The following are some of the articles written by La Viece (Moore-Fraser) Smallwood, Author, Poet, and Genealogist. The articles were published in The Baker County Press, The Baker County Standard or The Florida Times Union

• Profile - Mamie Mae Burnsed
• Claude Scoles
• Myrtie Rowe remembers Macclenny years ago
• Dr. John Holt A man of endless talents...
• Miss Ida - Legacy Of Midwifery To Gospel Tunes
• Profile - Lacy Richardson - Keeping that 'ole time' tradition
• Profile - Verdie and Dewey Fish - Pioneers that made do.....
• The Talents of 'Abbie' Cook.....
• Moniac native learned of Christmas a bit late....
• Brothers keep time at a distance
• Lawton and Essie Conner
• A long road of hard work - Sammy Walker
• Old Macclenny was a 'moving' thing for Gilberts
• Almost a century of Baker memories - Annie Mae Combs
• There was no special welcome for this Baker County hero - Edgar kirkland
• A lifetime of helping - Sippie Hartenstine's still going strong
• John D. McCormick
• John Calhoun & Bertha Mae Bennett Crawford Family
• Fay & Harold Milton
• Hardy & Carrie Hogan Rhoden
• The ' good ol' days' bring fond memories for Elva Dinkins


Main Street Sanderson's Her Beat
Profile-Mamie Mae Burnsed
By LaViece Smallwood

Mamie Mae Burnsed has lived on the main street of Sanderson most of her life, watching people come and go as well as the years that have changed them.

"People used to stop and talk; now everyone's in such a hurry," she said from her home located on the main thoroughfare.

Sanderson used to be especially busy on Saturdays," she continued. "Most folks had to walk to town for their weekly groceries or mail. Some had horse and wagons. It was an all day affair with most families. Everyone was so glad to visit and catch up on the news. Now they just drive up in their cars, rush in for their groceries or mail and drive right off, always in a rush. Use to they'd linger for awhile."

Mamie was born to Baker County natives, Emma Fraser and George Washington Burnsed on September 17, 1899, who were living in Bradford county at the time.

"My dad was working there at a saw mill," she said. "We were poor but we didn't suffer. We had the things we needed."

Living in what she termed a shackey house, heated by a fireplace with an old wood cook stove, the family decided to move to Green Cove Springs for a better job opportunity.

"My dad sold our horse and wagon and rented a double wide wagon and mule team to move our things to Green Cove," she said. "My mama ran a boarding house and that's where I met "Shorty" (Eliud Clair Rodgers) who was a saw mill man from South Carolina."

Mamie and Shorty were married June 21, 1916, in Green Cove Springs where their little girl, Emma Lucile, was born in 1919.

"After about a year I noticed "Ceil" wasn't developing properly," said Mamie. Both she and Shorty were crushed when they found out their infant daughter would never grow into a normal child or adult. Eventually they moved to Baker County, joining her parents who had returned and gone into the grocery business. The sandy road through Sanderson, known as Highway 90,. was being paved, all the way to Jacksonville, and along with construction of the Sanderson overpass and school house. The year was 1925.

"Ceil died with pneumonia a year later at the age of seven," related Mamie. "She never walked. I took the best care possible of her and we loved her very much. She was a beautiful child, just look at her picture," she said pointing to a photograph hanging on a nearby wall.

"I didn't want another child, at least for awhile," she said, "because I wanted to keep Ceil's memory longer, but one day, a few years later, I was out in the back yard dressing a chicken and a young neighbor boy came to the fence and asked me if I'd heard about a baby that had been left in Olustee.

"I hadn't heard about it, but I went and told Shorty," she said. "Later Shorty heard that the Sheriff (Joe Jones) had stopped at a grocery down the street with the little baby on his way to Macclenny. Shorty went down to find out more information and fell in love with the little fellow. He asked the sheriff if he'd stop by our place "and show the baby to Mamie."

"Well my ma was there too, and she was beggin' us to take him. He was a cute baby. Must have been mighty poor people who left him. He had a pillow slip for a diaper, a bottle of milk, and an old piece of army blanket wrapped around him.

"He had been left on a deserted store front; and luckily someone heard him cryin' 'cause at that time there was no such thing as fence laws and hogs were roaming all around. What if one had got the poor little thing?" she said, emotion rising in her usual calm voice.

Continuing, she explained the Sheriff informed them the Judge would have to rule on the case and make the decision, but he'd let them know.

"Shorty didn't sleep much that night for thinking about wanting that baby," she said. "The next morning (Sunday) he got up and drove over to Macclenny taking a little pillow with him to lay the baby on. The sheriff still said he'd have to wait until the next day (Monday) when the Judge could rule on it, so Shorty had to come home without him.

"Early Monday morning the Sheriff's wife, Alma, brought him to us.

"Oh, I'm so proud I took him," she said, "He was the best little boy and we all loved him so."

By this time, Shorty and Mamie had taken over her parents' general grocery store, and times were some better.

"Back then I purchased staples such as sugar, rice, grits, etc., in one hundred pound sacks and emptied it in huge bins or cans. Nothing was prepackaged then like it is now. We just weighed out the amount customers wanted and put it in a bag.

"Sugar and rice sold for five cents a pound and bacon for eight cents. You could buy good steak for twenty cents a pound," she said. "I sold cheese for 20 cents a pound, eggs ten cents a dozen and milk was ten cents a quart bottled from her mother's cow and glass milk bottles. "Buttermilk was five cents a quart," she continued. "We had no refrigeration like we have today but used a carbide refrigerator that kept it cool.

"People ate might common food back then like dried beans, grits and meal. Most people had their own gardens, but I sold produce like lettuce and fruit such as bananas. It was delivered to us on trucks from Jacksonville.

"People coming to town to buy groceries stayed all day and usually bought a five cent cold drink and nickel pack of crackers with maybe a slice of cheese cut off the old cheese block for lunch," she said. "They could eat what they wanted for fifteen or twenty cents."

Shorty died in 1946 and Mamie worked the next sixteen years with the Sanderson school lunch program, raising Sonny as a widow.

In 1972, at the age of forty-one, Sonny died with a heart attack.

"Some people say Sanderson don't grow none, but it does," she said. "There are houses all over the woods out there. The people here are mighty good to me. They know I never leave unless I go to the doctor and they drop in occasionally to say 'Hello' and to see how I feel.

"I know most it won't be long before I have to leave Sanderson and go to the nursing home," she said wistfully as we talked. "I don't want to go. I wouldn't really mind as much except that I dread to move away from my little home and Sanderson where all my memories are."

[NOTE cwm: Mamie died 10 Mar 1986 and is buried in Manntown cemetery along with "Shorty" & "Sonny"]

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Claude Scoles
Memories of France and World War I

By LaViece Smallwood

Shortly before noon on Sunday, June 28th, 1914, crowds gathered in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austrian province of Bosnia. They came to see Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie. Suddenly a man jumped on the running board of the royal touring car and fired a pistol. Two shots struck Ferdinand and one hit Sophie, who was trying to shield him. They both died almost immediately. The assassin was Gavrilo Princip, a hyoung Bosnian student who had lived in Serbia.

Austria-Hungary, suspected that its small neighbor, Serbia, had approved the plot to kill Ferdinand. As a result, it declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. By October 30, the Central Powers - Austria-Hungry, Germany and the Ottoman Empire - were at war with the Allies, Belgium, France, Great Britian, Russia and Serbia. Other countries later joined in the fighting.

A single act - the shooting of Ferdinand marked the outbreak of World War I, but there were several basic causes.

The United States tried to remain neutral in the early years of World War I. The British angered Americans by searching neutral ships. But Britain, as a nation at war, had the right to search under international law. Americans turned against the Central Powers when they learned of German submarines sinking unarmed passenger ships, and German atrocities against civilians. The entry of the United States into the war boosted Allied morale, and fresh American troops reinforced the battered Allied armies. Americans had decided that by joining the Allies they would help "make the world safe for democracy." American doughboys, as the soldiers were called, marched aboard troopships singing George M. Cohan's "Over There."

One such red blooded American was 19 year old Claude Scoles, who enlisted along with many of the friends he was born and raised with in Mt. Vernon, Ohio and who marched aboard one of the thirteen convoy troop ships with 50,000 other American doughboys heading for France in 1917.

"It was real rough, everyone was sick," remembered Claude from his retirement home in Glen St. Mary. "I'd never been so far from shore that I couldn't throw a stone and hit it. we came down between England and Scotland expecting trouble in the channel because that's where the German submarines congregated. If a piece of paper fell someone would shoot at it we were so scared."

Much of the war involved hand to hand combat in trenches between the largest armies ever seen up to that time. New and improved weapons gave each side more efficient machines to kill the enemy.

Claude Scoles, trained for combat in America received new training in France to use the French weapons, and usually traveled in boxcars by train to and from locations.

"French girls, hired as breakmen had to keep their doors locked on the trains at all times," he said, "guarding against love starved soldiers."

"We slept in trenches to keep from being shot. You couldn't dig an inch without hitting water, so that meant we stayed wet and muddy all the time. It rained constantly.

"We wore hob nailed shoes, and wore wool cloths with wrap leggings (like an ace bandage only it's wool). Their argument was we wouldn't catch colds if we wore wool summer and winter, and all the time," he said shaking his head at their unfounded reasoning.

"I got a bunch of coody's (body lice) once and I looked like a zebra all spotted over with iodine they put on me to kill 'em, but I didn't get rid of them until we got to where we could change our clothes.

"There was a terrible flu epidemic in France and people were dying everywhere. I came down with something, never did know what, and lost 45 pounds. I refused to go to the hospital so many were dying. I just took CC pills, all it was was a laxative, and I finally got over it. Everyone thought I was doomed to die.

"We got to go on R&R (rest and recreation) occasionally," he said. "France was the most filthy country in the world, you couldn't breath for flies. Worse place I ever seen. Toilet facilities were very primitive. The French used chamber pots and usually dumped it out their windows. If you were walkin' along the streets you'd best walk out in the middle of the street or up close to the building or it would hit you for sure. Flies were everywhere. Gads, it was terrible," he shivered remembering the situation. "Everyone got French dysentery from poor water."

Even so the Americans found time for jokes and fun on their $30 a month salary plus $3 extra for overseas duty.

"Once I went into a French Tavern and this beautiful French girl kept smiling at me and at the same time uttering some of the most foul words imaginable, smiling all the time. Americans sitting at a nearby table laughing hysterically revealed they had "taught her some friendly American greeting words," he said. "That poor French girl thought she was saying nice words to me."

