Gardens. Pallbearers will be J. O. Guthrie Jr., Thomas Fulford, Woodrow Green, O. K. Drymond, Paul Taylor and Manley Bell.

Happy Birthday Grandma

2013-03-03T04:00:00.000-06:00

Today is my Grandma's birthday. She would have been one hundred and seven. She is the only grandmother I knew so if someone says Grandma, she is who I think of. She had a stroke before she died, so the last few years she depended on others more than I am sure she would have wanted.

Edith Mae Wilson was born on March 3, 1906 near Oneco, Florida to Benjamin Franklin and Ida Lundy Wilson.

Edith abt age 5

This photo was taken on the front porch of her parent's home. It is an enlargement of a family group photo. All the family is dressed up for the picture but as you can see she isn't wearing shoes. It looks like she is holding a small purse in her lap.

Having a purse in her lap would fit her. She was always ready to go somewhere. She took vacations several times driving from Florida to North Carolina or Virginia with a car full of children and grandchildren. Once I was old enough to drive with her and sit up front I decided I would rather ride the bus!

She married Walton "Tink" Fulford on June 4, 1924 and my mother was born about 13 months later. She had seven children over 24 years, the last one being born almost two years after her first grandchild.

Her home, built in 1926 was on the water of Sarasota Bay in Cortez, Florida. It was always a showcase for native palm trees, tropical plants and roses. Tink grew palm trees to sell and planted them all over the yard. Sometimes he would sell one from the yard but she made sure the hole quickly was filled with another one. She was responsible for the plants and roses.

She died in 1992 on the same day Hurricane Andrew arrived on the Florida coast. At her funeral my brother made the comment that you would expect Tink Fulford to come back with the biggest, baddest wind he could find to pick up Edith.

Grandma Fulford 1952

The Tampa Tribune

Friday, August 28, 1992

EDITH MAE FULFORD, 86, of Cortez died Sunday at Suncoast Manor in Bradenton. She was a lifelong resident of Manatee County. She was a homemaker, a member of Cortez Church of Christ and worked as a volunteer to raise money for the Cortez Volunteer Fire Department for 31 years. She is survived by three sons, Gary D. of Bradenton, and Ralph M. and Wayne W., both of Cortez; four daughters, Mary Fulford Green of Bradenton, Anna Dean Riddick of Sarasota, Belinda Porterfield of Montgomery, Ala ., and Irene Taylor of St. Petersburg; a brother, Walter H. Wilson of Lecanto; 22 grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren. Brown & Sons Funeral Home Chapel, Bradenton.

Armed and Dangerous

2013-02-27T06:00:00.000-06:00

W.B. Green on the USS Texas abt 1927

I was looking at some old photos my grandfather had kept and found this one of my uncle William Bryant Green. He was born in 1908 and died on February 1, 1943 aboard a Navy plane that crashed in Arizona.

The more I looked at this picture the more I thought it looked kind of strange. There were a couple like it and the caption says "Old Glory on Stern of the USS Texas." Bryant graduated in 1926 from Taylor County High School and enlisted in the Navy so I assume this was taken a year or so later.

I knew he served on the USS Texas but was wondering why they would have a gun like that on the ship?

The USS Texas was the most modern Battleship in the US Navy when it was launched in 1914, one of the group of ships originally proposed by Teddy Roosevelt when he was President.

Ten years later it would still have been considered state of the art with the biggest guns around, 14 inches wide that could shoot a 1,400 pound shell over 13 miles. In fact it was officially the Flagship of the United State Fleet when Bryant was aboard.

So why did they have this cannon that looks like it came from the Civil War on deck?

I contacted someone who runs the USS Texas historical web page and asked him. The ship was taken out of service in 1948 and is now a museum on the Texas Gulf Coast near Houston. At first he couldn't ID the gun and said it would not serve any function aboard a ship like the Texas but agreed the photo was of the ship.

He sent me a link to an inventory of all the armament used aboard the Texas over it's 34 year history.

