With national politics heating up, your ol' columnist's thoughts turned to politics on the home front�but from the earliest years of our county's settlement. He rifled through his research notes on Baker County's political ancestry, both as a political unit and its officers, and here is some history on the subject.

Our county was first situated in St. Johns, one of the two original counties (Escambia was the other) when Florida was organized as a US territory. This area was soon after included for a brief time in the newly created Duval County.

The first pioneers into the present Baker County settled into the northernmost part of Alachua County, created in 1828. They were cut out into Columbia County in 1832.

While most of the early settlers were more interested in pulling subsistence from the sandy soil, others felt it incumbent to participate in governmental affairs.

Locals on the Columbia County Board of Commissioners in 1845 were Moses Barber and Daniel Platt. Barber remained on the Board through 1847. John Harvey joined the County Commission on November 18th, 1848, for a term of two years.

The Columbia County Justice of the Peace office was established in or before 1845 and was a critical and necessary judicial force in the great expanse of the original Columbia County. In the eastern section that is now Baker County, Moses Barber, Nathan M. Pease, and John Sweat were elected in 1845.

The JP�s elected for the eastern section in 1847 were Joseph M. Crews and Methodist minister William Z. Herndon. Elected in 1848 were John Harvey, Jr., and John D. Williams. The 1849 JP�s of the area were Joseph M. Crews, John Harvey, and William Z. Herndon.

1851 JP�s for the present Baker County were John Harvey, Asa Roberts, and William Williams. Those elected in 1853 from the eastern half of Columbia County were James M. Burnside (Burnsed), Joseph M. Crews, John Harvey, James M. Sweat, and William Williams.

William N. Thomas was elected JP in 1854. Tarlton Johns, Alfred Sweat, and James Sweat served in 1856. The last to be chosen in 1857 before New River (a parent of Baker County) was separated from Columbia were Joseph Crews and Darling C. Prescott.

In 1858, the Florida Assembly created New River County, later to be divided into Baker and New River. Records for the north end of New River are scant for the period it was included in the short-lived New River County.

�Passed the House of Representatives January 25th, 1861. Passed the Senate February 2nd, 1861. Approved by the Governor February 8th, 1861�, and the General Assembly of the state created Baker County on February 8th, 1861 (when will our elected officials proclaim an annual holiday commemorating that momentous event?).

State records further inform"�it shall be the duty of the Judge of Probate of New River county, within twenty days after the passage of this act, to issue notices of an election for a Judge of Probate, Clerk, Sheriff, Tax Collector and four Commissioners for said county of Baker, (who shall hold their offices for the residue of the term for which other similar officers in the State were elected, and until their successors are elected and qualified,) which election shall be held not more than thirty nor less than twenty days after the date of said notices."

Named for the Hon. James McNair Baker, circuit court judge and later Confederate statesman, the county became the 39th to be created in Florida. In the interim between the state�s secession 11 January, 1861, from the Union and joining it self to the Confederacy, Florida styled it self �The Sovereign Nation of Florida�, and thus Baker County has the distinction of being created by a �nation� rather than a state.

Since then, politics in Baker County have been exciting, sometimes embarrassing, and even subject to national notice.

Your ol' columnist doesn't expect everybody to share or even appreciate his interests and pursuits, and he figures this week's effusion might fall on stony ground, but he just has to address a subject dear to his heart and hope some seed will find fertile soil.

For nigh unto my entire life I've been fascinated by art, history, and my community. In that combination of interests, I've often felt to be a member of an extremely limited group, even forlorn at times (I'm good at self pity).

I knocked my self out in years past trying to form an historical society, a local artists' group, and a downtown Macclenny sidewalk art show, all three designed to bring us a good reputation as a quality community. It took three attempts before the historical society finally took, the local arts association flunked miserably (victim of inertia), and most businesses griped about their store windows being blocked on downtown sidewalk art show days (few expressed gratitude that visitors during the art show days wandered into their shops to buy).

So, it was with great surprise and pleasure that I received a commission to depict the history of Baker County in a mural to be displayed in our courthouse. Here I thought was the almost perfect combination of my love of history, art, and community service. I put much research, expense, and art experience into the effort. My arthritic uncooperative legs still give testament to the many hours of climbing and stooping.

There was the unfortunate situation of a circuit court judge getting carried away with his power and causing resentment among some of our citizens and causing the artist some grief by ordering the mural not be hung in the space created for it. His Honor unwittingly did us a great favor by his decision; the mural was toted down stairs and where it can be viewed by any and all visitors to our courthouse rather than by folks in the upper chambers.

Friends of the courthouse restoration and the Historical Society gathered over a couple thousand dollars for framing the mural. Members of the Historical Society researched professional instructions on the proper public display and protection of major art works and presented a healthy sized packet to the Board of County Commissioners over a year ago.

The mural still sits vulnerable to warping and to damage from intelligence challenged viewers.

I checked out the mural in February of 2003 and discovered some idiot(s) had scraped off part of the paint. Recently, I discovered the packet and price quote for the framing and protection of the mural has been "lost in the shuffle."

I am fully aware that the general intelligence and tastes of much of my fellow citizens prompts them not to be overly concerned that a depiction of a million years of their heritage has been considered unworthy of attention by the proper authorities. I know that a document mentioning a couple thousand dollars is not in the same league with, say, a neglected grants paper for restoration of the old jail or documents pertaining to restoration and upgrading the county courthouse, but what the mural represents is beyond money value�it represents Baker County's heritage and its pride in itself.

Too often in the past, our sister counties have laughed at us. I hope and pray the giggles are not starting up again.

Since I wouldn't know Britney Spears if she rushed up and bit me, I suppose this intro could be considered out of line. However, since she has received much free publicity (which, of course is what she and her agent wanted from her recent show in our area), I figured I could tie it in to this week's effusion�along with the fact that we just went through Women's History Month and I neglected to react.

I've seen photos of the young woman, and as I remember them I can see where our young ladies in the approximately eight years through early twenties get their apparel inspiration. Good people, I've seen local girls in the pre-teen and early teens groups on the streets looking like street walkers (Mothers, mothers, mothers, how can you let your little kids leave your house looking like that?�unless you're living out your on unfulfilled fantasies).

All this set your ol' columnist to thinking�we've truly switched our heroine types. Today, it seems an inordinate number of young women admire and attempt to emulate Britney, Madonna, Corinne Brown, Rosanne, Barbra Streisand and other mouthy ill-mannered, insensitive sorts. Well, in the words of dear old Aunt Marthy Lowery of days gone by, I walk along to tell you that today's emulators have driven their ducks to a poor market.

I'm going to give you some replacements for your current heroines, heroines that go far above the decent mark. I can't list them all, but a representative list is Aunt Vessie Combs Thrift, to my knowledge the first female to hold a public office in the county; Mrs. Hazel McKinney who had the dedication, nerve, and zeal to run for public office here at a time when it took all three traits for folks of her race to do such a thing; Ms. Ann Harwick who along with Sheriff Joe Jones successfully stemmed the deadly TB tide in our county; Mrs. "Todd" Wolfe, whose loyalty to her nursing purpose eradicated internal parasites among our younger population (and she sometimes had to borrow a horse or mule to make some calls in the north end of the county); and the lovely Mrs. Veda Fish Dopson, a beauty queen who never allowed her favorable attributes to overcome her lovely personality (and whose beauty has increased with time).

The aforementioned are only representative of the many of modern times, but from the research of my friends Linda Rosenblatt and Dicky Ferry come two other women of bravery and altruism - the mother and daughter Mrs. Emily Burroughs Fraser and Mrs. Amanda Fraser Williams, respectively.

In the first skirmish between Union and Confederates at Barber's Plantation in February of 1864, one young CSA private, Nathan Hunter of Lake City, was critically wounded. His mates had no choice but to hide him and beat a fast retreat.

Gen. Joseph Finegan talked Mrs. Emily Fraser into going with her young son Brantley and a slave to rescue the young man; a smart choice since Mrs. Fraser had the reputation of a keen eye and brain, and the trio would probably not arouse suspicion. He requested that she gather all the intelligence possible regarding Union strength of arms and men camped at the plantation. She found Pvt. Hunter, and the rescue party loaded him onto the wagon. She had the foresight to secret the wounded man under her voluminous skirts. No sooner had they started west toward the Fraser home than Union men stopped her and questioned her at great length.

She found it difficult to pledge allegiance to the US so soon after her own son had been killed in battle, but a greater fear was that her young son might forget and become talkative and that the slave, so close to freedom, might give away the secret mission.

She was, in the end, successful in her mission of mercy. Pvt. Hunter, sadly, did not live through the night and was buried on the Fraser plantation (his father re-interred the body near Lake City).

Her daughter Amanda was awarded an unsolicited (from her, that is) pension from the State of Florida for her nursing of Confederate wounded and ill. The application for her pension was glowing with praise for the young woman. It was granted.

There, young women (and your mothers), your ol' columnist has given you some women of substance, some women you could be proud to model your selves on.

I'll close now. I suppose my opening paragraph has some of you gentlemen out there in weekly-newspaper-readers land steeped in fantasies.

Most citizens feel a personal relationship with their hometown newspaper. This columnist is no exception. When I was in Alaska, the Press brought the home town folks and their doings to me. When I was in Germany, the Press was my island of security in that foreign land. Its contents have amused me, sometimes irritated me, and always kept me aware.

I feel privileged to offer this little history of THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS, and I hope it will amuse, perhaps irritate, and make you aware too.

Like all entities, THE PRESS did not arrive by parthenogenesis; it has its parentage and family tree, and it has its kin. We could reach back to Classical Age hand lettered flyers on parchment or to Medieval Age town criers for THE PRESS ancestry, but we'll move closer to our own time and begin with Charles A. Finley and his Sanderson based newssheet THE STAR. I can go no further back than THE STAR, and I find the lineage from there to the founding of THE PRESS in 1929 reads like the convoluted ancestry of British royalty, and it all ties in to the history of THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS.

Mr. Finley arrived in Sanderson soon after the close of the War Between the States. The little community had been in existence since 1859 beginning with the coming of the rails, and it had been the seat of government for Baker County since February, 1861.

Sensing the newer and burgeoning community of Darbyville (now the City of Macclenny) about ten miles east on the Florida Atlantic and Gulf Coast Rail Road might be a more fertile ground for his business, Mr. Finley loaded his printing equipment and re-located there around 1869. For reasons unknown, THE STAR ceased publication soon after but resumed in 1874. He soon had competition from C. D. Allen, late of the North, who published THE FLORIDA STANDARD.

Judge J. Mott Howard began issuing THE PRESS in Sanderson in the early 1870's. He sold out to a Baptist minister named Carr who continued the newspaper for a few years in Sanderson, and when the county seat was moved to Macclenny in 1888, Judge Howard moved with it and resumed publishing under his old business name THE PRESS.

James B. Matthews came to Macclenny in 1890 and published and edited THE MACCLENNY SENTINEL. He then bought Judge Howard's THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS and merged the two papers as THE MACCLENNY STANDARD (not to be confused with any other newssheet of a similar name).

Mr. Matthews was a native of Rockport, N. Y. He came to Florida in 1883 and edited papers in Green Cove Springs, Hawthorne, and Palatka. A few months before his death in 1902 he was reputed to be the state's oldest editor. He was one of Florida's populist leaders and was not averse to speaking out via his newspaper on issues dear to his heart. I haven't learned who operated Mr. Matthews' paper from his death until the next owner took over in 1905.

One could buy 12 issues of Mr. Matthews' newspaper for less than the price of one issue of today's PRESS.

In the early years of the 20th century a young dark complexioned veteran of the Spanish-American War who hailed from near Providence in the present Union County came looking for opportunities in Macclenny. He was Tate Powell, and he itched, according to his own words, to get into the printing business.

He wanted to purchase THE MACCLENNY STANDARD, but was financially embarrassed. He asked around town for a backer, and all replies were, "See Charley Barber." Senator Barber took the young man into Jacksonville to the Florida National Bank. When asked for $500, the bank president answered, "Yes, you can get it."

In early 1905, Mr. Powell bought the newspaper for $465. His mother advanced him $35, and his long career in the publishing business in Macclenny began.

He and his brother Avery, a witty gentleman greatly respected in the Florida newspaper publishing business, struggled with a Washington hand press until a German tramp printer, fond of alcohol, came by and taught them the printing trade, "�from one end to the other", so said Mr. Powell. Their printing concern was located in the upper floor of a house now gone that stood on the northeast corner of College Avenue and McIver Street in Macclenny, the same location where Mr. Allen had printed THE STANDARD for several years.

Mr. Powell married the former Miss Gwendolyn Rivers and moved her and him self into the Barber Hotel (the old Hotel McClenny). A daughter was born to them, but the child died young. "Little Tate" came next.

The newspaper office burned in 1923, and Mr. Powell handed the reins of the business to Mrs. Iva Sprinkle of Lake Buter. He let the wanderlust bug bite him, and he and his family rambled for about 12 years. Mrs. Sprinkle changed the name of the paper to THE BAKER COUNTY REPORTER.

Mr. Powell moved back to Macclenny in 1929, and THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS was born. He purchased the old STANDARD and renamed it for the newssheet that had been owned and edited by a man he admired - Judge J. Mott Howard. The date of the purchase was April 12, 1929. The backers for the purchase were T. M. Dorman, Joe Jones, Lucious Knabb, I. R. Rhoden, and W. C. Thompson.

Tate, Junior, expressed a desire to join his father in the printing business, and they were engaged in a partnership of 32 years publishing THE PRESS. Mr. Tate, Junior, brought his son Ray into the business, and the three generations worked together for several years. Mr. Powell, Senior, retired in the early 1960's but continued as writer and advisor.