Even so, his outfit E Battery, 134th Field Auxiliary, 37th Division, which is known as Buckeye (being from the sate of Ohio) were given a commendation from Edward Burr, Brigadier General of the USA for outstanding conduct. His outfit was one of the first combats to be shipped home, landing on American soil in New Port New, Va.

The peaceful little Ohio town he left wasn't quite the same. Perbnhaps because he lost some of his friends serving him on French soil, perhaps because his parents had migrated to Florida, but regardless, a few years later found Claude Scoles leaving Mt. Vernon, Ohio once more, only this time for Baker County, Florida.

"My dad, Clement Laird Vanlandingham Scoles, had bought a house here from Mr. Getsy, also a native from Ohio. I stopped by to visit, on my way to Miami, and stayed. I've never regretted it," he said with a abroad smile.

In 1928, he met and married a native Baker Countian, Lillian Mae Prevatt, daughter of Kel Prevatt and Mary Lou Combs.

"Both of us were old enough to know better," he quipped, explaining he was 30 and she was 26.

"I had a brand new car and a good job at the Glen St, Mary nursery," chimed in his wife explaining she was head propagator of the green houses.

"Yea, but you were waitin' on ole number one," he said with a twinkle in his eye.

"I got her job at the nursery too," he said. "People asked me what happened to her and I told 'em I fired her," he laughed, but admitted he wanted her home raising their family which incidentally are the three children they're so proud of, Robert, JoAnn and Wendell.

Slowly and carefully he picked up a letter addressed to Cpl. Claude Scoles and said, "This letter's from an 84 year old friend of mine in Ohio who served with me in our outfit. He writes that at our last reunion only twenty eight were known to be left from the original 208 in our outfit.

"It's been over 60 years since those days in France and my memories are growing dim," he said as he wistfully folded a handmade cigarette.

[NOTE cwm: Claude died 24 Oct 1980, & Lillian on 27 Dec 1993. Both are buried in Taylor cemetery]

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Myrtie Rowe remembers Macclenny years ago.

By LaViece Smallwood

Myrtie Rowe grew up in the Kyler section of north Baker County where her parents Robert E. Lee Taylor and Elizabeth Williams owned. a grist mill and country store.

"You couldn't go too far from home in those days," said Myrtle speaking of the turn of the century times. "There were only about two cars in the whole community. Everyone else had a mule and a wagon."

"It was especially exciting to visit Macclenny and see the train go by," she said. "We'd have to really hold on to our mule."

School for Myrtie was a three room school house not far from her home.

"But when I spent the night away from home with friends we'd have to get up. before daylight, fix our breakfast and pack our lunch and start walking in the dark to get to school on time.

"We'd have the best school plays, and more fun than you can imagine. Nothing compares to it today. They were absolutely the greatest. We'd put our whole heart into it.

"We'd carry a lunch bucket to school everyday and eat on the playground with the hogs and all," she said. "Once a hog grabbed my sandwich right out of my hand and took hold of my finger and all. I still have the scar," she laughed holding up the injured finger as proof.

"Young people back then really enjoyed going to church. We'd walk to Sunday School in the mornings but go back in the mule and wagon at night. Services started about 7:30 p.m. but lasted until after midnight," she said, explaining that after the preaching, the altar call was held.

"On our way home at night us kids would lay down in the back of the wagon and look up at the stars.

As Myrtle grew into her teens her attention began to turn toward the boys, one in particular who lived across the branch.

"I could see Verg plowing in the fields each day as I was grinding corn at the mill," she said. "He was older than me and already had a girl friend. Some times they'd come over to my house to play the organ and sing and she'd call me her little girl. It turned out her 'little girl' was in love with her feller.

"I remember one time I was having to plow corn and I saw Verg driving by in his mule and wagon going someplace. I didn't want him to see me plowing so I hid behind the barn with the mule and plow until he passed on by."

Courtin' was done in groups those days, Myrtle explained.

"We'd have bon fires out in the yard, play games, go to cane grindings, candy pullings and peanut boilings, she said.

"Mama didn't believe in dancing, but we'd go to things that turned into, it", explaining that the boys would come by in a wagon gathering up the girls to help 'hull peanuts' or any other kind of help neighbors might need.

"Back then everyone pitched in to help neighbors," she reflected.

"After we. finished up our peanut hulling or what ever we'd been called on to do," she continued, "We'd somehow get into square dancing.

"Once I danced a hole right through the bottom of my new pat'en leather sandals. We only got two pair of shoes a year and I was scared to death mama would find out. When I got home I patched them up with some leather we had, but she noticed anyway," recalling the scolding she got from her mama wasn't too bad.

"Mama was the boss when it came to saying what we did," explained, Myrtle. Pa always said, "It's ok with me if it's ok with your Mama."

"I remember once my daddy was camping out in the woods, cutting cross ties with some hired hands. I had gone to a peanut hulling and afterwards it just turned into a square dance. I looked up and there stood Pa."

He said, "What are you doing here? I'm going to tell your Mama."

I said, "What are you doing here? You ain't supposed to be here either."

That was the last she heard of that.

When Myrtle reached eighth grade that was as high as the Kyler school taught. Plans were made for her to go live with a brother in Okeechobee, Florida to further her education. This news soon reached Verg, who, with his brother. Ira, had gone into the grocery business in Macclenny.

A marriage proposal followed and a new life in Macclenny began.

I helped in the grocery store," said Myrtle. "White bacon sold for four cents a pound and twenty four pounds of flour sold for seventy five cents. Live hens were a dollar each."

Four children blessed their marriage which lasted a. short twelve years. One morning, while Myrtie was preparing breakfast, Verg had a heart attack and died.

She sold the store and went to work. Later, she married Charlie Rowe, a sawmill man, and opened another store. With Charlie's two children and her four, they lived next door to their business and raised their family.

Twenty five years later, her second husband suffered a heart attack and died.

Today she still lives in the home she and Charlie occupied spending her time in community and church activities.

A past president of the Macclenny Woman's Club, she is present chairman of the county Red Cross, and President for the county Council on Aging. She has been President of the Church of God Ladies Auxiliary for twenty eight years.

Myrtie Rowe's love for people is evident in the service she renders. Friends say she is the type of person you can depend on day or night to help out when needed.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she contends. "My life in Baker County has been good."

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Dr. John Holt
A man of endless talents.....

By LaViece Smallwood

Volumes could literally be Written about the illustrious, fruitful and productive life of John Holt, Doctor of Psychology, Ordained Methodist Minister of the Gospel, educator, author, composer, pianist, organist, missionary, artist and poet to name a few.

"I'll tell you why I think I do so many things, the accomplished 86 year old spritely achiever said. "I used to offer my students as much as twenty dollars if they ever caught me idle. To this day if I listen to television or music, my hands are busy," he said, pointing to an array of crocheted handiwork, most of which he designed. He also quilts and embroiders. Handing me a stack of books he has authored, he explained that one of them, entitled "Dirt Roads of Georgia" is his autobiography from age five.

"I grew up in the backwoods, greatly in the backwoods," he emphasized. "There were no cars, no roads, no nothing. My dad was a Naval Store Prospector, and traveled around buying up run-down or abandoned turpentine establishments, building them up and reselling for profit. I was taken out of school a lot. My dad just took me to school each time we moved and said to the teacher, "I don't know what grade he belongs, just put him where you think he should be. I was eight or nine before I got out of the first grade

"Of course," he continued, "Since I left home, my personal way of life has led me to fifty-four different homes. I've got a list of all of them."

At the age of eighteen Doctor Holt had passed a teacher's examination and was teaching eighty one students in a one room abandoned church.

"We had no desk. The students sat in the pews with their pads on their laps. I made $210.00 for a year's work."

His talents as an educator were recognized immediately and offers of jobs came from far and near. He soon found himself principal of a school with fourteen teachers.

"World War I was raging and it looked like Germany was going to whip us," he said, "so I enlisted in the Marines and went to France. I was promised my job would be waiting. Upon my return I found the laws had been changed and was told in order to teach I needed a Bachelor's degree in education. I didn't know what It meant, nor had I ever heard of credits. I knew I had to have a job and I desperately wanted to teach, so I went to Furman College in South Carolina to apply for enrollment.

"There I was told I must have a high school education before applying to enter and there I stood with an eighth grade education. My experience didn't count, they told me.

"Finally after crying and begging, they consented to let me take an entrance exam, (which they never got around to giving). With only six weeks left of school I convinced them to let me start then so I could start learning. I ended up with the highest score in the Freshman class, finishing college in three years."

Ironically, 63 years later,. word of his success in the educational field reached a school he once attended in Fitzgerald, Georgia, which extended an invitation of honor for him to graduate with their 1975 graduating seniors and receive a high school diploma. This he did.

Prior to 1975, he received a Bachelor degree in 1924, Masters in 1928 and Doctorate in 1953.

From his first graduate job as Superintendent of Schools in Douglasville, Georgia, a position offered to him upon graduation, he advanced to Dean of Schools at Furman, his Alma Mater. He was the First Dean of Georgia State, as well as the first at the University of Tampa and Thomas Edison, helping to organize them, writing their catalogs, setting up their courses, hiring their faculties. The Georgia Superintendent of Schools brought other superintendents to observe his record keeping system.

"The depression hit and people by the thousands were roaming the country in search of work," he said. "I was asked to take the position of psychologist for the State of Florida. My office was in one of the state's many transient camps in Miami where I was personally responsible for the mental health of 1200 people.

"After the depression, I felt I needed a long vacation. I'd never crossed the Mississippi River, so I bought a travel trailer and took a trip out west for three months. In Wyoming I stopped by the Arapahoe Indian reservation. I wanted to see what they looked like. Something really struck me. I had a feeling I just had to go back and live with those Indians, and I did. One of my greatest desires since age twelve (when I joined the church) was to, be a missionary. I returned to Florida, packed up my things and headed back to Wyoming and the Arapahoe reservation. I mastered their language which was difficult, because you see, it's not a printed language. I stayed sixteen years. While there I had very little contact with other people."

After leaving his work with the Arapahoes, he .traveled around Wyoming investing his time in education and his money in philanthropies such as building five churches with "my own hands and money".

"I think I've traveled in almost every civilized country on the globe and I found the nicest people in the world right here in Baker County, now that is true," he stressed emphatically. "They are the friendliest and best and make the staunchest friends. I've got worlds of them in this county and I wouldn't take a million dollars for any one of them."