In a subsequent email he said the cannon looked like a 3 inch 25 caliber field gun. It was called a landing gun, something Marines could use if they were doing an invasion. Sure enough there on the inventory was one 25 caliber Mark IV Landing Gun assigned to the ship in November 1919. So the Marines, if they took it with them would need to be pretty good shots because they only had one of them.

They didn't have to invade any foreign fields while Bryant was aboard. He transferred to another ship in the Pacific during WWII when the USS Texas was part of the invasion of North Africa in 1942 (with Walter Cronkite aboard the Texas and reporting) and then Normandy beach on D Day.

Roadside Attraction

2013-02-19T20:00:00.000-06:00

A couple years after I got out of college I had moved back to Tallahassee, Florida and got a job that required me to travel to Pensacola, Florida about once a month. On one of those trips I stopped at the T.T. Wentworth Museum in Pensacola. At the time I didn't know there was any family connection.

I've since learned that T.T. Wentworth's grandfather was James Hamilton Wentworth who lived in Taylor County Florida and married my gg aunt Elizabeth Green in 1883.

TT Wentworth Museum in the 1970s

Theodore Thomas Wentworth Jr. was born in 1898 and died in 1989. I don't know if he was there the day I visited. He could have been since he kept shop up until he died.

Tom's father started the roadside attraction in 1907 on Santa Rosa Island but the son was the one that filled it up with things he had acquired. It was a typical Florida tourist stop.

TT Wentworth

Wentworth found many civil war artifacts and dinosaur bones in the area himself and displayed them with what the museum web page describes as a collection of "shrunken heads, moldy birthday cake, petrified cats, and Robert Wadlow's left shoe." Yes, everything a Florida tourist would want to see on a rainy day when they couldn't go to the beach.

Robert Wadlow's right shoe located at Snyder Shoes

If you haven't been there you might not know that Wadlow (1918-1940) at 8 feet 11 and a half inches was the tallest man ever recorded. So having his size 37 1/2 left shoe was a big deal. His right shoe is on display at a shoe store in Manistee, Michigan.

Before he died Wentworth convinced the State of Florida to accept his collection upon his death and move it to the old Pensacola City Hall where they were creating a museum. Since his collection was originally the main attraction it is called The T.T. Wentworth, Jr. Florida State Museum.

One of his great nieces who I got to know doing family research, Karen Wentworth Penton, along with a couple of her relatives just wrote a book "T. T. Wentworth Jr. Museum 55th Anniversary."

For now you can only buy it in Pensacola but hopefully it will be available online soon.

Vashti

2013-02-13T04:00:00.000-06:00

My great great grandmother Vashti had an unusual name and unusual life. Vashti the First was a Persian Queen in the Book of Esther. Some associate the name with a strong willed and independent woman. I don't know if that description fit my grandmother or not but I have a couple of them around today.

Vashti Ann Graham was born in Montgomery County, Alabama in 1836. When she was 21 years old she married a man old enough to be her father.

Moses Wilson was 44 and needed a wife pretty bad since his first wife died after bearing 12 children, 6 of whom were still in the house. Vashti Graham's parents Mercer and Mary Graham had known Moses Wilson for a long time, moving from North Carolina and later to Florida together in a migration for better land. Mercer Graham was a veteran of the War of 1812 and he and the Wilson clan moved to Alabama when it was opened up to homesteads and then to Florida after the Civil War.

Vashti bore Moses 13 more children and number 10 was my great grandfather Benjamin Franklin Wilson. He was born on March 22, 1875 near Fort Dade, Florida and died in Oneco, Florida on September 15, 1933.

Moses Wilson died on April 17, 1896 in Pasco County, Florida at age 83, leaving Vashti with a house full of children. She also had a large extended family in the area. That happens when you have over two dozen kids, the oldest an AARP member himself by that time.

The younger children moved to Manatee County around the turn of the century and settled near Oneco and Myakka, Florida. Several of them died within a few years of Moses.

For years I've wondered what happened to Vashti after Moses died in 1897. I could never locate any trace of her. I found these records after a cousin told me about a cemetery listing in Gadsden County, Florida for a Vasters Wilson. Her name had been spelled all kind of ways on census and other records so I decided to contact the hospital to see if it could be her.