As a kid I found every excuse possible to hang around THE PRESS office. I breathed in the printer's ink like it was heady perfume. I watched Ray set type for job printing, listened to old time tales of the trade from Big Tate, and was the butt of jokes from Little Tate.

My ear was bent for over an hour in 1962 when Mr. Tate, Senior, learned that his son and grandson had sold the paper. He didn't realize that Little Tate was exhausted from all night sessions at the linotype and had tired of the ground-in printer's ink in his fingers.

The new owners, Bennett and Hahn, changed the format of THE PRESS to tabloid style, infuriating most of the readers. In those days THE PRESS was delivered via the postal system, and the Macclenny post office was on Macclenny Avenue next door to a liquor store. A local leading citizen expressed his resentment of the new smaller paper because it wasn't big enough to disquise the fifth of booze he bought while on his mail retrieval errand.

It was said the irate citizen (incidentally an in-law of Tate, Sr.) was responsible for the return of THE PRESS to its original size and the ownership back to the Powells. Acually, the new owners couldn't make the payments and were unsuccessful in winning over the local populace with their foreign ways.

A gentleman from New England tried his hand at operating THE PRESS, but he couldn't cotton up to small Southern town mentality. He returned the paper to the Powells and returned him self to the North.

Next came an elderly couple from west Florida in the late '60's. Their stay was short, and the Powells once again resumed ownership of the paper.

In February of 1971 entered James C. "Jim" McGauley. Some deemed him a liberal as fiery as the color of his hair. Others saw him as a refreshing change of direction. Still others hoped for relief from an old slant toward a Powell-favored political bloc. Whether the locals liked him or not, few would deny Jim was a man of convictions and keen observation.

Little Tate took Jim on for a couple of years as an employee, and then leased THE PRESS to him for a year. The terms of the lease were generous, and there was an option to buy in '74. Again, the terms were generous.

All parts of the new, and this time permanent, change of ownership were fortuitous. Mr. Powell was happy to retire and rest, big chain stores were moving in and needed to advertise, and the county's population was growing with many folks moving in from out of the county and out of state, and they wanted to be informed of local news and politics.

The demands of the new readers meant there had to be more than who had brought in a giant sweet potato to be displayed in the paper's office, who motored into Jacksonville on a pleasure trip last Saturday, who was attending Fifth Sunday meeting at Pine Grove, and who should pick up his smoked meat from the municipal cold storage plant.

THE PRESS began regular coverage of crime and government proceedings (not to be considered synonymous). The new editor/owner prodded the thinking process of his readers, and the new direction of THE PRESS placed it among the state's most prestigious institutions. The past thirty years can be summarized as "Award Winning Style."

In the early 1960's, Tate Powell, Jr., asked your ol' columnist to contribute some articles on area history. That little attempt - "From Out of Our Past" - elicited very little response from the readers. In spite of that, editor McGauley asked me to do a year of weekly columns celebrating our nation's Bi-Centennial in '75-'76, and that year stretched out to nine years. Unbelievably, he asked me to return in 2000 as a guest opinion columnist (not that I am one known to have opinions or to share them without solicitation).

I feel privileged to have been associated with the paper during those periods of writing, and I repeat...I feel especially privileged to have had the opportunity to pen this little history of THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS.

It stands with the War Between the States and the pestilential years as being among the saddest chapters in the county�s history.

Early on Sunday morning, September 11th, 1904 most of the residents of Baxter and Moniac and the country around gathered at the Baxter Station (about a half mile west of the present SR 127) for a rail excursion to St. Augustine. The amiable crowd could not know that before they nervously entered their homes again that night they would be witnesses to the bloodiest civil disturbance the county had ever experienced.

Snacking baskets and extra nickels for fizzy dopes (old time label for Coca-Colas) were brought along for added enjoyment in Florida�s sun and fun capital (Miami and Disney World were in the future). Mr. and Mrs. Charley Hodges and infant son and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Williams boarded together. They had been invited by a St. Augustine merchant friend to spend the day on his yacht. The wild and happy young Altman boys, Charley and Hillary, intended to have a good time that day and brought along a flask of �good-time-insurance-juice.� Several blacks including the Messrs. Jim Riley, Jesse Campbell, Jim Plummer, and a family named Eddy had donned their Sunday best and waited eagerly on the platform.

All the men were employees of William N. �Turpentine� Duncan, a native of Tennessee and recently from Macon, Georgia. Although his manner of dealing with his workers and the locals had not found favor with the Baker and Charlton Counties fold, his gift of a holiday was conceded by most to be the act of a gentleman.

Mr. Duncan, a big-framed and extroverted man, had bought up a vast acreage in the environs at the turn of the century. He then brought his wife and infant, two teenage sons, and two married sons and their wives down from Macon. On the big excursion day all his family except his wife and baby joined him on the train. Mrs. Duncan, Sr., remained home because the baby was not well and she had to wait for a doctor she had summoned from Fargo.

Late Sunday afternoon, the folks began arriving at the St. Augustine depot at the appointed time, some weary from sightseeing and others drunk and boisterous. The blacks were particularly aggressive, and they threw taunts at their fellow white workers.

For reasons never determined, Mr. Duncan pushed the drunken loud cursing white men aside and boarded his black workers first. With most of the whites grumbling behind him, Mr. Duncan seemed to be having difficulties with the ticket agent, turnstile keeper, and conductor. The train employees were edgy with the �blacks first� arrangement. The whites were becoming increasingly impatient at the delay.

At a railroad officer�s insistence, Duncan confiscated all pistols from the whites (to tote a sidearm in 1904 was as common as having a watch in one�s pocket).

The blacks, emboldened by the attitude of their boss toward his white workers and his disarming the white men, raised their taunts and jeers to a higher level.

Several whites, sullen and mumbling curses at their boss and his black workers, fingered their long bladed pocketknives.

All were boarded, including The Macon Baseball Club after their game in St. Augustine that day.

The cars were crowded, the white boys were liquored up, and the atmosphere inflammable.

The train was segregated, but white gentlemen smokers were required to share the blacks� car to light up. Tension mounted each time a white smoker entered the car or passed through. Boozed up spirits were high.

Manager Smith of the Macon Ball Club told a reporter in his hometown that the Altman boys, Charley and Hillary, alternately threatened to cut each other�s throat and drink out of the same bottle. They began to �give a rough time� to Jim Plummer. Plummer left the car in fright as his friend Jim Riley called after him, �You run from that man?� One of the Altmans grabbed Riley and slashed his throat, almost decapitating him.

One of the young Duncan men, Jackson, attempted to go to the aid of his black hands. Mike Rowe and Ivy Harvey took up the Altman battle and in but a moment Jackson Duncan�s dead body, its heart hanging out, lay bleeding in the aisle.

The conductor closed off the gory car and refused to stop as per Duncan�s orders except to halt briefly at Cutler-St. George to wire for help and instructions. The violence escalated, becoming an orgy of blood as by-stander blacks and some members of the Macon Ball Club were indiscriminately slashed.

Marshall Duncan was badly cut up and tossed off the train. Duncan, Sr., thinking the Altmans and Harvey had hidden in the restroom shot several times through the door. They and Mike Rowe, however, had jumped off the train at St. George. The Altmans and Harvey slid beneath a rail car and rode the rods in to Baxter. A section foreman�s rail buggy was borrowed to go back to St. George to pick up Rowe.

When the train arrived in Baxter at eleven that night, an uncounted number had been killed and wounded. The blacks scattered as soon as (or sooner than) the train stopped. Most white men who believed they might be implicated on either side also disappeared.

The women folk and children were cautioned not to look in the direction of the murder car as anxious husbands rushed them off into the dark. One witness, Mrs. Mattie Hodges said, �I am a woman and I can�t help being curious. I looked and I have many times wished to God I had listened to my husband. When the door was pulled open the blood flowed out. I looked in and could not see one inch that was not covered with blood.� Another witness stated, �They stacked them [bodies] up like cordwood.�

There was no sleep that night in the Baxter-Moniac neighborhood. Shots were fired all night�and it was a long night.

Women and children were barricaded in their homes or secreted under their houses by the men. Mrs. Mattie Hodges confided that her husband Charley had nailed her and their baby inside their house and that she had often shuddered in later years at the possibility of one of the malcontents setting fire to the house with no chance of escape for her self and her child.

In response to threats by several locals to �git rid a� all them damned Duncans�, a few of the braver men rushed to the Duncan house to protect Mrs. Duncan and her infant. A member of the band around the house later stated, �I couldn�t give a ---- fer Duncan an� his bigger boys, but I wuddn�t goin� t� see a womern an� baby seffer fer what th old --- -- - ----- done.�

The train bringing the doctor from Fargo for the Duncan baby stopped far to the west of Baxter, and then raced through the community at top speed. Some men met the doctor and took him to the Duncan house where he saw to Duncan, Sr.�s wounds and then spent several grueling hours mending the butchered and shot.

The one deputy for the area, Rufe Thrift, was unable to do much more than stand off the mob from the Duncan house. �Uf all th� bad Thrifts�, claimed a contemporary, �Rufe wuz th� baddest. Not many wuz willin� to go up aginst �eem.� A few of the men folk remained with him as the sky began to lighten, but most had gone home to see to the welfare of their families.

By daybreak the threat seemed to have dissipated sufficiently for Deputy Thrift�s self-appointed posse to leave him. When the sun rose over the pines, Rufe Thrift stood alone.

Deputy Thrift had determined to protect the Duncans and to keep the peace. That exacerbated the enmity that already existed between the Altman and Harvey group and the Thrift clan of the area.

Duncan revived on Thursday the 15th and decided to terminate the situation permanently and to exact revenge on the Altman-Harvey faction. He grabbed his shotgun and strode the short distance to his commissary.

But Ivy Harvey and the Altmans were riding hard to Taylor for reinforcements.

The Duncan commissary stood approximately on the site of the much later C. H. Yonn store. It was described as being a rather large squarish frame structure with a hip roof. A small porch graced the otherwise unadorned front. Side stairs led to the workers dormitory above. The post office for the region was in a corner of the lower floor. W. H. Altman, brother of Charley and Hillary, was postmaster.

Above flew the American flag, and inside was a waiting gunman � Riley Dowling - friend of the Altmans and Harvey.

Duncan rushed into the building. A single shot dropped him (not a mortal wound), allegedly fired by one, or two, or all three of Jesse Altman, Coley Johns, and Lonnie Dowling who were hiding in the post office. Deputy Thrift pulled his gun and attempted to take the three into custody. At about the same time Ivy Harvey and several others � Charley Altman, Hardy Altman, Aaron Dowling, W. H. Dowling, Hardy Johns, George Johns, John Eddy, and Andrew Harvey - returned from Taylor and approached with firearms blazing. Thrift scaled the stairs quickly to the top story. There, he encountered Riley Dowling.

The Taylor area men moved in. Thrift, for reasons never ascertained descended the stairs.

The crowd began to shoot, wounding him in the legs. He fell to the bottom of the stairs and crawled under the building. Some of the men said he begged them, �Boys, y�all done killed me. Let me die in peace.�

The mob moved in cautiously and, seeing he was indeed unarmed, blasted away at close range. It was reported by his daughter Sanada Thrift that there was not an unbroken bone in his body when it was dragged from beneath the commissary.

Word was sent to Deputy Thrift�s widow Susan about the tragedy. She was ill, but she, her two infants Minnie and Dan, and her 16 year old daughter Sanada �Nader� started on the long horse and wagon trip from north of Macclenny to Baxter to collect her husband�s remains.

At Baxter, Mrs. Thrift and Miss Nader were directed to Mr. Thrift�s corpse on a counter in the commissary. It was covered with a sheet except for the head and hands. Miss Nader recollected they looked unblemished and as if they still had life in them. When volunteers lifted the body to load it in her wagon it fell in to two pieces.

The little Thrift cortege crossed the long wooden runner bridge over the St. Mary�s River to Moniac Cemetery where the young Miss Nader began to dig a grave for her father�s body. Near dark, two men appeared out of the huckleberry bushes to finish the dig, lower Deputy Thrift�s body into the grave, bade the Thrift women not to speak their names to any one, and disappeared into the darkness.

Miss Nader covered her father�s body with the Georgia sand and spoke little of the incident in later life. When conversing with this writer 75 years later, she did not reveal the men�s names even at that much later date.

After killing Deputy Thrift, the Altman faction discovered the corpse of Riley Dowling upstairs, evidently the victim of Deputy Thrift. The Dowling body was carried away on a makeshift litter of guns and frock coats and left on his porch by unknown persons to be found by his wife later. His murderer was not determined, and Duncan allegedly said, �Good, I couldn�t have looked the county over and found a man I�d rather it to be.�

Evidently, he didn�t like Mr. Dowling.

Word of the Baxter battle was telegraphed to Sheriff U. C. Herndon in Macclenny. He deputized every man he could find on his way to Baxter. �An� ketch �em �e had to�, said an observer, �Wuddn�t nobody wanted t� git mixed up in that fracas.�

The sheriff received no cooperation from the Baxter people of either faction. He was seriously hindered in his investigation by snipers firing at him and his posse. Two of his men were reportedly killed, and the sheriff, according to eyewitnesses, received a minor wound.

It was apparent to Sheriff Herndon that the situation was more than he and his few deputized men could handle, and he wired the state capital for assistance.

Florida�s Secretary of State Crawford, in Gov. Jennings� absence, mobilized the State Militia, and the trains rolled in with troops on Tuesday the 20th. The soldiers made camp and their campfires were kept blazing all night. Some locals feared renewed riots because several of the militia were close relatives of the belligerents. Duncan protested the use of state militia rather than U. S. regulars; he claimed the men of the militia would not fire against their own kin.