Baker County prior to this time was no stranger to him. His brother, A. P. Holt, settled here in the 40's, bringing him here many times, for visits. During the 50's he left the Arapahoes to be with his grieved father who had moved to Macclenny after the death of his mother. During this time he owned Macclenny's first jewelry store and wrote a weekly column entitled "Let's Face The Facts" for The Baker County Press. His editorial type writing style focused on worldwide problems as well as state and local government affairs. County problems, such as unkept store fronts and messy window displays brought about a clean up campaign and praise from merchants and local residents alike.

Another time he was visiting in Baker County, on vacation from the Arapahoes, he was persuaded by then Baker County School Superintendent Jimmy Burnsed to take the job of Principal at Taylor School so it could open for the school term. He obliged.

Dr. Holt has mastered most of his feats by self mastery and determination. At the age of eight he asked, his sister to explain the lines and black symbols on her piano music. Today he plays complicated pieces by such famous composers as Beethoven, Bach, 18-20 pages long on the piano and organ.

Once, when he was very young, his father bought a box of books at an auction. One was a Bible written in Spanish. Before long he had learned to read it by comparing the English version with it word for word. The box of books turned out to be one of his greatest treasures, exposing him to great authors such as Shakespeare. One of the books entitled "Happy Hearts and Homes That Make Them," he attributes influenced him more than any other one thing in his life.

Quotes, such as "You judge a person's intelligence by what he does,"

"You can't have friends without being friendly,"

"The city of happiness is in the state of mind,".

"Nobody has any right to respect you unless you respect yourself,"

"You can't buy happiness, no need to look for it because it's a creation of your own mind."

Living by philosophies such as these is perhaps the reason he never once in his life had to apply for a job. Opportunities were always extended to him.

His contributions were recognized when he was selected to appear in the 7th edition of Personalities of the South, honoring American leaders for their outstanding ability and Service to Community and State.

Proof that Dr. John Holt has a swollen heart and not a swollen head occurred when a "Service to Mankind Award" arrived in the mail for him.

Feeling unworthy and unqualified to have received such an award, he said to the postmaster, "I don't believe this belongs to me, I don't know of any service I've rendered to mankind," but the postmaster assured him there was no mistake.

Still unsure and completely astonished that he should be selected for such an award the postmaster advised him to speak with the president of the club that presented the award. The Baker County Sertoma Club's president, James Smith, assured him there had been no mistake.

"I never knew there was even such a club in Baker County," he said. "I treasure and appreciate that one plaque more than any other honor I've received." And he has received countless others.

For years Dr. Holt has transcribed books for the blind, teaching himself the Braille so masterfully he was accepted as a Braille writer by the Library of Congress. His services were free, a labor of love.

I have never said I couldn't do anything," he said. "if I couldn't do it, I learned how."

The hand painted Holt Coat of Arms, which hangs proudly to the right of his entrance door reads, "Exaltavit Humilies" meaning, "He exalts and helps humble people."

Quite appropriate for Dr. John Holt? Agreed.

"I'm writing a book now," he said, as we were winding up our conversation. "You've heard of Death With Dignity? Well my book is "Growing Old With Dignity." A man can walk straight and tall if he wants to."

And that, Dr. John Holt, is why you are considered ten feet tall.

[NOTE cwm: Dr. John G. Holt b. 1894 d. 1984 buried Woodlawn cemetery]

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Miss Ida - Legacy Of Midwifery To Gospel Tunes

By LaViece Smallwood

Ida Gainey stood at her door expressionless after learning someone wanted to write about her life in Baker County. Regaining a little composure, she managed a big grin and a natural "I'm so glad ya'll came".. greeting.

"Let me get my teeth in," she said as she showed us to our seats.

"My, my, who would want to know anything about me?"

Ida Gainey vividly remembers the painfully poor days surrounding her youth barely surviving in a family of nine children.

"I watched my mama a lot when I'se a little girl,". she reminisced.from her Baxter home in northern Baker County. ."She prayed a lot." There was an ole stump she'd go to, or down by the creek, or in her room. I member she was a good mama, she endured, she never left us children until God took her."

"Mama" was Laura Mizell who married Danel Raulerson, a blacksmith and reared their family "up from Moniac" a rural Georgia Community near the Baker County line.

"We missed school a lot," said Miss Ida, as she is fondly known throughout the community. "We'd go to school totin' our lunch pails with no shoes on. We poor children starved lots of times. We'd come in from school and might find a cold biscuit and a piece of onion, and go straight to the cotton patch.

"Lots of times we'd go to bed cold and hungry. Sometimes we'd cover up with the feather mattress, take feed sacks and stuff them with corn shucks or moss to sleep on,". she said.

"Part of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. I Had one dress I wore to school. I'd come home and change into a rag and wear my dress back to school the next day.

"I only went to the fifth grade, but I'm grateful 'cause I learned to read."

Mis' Ida reached for her "little black memory book" as she tried to remember special dates.

My mama died the year I got saved," she said turning the pages of the worn little book.

"Here it 'tis. It was 1933."

In 1924 at the age of fifteen, she had met and married Odus Gainey.

"Odus loved me, but, well I guess I should be 'shamed to say this, but I had another feller lik'in me too. So Odus bought my sister a pair of shoes so she could dance with him and make me jealous. I didn't lik' that much. The next day he was at church with another girl, so I sat right down and wrote him a letter. In it I said, Odus, you shore did hit my heart yes'ta'day, and I didn't know I loved you so."

"I got a reply right back and he said he'd never do that no more."

"It weren't long before I'd had a mind to marry up with him. My daddy heard we was plan'in to run away. He told me if'in I ran away, I'd git back faster than I went, so in about a month or two we got married, and moved to Baxter."

Hardships didn't improve with marriage, In fact the $1.25 Odus made a week working as a section laborer, with the Southern Railway wasn't enough to cover their expenses. More times than not, all they had to eat for breakfast was greens.

Ida found herself expecting their first child. In her seventh month of pregnancy while fishing down by the creek she slipped and fell backward while pulling on a fish line. The baby never moved again. Two weeks later she lost a baby girl.

In 1926, her only child, Mildred,, was born.

"Peoples' always asked me why I ain't ever had more children," she said. "It was after I had grandchildren that I learned the reason myself, explaining that once when Mildred was a baby she was hospitalized for an infection. During this time her husband told the doctor he felt one child was enough, and told the doctor to do somethin'.

"Now I never have felt that was fair,. but Odus had raised his Pa's bunch and I guess he figured he'd had enough children to raise. Sides that, times were hard."

These circumstances were contributing factors to a very important part of her life.

"I developed a love for people and their children," said.Mis' Ida, relating how she'd go stay with expectant friends and neighbors until the doctor arrived to deliver their baby.

"The doctors use'ta tell me to pay attention so I could learn to do it by myself."

One such family had 18 children so'Mis' Ida got lots of practice.

"Sometimes the doctor never got there and I'd have to deliver the, baby myself," she said.

"The county nurse suggested she become a registered county midwife.

It was in April 1944 when she first applied for a license. Soon she was equipped with a black bag that carried all her midwifery supplies and an official looking white uniform.

"Mis' Ida, the times come," was a familiar voice into the night and day, as her services were needed more and more.

"I got paid $20 a baby,. regard less how long I stayed in the home," she explained.

The price was never. "upped.", was the same when she retired forty years later.

Noting the mighty poor. Conditions back then, "I never lost a baby" she said proudly.

"I had lots of experiences," she said, getting up from her rocker to get the original little black bag that accompanied her each time she was "fetched" to go. Reaching inside the dilapidated and fatigued bag she pulled out her record book of births.

"A lady came by not long ago and wanted to know when she was born. Seems they couldn't find a record of it at the State Board of Health. I had it right in my bag. Reckon the state lost their copy," she said thoughtfully.

Soon after becoming a midwife, husbanf 0dus died.

"He had to retire 'cause of diabetis'," she recalled. "He only drew $56 a month retirement from the railroad. It weren't enough money to buy sugar pills and he died. Just up and Went out yonder under the shade tree," she said pointing toward the front yard. "He sat down in a chair, went into a coma, and was gone. He wouldn't take no shots, he refused any help from the county nurse, so he died."

Changing the subject abruptly she said with a chuckle, "I delivered a baby girl one Easter day, and they named her Ida Easter.

"Thing about some of these people they'd wait too late to git a doctor, or git to the hospital," she'said shaking her head in dismay.

"I 'member once, after I retired, I was sittin' here a quilt'in (pointing to a quilting frame attached to her ceiling) and a man came running in saying, "Mis' Ida you gotta come, she's done had the baby." I told him I wasn't licensed no more and I'd git in trouble, but he kept pleadin' and'pleadin'. Finally I said, ok, lets go and when we got there to his house, I found his wife on her back in the yard with the baby on her belly fightin' off hogs from eatin' her baby. That's where he'd left her to git me 'cause the baby came before he could git her to the hospital."

Later, I went to the doctors office to talk to 'um 'bout it and they said not to worry 'cause I saved her life."

Midwives were forbidden to prescribe any kind of treatment she explained.

"I waited all day once in freezin' cold weather on a delivery," she said, "but nothing happened. Someone said, "Mis' Ida you care If'en we gives her some liquor?" I told 'em I couldn't tell 'em nothing. Then they said, "Well how 'bout if we fix her some low bush mercale tea? I said I can't tell you nothing to do. It got supper time and they fixed some cornbread and peas. Finally I told 'em I was going home and I got up to leave. It scared that poor girl 'cause I was leav'in. I heard her screaming, 'Run here nurse, run here, it's a comin', it's a comin'. And sure 'nuf it Was."

"Times were sure hard back then," she said, remembering one time she was invited to eat a meal after delivering a baby and being there all day. All that was on the table was a smoke house bone and cornbread.

Ida Gainey's not the, least bit bitter. She is not even disillusioned. In fact, she is grateful "for what the Lord has done for me" beginning with her daughter Mildred, her six grandchildren and six, (presently) great grandchildren.

Life centers around her family and the Baxter Church of God.

"I'm the mother of that church," she said proudly. "I stood at the door and fought the devil for that church."

"Before you leave, let me show you what the Lord's give me," she said rising from her rocker and seating herself at the upright piano. As her fingers scaled the keys in perfect gospel tones, her voice rising above the worldly cares outside her door, eyes closed, as if in vision... the words were sung with feeling and conviction, "I have Jesus, now I have everything."