They told me the old patient records from that period, that had not been destroyed, were sent to the Florida Archives 50 plus years ago. Several weeks after contacting the Archives in Tallahassee I received a file that included these commitment records. The records confirm the Vasters Wilson they have listed in the State Hospital Cemetery, dying in February 1904 was Vashti Ann Graham Wilson.

Florida State Hospital Cemetery

She was apparently living with one of her children when the 1900 census was taken although I have not found her on it yet. By 1903 her youngest son, James Wilson and James Mack Childers, son in law and husband of daughter Mary Salenca Wilson filed these papers to have her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane in Chattahoochee, Florida.

At age 67 Vashti was depressed and unable to cope with the loss of her husband and children. The Court file says she had been this way for 2 years and the family could no longer take care of her. Her son James moved to Gadsden County Florida around 1905 or at least that is what family members remember. I am still looking for him. I am not sure if Vashti's grave has a marker. Next time I'm in the area I'll check on it.

My grandmother died in 1992 and I never asked her about her grandmother so don't know if she knew this story or not. I talked to her younger brother Walt Wilson several times and he didn't know what had happened to either Moses or Vashti after his father moved to Manatee County.

Dempsey's Rock

2013-02-07T09:00:00.000-06:00

Dempsey Burgess was the brother of my ggg grandfather William Burgess. He was born in 1751 and died in 1800 in what is now Camden County, North Carolina. Their grandfather William Burgess started the first Baptist Church in North Carolina in 1727. I wrote about the Shiloh Church in an earlier post.

Dempsey Burgess was a member of the North Carolina Provisional Congress before the Revolutionary War and when the war started was appointed Lieutenant Colonel in the North Carolina Militia. After the war he was elected to the 4th United States Congress in 1795 and served four years. When he died on January 11, 1800 he was buried in the small cemetery next to Shiloh Baptist Church, about 13 miles southeast of Elizabeth City, NC.

That is how I first came across him, looking at the cemetery records. I was trying to find the graves of his father and grandfather. The State put a historical marker on North Carolina Hwy 34 in Camden County that says his grave was in the church cemetery 7 miles away. Unfortunately there was no record of a marker for him or the other family members when a cemetery census was done in recent years.

The folks at Shiloh Church are proud of their history as the first Baptist Church and since the Burgess family started it and gave the land for the church they know the family names. They said others had asked about Dempsey's grave and it could never be located. There are two areas of graves, one across the street from the other and they assumed his was in the section that has a lot of unmarked graves. They told me there was no marker for him or the other Burgess family members.

I contacted the VA about obtaining a marker for them and was told they would do one for Dempsey but not his father or grandfather. They both had served in the military but since their service was prior to the Revolutionary War and not during or after they wouldn't qualify for a VA marker.

I've since found a brochure the church published in the 1970s and in it they had this photo of a rough stone marker for Dempsey Burgess. It wasn't much, just his name and date of death. The folks at the church don't know what happened to it but apparently it's no longer around. Hopefully I can visit the area one day and check for myself.

Super Bowl Week

2013-02-02T06:00:00.000-06:00

1928 Taylor County High School Bulldogs

This being Super Bowl week I decided to write about football. This photo was taken in 1928 when my Dad was playing for the Taylor County High School Bulldogs. That's him on the far right, bottom row.

I shared this picture before along with information on the team holding a 50th anniversary party in 1978 and have the names of all those in the photo in that story.

William Bryant Green

The photo of my Uncle William Bryant Green sitting on the goal posts was taken about 1923. Prime Time had nothing on him!

Bryant was born in 1908 and died on February 1, 1943 when the Navy plane he was on crashed trying to land at an Army base in Tuscon, Arizona.

This football field was one the five brothers created in an empty lot next to their house on Green Street in Perry, Florida.

Well neither my Dad or Uncle played football after they graduated from high school but I can add a Super Bowl to this story, although not family related.