From the Schley [Georgia] County News of 22 September, 1904, comes the statement that Wilson�s Battery arrived on Friday the 16th and that more bloodshed is expected (there were some disagreements of dates in all the reports). Listed as dead in the article were Jackson Duncan, unknown Negro [Jim Riley], Deputy Thrift, and Ellis [sic - should be Riley] Dowling. The reporter adds, �A list of the wounded is unobtainable, but the number exceeds half a dozen, some of whom will die.�

The source cited above gave the initial murders as occurring on the Georgia side of the St. Marys, which was true, but not true was the news that Sheriff Herndon refused to arrest the Altman boys. The Altmans and their allies made for the woods before the sheriff arrived, making arrests of them impossible.

It should be interjected here that the Schley County News reports on the feud contain some incorrect information; the media never change.

The militia kept an uneasy peace while Sheriff Herndon conducted his investigation and made arrests. Georgia opened her border and permitted the sheriff, with National Guard support, to enter the Bend and capture 21 of the Altman-Harvey-Dowling group.

Also incorrect in the Schley newspaper was the item regarding Riley Dowling�s death. The paper claimed the deputy�s posse did the deed, but Mr. Dowling�s body was found by the Altman faction after they had murdered Thrift, upstairs in the commissary where he undoubtedly had been slain by Deputy Thrift�not the deputy�s posse.

Friday night, the �insurrectionists�, as some were calling them, sent word to Sheriff Herndon that they would surrender at 8 o�clock the next morning. On time as promised were Charley, Hillary, and Jesse Altman; William Dowling; Andrew and Ivey Harvey; and Coley (Cauley), George, and W. H. Johns.

All but Jesse Altman came in together; he had been hiding in the woods and surrendered alone. Hillary Altman had a gunshot wound in his right shoulder. None of the others was wounded.

Sheriff Mattox of Charlton County agreed to have the men who committed murders in his jurisdiction locked up in the Duval County jail. He allowed that Georgia governor Terrell would probably insist the men be turned over to the Charlton County justice system.

The prisoners, under heavy guard, were taken by special train to Jacksonville with the Wilson Battery for security. From the Bay Street Station they were marched to the Duval County jail under additional army guard.

It was claimed by some descendents of the participants, but not documented, that the jails in the counties of Baker, Columbia, and Duval were filled with the accused. Records were found only of the Folkston, Jacksonville, and Macclenny jails used for the purpose (the small calaboose in Macclenny could hold only a very few. Some swore the Baxter insurrection was the catalyst for the commissioners deciding to build a new jail within a few years).

Charley and Hillary Altman were charged with the murder of Jackson Duncan and Jim Riley. Jesse Altman was charged with shooting W. N. Duncan with intent to murder. The others received a lesser charge, basically of being members of the mob that might or might not have shot Deputy Thrift and Mr. Duncan.

Baker County Judge Henry Berry fixed bail for Jesse Altman, Lonnie Dowling, and Coley Johns at $750.00 each and $350 each for Charley and Hillary Altman; Aaron and W. H. Dowling; John Eddy; George and Hardy Johns; and Andrew and Ivey Harvey.

The Hon. James P. Taliaferro of the U. S. Senate and C. F. Barber of the Florida Senate immediately launched a bail campaign for the men. Sen. Taliaferro was vacationing in Canada at the time and his correspondence with Sen. Barber provided much of the information for this narrative. Senators Taliaferro and Barber lent and donated funds for bails, attorneys� fees, and families� subsistence.

Barber and influential Sanderson merchant and state legislator William D. Mann set out for the north county and Bend districts to allay panic and advise that feuding blood be cooled for the duration of the trials. �Now, don�t be witnessing against your neighbor just to get even�, they reasoned. �Stay quiet and know nothing. The State will have no case against anybody if you all will just stay quiet.�

And, stay quiet they did. Sheriff Herndon was heard to remark as he rounded up his suspects, �This ain�t going to do nobody no good. They won�t get anything out of �em.�

Charley and Hillary Altman were tried in Folkston. The trial was short, and they were acquitted. A second trial for the murder of Jim Riley was of an even shorter duration. They were then taken to Macclenny for hearings for the murders on the Florida side.

The hearings were held in the Baker County courthouse, a handsome frame structure that stood north of the brick building that went up four years later to house county business. Loud protesting crowds gathered around the Baker County courthouse on the first day. All men were armed, and there were threats to set fire to the courthouse if the men were brought to trial. One nervous townsperson declared, �If them Altmans want t� burn down th� courthouse, I�ll not only let �em, I�ll holp �em strak the match!�

Tight-lipped attitudes of witnesses frustrated the proceedings resulting in delays and re-schedules. No one on the witness stand seemed capable of remembering details of the event.

The Duncans, Sr. and Jr., did not appear for the hearings

Florida Gov. Broward, it was rumored, took a personal hand in the process and bogged down the Baxter Rebellion trials in judicial loopholes and government red tape until the incident became a forgotten subject in Tallahassee.

The court declined to hold the prisoners.

Several of the principals left the county. A few of the principals remained but refused to discuss the event until long after.

Many years later, Mr. Duncan, then a resident of Madison, told a Mr. Lewis who had announced he was moving to Maccleny, �Them people there are crazy.�

Mr. Lewis is said to have answered, �Well, maybe, just maybe, it�s how you treat �em and approach �em that�ll make the difference.�

The American public�s concept of Indian wars has been hijacked by the producers of Western movies and novels into believing the only belligerency between the two races was confined to the �Wild West.� In reality, conflicts between Native Americans and Americans of European pedigrees began in New England; spilled over into the Mid-West; flared up throughout the West and Northwest; and was especially violent and tragic in the South.

The present Baker County was one of the stages where horrible dramas during the Second Seminole War occurred. Our narrative in three parts gives just a part of that sad period of our history.

Part 1
The Adversaries
Indians

From several contemporary sources come the names of the northeast Florida Indians. There were the Seminoles that were a mixture of Creeks from Alabama and Georgia; perhaps remnants of aboriginal people; blacks; and sympathizing, renegade, and opportunistic whites. The Seminoles� largest towns and farms were mostly south of the present Baker County, but evidence has been found of settlements around Ocean Pond, along the St. Mary�s and its prongs, on the strip of dry land between the Okefenokee and Pinhook, and on Willingham Branch (Brickyard Branch).

The Hichitis were settled around Ocean Pond and from Olustee westward (Olustee is supposedly a Hichiti word). The Cowetas were reported south of the Okefenokee in 1820. Yuchees and Yamasees were known to be in the vicinity of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period. Muscogees were believed to be living along the lower St. Mary�s River in the early 1800�2. Osceola, the famed war chief of the Florida Indians claimed to be Miccasukee rather than Seminole, and that would indicate that there was a representative group of that tribe in the area since he and his mother and her extended family were said to be living south of the Okefenokee in 1808 (U.S. Army report).

There were established Indian towns and farms in the area prior to the white pioneers� inroads into the territory. Most groups owned herds of cattle and were good horsemen. Some Indians were bi-lingual, having learned much of their English from their black slaves and companions.

There was not always a clear separation of the Crackers and Indians from soon after the Crackers� arrival in northeast Florida. Although there was the all-too-human bias from both sides, there was also mixing of the races by legal and common-law marriages and rape. Indians were known to baby sit, hire out in exchange for cloth and dairy products, and even serve in the militia if it meant they could fight a rival group of Indians.

Lt. Sprague of the US Army saw his enemy as a ��wicked and demon-like looking set of savages.� Some were dressed in nothing more than ragged buckskin shirts. Others wore cotton shirts only, and still others sometimes were clad in old forage bags cast off by the soldiers.

Visitors to Indian camps and towns recalled that men, women, and children circled a fire and beat time with discordant and monotonous tones.

Later in the War, Lt. Sprague, who once had only negative remarks about his enemy, evidently had a change of heart. He said, �It is impossible not to feel an interest in these people who have been hunted down like wild bests. Their sin is patriotism, as true as ever burned in the breast of the most civilized. Florida is the land of their birth��

Several Indian leaders believed they could live harmoniously with the new white settlers, however the most influential among them believed otherwise.

Secoffee (called �Cow Keeper� by the whites) was the leader of the Indians - the Alachuas - of an extensive area in north central Florida, including the present Baker County. He warned that any emissaries of the military sent to him would be put to death. Bolech (�called by the whites Billy Bowlegs�) who rose to power after 1839 and instilled much fear in the settlers might have been his son or grandson.

Part 2 - The Adversaries
The Military and the Crackers

The Militia and Crackers did not come across with better descriptions than their enemy. The Indians summarized their attitude toward the white settlers when they said, ��but the Crackers are not our friends.�

All area men of military age who were free from physical or mental disabilities were obligated to serve in the militia, most for terms of two to three months. Most went willingly, but, as in all wars, some chose to dodge the conscription teams.

Capt. David Jesse Miller, who was to have many descendents in the present Baker County, commanded a militia unit with men mostly from the Ware County, Georgia area. Some were men of the present Baker County. Col. Thomas Hilliard, commanding officer of the Ware County Militia, ordered Capt. Miller�s group into service from June 9, to August 19, 1838. The purpose of the order was to repel invasions of the Indians out of the Okefenokee and Florida into the county.

Capt. Miller and his wife Loanza Dyer, through their daughter Mary, are ancestors of Baker County Yarboroughs (Yarbroughs, Yarbers) and Thrifts. Mary married Ben 'Gosh' Yarborough, a son of William and Elizabeth 'Betsy' Handley Yarborough of Ware County, and they later settled on the Old Train Road (later called the Yarborough Trail) on the Baker County side of the swamp.

The Millers had hardly settled in south Georgia when the first alarms sounded signaling the Second Seminole War. Early in the war, an English immigrant family named Wildes was massacred in Ware. Spurred by the murders, the Secretary of War authorized a force to be raised, composed of volunteers of Ware, to pursue, capture, and remove the Indians from the Okefenokee area.

Dave joined the local militia and was elected captain of a company of volunteers from Ware Co., Georgia, and Columbia Co., Florida (part of which later became Baker). Capt. Miller's first lieutenant was Hampton Harris, another progenitor of many area citizens.

Columbia County, of which Baker County was a part until 1858, girded itself in early 1836 for battle with the Seminoles and their allies. Several men in the eastern section of the county joined units in Camden, Duval, Nassau, and Ware Counties.

Capt. Daniel Cone organized a body of militia in Camden County, and several settlers in the northeast of the present Baker County joined. Jonathan H. Thigpen, who lived just east of Trail Ridge was a captain in the area militia and saw much action in the counties of Columbia (that part now Baker), Duval, and Nassau. Capt. Pile of Duval County and Capt. Haddock of Nassau County formed units, and several men near the county lines joined them selves to their groups.

Daniel Mann�s terms of service are representative of the militia members. His first enlistment was at Fort White on June 6th, 1837, in Capt. Enoch Mizell�s Company of Col. Mill�s Regiment. He was discharged at Newnansville on the 18th of December, 1837. He had a second tour of duty and was discharged at Black Creek/Fort Heileman (Middleburg) on the 30th of October, 1839. His third enlistment was at Black Creek/Fort Heileman on November 14th, 1839, in Capt. Jackson Bird�s Company, and he was discharged at Thigpen�s/Deep Creek on May 14th, 1840. All his terms in the military were for periods of six months each.

One would think that after three wars and being 65 years of age, Elisha Green would have had his fill of fighting. He was a veteran of the War of 1812, First Seminole War, and The Creek War under Gen. Jackson. During the Second Seminole War, but he enlisted in 1840 at Capt. James Pile�s house in Jacksonville in the First Florida Regiment Militia.

From several and sundry sources, your writer has compiled lengthy lists of area men who served in the Second Seminole War, but they are too space consuming for our column and will be included, instead, in a forth coming Baker County history book.

Part 3
Fortifications

Some sites were prepared for military bases of action at the onset of the War, and others were declared forts as the battle raged about them. Not far outside today�s county boundaries were Fort Alert (Traders Hill), Fort Gilmer (near the present Fargo), Fort Heileman (the present Middleburg), Fort #16 south of Alligator (the present Lake City), and a fort at Alligator. Within the present county limits were Fort Moniac (above the present Baxter), Fort #15 (south of the present Sanderson), and Fort #18 (the present Macclenny). Some bases were not intended for permanency and were not designated forts but were called �camps.�

Fort Moniac, like most sites with an Indian or Indian sounding name has had its share of bogus beginnings stories, complete with Indian chiefs, maidens, young amorous bucks, and love affairs gone awry. The part of the true beginnings of the fort that seems incredulous is that it was actually named for a Creek Indian who was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy - Major Alexander David Moniac of Alabama.

Maj. Moniac�s tragic demise during the Battle of Wahoo Swamp on the Withlacoochee River insured his immortality in that his name was applied to a military fort in the northeast corner of the present Baker County (Moniac, Georgia, was originally �Moniac Station� and is across the St. Mary�s from the site of the fort). His biographer stated that as Maj. Moniac boldly sought a place to ford the river, a bullet dropped him. His body sank in opaque water (John K. Mahon, U of F Press, Gainesville, 1967, HISTORY OF THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR).

Dicky Ferry of Macclenny presented your columnist with photocopies of the pension claims of Major Moniac's widow Mary as filed in the State of Alabama's Baldwin County. The commissions of Major Moniac and the fort which bore his name are all matters of record. No where among those voluminous aged documents did we find that David Moniac ever laid eyes on the sites of the fort and the little community that became his namesakes.

From these papers and other sources, we discovered that Major Moniac was living in Alabama (exact site or sites not yet known by this writer); was relatively wealthy before the Creeks' lands and cattle were taken from them by the Georgians; graduated from West Point Military Academy; married a Creek woman named Mary (maiden name initial "D") on the twentieth of October, 1828; and had two children, Margaret J. (nee Moniac) McDonald and David Alexander Moniac.