[NOTE cwm - Ida Raulerson Gainey b. 1909, d. 29 Sep 1992 buried North Prong cem. Odus Gainey b. 3 Mar 1903, d. 18 Jun 1966 "]

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Profile - Lacy Richardson
Keeping that 'ole time' tradition

By LaViece Smallwood

Except for a paved road and modern automobile you could almost imagine yourself back in the past, say. about fifty years ago, when you drive out State Road 229, about three miles south Of Sanderson to visit Lacy Richardson.

A two-rutted lane, flanked on either side with tall stately cedar trees, leads you up to the log and weather-boarded 19th century home place.. Freshly swept dirt yards, free from even one blade of grass, with neatly arranged flower beds scattered about, add to the nostalgic scene from days past.

The old outdoor toilet to the right of the back yard leans dejectedly to one side, and. the century old barn stands stately nearby.

Clad in overalls and denim shirt, Lacy Richardson sits in one of the comfortable rocking chairs that grace his front porch in the cool of the giant shade trees. To the right and left of him, within a block or two, are the modern homes of five of his eight offspring who keep the home fires burning by doing things today they were raised up doing in the past.

"For instance," said his daughter Rachel, who with her husband and daughter live a stones throw away, "we grow and raise most of our food, grind our own corn into meal and grits and we are building a smokehouse to preserve meat, like Daddy and Mama used to."

Lord, it was good eatin' too," chimed in her father.

Lacy Richardson was born nearby. He's not absolutely sure if it was over on the "ole Pierce Place" or not, but he knows his great granddaddy, Elisha Greene, settled the land in 1830 where he found pure water, on high ground along the South Prong of the St. Mary's River in what was then Columbia County (Baker in 1861). It was here he lived and died raising a family of thirteen children by his second wife, Elizabeth Driggers.

The eleventh child born to them, Andrew Jackson Greene, was Lacy's grandfather. Andrew's marriage to Marry Jones produced fifteen offspring; the sixth child, born in 1891, Sadie Lovania, was Lacy's mother.

Sadie married Ellis Stephens Richardson January 23, 1907. Their first child, Lacy, was born in December of that same year.

"I was raised on Griffin's Nursery where my father was employed," said Lacy. "There wasn't too much to do as I grew up back then. You couldn't call yourself datin' 'cause they wern't no money or cars to do nothing. You'd just meet up with the girls and talk a little."

After graduating from the eighth grade at seventeen years of age, he took a test to become a teacher and passed. Instead, though, he went to work for the state as a rodman, helping a road surveyor. He returned to Baker County in 1926 and became employed again by the nursery and met Emma McDonald.

"The way that come around, we was both working at the nursery," he said. "I asked her dad for permission to marry her and he said he wouldn't give her away, so I told him I'd take her anyway. He didn't say nothing and I didn't say anymore."

Three weeks later, with his dad, Ellis's borrowed car and ten dollars in his pocket, he headed out toward the McDonald home.

"When I got there for Emma, her dad got in the car and went to Macclenny with us to get married," he said. The year was 1930.

"My parents had a big ole house and we moved in with them."

"The bottom fell out in 1930, " he said, speaking of the depression years. "I worked six days a week at the nursery and was asked to give one of those days in free labor back to the nursery. The worse thing was going to buy groceries on a $2.50 paycheck.

"I done it for awhile, until it looked like we were going to starve, then I moved into a little house on my Dad's place to help him with the farming, while he stayed on at the nursery. Our first two children, Wilford and Joyce, were born there."

In 1934 Lacy helped his dad build a new home. In return for his time and labor Ellis Richardson gave his son his present home and about 30 acres of land. The original log home was later insulated by adding weather boards. In 1951 the home was wired for electricity and in 1965 indoor plumbing was added. Six additional children were born.

Eventually he was able to do some turpentine work on his land, along with farming. Later he spent thirteen years as a guard at the State Prison in Raiford.

"I had the death watch and guarded more than one before their electrocution," he said.

"Do, you believe in capitol punishment?" I asked.

"They got to do something with 'em," came his reply.

"I sat in the electric chair once, but I was sure it wasn't connected up when I did it," he said.

Prisoners are running the prisons now, he continued. "if they don't get what they want, they riot."

Though times have changed, and Lacy Richardson is most certainly aware of it, he isn't letting it affect him much, one way or the other.

"People 'round here use to have feuds," he said. "They'd meet' up at Sanderson and kill each other once in a while. There's been less killing in the past twenty years than ever before.

"Use to be moonshine stills all over the county," he continued. "I put me some in a wash pot one night in the smoke house and a car drove up just as I got the fire good and started. I put the fire out and went to see who it was. It was the Sheriff, Shannon Green. His car had broke down and he needed a flashlight. I never did try to make no more. You could buy a five gallon jug for $4.00."

More than 100 years ago, Elisha Greene was fighting wild Indians in a primeval wilderness and his wife, Elizabeth, was making her family's clothing on a loom. While their great grandson has no desire to go back to those days, he's content not to go forward either.

"I'm satisfied with things just the way they are," he said, rising from his chair, extending his large frame to just beneath the rafters of his porch.

"See the logs," he said, pointing proudly to one exposed beneath the timbers? This house is still the way it was when it was built and I like it just that way."

[NOTE cwm - Lacy was b. 31 Dec 1907, d. 19 Dec 1989 and buried in Swift Creek cemetery, Union Co., FL]

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Profile -Verdie and Dewey Fish
Pioneers that made do.....

By LaViece Smallwood

Most of the early pioneers in America built their first homes and furnishings from materials obtained off the free land and fed their families the same way. They used looms to spin the cloth they wore on their backs and such natural products as indigo weed and red oak bark to make dyes for it. Corn shucks were used to make bonnets and sun hats, soap from crackling grease and potash, starch from grated roots. They swept their dirt and clay yards with brooms made from gallberry bushes and mops from corn shucks.

The early settlers of Baker County were no different from anyone else. They simply lived off the land.

"Every year in the fall when the crab grass would die, we'd gather the grass and make grass mattresses," said Verdie Fish, the former Verdie Rhoden. "Sometimes we'd make our mattresses out of moss, gathering it green, boiling it in a syrup boiler until the green was gone and it was dead, then we'd hang it on the fence to dry. You could work it up real fluffy to make a nice mattress. Every year we'd have to re-moss and add even more moss to make it thicker. We didn't have bed springs back then, just solid boards on homemade beds. Our pillows were made the same way the mattresses were.

"If anybody got a good feather bed back then in those days that was something," she said explaining that both geese and ganders were really valuable to have.

"I've walked many a mile on a hot day through the hot fields carrying a bucket of water for the geese. They helped to keep the grass down in the cotton patch and produced about one pound of feathers a year. I've had to hold many a one's head for my mama to pluck the feathers, usually about three times a year. If they ever got a hold of you they wouldn't turn you loose either."

Mama was Josephene Combs who had married Nathan Rhoden. Verdie was the fourth of their eight children.

My mama cooked the best food in a fireplace.

She used as much dead wood as she could; it resembled coals. When the fire died down under the vegetables she'd rake the coals out. The women back then knew just how many coals they needed to make the fire hot to bake the best bread I ever ate." "Mainly they made corn broad; made up into what they called pones (dry enough to mold). They used plain meal, salt, and water. They knew how, don't think they didn't, and it was baked just right.

"We used a hand mill to grind our corn into grits and meal.

"I used to enjoy going to my grandmother Rhoden's (the former Doriann Thompson who married William Newton Rhoden). She had honey bees. My dad and uncle would rob the hives and that fresh honey with homemade butter and hot homemade biscuits was so good."

Her grandfather, Richard (Dick) Combs fought in the Battle of Olustee when his horse was shot from under him, killing the horse and sending a bullet soaring through his thigh. It was the only horse the family owned.

"During my parent's generation they used to make caskets. The sawmill would usually donate the lumber and the carpenters, their time. The neighbors would all gather to help. The women folk would line the inside with white material and cover the outside in black with a pretty border around it. I think they were made better then than today," she continued. "They were made of heart cypress the shape of the body. A hole would be dug the shape of the coffin down in the clay and the casket would be lowered flush, and a board laid on top. The clay kinda sealed the casket in place. You'd never see a grave caved in when they were buried that way. The bodies were carried by mule, and wagon to the cemetery.

On the 10th of November 1921 she married Dewey Fish.

"At first we wondered if we'd get married," she said. "Dewey had taken time off from farming and hauled cross ties to make the money for the license and to pay the Notary Public to perform the service. We were to be married at my parent's home and my mama had a big dinner of pork and rice for everyone, but the man never showed up to marry us. Finally Dewey borrowed a car to go looking for him and found a note on his door saying something had come up and we'd have to get someone else. He had recommended another Notary Public, so Dewey rode over to his house and got him. After the ceremony we invited him to eat with us, and all through mama's meal of pork and rice he kept saying how good the chicken was. I think he was from the north."

Dewey bought his family homeplace after the death of his father and the young couple started raising a family which eventually totaled eight children. "My first baby was a little girl, and she was only about three and a half pounds. I almost departed this ole world when she was born. Back then they didn't have anything to give you for pain. Nature just had to take its course, but then it only cost five dollars for a delivery. We had to hire someone to stay for four weeks each time I had a baby because you'd have to stay completely in bed nine days," she said. "it cost us two dollars and a half a week, plus we furnished their room and board, so if you had a baby on the way back then you had to prepare for the finance which was a total of fifteen dollars. I mean that was a lot of money back then.

"Dewey was in the room with me and watched each one of our children come into the world. Babies slept in the bed with their mothers until another one came along. I still believe in that," she said, her maternal instincts showing.

"There was lots of work for everyone on the farm and you did what you had to do.

"Once I wanted to get our outdoor toilet nearer to the house and our backdoor, so I waited until Dewey left one morning and I hurried out and dug myself two holes, right by myself, deep enough to bury two 55 gallon gasoline drums."

"Oh, you had help from the boys," Dewey broke into the conversation.

"Oh no I didn't," she said emphatically. "I did it all right by myself."

Continuing she said, "Then I took the old toilet building down by sections, it was connected by posts, and I moved it inside the chicken yard. I wanted it fixed as dainty as I could fix It."

Changing the subject, she said, "it would take as much as three days to do the wash back then, and we home made most of what we wore. We used to have a joke going around 'cause so many of our clothes were made from flour sacks. Someone was always saying, 'Be careful if you stoop over' 'cause we might see 96 on one side or 100 on the other. That stuff was printed on there and it wouldn't come out."