Fred Biletnikoff played at FSU, graduating in 1965 as the school's first consensus All American. I was in elementary school at the time but was lucky enough to live near the football field and allowed to go to the practices almost every day after school. I am sure my effort to retrieve wayward footballs, set out paper cups of water and sliced oranges and collect discarded pads at the end of the day contributed to his great season. I've saved this newspaper clipping and autograph for 48 years.

He was drafted by the Oakland Raiders and went on to a Hall of Fame career in the NFL, including being chosen as the MVP of the 1977 Super Bowl!

What took you so long?

2013-01-31T02:00:00.000-06:00

This is the new grave marker for my great uncle Stephen Fulford that arrived this week. He died 100 years ago today and was buried in the Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern, North Carolina. He outlived his two wives and had moved from his father's home and relatives on the Straits in Carteret County 50 years before, so his grave was never marked.

It will be installed Saturday with an assist from some good folks in the area.

Life of Crime

2013-01-26T18:00:00.000-06:00

Cornelius Seay Black (1842-1905) was the son of Charity Wilson and Abraham Black. He was born and died in Pike County Alabama. We drive thru Troy, Alabama on our way to Florida and it's usually a gas stop. I never knew anything about Cornelius Black until a cousin asked me to research him. His father was a preacher for the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pike County but his son must have slept during most of the sermons. The only records I've found on him are not good. A parole record when he was let out of prison early for murder and a newspaper account of his death, at the hands of his son.

Alabama Parole Record

His mother, Charity Wilson, was the daughter of Godwin Wilson and apparently the sister of my great great grandfather Moses Wilson. I am sure they were related but I'm not ready to say she was his sister. She could have been a first cousin. The census, land and other records along with recent dna testing prove a family connection, I just don't know in which generation.

On November 16, 1894 Cornelius Black was sent to prison for murder. I haven't found records about the crime yet but guess it wasn't thought of as too terrible because his sentence was only 20 years and he only served 3 1/2 years before being pardoned.

Montgomery Advertiser December 23, 1905 Page 10

On the 1900 census his wife Frances listed herself as a widow even though he was living in the same community with another woman. He had married the mother of his son's wife, Julia Pool. That didn't work out too good for him because five years later there was this newspaper article in the Montgomery, Alabama "Advertiser."

It tells of his son shooting him dead during a fight over custody of the son's children. The description of Cornelius says he "has a very unsavory reputation in the county, having been in all kinds of trouble at various times." I don't know if that went on his tombstone, I haven't found one for him yet. I would hope there were other redeeming qualities, but so far they have been elusive.

Checking Out the Competition

2013-01-22T07:00:00.000-06:00

My great grandfather William August Lundy was pretty industrious. He farmed, owned orange groves, had a commercial boat landing on the Manatee River near Bradenton, Florida and was a real estate developer, selling lots for farms and houses. I recently found he also did ok investing in Texas oil land.

Tampa Tribune August 12, 1902, page 8

But his most interesting business was the warm spring adjacent to the Manatee River he called the lost Fountain of Youth and marketed as Ponce de Leon Mineral Springs.

He may have been even better at business than we thought. I found this newspaper article from 1902, just five months before he died that showed he wasn't averse to checking out the competition.
The article talks about the trip he, his oldest son and their wives made to see the Glenn Springs Resort in South Carolina. At the time it was a 75 year old resort and hotel built around a sulphur spring.

It had been marketed successfully as a cure for all kinds of ailments and even wounded troops from the Mexican War had been sent there to recover.

They also sold bottled water, just as William Lundy was doing with his spring in Florida.

According to an article written by the University of South Carolina Digital Newspaper Program, "Glenn Springs Water claimed to cure an impressive list of maladies, such as "general debility, torpor of the liver, dyspepsia, liver complaints, female complaints, malarial diseases, jaundice, hemorrhoids, and rheumatism."

I don't know if William Lundy was actually checking out the resort to see if he could copy some of their success back home or if he just needed a vacation.

Whatever his motive he didn't have time to make any changes to his Fountain of Youth venture. He died soon after getting back home and the land was sold to settle his estate.