Moniac's widow deposed that her late husband entered the military service on the 19th of August, 1836, was promoted to the rank of major on the 15th of November, 1836, and died on the 21st of November, 1836. She further claimed that his remains were laid to rest with the honors of war at the "Battle ground of major Dade beside those officers who fell in that action..."

Fort Moniac�s existence was short, but its name remained on some maps until the late 1850's. Evidently not a lot of action was seen there during the Seminole War but post returns indicate that a great number of units stopped there on their way toward the lower territory. One report lists the death of one hapless soldier on the road from Fort Alert (Traders Hill) to Fort Moniac by being thrown from his horse.

Digging immediately south of Miltondale Road in northwest Macclenny at the site of the old Barber Plantation has produced military artifacts decades prior to Civil War vintage and thus might be from the period of the Second Seminole War (some artifacts are contemporary with the First Seminole War). Seminole War historians have labeled the fort on the plantation �Number 18.� An 1859 map by James R. Butts shows a fort at Barber Plantation.

As an additional safety measure for the white residents, the military proposed a defense system for the zone of Indian belligerency that consisted of squares or blocks 20 miles on each side and to have a post as near its center as possible garrisoned with 20 militia members, half of them mounted. White settlers were to be warned by riders of impending raids and were to take them selves to the block houses for defense. The system was approved on January 23, 1839.

The southeast of the present Baker County and lower Georgia Bend were in military defense square #6 (later changed to #18). The upper area of the present county was in square #5. The John Canaday house and James M. Burnsed house in the northeast of the county, the John Harvey house on Cedar Creek, and the Mose Barber house on the South Prong were designated blockhouses, and all were utilized at every alert of impending Indian raids.

Farther north were the stockade homes of George Combs and Joachim Williams.

Archibald Hogans and Ferry Bill Raulerson, in the northeast corner of the present Baker County, raised Indian proof stockades around their homes (information from descendents). The Raulerson home has been variously described as a spacious double-pen house, a one room cabin, and a fortified blockhouse that sat any where from the banks of the river near the present North Prong Church to within sight of Fort Moniac (all probably correct for different periods of the home�s existence). Sadly, the protective measures at the Hogans place did not prevent the Indians from torching it and perhaps slaying Mr. Hogans.

John Canaday built his home on the Florida side of the St. Mary�s near the present Baxter and later ferried it across the river into Georgia and situated it near Joniken (Jernigan) Branch. In later years the structure went by various names: Canaday Blockhouse, the Old Fort, and Moniac Cabin. The Canadays were living on that site in 1832, and Mr. Canaday is believed to have been killed there in 1838 by warriors under the command of Bolech (nick named Billy Bowlegs by the Crackers).

The only blockhouses/stockades known from records and oral history in the south end of the county were those of Elisha Green on the South Prong and David Mizell a bit farther south (maybe in the present Union County) Either the Green place or the Mizell�s might be synonymous with Fort #15. Some Mizell historians believe their ancestor�s stockade was south of Alligator and might be the same as Fort #16.

There is a possibility that John Jones and a Roberts family in the same vicinity lived in protected homes/blockhouses too.

As we shall see in Part 4, the best laid plans of forts and blockhouses were not enough to prevent the slaughter of Cracker settlers in our little corner of the world. And we shall also see that the Indians fared no better; they were the ultimate losers in that extremely melancholy period of our history.

Part 4
Indian Raids and Militia Counter Attacks

There is no need in this narrative to re-hash the events leading up to the Second Seminole War (1835 - 1842); there are several scholarly works devoted to the subject that do it justice. Suffice it to say there were bad feelings between the adversaries. The Cracker pioneers believed they were entitled to a peaceful possession of the land. The Indians resented being pushed into the least hospitable parts of Florida and having their slaves and cattle stolen with impunity by the settlers.

The most notable beginnings of the War were in central Florida. The killing of Indian Agent Wiley Thompson, reputedly by Osceola, at Ft. King (near the present Ocala) and the massacre of Maj. Dade�s unit by Chiefs Alligator, Jumper, and Micanopy near the present Bushnell were the triggers. The War was not contained in central and south Florida as most histories would suggest; when some belligerent Creeks moved north into the Okefenokee there ensued many troubles for the white residents in southeast Georgia and northeast Florida. The swamp was the perfect base of operations for the Indians.

Some of the first incidents of the War in this vicinity were reported by a Mr. Pickett: �The Chehewa and Creeks, instigated by William Burgess, a trader in the Spanish interest [the Spanish were still sticking their fingers in the Florida situation], plundered the store of Robert Seagrove, at Traders Hill upon the St. Marys river, killing Fleming, the clerk, and two travelers named Moffet and Upton. They most cruelly beat with sticks a woman residing there named Anne Grey.

"Six miles further on they killed families of men, women, and children moving in wagons [Believed to include the Cathcart family. A survivor was ancestress to area Mobleys and several Rhodens].

"Another murder took place at Fence Pond. This place was twelve miles below Traders Hill [between today�s Toledo and St. George on highway 121]. A train of wagons stopped there for the night, and the next morning when the travelers were ready to continue their journey, the Indians made a raid on them, killing one of the men, robbing the wagons, and taking all that they could carry with them [We learned later that it actually was a massacre that included the Howell family. A survivor named Sarah married into the Canaday�s]."

Clement Johns and his wife Jane lived near the present Baker-Clay-Duval Counties junction. In September of 1836, there was a Seminole raid on the Higganbotham farm on Brandy Branch. According to the Jacksonville Courier, Maj. Hart and several militarized townsmen rushed to the rescue of the Higganbotham. There, they found no one injured, but all badly shaken. The troops immediately hit the Indians' trail which led from Brandy Branch, split toward Trail Ridge and McGirt's Creek, and aimed south for Black Creek and Alachua County and toward the Clement Johns farm.

Maj. Hart's men did not find the Seminoles, but at the McCormick settlement they found gruesome evidence of the Indians� visit. "On examination, Major Hart states they found the calcined bones of a human being burned in the house. A piece of the back bone was found with some flesh upon it. The skull was to be seen, but at the touch it fell into crumbled pieces. The bones were mostly reduced to ashes. Near the house was found a quantity of hair, to appearance that of a female.

They rode hard to the Lowder place, expecting the same sight. The house was untouched, dinner still warm on the table, but the family gone.

Capt. Jonothan Thigpen of the militia and who lived on a plantation near the present Baldwin joined the chase and led a small party in pursuit of the Seminoles as soon as word of the Higganbotham raid was made known. He found Mrs. Johns scalped, shot, burned badly, but still alive.

When revived Mrs. Johns stated that the Indians spoke in English, had fatally shot her husband, removed everything of value, and set fire to the house. She remembered in detail the Indian�s slow methodical removal of her scalp.

Both Bolech/Billy Bowlegs and Coacoochee/Wildcat claimed credit for the Johns raid.

Settlers and militia thought the depredations were over due to a quieter interlude after the death of belligerent Seminole Chief Sam Jones in Florida, but his successor Chittotuste-nugge, a resident of this area prior to the war, proved to be as determined as old Sam had been. Combining his tactics and forces with Bolech/Billy Bowlegs and Econchatti, he had a surprise in store for Col. Thomas Hilliard after Hilliard wrote to the governor, 18 October 1836, �...the company raised under your orders . . . has been discharged, believing as I do that the Indians are done passing through, and the most of them gone to Florida ..."

Shortly after that report, the head of a Crews family was reportedly slain as a young man by Indians soon after his move to Camden (that part now Charlton) County�s Georgia Bend from South Carolina. His wife and children survived the conflict.

On May 27th, 1838, there was action barely one mile from the Okefenokee on the Florida-Georgia border, �a new trouble area�, according to one report. Capt. Sandelung (? Sanderling) with 40 Florida militia engaged about 20 Indians for a half hour. Two soldiers were wounded. No count given of Indian casualties, if any. About the same time Capt. David Miller�s men of Ware County saw action just below the Okefenokee.

Capt. North of the Ware County Militia reported to his governor, ��taken up thare residence in the Okafanoka Swamp two battles have been fit by them and our citizens on the 27th and 28th May last the paticulars of which I have not bin able to ascertain. Two of the whites ware wounded one suposed mortally no Indian kild or wounded as has been known the last battle ware in the limits of this county on the Sawanna River.

Captain Aaron Jernigan lived near Fort Moniac during the War. His neighborhood was being terrorized by Bolech/Billy Bowlegs and Econchatti. On August 19th, 1839, the settlers gathered at the fort for protection against the Indians. Between sunset and dark, about 65 Seminoles attacked killing Eliza Patrick, a Mr. Davis, a Mrs. Raulerson, and three little boys. All the houses in the vicinity of Fort Moniac were burned except Capt. Jernigan�s. Jernigan�s horses were stolen, all the books in the Fort Moniac school were burned, and everything of value in the houses, including the salt supplies, was tossed down wells.

Mrs. Raulerson�s bloodied corpse was discovered with her infant still nursing.

Witnesses to the attack said the Indians� war whoops and screams continued all night long. Survivors spoke of hideous shouts and from the attackers and loud laughter from them as they ransacked the cabins and tore clothes from carcasses searching for treasures.

Capt. Jernigan, James Hogans, Nathan Norton, and others (fifteen in all) pursued the Seminoles into the Okefenokee. All the men except Jernigan, Hogans, and Norton quit the chase. The three remaining men caught two Indians and scalped them.

In 1838 Joshua Tippens attempted the removal of his family to his father-in-law David Mizell�s fortified home far up the South Prong of the St. Mary�s (maybe even in the present Union County) during an Indian alarm. The tragedy is described in a letter written by a Mizell neighbor to a relative in St. Marys, Georgia: ��within a few miles of her [Mrs. Tippens] father's house, was fallen in with about seven Indians, between 10 o'clock, A.M. and 12 o'clock. Mr. Tippens was shot from his horse, the Indians then made an easy capture of his helpless family and vented their savage spleen by beating them on the heads with their tomahawks [one child survived].�

According to the descendents of the Mizell Family and of the Green Family who were first at the gory scene, Mrs. Elizabeth Green and her children buried Mr. And Mrs. Tippens and two of their children in one of her wagon bodies in what would become the South Prong Cemetery (Mr. Green was away in the militia on a campaign against the Indians in the Alachua area).

In 1840, after a relative quiet period in the war, there was a recrudescence of the conflict just below the Okefenokee, and in August of that year, several neighbors fled to the protection of the Hogans� stockade above the present Baxter community. The Hogans� home was badly damaged by fire, and the family removed them selves for a while to the relative safety of the present Columbia County.

William Barber who lived on Trail Ridge on the south bank of the St. Mary�s, was slaughtered, stripped, and mutilated in the pre-dawn hours in the summer of 1841. A relative (name not recalled by the family) was killed by the Indians after he discovered they had bashed his babies� brains out against the side of their cabin. All the bodies were stripped and mutilated; the mother was supposedly spared because she had the appearance of Indian blood in her background..

Deaths by the Indians were usually followed by deliberate damage to the bodies in what could be described as macabre and ghoulishly creative in the extreme. When possible, soldiers and Crackers fending off their Indian attackers attempted to bury their dead to prevent the bodies from falling into the hands of the enemy (such was the beginning of the Hicks Burial Ground/Macedonia)..

A sergeant of the 7th Infantry was shot dead, stripped entirely, one eye cut out, and the body otherwise mutilated. It was reported that a male victim�s genitals were found stuffed in his lifeless mouth. One female was found with several arrows in her body, apparently more than were needed to end her life.

Incorporated Communities

Glen Saint Mary: Because of its situation at a major crossroads for the area, it can be presumed that the site of Glen Saint Mary, more commonly referred to by today�s residents as Glen and by past years� old timers as �Glen Saint Marys� and �The Glen�, had some semblance of settlement during the pioneering decades of the 1830�s - 1850�s. In the 1870�s the site began to attract Northern settlers, doubtless due to the glowing reports sent to his friends by new comer Charles Turner of New York and New Mexico.

By 1880, the vicinity residents of and around the present city were almost all former citizens of the upper Mid West and Border States, plus a few from Nebraska and Texas.

George L. Taber, now a legend in the horticulture industry, arrived in 1881 for his health. About the same time Miss Teresa Tilton opened a small hotel to cater to Northern visitors. Both she and Mr. Taber have been given credit for naming the town, but most believe the honor belongs to Mr. Taber. He named what would become his world famous horticultural nursery Glen Saint Mary in 1881, and the label was then most likely applied to the train stop a few miles north of his home.

The name Glen Saint Mary can be considered to have become official when the post office was established there in 1883.

Alverdo A. Geitgey of Ohio was a land speculator who took up residence in Glen in the early years of the 20th century. He platted out the town soon after. His design for his adopted community was based on the charming arrangement around a town square he was familiar with in the North. The Great Depression ended his dream.

Macclenny: The site of Macclenny has long been a place of habitation. Evidences of aboriginal peoples have been found in two areas within the present city limits. The earliest documented Anglo-American settlement was in 1833 near today�s Pine View Golf Course and was known for several decades as Barber�s or Barber�s Station. This settlement, named for its primary resident Moses Edward Barber, remained on most maps until 1870.

There was either a fort or camp in the northwest of the present city during the Second Seminole War, verified by digs and metal detector searches, but the names - Fort #18 or Camp Brown - are debated.

Co-existent with Barber�s in the late 1850�s until the end of the War Between the States was Williamsburg in the west side of the present city. Named for and by its founder Samuel N. Williams, it proved to be an impossible stop for trains and eventually was abandoned.