And we might say the same for these noble families who struggled against the hardships of the times, not considering them that so much because it was all they knew, but their lives are stamped and printed down in the pages of history now, and no matter what, it won't ever come out.

[NOTE cwm: George Dewey Fish b. 15 Jun 1899, d. 5 Jan 1981 - Verdie b. 23 Jun 1902, d. 12 Jul 1989. Both are buried in North Prong cemetery]

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The talents of 'Abbie' Cook.....

By LaViece Smallwood

More than 130 years ago the President of the United States was signing land deeds on sheep skin documents, or so it was for Abigail "Abbie" Stephens Cook's grandfather.

Obviously a time of growth in pioneer America settlers on the move from Virginia via Georgia and on to Alabama included her grandfather, William Carrot Stephens and his wife Abigail Jackson. All but two of their sons continued on to Texas and settled that new frontier land. The rich Talapoosa River muck lands located near Daviston, in Talapoosa County, Alabama still remains today the homeland of four generations of Stephens.

Fate and circumstances led one descendant to Baker County Abbie, so named for her grandmother, remembers the intervening years before her migration with vivid accounts of pioneer life.

The birth of automation brought with it fear and suspicion among the settlers along the Talapoosa. Speaking of the first cars to enter the domain, Abbie recalls.

"We'd heard dad talk about these things that went without a horse. Our house was off the main road, but we could hear the car when it passed by. After it went by we would all run down the road to see what kind of tracks it made. We didn't want to go near it," she said with a shiver as If remembering the fright it caused. "The horses couldn't stand those things either," she continued, "and they'd run away. If you met one (car) on the road the horses would tear off in the fields.

"The old country doctor got him one of the first out thinking he could get around so much faster but it would scare people and the horses so bad he said he'd kill more than cure, so he went back to the horse and buggy. It was years before he could use his car. Those things (cars) were as odd to horses as they were to people.

"We kept hearing talk about something known as a train," she said with a chuckle. "Dad knew where we could go see one as it came around a curve, so we got loaded up in the horse and buggy to go look at it. Dad took the horses off to tie them up and let us in the wagon. We heard it before we saw it and it was blowing and blowing making a terrible noise. We got so scared we all jumped out of the wagon and climbed under it. We never could tell people who asked much about it, cause we didn't see much," she said.

"My father, Thomas Aaron Stephens, and my mother, Frances Marion (so named for the great Revolutionary war hero) Gross, bought land adjoining my granddaddy. During the war the government commissioned him to care for his aged parents and other families left without husbands or fathers while the war was going on, it was my father's duty to supply them with corn, for animal feed and corn meal for bread. They had chickens for meat, cows for milk and a garden for vegetables, but dad watched out for their other needs.

"The preachers of that time used to preach a lot about the devil," explained Abbie, so she developed a fear of running into him. "My job was to go to the spring for water when the well was low," she said. "If I went late, I could see devils everywhere. Once I stumbled over a drunk in our cane patch and I just knew for sure it was the devil himself."

Progress on the frontier was advancing and Abbie was growing into a young lady.

"My dad bought my sister and me our own horse named Gritty and the first rubber tire buggy in the county," she said.

"We kept passing this nice looking young man on the road, but never had met him formally. I'd heard who he was because my dad and brothers had met him, but one night my sister and I had driven our horse and buggy to a neighborhood party and he was there. After we met formally he asked if he could drive me home in his horse and buggy. I said yes and he went off to borrow a lap robe," she said explaining that everyone used lap robes when they rode in a horse and buggy to keep warm.

Meanwhile though, Abbie remembered her sister and knew she'd have to accompany her back home.

"He was mad," said Abbie, "and stayed mad four months."

Later however, he was tempted into stopping by her family's apple cider press to drink apple cider and a friendship developed.

A turpentine man, William Fountain Cook found himself smitten by the Talapoosa River damsel and when he heard she was leaving town with her sister to visit some relatives, he emphatically told her she was going to stay there and marry him.

"I told him I couldn't do that," said Abbie. "I explained I had to go on this trip with my sister, so he said he would come along too.

"We drove by the pastor's house, got married and left by train on the trip to my relatives."

That was in 1911. Ambitious "Fount" already had a furnished home and a horse and buggy as his assets, not too common for someone his age in those days.

Working as operations manager for a large turpentine company, the next few years brought many changes as Fount and Abbie moved from place to place.

From Alabama with a daughter Wilma, to Georgia, where a son Willard was born, and on into Florida where another son Weldon arrived.

The year 1929 found them in Macclenny.

"We lived in one of the Powers homes between the railroad tracks and Highway 90," said Abbie as she described the city as it was then.

Eventually turpentine work became slow. Fount operated a fruit stand in Haines City for a short time, then decided upon retirement in Macclenny where all three of his children had found their mates and were making their homes.

As a young housewife in 1920, Abbie completed a four year correspondence course from the Women's Institute of Domestic Arts and Science in Scranton, Pa. It included the skills of drafting your own patterns, tailoring, hand embroidery and applique.

"I received instructions and had to select the suggested materials," she said. Upon completion I'd mail the article to them for correction. I had rules like a carpenter," she continued. "I had tools for each required skill and they could tell if I used the correct or incorrect ones."

Abbie loves making lovely gifts for family and friends. Some of her items have found their way into gift shops labeled "Handmade by Grannie Cook."

Another special talent discovered a few years ago is oil painting. Many of her paintings have been sold to admirers around the state. Her sea scapes, wooded and still life scenes are among those adding to the d�cor in her small cottage home.

Working in her vegetable garden and with an assortment of outdoor plant life bring her many hours of enjoyment.

Widowed in 1966, Abbie has kept occupied with her many talents and received a certificate of appreciation from the Agency on Aging for her outstanding contributions and talents. An excellent cook, I can testify to you she makes the best kumquat preserves and cooks the tastiest beef liver in town. Try her special recipes.

Beef Liver

1 lb. beef liver (trim & cut into 1 inch squares)
1 cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
Dredge liver in flour. Brown oil
Add 2 apples, peeled and sliced
Add 2 med. onions (chopped fine)
Add 1/2 cup apple juice
Add 1/2 cup water
Steam with top on pot 5 minutes.
Cut heat off and let set and steam.

Preserved Whole Kumquats

2 cups fresh kumquats
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
1 stick cinnamon (optional)
1 lemon sliced thinly (optional)

Wash and drain fruit. Cut a small gash crosswise in each kumquat. Cover with water and bring to a boll. Cook 5 minutes. Drain.

Make a syrup of sugar and water. Add cinnamon (or other spices of your choice) and lemon.

Drop kumquats into syrup. Bring to a boll and cook 10 minutes. Cover and let stand overnight.

Cook again uncovered for 10 minutes and let stand to "plump" at least overnight.

Bring to a boll again and cook until fruit is clear and syrup thick.

Pack in clean jars while hot.

Cover with hot syrup and close jars with a self-sealing lid.

To keep flavor and color it is best to cook in small amounts as in this recipe.

Never try to do more than twice the recipe in the same cooking.

[NOTE cwm: Abigale "Abbie" Camilla Stephens-Cook b. 26 Jan 1894, d. 24 Sep 1985; William Fountain Cook b. 9 Aug 1896, d. 10 Feb 1966. Both buried in Woodlawn cemetery.]

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Moniac native learned of Christmas a bit late....

By LaViece Smallwood

Harley Burnsed was a grown man before he heard about Santa Claus. Even the real meaning and significance of Christmas eluded Burnsed until he had a family of his own.

"Nope, I never heard tell of Santa Claus, or Christ's birth when I was a youngin'," the amicable eighty-seven year old Moniac native said. "When I did hear tell of it (Santa and Christmas) I thought it was a mighty nice thing for kids. I still do," he said, explaining there was no big meal prepared for the occasion in his childhood home either. "We did know to exchange gifts but I never knew why," he said. "If they (parents) knew they didn't tell me. We made our own gifts, too," he said, adding, "There sure wern't no place around to buy anything. Me being the oldest, I'd go into the swamp and cut down black gum trees to build wagons."

Burnsed, born in 1892, was the first child born to J.L. (Jasper) Burnsed and Zelphia Thrift at a time when primitive pioneer conditions existed in the community, located on the Florida Georgia state line.

"There wern't no bridges or graded roads," said Burnsed who still lives in the vicinity of his birthplace. "There wern't nothing but horse cart trails and horses or mules for transportation. A few people had carts. My daddy was the first in the community to have a wagon," he proudly exclaimed.

"Boys wore dresses back then," he said. "I Was a great big boy when Mama made me a pair of knee pants. I looked down and saw 'em on me and started crying."

"My daddy grew long cotton and when we'd go into Sanderson to sell it for five cents a pound in the seed, we'd leave 'bout 3 a.m., before daylight," he said. "The reason I remember that so good is because my mama would fix us a good breakfast and we'd stop over by Cedar Creek to eat it. There'd always be a great big slab of white bacon and oh, my Lord, was that good--too good to even talk about," he said with a shudder, obviously overcome by the memory.

"My daddy was a great hunter," he said, "and he took me with him. None of the other kids cared to go too much. A coon hide brought fifty cents and a seven foot gator hide a dollar fifty."

"By being a good hunter we got along good in them days 'cause there wern't no laws governing the Okeefeenokee swamp then. The bears and deer were fat on acorns and blueberries and the meat was so sweet," he said.

"The first depression I ever heard tell of was once me and my daddy was over in Moniac and there was some talk 'bout it and ole man Riley Crews spoke up and said, 'They say there's a depression, but I can't tell no difference. And he couldn't cause all we ever had to buy back then was a barrel of flour and maybe some coffee ever so often. We raised or grew or hunted the other food we needed."

Burnsed said as a lad he made his first trip by train to Jacksonville with a school teacher. He said he "really got an education."

"I didn't even know horses wore shoes and I heard these horse and surrey buggies clomping down Bay Street which was brick then. Boy, that was amazing to me," he said.

The first airplane and automobile didn't surprise Burnsed any.

"I knew they were coming all along, cause I read about it in the Bible," he said." It (the Bible) says that men would go up in the air without wings and that carriages would be drawn without horses, so I was expecting it."

On December 31, 1911, Burnsed married Lossie Rhoden, a neighbor's daughter.

"We were going to school together .... and well you know what happens in school," he said, obviously meaning that was one of the rare opportunities young people had to meet and become acquainted at that time.

Burnsed says he thinks he "got almost to the third grade" before marriage.

The Burnsed's started their life together as tenant farmers.