About a half mile east of Williamsburg was a saw mill operated by a Mr. Jackson in the late 1860�s, and he lent his name to the site for a short period.

John Darby, a native of Ireland, Confederate veteran, and late of North Carolina, moved his turpentine distillery into what is now east Macclenny in 1868, and thus Darbyville was born. Many Macclenny old timers continued to refer to their home town as Darbyville into the 1940�s.

Concurrent with Mr. Darby�s interests in the area was the naval stores and timber operations of Confederate veteran Carr Bowers McClenny of Virginia. Mr. McClenny and Northern backers, including U. S. Grant, Jr., engaged Coloney and Talbott of Chicago, Illinois, to plan the City of Macclenny in the early 1880�s. Until Macclenny was chartered in 1887, Darbyville continued to exist within the present city limits.

The county seat was moved from Sanderson to Macclenny in 1888.

Unincorporated Communities

Baxter: Baxter is in the northeast corner of the county and can be considered the consolidation of a few earlier nearby settlements. Named for the owner of a naval stores and timber milling business there, Baxter has a long history of existence, but under different names. The earliest known appellation was Pine Log Crossing. This name was shown on maps of the early 19th century, and according to oral history this was the name used by Indians and military in the late decades of the 1700�s.

Nearby was Raulerson�s Ferry (named for William �Ferry Bill� Raulerson), the Canaday �Fort�, and Fort Moniac (the community of Moniac, Georgia, is across the St. Mary�s River from the fort�s site). In 1904, Baxter was the scene of a bloody �rebellion.� After that, the community, once relatively busy and populated, lost its industries and most of its residents.

Cuyler: Originally a sawmill community, this scattered residential area was named for Cuyler Hilliard, scion of a prominent Ware County, Georgia, family. Cuyler has been in existence since the beginning of the 20th century.

Johnsville: This community abutting Sanderson on the north is what remains of Sanderson�s original name - Johnsville Station. The residents are of African descent, and Johnsville is the county�s second largest black community. Some of the older folks call the area �Jonesville.�

Manning: Named for the families that have lived there since the late decades of the 19th century, this small community is in the south of the county and was once a stop on the now defunct Atlantic Coast Line RR.

Margaretta: Benjamin Gurganus came from North Carolina after the War Between the States and established him self and his family east of Sanderson on the north side of the rail road. He named his plantation Margaretta in honor of his daughter. He and an associate Walter Drake brought several families of blacks from Georgia as workers (most old time Baker County blacks had left the area at the end of the War). The Gurganus family were dying out, and the two remaining members moved into Jacksonville in the late years of the 1800�s. The black families remained, and Margaretta is the county�s largest almost 100% black community.

Olustee: Located on the south shore of Ocean Pond, Olustee is thought to be of Hitchiti Indian origin. The name is loosely translated as dark or muddy water. Oral history has placed parent communities and a fortified settlement at other sites around the large lake. A celebration was held in the town when the locomotive �Jacksonville� pulled in on the new railroad in 1858. Olustee was the site of preparations prior to the Battle of Ocean Pond, and the New York based Eppinger and Russell Company erected the world�s largest lumber mill there during Reconstruction.

Olustee was named Ocean Pond and Ocean Lake on some hand drawn maps of the 19th century.

Pinetop: Once a group of frame houses for blacks and whites, and once known as Knabb�s Spur in the early 1900�s, Pinetop was the local headquarters of Southern Chemical and Resin Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, until the mid 20th century.

Possum Trot: There is probably not a rural area in any of the contiguous United States that does not have a �Possum Trot.� Baker County�s Possum Trot south of Olustee has been continuously inhabited, albeit oft times sparsely, since the last quarter of the 19th century.

Sanderson: Histories set 1858 as the founding of Sanderson as a lumber camp, but there was a settlement there - Long Pond - during the Second Seminole War. Sanderson was originally known as Johnsville Station and served as a train stop for the community of that name several miles north. Sanderson was the seat of county government and the home of the county�s consolidated high school in the 1880�s.

Taylor: Gordon Stewart Taylor, a Confederate veteran from Georgia, established his plantation at the crossing of two very old routes in the north center of the county in the 1870�s. From that settlement there grew a broad scattered community known as Taylor.

Trail Ridge: A community was platted out a few miles west of the county�s eastern limit and named Trail Ridge for the geologic formation it sat on. Most of the new families were from the North. The town planners failed during the Great Depression, and most residents moved back North or into Macclenny.

Dead Communities

Bessent: Several families with the surname Bessent moved from Nassau County into Baker County and lived near the Atlantic Coast Line RR several miles south of Macclenny. Bessent was a stop on the rails until the early years of the 20th century.

Bluff Creek: Settled by English �colonists� in the 1880�s, Bluff Creek was a rather loosely connected community until the Influenza pandemic of 1918-19. It was situated between Baxter and Cuyler on (Where else?) Bluff Creek.

Cedar Creek: Cedar Creek was a small but prominent residential area on the main Jacksonville-Tallahassee Road from the end of the Second Seminole War until the yellow fever epidemic of 1888. It began as the fortified home of John and Mary Harvey in the 1830�s and �40�s, and from the county�s creation until the removal of the county seat in 1888 it was the home of the majority of the county�s elected officials.

Darbyville: See under Macclenny.

Drake: Walter A. Drake of Oglethorpe County, Georgia, made his home a few miles east of Sanderson for the remainder of the century after the end of the War Between the States. He was influential in politics at local and state level. His plantation was extensive and deemed worthy of a stop on the rails by the rail company.

Eddy: Named for the large Eddy family that lived in the north central section of the county, Eddy existed as a rail stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR from the mid 1800�s into the 1930�s.

Edderd Ford: James Edward �Edderd� Rowe moved from Nassau County to about two miles south of the present Macclenny in the 1870�s and made his home on Turkey Creek near the Jacksonville-Lake City Road. Travelers forded the creek nearby and drank from a spring on the west bank. A small community grew around the Rowe farm and it lasted until after 1900.

Johnson�s/Darby�s Old Still/Mattox Crossing: Near Trail Ridge just inside the county boundary was �Johnson�s� during the War Between the States. It was replaced by John Darby�s turpentine distillery soon after the War�s end. By 1900, Goss Mattox and his family moved in and operated a turpentine distillery and cooper�s shop. After a tragic shoot out at Mattox Crossing, the businesses were closed and the residents moved away.

Johnsville: Several members of the Johns clan lived in the area of east central Baker County from the 1840�s into the 1940�s. The community of Johnsville was near Taylor. Only the Johns cemetery remains.

La Buena: Pronounced �Lay Bewner (long �U�) by old timers, its origins are not clear. It was a stop on the Atlantic Coast line from the late 1880�s into the early decades of the 1900�s.

McPherson: Situated west of Trail Ridge in the southeast section of the county, McPherson was a stop on the Atlantic Coastline RR in the late 19th century. A family by that name lived nearby, and the patriarch of the family was an employee of the railroad.

Moore�s Head: �Head� refers to the beginning or �head� of a swampy creek or slough. No one seems to know who Moore was or why the name is on maps. It is a desolate site, but trains on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR once stopped there.

Newburg: Newburg, sometimes written �Newbury�, is known only from a few maps from the decades after the end of the War Between the States. The maps show it as being east of Sanderson. Walter Turner was said to have applied for a post office there but was denied his request.

Nursery: This was a stop on the Atlantic Coast Line RR about 4 miles south of Macclenny. Established as a shipping point for the Turkey Creek Nurseries nearby, it existed from the last years of the 19th century until about 1910.

Pomerene: This once-upon-a-time stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR is said to have been named for a railroad worker�s lady friend, probably another of those made up after the fact beginnings stories. Old timers said it was nothing more than a re-fueling stop for wood burning locomotives.

Sapp: Located at the extreme southern end of the county, Sapp was a large thriving naval stores community from the mid 1800�s until about 1920. The first settler was John Sapp, a sheep raiser, farmer, and part time minister. Sapp, once one of the county�s largest voting precincts, holds the dubious distinction of unwittingly being a primary force in determining the 1876 election for the highest office in the land. Returns irregularities in the Sapp precinct caused a major change in the county�s election that eventually was a factor in bringing Florida back into the Democratic fold and changing the state�s electoral votes to put Rutherford Hayes, a Republican, in the nations� president�s chair. President Hayes put an end to Reconstruction in the South.

Sargent: Once the last stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR just before the rails left the county for Columbia County and the State of Georgia, Sargent was home to the swamp trapping Brady family until the early 1940�s. The one-family railroad stop served other families living in the swampy neighborhood and was in existence prior to 1900.

Soakum: Soakum was never a community; it was a state of mind. It seemed to take forever to get there from anywhere. A lot of people went to Soakum to hunt game and tend to their cattle pastured there, but nobody was ever able to pin point Soakum�s location. It was a broad undefined area of pines, vicious saw edged palmettos, impassable swamps, very dirty sand, and hordes of insect pests. About as close as most people could come to identifying its location was to say it abutted Pinhook Swamp and straddled the Baker and Columbia Counties line. A few shanties were scattered throughout, but nobody seemed to live in them.

Soakum was a different world.

Steckert: Thought to be named for the area�s section foreman on the Atlantic Coast Line, Steckert was a small attractive community until the late 1930�s. It became a favorite trysting spot for illicit affairs and �going to Steckert� was a slangy code name for such goings-on.

Travelers� Rest: Still on some maps simply as �Traveler�, this was a small community where pioneers of the 1830�s, �40�s, and �50�s stopped at a well of �sweet� water. Later a shallow well was sunk and a pitcher pump attached. Oral history claims that an old curmudgeon user of the trail laid a curse on anybody that neglected to leave a water-filled container for priming the pump by the next traveler. The site became popular for hunting camps.

Woodstock: As its name implies, Woodstock was a stop for wood burning locomotives until coal and diesel replaced the locally cut timber fuel. Until the 1920�s the community was busy with a bank, commissary, drug store, and several families. It was also known as Mann�s Spur prior to 1900. A few black families were living there into the 1940�s.

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There were other planned communities from the 1880�s into the mid 1920�s that the developers had hoped would appeal to the Yankee desire to live in a �tropical� atmosphere, but they never got further than plats drawn on paper and perhaps a temporary sign set up on the proposed sites.

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Sources: maps, tax records, oral history, first hand witness by the author, newspaper clippings, and business papers from the descendents of the communities� developers.

Gene Barber
June, 2004

The topic of dead communities will doubtless come across as macabre, but Baker County has had several areas of residences that no longer exist. I heard of some of them from old timers, found a few in retired public records, and saw others named on old maps. Some of those defunct communities played major roles in the county�s history.

Babytown: Babytown was a neighborhood on Macclenny�s southside rather than a separate community and will be saved for its own treatment in a later column.

Barber�s Station: Also known as Barber�s and Barber�s Plantation, this was a rather large community and a stage coach stop from the early 1830�s until just prior to the War Between the States. It was located in the present northwest Macclenny.

Bessent: Several families with the surname Bessent moved from Nassau County into Baker County and lived near the Atlantic Coast Line RR several miles south of Macclenny. Bessent was a stop on the rails until the early years of the 20th century.

Black Bottom: This community is dead in name only. Once the homes and farms of the Griffis and Wilkinson families, this area has been re-named the more euphonious Deerfield and is near the junction of Baker, Duval, and Clay Counties.

Bluff Creek: Settled by English �colonists� in the 1880�s, Bluff Creek had been a rather loosely connected area of residents for a few decades. The Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 ended its existence. It was situated between Baxter and Cuyler on (Where else?) Bluff Creek.

Cedar Creek: Cedar Creek was a small but prominent residential site on the main Jacksonville-Tallahassee Road from the end of the Second Seminole War until the yellow fever epidemic of 1888. It began as the fortified home of John and Mary Harvey in the 1830�s and �40�s, and from the county�s creation until the removal of the county seat in 1888 it was the home of the majority of the county�s elected officials.

Darbyville: John Darby moved his turpentine distillery from Trail Ridge to what is now the east side of Macclenny in 1868. The village of Darbyville existed within the present city limits of Macclenny until it was officially absorbed by the new city in 1887. Some old timers insisted on calling their home town Darbyville as late as the early 1940�s.

Drake: Walter A. Drake of Oglethorpe County, Georgia, made his home a few miles east of Sanderson for the remainder of the century after the end of the War Between the States. He was influential in politics at both local and state levels. His plantation was extensive and deemed worthy of a stop on the rails by the rail company.

Driggers: I found no records of this community, but some old timers were certain a site in the extreme south of the county just above the present Union County line bore that appellation.

Eddy: Named for the large Eddy family that lived in the north central section of the county, Eddy was a rail stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR from the mid 1800�s into the 1930�s.

Edderd Ford: James Edward �Edderd� Rowe moved from Nassau County to about two miles south of the present Macclenny in the 1870�s and made his home on Turkey Creek near the Jacksonville-Lake City Road. Travelers forded the creek nearby and drank from a spring on the west bank. A small community grew around the Rowe farm and it lasted until after 1900.

Ft. Moniac: Several pioneers� farms clustered near Ft. Moniac in the northeast section of the present Baker County during the Second Seminole War. When the fort was abandoned, some of the settlers moved to central Florida. When the rails came through, Moniac Station was established across the river in Georgia, and the old Ft. Moniac area was almost deserted except for a few of the older families.

Jackson: This small sawmill community was located approximately where Lowder Street and Macclenny Avenue cross. It was established soon after the War Between the States ended and lasted but a few years.

Johnson�s/Darby�s Old Still/Mattox Crossing: Near Trail Ridge just inside the county boundary was �Johnson�s� during the War Between the States. It was replaced by John Darby�s turpentine distillery soon after the War�s end. By 1900, Goss Mattox and his family moved in and operated a turpentine distillery and cooper�s shop. After a tragic shoot out at Mattox Crossing, the businesses were closed and the residents moved away.

Johnsville: Several members of the Johns clan lived in the area of east central Baker County from the 1840�s into the 1940�s. The community of Johnsville was near Taylor. Only the Johns cemetery remains.

Knabbs� Spur: This is another community that is dead in name only. It was the early name for the Pine Top distillery west of Glen Saint Mary.

La Buena: Pronounced �Lay Bewner (long �U�) by old timers, its origins are not clear. It was a stop on the Atlantic Coast line from the late 1880�s into the early decades of the 1900�s.

McPherson: Situated west of Trail Ridge in the southeast section of the county, McPherson was a stop on the Atlantic Coastline RR in the late 19th century for families in the southeast area of the county. A family by that name lived nearby, and the patriarch of the family was an employee of the railroad.

Moore�s Head: �Head� refers to the beginning or �head� of a swampy creek or slough. No one seems to know who Moore was or why the name is on maps. It is a desolate site, but older heads insisted that trains on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR once stopped there.

Newburg: Newburg, sometimes written �Newbury�, is known only from a few maps from the decades after the end of the War Between the States. The maps show it as being east of Sanderson. Walter Turner was said to have applied for a post office there but was denied his request.

Nursery: This was a stop on the Atlantic Coast Line RR about 4 miles south of Macclenny. Established as a shipping point for the Turkey Creek Nurseries nearby, it existed from the last years of the 19th century until about 1910.

Pomerene: This once-upon-a-time stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR is said to have been named for a railroad worker�s lady friend (probably another of those made-up-after-the-fact beginnings stories). Some old timers said it was nothing more than a re-fueling stop for wood burning locomotives, and others claimed there was a cluster of houses nearby.

Sapp: Located at the extreme southern end of the county, Sapp was a large thriving naval stores community from the mid 1800�s until about 1920. The first settler was John Sapp, a sheep raiser, farmer, and part time minister. Sapp, once one of the county�s largest voting precincts, holds the dubious distinction of unwittingly being a primary force in determining the 1876 election for the highest office in the land. Returns irregularities in the Sapp precinct caused a major change in the county�s election that eventually was a factor in bringing Florida back into the Democratic fold and changing the state�s electoral votes to put Rutherford Hayes, a Republican, in the nations� president�s chair. President Hayes put an end to Reconstruction in the South.

Sargent: Once the last stop on the Georgia Southern and Florida RR just before the rails left the county for Columbia County and the State of Georgia, Sargent was home for a short while to a swamp trapping Brady family in the early 1940�s. The one-family railroad stop served other families living in the swampy neighborhood and was in existence prior to 1900.

Soakum: Soakum was never a community; it was a state of mind. It seemed to take forever to get there from anywhere. A lot of people went to Soakum to hunt game and tend to their cattle pastured there, but few tried to pin point Soakum�s location. It was a broad undefined area of pines, vicious saw edged palmettos, impassable swamps, very dirty sand, and hordes of ticks. About as close as most people could come to identifying its location was to say it abutted Pinhook Swamp and straddled the Baker and Columbia Counties line. A few shanties were scattered throughout, but nobody seemed to live in them when I was there as a kid.

Soakum was a different world.

Steckert: Thought to be named for the area�s section foreman on the Atlantic Coast Line, Steckert was a small attractive community until the late 1930�s. It became a favorite trysting spot for illicit affairs and �going to Steckert� was a slangy code name for such goings-on.

Travelers� Rest: Still on some maps simply as �Traveler�, this was a small community where pioneers of the 1830�s, �40�s, and �50�s stopped at a well of �sweet� water. Later a shallow well was sunk and a pitcher pump attached. Oral history claims that an old curmudgeon user of the trail laid a curse on anybody that neglected to leave a water-filled container for priming the pump by the next traveler. The site became popular for hunting camps.

Woodstock: As its name implies, Woodstock was a stop for wood burning locomotives until coal and diesel replaced the locally cut timber fuel. Until the 1920�s the community was reportedly busy with a bank, commissary, drug store, and several families. It was also known as Mann�s Spur prior to 1900. A few black families were living there into the 1940�s.

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There were other planned communities from the 1880�s into the mid 1920�s that the developers had hoped would appeal to the Yankee desire to live in a �tropical� atmosphere, but they never got further than plats drawn on paper and perhaps a temporary sign set up on the proposed sites. A much later �planned� community was called Holy World, the biggest hoax ever pulled on the county, and existed only as rumors in the 1960�s.

Why did the communities die? Families pulled up stakes and moved away, some to that great residential area in the sky. Timber and turpentining played out. Names were changed. And rumor has it that some met their demise when public officials gave public money to a venture openly declared not to be a public facility.

Your ol� columnist is well aware that he treated this subject under his old heading �The Way It Was� (Nov. 4, 1976), but, considering the season of politics is upon us again, he feels the topic should be brought out, dusted off, up-dated, and presented every four years.

1876 was the year when Baker County was recognized nationally for the second time; the first was when the major battle of the War Between the States was waged on its soil at Ocean Pond in 1864. Due to the county�s questionable politics and voting irregularities in 1876, there ensued a chain of somewhat confusing and unethical actions and events that resulted in some of the county�s returns being declared invalid, and that decision contributed to changing the direction of the state and nation for the next several years.

The occupation of Florida by Federal troops to implement the program of Reconstruction was in its eleventh year, and the past eight years had been under the harsh direction of what was known as the �Radical Republicans.� A state and national election was coming up, and many of the old time Floridians of the soil had not even a modicum of concern; since the end of the war eleven years earlier, most had been concentrating on feeding and clothing themselves. They were, for the most part, oblivious to the workings of politics.

Interest, however, was strong among the former Confederate citizenry that hoped to regain control of their state, probably prompted more by resentment of Tallahassee being run by transplanted politicians and that former slaves had been given the vote than by a sense of duty. With each election since 1866 acts of violence had increased.

The electorate began to polarize. Unreconstructed former Confederates joined forces with some conservative Republicans, and the Radical Republicans aligned them selves with the Freedmen�s Bureau, blacks, Scallawags (turncoat Southerners), some loyal Democrats, and Carpetbaggers. When the polls opened on the seventh of November, 1876, the two sides turned out strongly determined to rid themselves of the other.

In Baker County, one would need a program to tell who was what and on what side in the white community. Aaron Driggers, who had been a Whig (old time conservative party) and had initially been opposed to secession (although he had been a Confederate soldier) was a staunch Democrat. The Cobb brothers, L. C. and W. C., had been secessionists, Confederate soldiers, and Democrats, but they turned to Republicanism during Reconstruction. Samuel N. Williams, a Whig who had been prompted by the brutality of some Federal troops to switch his allegiance to the Confederacy just prior to the Battle of Ocean Pond, once again joined the Republican Party. Neal Drawdy, an anti-secessionist, joined the militant Democrats after the war. His father-in-law Edward Rowe remained a conservative and refused to join either the Confederate or Union Army but later became a member of a secret Democrat Club dedicated to terrorizing blacks and ending Republican rule at any cost.

Black males were registered Republicans whether they wished it or not.

Most Democrats all over the state, and Baker County was no exception, intimidated Republicans and newly enfranchised blacks with every means possible, lawful and unlawful, to keep them from the voting sites, and the Republicans toted accusations of similar tactics, and well deserved, from the Democrats.

The telegraph line was cut several times between Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Three railroad trestles, including the one between Darbyville and the present Glen Saint Mary, were burned on the morning of the seventh. Members of both political parties were reported to be conspicuously armed at all four polling places in the county � Barber�s, Johnsville, Sanderson, and Sapp.

Repair crews spliced the telegraph lines so that communication was reestablished for the returns to be sent to the capital from across upper Florida. Although all results were not received by then, especially from central and south Florida (those sections were thinly populated and considered to have little or no effect on the outcome), the Republicans declared victory by four p m on Election Day. Premature congratulations were sent to Lt. Gov. Marcellus L. Stearns, a former U.S. soldier from Maine and late of the Freedmen�s Bureau, on his win for the gubernatorial seat.

Rumors of polling irregularities flew In Baker County. Republican voters, and in particular blacks, complained they had been denied access to the polls. Ballots were missing in the Sanderson precinct. And at Sapp, in the south end of the county, there were more ballots in the box than the number of registered voters.

The state canvassers met in Tallahassee on Monday the 27th of November and found that all counties had reported except Dade. As each of the 38 counties� reports was opened and announced, each was promptly and ritually protested. Democrat Samuel Pasco protested the counties with Republican majorities, and Republican Malachi Martin protested the counties with democrat majorities.

One of the little counties surprised the representative of both parties � Baker County had gone Republican! It was reported that the room was briefly silent save for the turning of heads toward one another in disbelief.

Even the Republicans expressed surprise at the Baker vote.

Board member Pasco broke the silence when he jumped from his seat and shouted out his challenge of Baker�s figures of 130 Republican and 89 Democrat votes. However, knowing that the presidential electoral college would meet on the 6th of December and that time was very short, Pasco allowed the figures to be recorded�but subject to subsequent argument.

There was much subsequent argument.

Both parties knew that Baker County was traditionally staunchly Democrat. Most Negroes (all Republicans) had left the county after the war, and only a handful of northern Republican opportunists had seen little here to attract them. It was common knowledge, however, that some of the former Confederates had deemed it prudent to align them selves with the ruling party � the Republican - of the day.

Still, Baker County was traditionally staunchly Democrat.

Your columnist flatters himself to believe that some of you nice folks out there in weekly-newspaper-reading-land might have saved the recent articles on Baker County�s dead communities. If you are one of those indubitably cognoscente and persons of fine taste, you will want to add the defunct community of Pendleton to the list. Pendleton was a stop on the rails a few miles west of Sanderson in the 1890�s. We don�t know who named it, who it was named for, or why it existed.

It was discovered by Democrat Pasco�s investigation that there were three returns from Baker County. All three were different, and none was in accord with the law that required a return to be signed by the county judge, clerk of court, and a justice of the peace chosen by them. One return, dated 10 November and signed by the clerk of court and a JP, but not by the judge, included all 4 precincts with a total of 238 Democrat and 143 Republican votes. The second was identical with the first but dated 13 November. The third return was also dated November 13th and was signed by the county judge, the sheriff, and another JP (appointed by Gov. Stearns on November 10th�three days after the election). The third return showed only 2 precincts with 130 Republican and 89 democrat votes.

Regarding the third report, the improperly constituted Baker County canvassing board had thrown out 2 precincts � Sapp and Sanderson. The ostensible reason was that the members had heard that a qualified voter was prevented from voting at Sapp and that seven illegal votes were cast in Sanderson. The actual reason, rumored later, was that independent candidate (a Democrat, albeit independent) for the legislature, George P. Canova, had lost out badly in those districts to mainline Democrat Benjamin J. Gurganus, and he prevailed on his friend County Judge William Driggers not to have those two critical precincts counted.

The county canvassing board tossed out the two precincts without authority to do so.

From the near apathy of a few years before, unreconstructed Floridians began to gather in their county courthouses and in the streets, emboldened by their �almost win.� There was violence in some counties, telegraph lines were cut again, and roads blocked by Cracker vigilante groups in the northern tier of counties. Wholesale charges and counter charges of lawlessness flew from one party to the other.

In Baker County, some prominent transplanted Republicans disappeared, rumored to have been deposited in some of the very deep holes in the numerous streams in the area.

The Republican headquarters in New York requested the Florida state canvassers send their report with all possible haste, because the result of the national ticket rested on Florida�s returns. The Republicans, a bit worried about a rumor that one of their members had fraudulently withheld some Baker returns, agreed to record the Democrat version of the state�s returns, in which Baker�s votes were a Democratic majority, and thus gave the Democrats a slight edge in the governor�s race.

However, this was too late for the national election. The first return had already been published nationally and favored Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The Florida returns were 24,337 for Hayes and 24,294 for Democrat Samuel Tilden.

When the electors met on the 6th of December, the decision was for Hayes.

George F. Drew, a New Englander (New Hampshire) and a businessman from Suwannee County, was the Democrat�s nominee for governor. Unsurprisingly, he had contested the election when it was announced that Stearns had won, but the Baker County returns favored him in the final count and insured his election.

Lt. Gov. Stearns wrote to ex-senator Thomas W. Osborn, � I am convinced that it was the intention of the Democrats to make the returns show 100 majority [Electoral College] for the Tilden electors [Samuel Tilden was the Democrats� nominee for President], and they would have succeeded in making them show 90 majority, as they claim, if one of their own counties had not failed them. This was Baker County � a small Democratic county which gave 90 Democratic majority but was returned by the county canvassers by throwing out two precincts.�

In Baker County, there was no Republican candidate for the legislature, but the seat was hotly contested by Democratic regular nominee, Benjamin H. Gurganus, and an independent candidate, George P. Canova. Mr. Canova was among the most unreconstructed rebels in the county. Gurganus attempted to be a �party man� who traveled the moderate constitutional path (but his true sympathies lay with the former CSA). The Canova faction, headed by county judge William Driggers, demanded the tossing out of two precincts - Sapp and Sanderson - that had given a majority to Gurganus. Democratic Party attorneys urged the state canvasses to investigate the �fraud in Baker County� and thus set in motion a sweeping months-long re-canvassing throughout the state.

As the state and nation waited (other states had similar problems), Baker Countians continued to fight among themselves, and the Democrats continued to quarrel within their party. They would not know until much later that their intra-county political feuds had aided the process whereby Florida was returned to the control of the Democrats under George F. Drew but had swung the Electoral College in favor of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

One of Pres. Hayes� campaign promises had been to put an end to the expensive and hated Reconstruction program instituted by the Radical Republicans. That promise was kept soon after he took his oath of office.