"I didn't like that too much," he said, "working for someone else. I wanted a place of my own but I only had about thirty dollars and a mule."

"About that time the Bo-weavel came into these here parts and ate up all the cotton," he said. "Bootlegging come along so I went into the bootlegging business like a lot of other people and that's how I got the money to get me some property. I 'recon the Lord sent bootlegging for a purpose after the Bo-Weavel ate up the cotton," he said. "Ain't nary a still in these parts now adays. A lot of people abandoned their farms back then, he continued, "and moved away getting what they could for 'em. I know of one 350 acre farm that sold for $400.00 and the man moved to Macclenny and plowed other people's gardens with his mule up 'til he died. That's all he'd ever done and all he knew to do to make a living," he said.

The Burnseds became the parents of seven children, five girls and two boys. Lossie lived to see her first grandchild. After Lossie's death, Harley married Margie Padget. That was twenty years ago.

Harley Burnsed still lives a stone's throw away from all the places that have brought him countless memories and experiences, soon to be published in a book about his life.

"I had a good time all my life," he said, "growing corn, peanuts, cane, raising hogs, cows, and now goats."

Burnsed said he'd never joined a church although there are "all kinds of people coming 'round wantin' me to join up. I tell 'em I don't have time. I'm too busy taking sick people to the doctor and the Lord's taking care of me." Burnsed admits he is basically hardshell Baptist and says he's read the Bible through twice.

Failing eyesight prevents Burnsed from doing many of the things he would like to do, but he still manages to laugh and tell about the good ole days.

"What all are you telling her?" quizzed his wife Margie as she returned from a shopping trip to Macclenny.

"Oh, I told her the facts," he jovially replied, "but I could tell her some stories," he said with a twinkle in his eye.

"You see, once there was this big bear and me and my daddy ................................................

[NOTE cwm: James Harley Burnsed b. 12 Oct 1892, d. 25 Jul 1989; buried Oak Grove cemetery]

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Brothers keep time at a distance

By LaViece Smallwood
Times-Union Special Writer

More than 70 years ago, when Daniel and McKinley Crews were born on a farm in Baxter, Fla., there were no automobiles, airplanes, telephones, blaring radios or television sets, no electricity, running water, indoor plumbing or microwave ovens.

Time seems to have stood still all these years for the bachelor brothers. They have spent their entire lives rising daily from the same beds, in the same house, under the same roof, on the same farm "Just like our ma and pa used to do."

The men rise with the sun to do separate chores.

While McKinley, the younger of the two, prepares a hearty breakfast of grits, boiled potatoes and piping hot biscuits on an enamel woodburning stove. Daniel feeds the 70 or more cows that graze inside the split-rail fences around the farm.

"It takes Dan'l a long time to feed all these cattle 'cause he feeds them one at a time out of a bucket," McKinley grumbles as he rambles around in the house's antiquated kitchen. Dense light filters through cracks in weathered wood window shutter and casts a glow on pots and pans of various sizes that dangle from nails on the rough pine walls.

"This ole stove's about wore out as I am," McKinley said as he removed a pan containing eight king-sized golden brown biscuits from the oven.

"Come over here and you can see how he makes biscuits." Daniel said, holding up a wooden spoon from a bowl containing a lumpy flour mixture.

"The health woman told me not to use hog grease, so we just put in some of that there Crisco and them yonder powders," McKinley said, pointing to box of powdered milk on the table "Just put all you want in a dish and stir it up, that's the way you do It."

"Now you can't put too much water. 'cause if you do you'll never make biscuits," Daniel cautioned. "They'1l be too soft "

The brothers have favorite dishes they eat from.

"That's the youngun' still in us, I guess." McKinley said. "Our ma got these dishes with coupons out of soap powders."

They fill their bowls with a good size helping of grits adding boiled Irish potatoes with lots of liquid. Biscuits are then crumbled and added to the mixture.

"Hasn't got a name. I just call it somethin' to eat," McKinley quipped.

"We said the other day that if flour, bread and Irish potatoes gave out we'd be in for it , Daniel said. "But once in a while we eat a mess of black-eyed peas."

The wood hinged door banged loudly as a cold wind blew a gust up through a 4-inch gap in the kitchen floorboards, where small chubby kittens were scurrying in and out.

"That there hole's fine in the summer, but it ain't so good in the winter," McKinley said. "We try and keep feed sacks stuffed in it, but the kittens pull them slap out through the ground.

The two men divide chores

"I wash the dishes, and he lays them out here on the table and dries them," McKinley said as he poured a kettle of steaming hot water into a large metal dishpan sitting on the table.

Bet you've never seen people wash dishes like I do," he said. I use a spoon and a rag like my ma did."

"That's his water, and I got my water," Daniel said.

"I keep a box over my pail to keep the cats out." he said, lifting the cover slightly to peer in. "I don't want him using my water. Let him go round yonder to the water pump."

"I used it once and he blowed off about it," McKinley said. "So now I wash with my water and he rinses with his."

"When Ma was living, we scrubbed the floor twice a year, on the Fourth of July, you know, and then before Christmas," Daniel noted.

"And now we scrub when we can or will, mostly when we will," McKinley added.

"I scrub my floor and he scrubs his," Daniel said. "I scrub awhile and then he does what you call rinsing."

A small brick and clay fireplace supplies warmth for the brothers, and a smoky kerosene lamp provides light. Except for an occasional trip to town and infrequent visitors. the men say they have little contact with the modern world.

"Someone gave me a little old thing in there that talks, but I don't know where it gets its news," Daniel said "My brother doesn't like any kind of music though. I got some education, but I don't take it to heart I don't use it."

As for politics, the brothers say they are "stuck on Democrats."

"I threw my pocketbook over the fence in Hoover's time," McKinley said. "Had to. Didn't have any money to go in it."

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The Baker County Press, Thursday June 21, 1979

By LaViece Smallwood

A Taylor Legacy
Lawton and Essie Conner

Eighty year old Lawton Conner stood in the middle of his three acre garden, his face barely visible underneath the wide brim hat that offered protection from the bright noon day sun. Tender shoots of corn he neatly planted weeks before waved in the breeze and the sharp edge of his hoe sniped away at the unsolicited voluntary growth.

"You Lawton Conner?" I asked as I started out across the rows of corn, my sandals sinking down in the hot soft soil.

"Yes ma'am I am," he said, peering from under the obviously patched up wide-brim straw hat.

A quick introduction and we started for the house where Essie, his companion of 63 years met us with hospitable greetings.

"Our house burned completely up 11 years ago," he explained as I sat in their modern trailer home. "Saved this rocker," he said, "That's all."

"We built our house out of good heart yellow pine lumber and when it went it went fast," he said further explaining a brick was apparently loose in the flue of the fire place on the cold wintery night in February when the disaster occurred. "We'd lived in that house about 48 years."

Both Lawton and Essie Conner were born and, raised in the Taylor community. In the distance we could see two cribs and a barn built by Lawton's father Henry who farmed the rich fertile soil over a 100 years ago with his father Willis Conner, a settler who moved in from Charlton County, Georgia.

Essie's parents Jamie Rhoden and Lettie Williams lived in the Kyler section, down the road a bit.

"I was about 12 years old when I first saw him (Lawton)" said Essie. "He rode a big ole mule to our singing school. I bet it weighed 1,000 pounds. He tried to get me to go with him but I told him my daddy said I was too young, so he left me alone."

"She. took my eye," Lawton quipped with a grin, explaining he respected her daddy's' judgement. "We weren't scared of him, but we knew to mind him" he added.

Lawton was 15 at the time. "Two years later her father gave permission to her to have fellers so I asked her again," he said.

In six months they were talking marriage. She was 14, he was 16. The tradition was to ask permission of the girl's father so Lawton and Essie did just that.

"I said, Mr. Rhoden me and your daughter has decided we want to get married," he recalled, relating that Essie ran into the house to avoid the conversation.

"I wasn't scared," spoke up Essie. "I just didn't want to hear the lecture I knew we'd get. However her father called her back outside and a lecture they did get, but also permission to marry.

"That was on a Thursday," said Lawton. "On Saturday I got the license and on Sunday we were married at her parents home. About a 100 people in the community came."

"My mamma made me the most beautiful wedding dress you've ever seen. Only cost a dollar to make," she said explaining the material cost 25 cents a yard.

Lawton was the only child of Henry Conner and Etter Bennett. A sister had died at 11 months old. The young couple moved in with his parents.

"After the wedding we drove the mule and wagon back to my house," said Lawton. "The next morning I got up and went to plowing.

"Me and my mother in law went to the garden to get turnips for dinner," said Essie. "She put lots of hock bones and the turnips in a huge iron pot (still in the family today) and cooked them in the fire place.

"I told 'em he married me just to have someone to play with," said Essie. "We weren't nothing but kids. I could hold him down real good," she said. "One day we were pickin' cotton near the road and got to playing. I was holding him down and he was just a laughing. We heard someone coming in their horse and wagon on their way to Macclenny and Lawton said, 'Get up, they'll think we're fightin'. But we always got along real good together. Never been separated but a very few times," she added.

Life on the farm wasn't easy, explained the Conners, "but I believe people were lots happier back then," he said, adding there is too much to think about today. "Everybody had to pick cotton and hoe back then. We didn't have time to go to school even. We went just long enough to learn how to read and write,". he said.

"I was just an old broke boy when we married," he said.

"But his daddy went to sharing with us right away," said Essie. "We helped him farm. If he sold eggs, we'd get half the money. We weren't use to having much. Sometimes his daddy Would give him twenty five cents if they went to town and he'd buy me a pack of gum."

"Daddy paid fifty cents a day for hired hands and they had to be good. for him to pay that, said Lawton.

Two years after marriage they moved out on their own.

"Sometimes I'd work on the county roads. We'd shovel dirt from sun up to sun down for a dollar, but back then a dollar would buy something."

"Like what?" I quizzed.

"Oh Lord Honey, you could get a, let me see, you could buy a 25 pound sack of flour for fifty cents," he said having to think hard as his mind flew back in time past today's inflation. "A good blue serge suit of clothes wouldn't cost but $15 then. Nowadays it's $200.00."

Saving up $15 wasn't easy he said, but it could be done.

"How?" I asked.