Gov. Drew, in his term from 1877 to 1881, instituted major reforms to aid the state to become fiscally sound after its long period of economic ills. Losing candidate Stearns, an increasingly bitter man, waged his hopeless battle to return to control of state politics. Mr. Canova relinquished his seat in the Florida legislature because he felt it had been unfairly gained. Mr. Gurganus died a highly respected citizen in the yellow fever epidemic of 1888. Judge Driggers� home precinct of Sapp, one of the �tossed out� precincts, is now no more than a broad stretch of reforested pinelands.

The following year, the courthouse at Sanderson burned, destroying all local evidence of fraud.

This column is indebted to researchers in the Florida State Archives, the Florida Historical Society, and the late Hon. John J. Crews for invaluable assistance in producing this material.

Baker County has always taken to its politics like hogs to swill, and sometimes the politics have been strongly suggestive of swill. As the local populace polarizes itself in the manner of national candidates and their supporters, your ol� columnist feels it�s about time the local populace learned a little something about their two political parties choices.

As we explore the two major parties, let�s be ready to understand these two shocking truths (given alphabetically): The Democratic Party ain�t your grandpa�s party any more! The Republican Party ain�t your grandpa�s party any more! Keep these two truths in mind as we regress to the geneses of the parties.

The Democrats can claim the longer history of the two. Thomas Jefferson, a strong believer in the common man, founded the Democratic Party in 1792 against the influence of the Federalists (generally conceded by the common man as being composed of the new nation�s upper crust). I am convinced Jefferson�s political group changed its name in 1798 to the Democratic-Republican Party just to confuse future generations.

Jefferson was the first Democrat elected president. His successors James Madison and James Monroe, respectively were also Democrats. The man of the soil, especially in the South, espoused the Democratic Party, and except for George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, no other historical names have come down more frequently through our county�s Cracker families.

The election of John Quincy Adams in 1824 created a stir among the Democratic-Republican Party, and through a series of convoluted situations, Andrew Jackson wound up as the nominee four years later.

Old Hickory Andy was a determined and tough leader who whipped his party into a more organized entity. Under him, his party founded the national convention concept. In 1844, his party took on it self the name we know it by today � The Democratic Party.

The Republican Party, like the Democrats, began as a political force for the common man, with a care for some that were, in those days, held beneath the common man. Sometime in the early 1850�s a group of anti-slavery and �Free Soilers� (believers that western lands should be granted gratis to settlers) met in Wisconsin to organize.

The party became officially the Republican Party in 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. They emulated the Democrats by staging a convention to nominate candidates in the Michigan state election. They elected to call them selves Republicans because it spoke of equality and put them in mind of Thomas Jefferson�s concepts of his Democratic-Republican Party (I still believe those people of that day were hoping to throw us for a loop with their label swapping).

The Republicans felt secure and bold enough in 1856 to nominate John C. Fremont for president. The party and Fremont�s strong platform came across to Democrats as �everything free� - free soil, free labor, free speech, free men. Fremont didn�t make it. At the time, the Democrats and Whigs (another topic for its own column later) were the major parties, and the Republicans were relegated to a third party. Third parties have never been a strong force in American politics.

The Whigs were losing ground throughout the nation except in the South where the members of the party were labeled �Cotton Whigs� and were pro-slavery and anti-government interference. The Republicans were gaining strength among the �Conscious Whigs� (those opposed to slavery).

The new vigor among the Republicans made their candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln, to be taken seriously among the electorate. He was the first Republican president.

As a move more politically expedient than from conscience, if one is to believe some of his speeches and communiqu�s that have been largely hidden from succeeding generations, Pres. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. His party began the process that made life less onerous for the slave population of the nation � slavery was outlawed, equal rights were guaranteed, and voting privileges were secured for Black American males.

Both parties claim the lead in the institution of universal suffrage (women given the vote), but history gives the edge to the Republicans.

At the end of the War Between the States, the Democrats became more and more the party of the common man but were usually the nominator of the rich for president. The Republicans� nominees for president, with some exceptions, were from the less-well-heeled, but their platforms seemed to Democrats to favor the rich.

In Baker County in post Civil War times, the Republicans were mostly Blacks, transplanted Northerners, and erstwhile Democrats that were of a practicality to know they would be more politically viable within the ruling Republican Party. The Democrats, composed of farming and laboring White citizens became, for all practical purposes the only party in the county until well into modern times. It was often said the Democratic Primary was tantamount to election.

The Great Depression did not spare Baker County, and the majority of its citizens remembered �Hoover Days� and would not have voted for Jesus if he ran on a Republican ticket.

For many local Democrats, their party reverted in the 1960�s to the John C. Fremont Republican platform of �give-aways�, and they began to ease out of their traditional party and join them selves to the Republicans.

As Baker County moves into the 21st century, it now has the strength and energy of opposing parties. No nation continues to exist when controlled by a lone political party (remember the Soviet Bloc countries). No nation is worthy of existing when it votes party rather than person.

Most Americans of the past couple of generations dearly love to panic. In olden times when they had to spend much time scratching out a living, their lives had neither time nor room for the luxury of panic. Now that our society is generally affluent, whether or not we will admit it, we can afford long hours of sitting with our eyes glued to TV and net screens and let the panic-inducers do their best work on us.

I�ve often wondered what our Jacksonville TV newscasters would report on if there were no weather, killings on the Northside, or a bunch of people running across a downtown bridge in the name of some sort of charity. The weather, of course, is their chosen hysteria topic, and they are in their panic-reveling, euphoric hog heaven during hurricane season.

Having been a Floridian all his life except for a dumb year or two up North, your ol� columnist has great respect for those counter-clockwise- revolving monsters of nature known as hurricanes. He knows the damage to life, limb, and property they are capable of waging during their annual visits.

He also knows one of the dire products of those terrible storms is unnecessary hysteria.

The media has a responsibility to keep the public aware of the storm�s location, give alerts when needed, and offer suggestions for preparedness, but this season has definitely been over-loaded with hype about evacuating, showing reporters on the blustery scene (the same reports repeated endlessly, we might add), and pushing the necessity to run down to the local emporia and buy them out of stuff that most folks probably wouldn�t need or already have on hand. Inferred by this columnist was, ��and brawl over who gets the last can of Spam, the last generator, and the last jug of water.�

The media also has a responsibility to re-think their broadcasts and alerts. If they are going to ask the public not to panic, they shouldn�t work hard to create panic.

Take the bottled water thing the newscasters harp on for instance. Why do otherwise normal, rational people walk right by their faucets that have been supplying them well with water for years and go buy water from a store at the near-command of TV newscasters? When a storm begins its journey across the Atlantic, does our old faithful water supply suddenly become tainted, non-potable, un-chic? Why not catch up water from one�s own tap and save several dollars? And, do we really think that bottled water comes from some one rowing out to the middle of the spring boil and dipping it up jug full by jug full rather than by filling those jugs from their own taps?

On a more serious note, has anybody at the top of emergency services ever given thought to how many thousands are liable to be killed by hurricane-spawned tornados while stalled in a long congested line on a highway during forced or TV-suggested evacuations? If the storm doesn�t hit the evacuees, it is most likely that panic will, and panic makes some keenly-balanced people start shooting and swinging tire irons at each other. There must be some brain-storming done at top levels to facilitate and speed up evacuations, and there must be more uniformed officers on the highways (take those officers off the beat searching for dopers and get them out on the evacuation routes). Making emergency planners sit just one time in one of those interminable creep-and-stop evacuations would result in a fine-tuned, intelligent, and efficient evacuation plan.

An aside note: Where and when did authorities gain the power to demand that I, or any of us, leave our homes during a storm? Don�t know about the rest of you, but I have a right to remain in my old shack come what may, and if I choose to stay in my old shack, then I�ll face the consequences�just leave me alone and tend to those that wish to be ordered about.

I don�t know if it�s panic or general lack of intelligence, but some of our imported residents of Florida seem to believe the political unit that is our state should tote the blame for hurricanes� existence and hurricanes� destruction. Did these folks sleep through their geography classes and never learn that Florida is in the sub-tropical belt and therefore subject to tropical storms? Are they not capable of realizing that one cannot crowd many metal houses on wheels onto many acres of near sea-level land and not be subject to wind and flood damage?

Accustomed to and softened by AC, ice, and good lighting, much of the public continued to panic without those electrical amenities after the storm. When government and business joined in an effort to set up so-called comfort stations in Jacksonville to provide free ice and snacks, the recipients actually skirmished with each other and cussed and criticized the hands holding out freebies to them.

The penman of this little effusion was most fortunate during the recent storm. All he suffered were blocked driveways and power outages for several hours. But he didn�t panic. He is a product of his time and place, greatly influenced by old fashioned Calvinistic doctrine that if the Supreme Being allows the storm to take him his work here is finished, but since the Supreme Being permitted him to remain, he has more to do.

Even the most casual reader of American history has come across the word Whig(s). If your histories were like your ol� columnist�s, they didn�t have the courtesy to define the word. A word like Whig(s) demands some sort of explanation.

Whigs� participation in American politics was at one time a prime factor in determining the nation�s direction. If you are a Southerner of Anglo-Celtic pedigree, chances are you had ancestors that wore the Whig label.

For the word�s genesis, it is necessary to travel backward in time to 1600�s Great Britain where it was tacked on to rebellious Scots Presbyterians by established church elitists. Seems the word came from whiggamore �cattle driver, considered then to be somewhat of a mean station in life and hardly worth a notice.

When a marriage of several different Protestant factions ended the possibility of a Roman Catholic monarch ever sitting on the throne, they wound up being called Whigs by the disheartened and bitter Catholic political faction. The strongest members of the Protestant union were of the aristocracy, and in time they fell heir to the title of Whigs. Through the strange convoluted process of social politics, the aristocracy, assured of no future Catholic �threat�, settled in to a most conservative attitude during the reign of the Georges, and in time the common man was again the Whig (Does anyone dare try to explain and understand social politics?).

In Great Britain, the Whigs of the man of the soil and the toilers of industry became identified with protests, social and legal reform, and of a definite liberal direction. In America, the Anglo colonists of the soil had brought their conservative common man attitude with them to the New World where the word Whig and its connotations lay in a fitful dormant state until the new nation�s politics began to heat up in the 19th century. In America, the Whigs retained their politically conservative inheritance.

Andy Jackson, a hero of the common folk of the soil and the frontiers, south and west, �west� being still east of the Mississippi, was not a hero of the rich, business opportunists, and States Righters. Jackson was an advocate of a strong presidency and federal government and other major issues of the day that engendered enmity and a loose coalition among his opponents.

John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay and their supporters called themselves the National Republican Party, but Jackson�s forces dubbed them the Whigs. As has always been frequent in history, an unsavory epithet eventually was accepted by the persons it was cast on and worn with some amount of pride. By 1834, the Whigs considered themselves of sufficient strength to tackle a national election. Like the Democrats of post WW II, the Whigs split and three candidates � Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Hugh Lawson White � stood for the office of president. The lack of a cooperative spirit left the Whigs at the polls, and Democrat Martin Van Buren was assured election as president.

In 1840 the Whigs were successful in putting William Henry Harrison in the White House, and he was succeeded by his vice president John Tyler. Some aside notes: the double given name of William Henry has remained popular in the South, and John Tyler was a lateral ancestor of the late beloved Miss Karlie Tyler of Glen Saint Mary. Tyler also penned his name to the Florida Statehood Act of 1845.

President Tyler�s policies rubbed against the grain of his party, and his party ousted him. The Whigs had another success in 1848 when their candidate Zachary Taylor was elected on their ticket. His successor Millard Fillmore was also a Whig.

Not unusual among American political parties, the Whigs began to divide on social, political, and regional issues. In the North, the Abolishionists were lured away from them and into the Free Soil Party. The New England �Conscience Whigs� were totally anti-slavery. Other Northern politicians were not so mindful of involuntary servitude as they were hoping to gain control of power with their free states majority. In the South, there were the rich �Cotton Whigs�, striving to maintain their slavery based economy.

The split cost the Whigs their existence. Most of the Northern and Conscience Whigs joined the recently established (1854) Republican Party. The Democrats welcomed other party-less Whigs, especially those of the rich plantation sort.

Former Pres. Fillmore took the remnants into his Know Nothing Party, a fine name for a political party. If you don�t believe it might very well fit today, check out some of the contradictory, negative, bashing-the-other-side rhetoric followed by �I�m (insert a name, any name), and I approve this message.�

The Whigs were dead except for the vestiges among the common man of the South and frontiers.

Baker County had its share of Whigs and Whig sympathizers, although they voted Democrat. Most were ultra-conservative, and, this will totally discombobulate die-hard Confederate battle flag waving good ol� boys of our day, most were anti-multifaction (a good word that has gone out of fashion meaning �secession�). However, when the die for secession was cast, most wed themselves to the Confederate cause.

After the end of the War Between the States, and the oppression of Reconstruction for the whites had replaced the oppression of the blacks under slavery, old enmities still festered between the former anti-secession and pro-secession forces. Oral history has it that some of the unexplained deaths in the area in the years following the Civil War were believed to have their roots in the afore-mentioned enmity.

Political parties of today, take note � a fizzling out can happen to you if you keep splitting. Multifaction can spell death for a political party just as it did the Confederate States of America.

I�m Gene Barber, and I approve this message.

A lot of you nice folks out there in weekly-newspaper-readers-land have accepted the current computerized so-called progressive direction in America, epitomized by the telephone automated response system.

For those of you who might have been in a Rip van Winkle state for the past 20 years, an automated response is when you call someone or a business with a serious need of information about a critical matter and you get, not a real live person, but a robot-sounding recording that puts you through twenty questions, most of which are totally irrelevant to the subject of your call and the rest are ambiguous and confusing to the max.