"Well, I'd hitch up my mule and wagon and drive through the night to Jacksonville with sweet potatoes, chickens and eggs," he said explaining he could buy chickens for 25 cents and sell them in Jacksonville for 50 cents. "I'd be there by morning and drive around peddling all day. That night I'd head to the big warehouse and mule lot to rest up to drive back to Taylor. "There weren't no truck deliveries back then," he explained, just mule and wagons. "I'd take care of my mule and leave him in the mule lot to rest while I slept on the warehouse platform. Next day we'd go home."

"That $15 would last us three or four months," spoke up Essie. "When we needed more he'd go back with another load.

Thirteen children blessed their marriage, all born at home, the first ones delivered by midwives the last by doctors. "We've got 35 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren with more on the way," beamed Essie.

"Our children said they didn't want to stay in the country so they all moved away to the city. They didn't stay too long though cause all but three came back and settled down right here." she said.

A total of 275 acres was divided among them. "Some of them drop by everyday," she said obviously very happy.

"I enjoyed my home and children and I never left them one night in my life," continued Essie.

"We knew where they were at all times," added Lawton. "There ain't no place like Baker County," he said. "I never had a mind to ramble off anyplace."

"The kids try to get him to go to the mountains," said Essie, "but he says he knows how it looks and he ain't going."

"If you ever find a big wide brim straw hat like this, get it for me," he said, adding, "I'll pay as much as $50 for it." Doctors have advised to avoid exposing his skin to the sun, thus he depends upon and treasures the irreplaceable patched up hat.

With it placed squarely back on his head, a mess of sweet tender turnips pulled from the garden washed clean and placed in my car, I sped off down Conner Road past the century old barns and cribs, their function now seemingly only a picturesque view of yesterday.

But to generations of Conners, decendants of their noble forebears, a constant reminder of a priceless legacy and heritage.

[NOTE cwm: Lawton b. 5 Aug 1898, d. 24 Jun 1988 buried in Taylor cemetery]

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A long road of hard work


By La Viece Smallwood
Standard staff writer

"I owe a lot to the people of Baker County. They supported me and gave me a chance in life. I believe if you do good to others, others will do good to you. --Sammy Walker

Six days a week, 12 hours a day, Sammy Walker is on the job at the corner of Highway 90 and College Street in Macclenny. Customers at Mixon Chevron find him friendly and cordial, eager to please and always smiling. He has been there 28 years.

Many of Sammy's friends and customers aren't aware that beneath the smiling surface are internal wounds that scar his heart.

And Sammy likes it that way.

Those scars have made him a better person, and appreciative for all he has.

Born in Clinch County in the small community of Council, Ga., in 1946, he was one of 11 children born to 31-year-old Jannie Austin and 60-year-old Allen Walker. The fact that times were hard and his family poor has never bothered Sammy. That's nothing to be ashamed of, he says.

Knowing that his mother was abused mentally and physically by his alcoholic father is only one of the darts that pierces his heart.

That he is alive is a miracle. Three months after his birth, his mother cradled him in her arms, along with a 14-month-old brother, gathered some of her other children and headed down to the railroad tracks, where she waited at the trestle for the first passing train.

Desperate to escape the cruelty of her abusive husband, she made an attempt to board the moving train with both babies and the older children. Sammy slipped from her arms and lay by the tracks unattended, before being found by a train engineer who had been alerted by train officials when the mother asked for their help in finding him.

He isn't sure what condition he was found in, nor can he imagine how he lived through that ordeal, but he was eventually reunited with his mother in Sopchoppy, Fla.

As long as he can remember, it was moving from one location to another, his mother always living in dread that she would be found by his father.

"She was always on the run," he said. He was kept in the first grade for six years. At one time, when he was in the fourth grade, he remembers living on a dairy farm "way back in the woods" and having to walk about 12 miles to school.

"There were not that many black schools," he said, "and we had to. walk a long way to get to one. I had to pass by a ravine that was filled with water and I'd get so wet that when I would get to school I'd be so embarrassed."

Sammy's mother married five times. Sammy says he knows there were 22 children fathered by his father, but Sammy was the only one of his brothers and sisters who graduated from school. He was the only one who never smoked or drank. He's not sure where they all are now.

"I was up in Georgia visiting my brother one time, and we saw this man sitting out front of a store with some other men drinking beer, " Sammy said. "My brother said, 'See that man over there,' and I said 'Yes,' and he said, 'Well that's one of your brothers.' I was amazed. No telling where they all are or what they're doing.

"The ones I grew up with had to look around for food sometimes, and I can recall how happy we were when the ditches would fill with water and we could go catch the crawfish. We made our own traps out of styrofoam cups. We'd boil us up a pot full, pull their tails off to eat 'em. Oooeee, that was some kind of good eating!

"As I was growing up, I knew I wanted an education. I never had any desire to steal, rob, drink, or smoke, or just do the things some of the others did. I just never wanted to. I really wanted to make something of my life."

And Sammy said it was the people of Baker County who gave him the opportunity, and restored his faith in mankind.

"People like Mr. Doc Finley, Red Mixon, Mr. L.V. Hiers, Billy Rowe and Willamina and Charles Lauramore," he said shaking his head as if in disbelief. "And I'll never forget all those sandwiches Mr. Marvin Lauramore bought me when I was hungry. All of them are some mighty fine people. They gave me food to eat for physical comfort and friendship for my happiness. And I could never forget that as long as I live.

"Mr. Claudell Walker says I'm his stepson that got left out on the beach to tan," he remarked with a huge grin.

Sammy came to Macclenny with his mother when he was in the seventh grade to be near his step-grandmother, Viola Austin, of Marietta. When he enrolled in Keller School they skipped him a grade or two before he had to return to Jacksonville to finish his last three grades.

Then his mother became ill and was hospitalized for three months. He would either walk or hitchhike the 12 miles to University Medical Center at least four days a week to visit her. He was the only one of his brothers and sisters who did so.

When she died in 1965, he returned to Macclenny to live with his brother. He needed work and often picked up bottles to sell for some crackers and a drink. Then one day Doc Finley asked him to work part time at the Chevron station, sweeping up and doing other odd jobs. That very day, Billy Rowe asked him to work for him as a dishwasher at NEFSH. He did both.

"I had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m., so I'd walk, even if it rained, and it often did, " he said. "When I'd get off there, I'd head in to Mr. Doc's station. Mr. Doc had been so good to me I just had to stay on and I'm so glad I did.

"I even worked for Mr. Paul Knabb in turpentine on my off hours and Saturday," he said. "I only had one outfit of clothes for a while, and I'd get so, dirty out in the woods. Every night I'd wash my clothes out, then dry them, put them back on for the next day. I got paid $4 for filling a vat and sometimes it would take me three days' work to do it.

"This was a time when integration caused some problems for the black people, but you know, they never bothered me. I could even be out after dark, and they'd be harassing other blacks along the way, but they's say to me, 'Hey Sammy, how you doing?'

"The people in Baker County have never mistreated me. They've never called me 'nigger' or any other bad remarks. They've fed me when I have been hungry. I've eaten at their tables -- they never made me feel any different because of my color."

In 1968, Sammy had saved enough money to buy a $500 car. He loaned it to a friend and it "blew up." It was back to walking until his good friend Billy Rowe sold him a truck. And that wasn't all Billy did. He promoted Sammy from dishwasher to cook at NEFSH.

"I did such a good job for Mr. Billy that he made me supervisor of the kitchen, and I stayed at NEFSH for 26 years, until I retired," he said.

"And I finally got able to buy myself a brand new car , " he said proudly. "I applied for credit down at Sands Chevrolet and gave Mr. Doc and Mr. Billy as references. I'll never forget that happy day when the salesman, Tommy Johns, called me and said my credit was OK and I could come down and get the car. "

Things looked up for Sammy. He married in 1969, but it turned out to be a bad decision.

"She was a husband-abuser," he noted sadly. "I didn't know when I came in from work whether or not she had a gun or knife to point at me."

The couple was divorced in 1980. In 1982,. he remarried -- to Luvisa Cummittee, a fellow employee at NEFSH. Sammy started going to the Church of God in Christ church with her in Lake City where she lived. Their only child is Devan, who is 8.

"She's wonderful," he says with a big grin. "She's like a missionary, she gives talks and all. She's great." Luvisa retired from NEFSH after 18 years.

The couple once lived in Macclenny, but he said the neighborhood became filled with crime so they moved to Lake City.

But Sammy feels that Baker County is his real home.

"I only live in Lake City at nights and on Sunday, he smiled. "The rest of the time I live in Baker County."

The day Doc Finley died on Feb 7, 1989, Sammy was made manager of Mixon's Chevron. Sammy's been at the station so long that he now finds himself giving bubble gum to the children of people that he had given bubble gum when they were young.

"I don't look back on my life with bitterness. A lot of people went through the things I did. So many of them made the wrong choices in their life -- drinking and doing drugs, stealing and robbing. I turned someone in for stealing not long ago. I don't believe in it. People work hard for what they have and it's wrong to take it from them.

"I owe a lot to the people of Baker County. They supported me and gave me a chance in life. I believe if you do good to others, others will do good to you. You've just got to try and want it yourself, and you can have it all if you work for it."

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Old Macclenny was a 'moving' thing for Gilberts


The Baker County Standard, October 22, 1992 Page 7
By La Viece Moore-Smallwood
The Baker County Standard

"Macclenny was very Primitive when we moved here. In the early days there were men all over town with big pistols hanging out of their pockets."--Will Gilbert

William Clyburn Gilbert and Willie Mae Mathews have been sweethearts from the time she was 11 and he 13. Today they live in the house they moved into at Seventh and McIver Streets in 1937. It is filled with memories deeply rooted in their hearts. Memories they have built together for more than 66 years.

In 1923, the Mathews family moved to Macclenny from Green Cove Springs. Willie Mae says 981 people then lived in the town. Her father, William Lion Mathews, owned a hardware business. Highway 90 was being paved, but all the other streets were unpaved and very sandy. Cows and hogs often lay in the path of the Maxwell and Nash cars that rumbled through town.

"My daddy had to stop our car many times and get a stick and get them out of our way," Willie Mae said.

Her family was among the first in the city to have indoor plumbing. She remembers her young friend Mae Henderson (later Mae Powers) visiting and exclaiming, "Now you want have to go to the river to take a bath. "

"My family didn't go to the river anyway," said Willie Mae. "We had large wash tubs we used, but most people went down to the river when they needed a bath, taking their. soap and a towel with them. " The "wash hole" was the St. Marys River that divides Glen and Macclenny.

Willie Mae had established a special relationship with William Gilbert years before when they both lived in Georgia, and even though their lives took different paths for awhile, they often saw each other when Willie Mae visited her grandmother in Helena, Ga.