It is highly touted as bringing greater efficiency to communication.

With an automated response system you have to respond first if you�d prefer hearing the recorded spiel in Spanish. Sometimes you are asked first if you want the message in English (This�in an English speaking country!). The rest goes along these lines: �Listen carefully [tacitly preceded by �you idiot�] to the following options. If you want this message in Swahili, press 2. If you have one ear on either side of your head, press 3. If you have a nose, press 4. If you believe the Jaguars could fill Altell Stadium if Weaver and his players would cut their take so ticket prices could be dropped to a decent level, press 5. If you think the Jaguars could fill Altell Stadium if they played better, press 6. If you�re calling about your grandma�s dental plates being accidentally dropped in the commode, press 7. If you are silly enough to believe you�re going to talk with a living, breathing, human being at this end, press 8.� And it goes on and on as your ear numbs with options.

A little example of the non-logic of some automated responses is when you desperately need to report a lost or stolen credit card. Believe it or not, while some kid is out buying a pickup truck and a load of Britney Spears CD�s with your lost or stolen card, the automated response goes through the several options available to you, starting with what language you wish to use, gives you the specials of the month, and your last option is � get this � to report a lost or stolen credit card.

To pile on more insult to your intelligence, the automated response recording often has what can be best described as a condescending fake smile or mindless lilt in the voice.

Never has the frustration of the automated response system been more exasperating to your ol� columnist than during the aftermath of the storm some call Jeanne (Your ol� columnist refuses to become emotionally attached to anything so destructive by giving it a name; to him they are Storm #1 of 2004, Storm #2 of 2004, etc.).

The person who penned this effusion allows that his frustration had to do with his communication via automated response with a major utility company in Florida that is quite Powerful and supplies consumers with Light, the name of which he will not divulge for fear of a lawsuit, increased rates, or being put at the bottom of the list again when next he seeks restoration of electricity.

At the height of the storm, your columnist heard a very loud crack coming from the direction of the power line transformer in front of his house, a sickening sound that signaled trouble in addition to that of downed lines. He is painfully aware that even when power is restored, a transformer with a popped fuse in front of his house means that the Villa Barber would still have no lights, refrigeration, water, music, and fans. There would be no re-charging of his motorized chair (he is quite helpless and immobile without it), and, worst of all, no peach ice cream after supper. He called his supplier of electricity, and that�s when the circus of non-communication began.

Doubtless, the utility company was being deluged with calls of panic and frustration, and, doubtless, the utility company was working hard to locate the sources of problems and was gearing up to correct them. Doubtless, the utility company was receiving a flood of crank calls also. Your columnist was not in a panic, he wasn�t frustrated (yet), and he doesn�t believe he can be properly listed under the heading of �crank callers.� He wanted simply to communicate that in addition to the utility company removing downed trees and restoring poles and lines in the area, they should put his popped-fuse transformer on a work order.

Your ol� columnist called, trying to by-pass the officious sounding information recording and list of options and pressed �0� until what he believed was a real person came on the line. The news about the transformer with the popped fuse was supplied. There was a right neighborly chat, but listening between the lines, so to speak, was heard, �Hey, Ernesto, here�s another old crank calling from north Florida. What would he know about transformers?�

Power was coming on all about the Villa Barber, and by Tuesday night it and the house across the street were the only two in Baker County without electricity. At the venerable Villa Barber, the refrigerator and freezer had to be emptied of spoiled food, and family and friends constantly re-gassed a borrowed generator to keep the old man�s motorized chair barely charged. Family and friends supplied him with food, and it�s believed family and friends were getting dern tired of tending to his importunate demands.

Then, the frustration began.

Beginning Tuesday evening, the penman of this effusion was on the telephone almost hourly through Thursday night, continually pressing �0� til his pressing finger was worn to a nub. It eventually got him in touch with a human again, and the human insisted that all of Baker County had power since Tuesday evening. To your writer, sitting in the feeble glow of a kerosene lamp (How did we ever see by those things?), drenched in sweat, and enviously eyeing all the households about him happily lit by electricity, the gentleman�s information was deemed somewhat short of total accuracy..

Your columnist�s vocabulary is inadequate to describe how much he dislikes being assertive, but Friday morning was the hour of decision; he went to the top � The Florida Public Service Commission. Within an hour, he saw the light, he felt the breeze, he heard the music, he had the power. He didn�t have the peach ice cream; it had melted.

It took the two men, very accommodating crew less than ten minutes (maybe just five) to pop the transformer fuse back in.

All could have been resolved so simply�your ol� columnist would not have had to swelter and be immobile�he would have been able to see�he would have had peach ice cream�if only there had been communication�blessed communication.

Be advised: Progress illogically applied can be a great impediment to progress.

Having observed the irrational, incomprehensible, expensive, manipulated circus of getting party-hopping Ralph �Does he have a clue?� Nader on states� ballots for the upcoming presidential election, your ol� columnist is prompted to resume his effusions on third parties. This comment is on a third political party that would make little sense today - the Anti-Masonic Party.

Most of us here in weekly-newspaper-readers-land have had Masons and related fraternal organizations members among our kin and acquaintances, and we can�t fathom how an American political party could possibly be built on a negative attitude toward a fraternal order of that sort (American political parties have been built on less sane reasons.).

Histories give us several reasons why the Anti-Masonic Party was born in the 1820�s. A frequently mentioned factor came from the results of a strong Protestant evangelistic movement that swept the states in that decade. The more conservative Christian denominations preached in their tent and open air revivals against the secrecy, the rumored use of wine, and the supposed misuse of Christian symbols among Freemasonry rites. Some of the accusations were macabre and most proved to be fallacious.

To quote from a published history of the Anti-Masonic movement, �The Presbyterian Synod of Pittsburgh declared Freemasonry �unfit for professing Christians� in 1821, and the Methodist General Conference prohibited ministers from joining in 1823.�

Religious and social temperance societies joined the attacks. It was said that the Catholic Church�s wish not to ally itself with the evangelical Protestants prevented that venerable institution from getting in on the Anti-Masons drive. Primitive Baptists, non-evangelical but fervently opposed to secret societies in those days, was another enemy of the order. It was believed by some at the time that the new Mormon denomination was especially fervent in its opposition to the order.

It wasn�t all religious and social; the Federalist Political Party was dying, and many of its former adherents drifted into the Anti-Masonic Party, in particular those opposed to Andrew Jackson�s policies. Your columnist wishes to insert here that most histories state this but go no further with reasons�and that�s about as far as he can go with it too.

The oft published ostensible reason for the Anti-Masonic Political Party was the case of one William Morgan�s disappearance or death allegedly at the hands of Masons. Morgan, angry with his Masonic brothers of the Batavia, N.Y., Lodge, threatened to publish the order�s secrets. The story goes that the Master of the Local Lodge and several members finagled to have Morgan arrested on an unpaid debt of less than $3. Then the Mason conspirators paid Morgan�s debt to release him from jail, kidnapped him as soon as he walked out of his cell, and held him prisoner in their own facilities. The tale became confused in most histories at that point. Some say he was murdered by the Masons, and others put forth he escaped and disappeared. A popular fanciful tale even in this columnist�s youth was that the Masons took him to the coast and set him adrift in a boat with only a day�s necessities.

It was said the Masons interfered with the investigation of Morgan�s disappearance and that those involved in the affair received very light sentences. It was also reported the Lodges did little or nothing to punish the men responsible for the incident. Obstruction of justice accusations were leveled at elected public officials that oversaw the case.

The most obvious reason for the hue and cry against the secret order of Freemasons, but one that doesn�t make the history books, is that it�s a human thing to be anti anything that excludes him or her. At the time in discussion, the Masons were adamant that its potential members be morally upright, have some kinfolk connection to the order, and be highly recommended by Masons for membership. Those that didn�t make the grade were naturally all for destroying the order and they joined the hue and cry.

The sole purpose of the Anti-Masonic Party was to destroy Freemasonry in the United States, and even Masons admit it was frighteningly close to realizing its goal.

And for you folks who have been suckered in to believing the media slant that all things prejudiced are Southern born, be advised that the Anti-Masonic movement�s genesis was in the northeastern sector of states � New York (where it was first organized), Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, etc.

Although several of the nation�s founding fathers had been Masons, the Anti-Masonic Party preached that the order was anathema to the country�s democratic foundation, and the belief grew at a phenomenal rate. But by 1840 most of the ill will was at its ebb, and the Anti-Masonic Party as a political force was dead. The majority of the party�s remnants drifted into the Whigs and Republicans

The United States has had more than its share of third political parties � The Know Nothing, Bull Moose, Prohibition, Progressive (several of these), Dixiecrat, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist Party USA, Natural Law, Reform, ad nauseum. It is tantalizing to label some of them �lunatic fringe.�

This is not to say this country doesn�t need a challenge to the two major parties to bring them back to public accountability. Your columnist is thoroughly disgusted with the venomous non-specific rhetoric from most candidates of both major parties.

It grieves him that he is lowered to the option in most races of voting for the lesser of two evils.

Lord, send us another Harry Truman.

A Nostalgic Trip

Part 1 � The Franklins

Each of the four seasons of the year evokes certain distinct images of places and people out of my past. Fall is the time of year that takes me back to my earliest memories of Glen Saint Mary.

I think it might come from all the colorful and redolent persimmons, kumquats, and satsumas ripening in October all over the community. Perhaps my memories are hearkening back to the home made Halloween carnivals at the Glen School. I recall the pleasant heady odor of burning leaf piles (those people would rather rake and sweep a yard than eat when hungry). Maybe it was the wienie roasts and games played all over town when the weather first got airish (that�s �cool snap� to the benighted).

I spent a lot of time in Glen in my youth and particularly at the old Glen Post Office that sat on the south side of the railroad on the Johnstown Road (now Highway 125). That venerable building now houses the Franklin Mercantile, an Omnium gatherum of nostalgia, scents, and friendliness.

My aunt Mary Hurst (later Rhoden) was the one and only postal clerk in the post office for many a year. She was my first draw to the old post office, but, once there, the ambiance of the place invited me back again and again.

The Glen Saint Mary postmaster in my youth was Jesse Earl Franklin. He was of old South Carolina stock. The Franklins came to Baker County from Texas in the early 1880�s by wagon train. Mrs. Sadie Ventling, one of the older Franklin children remembered crossing the Mississippi by ferry. She said the breadth of the river was frightening and she wondered if they would ever get across. She often spoke of her appointed task on the trip � steadying the family clock. She said it got mighty heavy for a little three year old before they arrived in Baker County.

A few folks knew the postmaster as Earl or Mr. Earl. We kids called him Mr. Franklin. His second wife Sallie always spoke of him as Jesse and addressed him as such. Mr. Franklin�s first wife was a Shaw (Esther I believe was her first name). Mr. Franklin was a slender gentleman with a thin voice, a very high thin voice when he was excited. He was usually smiling and witty, but his temper tantrums became legendary among Glen residents.

Mr. Franklin opened a general store about a half block south of the railroad in the last years of the 19th century. Later, he moved his business into the structure now known as the Franklin Mercantile. He applied for the job of postmaster for Glen, and when he was appointed, he moved his business north to a building convenient to the railroad. He installed the post office in the northeast corner of the store. This was the post office I knew and fondly remember.

The construction date and builder for the structure he moved his business and post office into is moot, but information from some U.S. Post Office Department documents suggest the building was in existence in 1905.

The second Mrs. Franklin was the former Mrs. Sallie Edwards, known to all but Mr. Franklin as Ms. Sallie; to him she was Thelma. Ms. Sallie was a school teacher, widowed, and had two daughters.

The second Mrs. Franklin was well educated and her mannerisms evinced a genteel background. She dressed about 20 years behind current fashion, her hands sagged with diamonds, and she thought the height of millinery fashion was a black velvet beret with a rhinestone clip and short white feather decoration. She drove a black Hudson Terraplane in the thirties and early forties (later bought by Massey Hurst�he eventually renamed it �a Terrible pain in the ___�). She was tight with a dollar.

Sallie Thelma Edwards Franklin was one of the county�s truly outstanding personalities (just a little bit eccentric). She was about the most self-assured person I�ve ever known. She could be almost insulting in her habit of correcting others and giving unsolicited advice. Nevertheless, most had a genuine love and respect for her.

She bought a big yellow Hudson automobile as soon as vehicle production resumed after the end of World War II, and she felt free to park it in the middle of any street in any city when she needed to make a stop to enter a business place. The law looked the other way, as they did for all the old timers who saw no need to pay attention to traffic and parking laws in those days of sparse traffic.

Mrs. Franklin�s voice was low, distinct, and mellow. She used it often and believed that others enjoyed it as much as she did (and most of us did). She would come out with a funny story every now and then. One I remember was her question, �Do you boys know how to tell a country girl from a city girl?� When the response was negative and hopes for a witty answer were high, she explained, �A country girl backs up to the fireplace and lifts her skirt, and a city girl faces the fireplace to lift hers.�

To enter the Franklin living quarters, in the same building as the post office, was like stepping back into another period. The worn but still elegant furniture, beaded and wrapped silk lampshades, and threadbare oriental rugs created an ambiance of the early but faded 20th century

Mrs. Franklin�s yard sported exotic plants including pinecone gingers and a lemon tree that would often be in bloom while fruit still hung on its branches.

The Franklins were shrewd in business and bought up lots of rental property. They were known to foreclose on anybody late in house payments or to evict renters for the same offense. If criticized for their foreclosures and evictions, they replied, �We didn�t take �em to raise�, and, �They need to learn to be responsible.�

At the next Christmastide, Aunt Mary quietly slipped away from us.