Will Gilbert joined the Merchant Marines and at age 19 began traveling all over the world.

He took a year out to attend Georgia Tech, then rejoined the Marines.

In 1926 he came home long enough to marry Willie Mae. After that, the two often met in ports when his ship would dock. Eventually, Will left the Merchant Marines and he and Willie Mae moved to Jacksonville where he worked in a Ford plant. In 1935, they moved to Macclenny.

The country was in The Great Depression and Will took a job selling sewing machines.

He held three licenses in engineering, and Willie Mae remembers once when he was called to help out in the Jacksonville Shipyard to work on some big ship engines.

He arrived there on Sunday afternoon and because several of the men had the flu, he was asked to stay and work overtime. With only two hours sleep at night, he finally finished on Wednesday. When he arrived home Willie Mae met him at the door with a bar of soap and a towel.

"He was so dirty, plain black, and I sent him to the wash hole down at the river to bathe," she said.

He was so exhausted he slept 24 hours.

Living in Macclenny had its problems. Very few people had indoor toilet facilities, and Will Gilbert got a government contract to build outdoor privies.

"I dug the holes 6 feet deep and 30 inches in diameter," he said.

"The hookworm problem was terrible," Willie Mae remembers. "It was a mess. The government was trying to eradicate the hookworm problem by building outdoor privies. Those little outhouses were a big modern convenience for many of the citizens at that time. "

Will Gilbert opened up a hardware-general store in 1935 with $55.60 in supplies.

"They said I wouldn't be there but two months, and I was there 38 years," he said.

By chance he got into the house-moving business when a local merchant friend asked him for a favor. "I had a big 7X22 foot trailer, " he said. "and Leo Dykes asked me if I would go to Woodstock (near Lake City) and move a house that was only 14x 18 feet.

"It was 1938 and a hurricane was sweeping through south Florida, the backlash hitting Baker County. I braced the walls of the little house and left it half-on and half-off the trailer until the winds subsided. When I returned the house had overturned, but the fireplace and everything else was still in place. Today the little house still stands in Macclenny. "

That incident led to other requests to move houses and the beginning of a long and successful career. He had moved the first house for $35 but said he lost money, so when he was approached by Mr. Dykes the second time, the price had gone up.

He charged $75 each for the next two he moved and bought two jacks to replace the 4x4s he was using. During the next 21 years he moved 4,300 houses and buildings.

He takes understandable pride in telling about moving a hospital in Madison with the patients still in it. "One man died and one baby was born during the move 305feet away," he noted. "About 25 or 30 people from Baker County went just to see me do it. The building weighed 250,000 pounds."

Once he moved a house in Baldwin. The owner had been gathering eggs. After the house was moved two miles away and crossed a ditch, an egg and glass of water were still on the table inside the dwelling," he said.

His motto: "The impossible we do at once, but a miracle takes longer. " The Gilberts were active in the community. With the late Vera Holt and Mrs. Ida (Will) Knabb, Willie Mae, who was the PTA president, started a soup kitchen for the children.

"We held interviews with the children and asked them about their lunch," Willie Mae said. "We found that most of them just had a cold biscuit and a piece of bacon, and some just had a sweet potato. It was obvious their diets were inadequate, so we were able to get the school board to build us a small room with a stove, sink, and counter. It became known as the soup kitchen because we served the children a free bowl of hot vegetable soup and a glass of milk daily. "

She said Mrs. Ida Knabb owned many cows and furnished much of the milk.

Eventually soup kitchens were built for the children in Olustee and Sanderson. The Sanderson soup kitchen was later moved by Will to Macclenny and today is occupied by their long-time family maid Mattie Josey.

The Gilberts prospered. They bought a summer home in Fernandina and as their family grew to five (a sixth child died young) they spent many hours during the summer at the beach. Will often let his employee drive a truck full of town children to Macedonia to swim in the "wash hole".

"I can't ever remember anyone of them thanking me, but not long ago Barry Rhoden told me how much he appreciated it and what it had meant to him and his family, and it made me feel good," Will said.

Macclenny had a movie house owned by Earl Chessman but, according to Willie Mae, it was full of bed bugs." In those days a lot of people had bedbugs in their beds and they'd get on the children's clothes and spread wherever they went, she said.

"The children would come home covered with them and I wouldn't let them come in until I sprayed them with a spray pump," she said. "I hated to deprive them of the joy of going to the movies, so I just sprayed them when they got home.

The Gilberts said almost all the people who lived in Macclenny when they first arrived are now dead.

"Macclenny was very primitive when we moved here," said Will. "In the early days there were men all over town with big pistols hanging out of their pockets." "Yes, and late at night you could hear them going off," said Willie Mae. "They'd get at one end of town and fire a shot signaling that the coast was clear and then you could hear cars going down the road with their loads of moonshine."

Will Gilbert said he remembers when two of the 'shine cars had a wreck and turned over. At the funeral the minister looked down on the bodies and said, "All dressed up and nowhere to go."

"I was told that 10,000 gallons of moonshine passed through Macclenny every week," he said.

On one occasion, while passing through customs in New York, Willie Mae said a customs officer was inspecting a bottle of wine she was bringing to her husband. Noting she was from Baker County, Fla., he asked her, "Why do you need this wine with all the moonshine you've got in Baker County?"

"I never realized until then we were famous, she said.

The Gilberts remember the 1938 fire that destroyed a city block in Macclenny.

"I'd just received a big shipment of galvanized tubs and buckets, " he ,said. "We took them all up on the roof, filled them with water from a hose and took wet brooms to put out the sparks that were hurled from across the street. Our efforts saved the fire from spreading," he said. Destroyed in the blaze was the whole city block where the current Standard building stands. Will's store was located where the office of Dr. Gary Dopson is presently located.

Ice cream was delivered to Macclenny by train every weekend, said Willie Mae. There was a little ice-cream store down by the railroad station and everyone would rush down to buy some.

"That was the only time we got any, and that was such a treat for us, " she recalled.

During World War II, the Gilberts said, dances were held at the Women's Club, and servicemen from Cecil Field would come to Macclenny to dance with the girls. "The local boys didn't like that," she said.

The Naval Air Station in Lake City would send a bus over every week to pick up the Baker County girls and their chaperons to attend dances, the Gilberts explained.

"I wasn't afraid to let our oldest daughter go; things were not as dangerous back then, and I trusted the chaperons," said Willie Mae. She remembered two of the escorts were Doris Crocket and Eva Ward.

The five Gilbert children all live in other areas, but come home often for visits. Anita (Mrs. George) Gerson and Rachel (Mrs. Herb) Nasrallah, live in Tampa. Charlotte Ramirez lives in Valdosta, Margaret (Mrs. William) Fusse lives in Hendersonville, Tenn., and son Peake and his wife Eleanor live in Fayetteville, Ga., where he works for Delta Airlines.

They have 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. When Willie Mae turns 90 on Nov. 14, they'll all be home to celebrate. Last September the Gilberts celebrated 66 years of marriage.

"We don't have any boxing gloves so we don't fight," said the jovial Will.

The Gilberts are Episcopalian. Will built the, quaint little brick church that stands at the comer of Fifth and Minnesota Streets in 1967, after a fire destroyed the original building. A Jacksonville firm wanted $650 to build and install the beams. Will took three hours to design the equipment to fashion the beams and three hours to install them. They acquired their beautiful century-old stained glass windows from St. Andrew's Church, which was being torn down in Jacksonville.

"Those bricks were supposed to be my new brick home," said Willie Mae, "but I didn't mind him building the church with them."

The Gilberts' are truly builders of varying degrees. The homes, churches and businesses will eventually crumble into the dust, but the Gilberts will be remembered always for the building of character, family, enduring friendships, and community bonding. That kind of "building" will live forever, and few of their kind will ever pass our way again.

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Almost a century of Baker memories - Annie Mae Combs

The Baker County Standard, October 6, 1993

by La Viece Smallwood
Standard staff writer

Annie Mae (Rhoden) Combs his lived almost a century in Baker County. Her once-strong melodious voice that often rang out in harmonious gospel tunes is barely audible above a whisper. Her once active life is more tranquil now. Her bright eyes twinkle and a ready smile creases her face when, she talks about "the joy of her life," was her husband of 40 years. Fred Combs died in 1964, but Annie likes to remember things that remind her of him.

Annie was one of eight children born to dark-haired, blue-eyed Easter Ann Raulerson and William (Billy) Rhoden "somewhere in Baker County," on Sept. 11, 1906. Her parents, who had married in Baker County on Feb. 17, 1895, lived most of their lives in the Cuyler section of the county.

It was a loving home where Annie remembers being rocked on her daddy's lap while he told her wonderful stories, or perched at her mother's knee listening to old-fashioned Primitive Baptist gospel tunes.

When she was of age, Annie walked the three miles with her brothers and sisters to the three-room Cuyler schoolhouse. They were Ulyss, Hassie, Roy, Carl, Thelma and Myrtle Lee. It was there she finished the seventh grade before marrying Fred Combs at the age of 18.

The couple first met at a county-wide singing convention, an event quite popular at the turn of the century in Baker County.

"I liked him right away, thought he was the cutest thing I'd ever seen," she smiled. "And he left the girl he was with to come sit with me, so I knew he liked me, too."

Fred received permission from Billy Rhoden to court his pretty daughter. He was allowed to "come calling," but it was understood that "time was up" at 8 o'clock. Annie's parents, and the rest of the family, usually joined the couple on the front porch of the home while they courted.

Annie helped her parents on the farm doing all the usual farm chores. There was always something to do as the family grubbed a scant living from the poor soil. There was little or no money for many of the things taken for granted today. For instance, the family used frayed oak twigs for toothbrushes while soda or salt substituted for their toothpaste.

"If you had a toothache back then, you just pulled it out because there 'were no dentist available," she said with a shudder.

Her brother Hassie was recruited to France during World War 1. and Annie's family worried about his safe return. They knew life was fragile. A baby brother named Clyde had died.

Easter Ann made the family's clothes on a pedal machine and, said Annie, "There was no such thing as nice wool sweaters or coats to wear," adding that her mother made them warm coats from flannel material.

Her grandparents, Newt and Dora Ann (Thompson) Rhoden, lived in walking distance of her home and she visited them often. And the family shared many meals together.

The Rhoden family held many square dances in their home. Her father stood guard to make sure things went well because in those days many people drank moonshine. It was important to her father for families to enjoy being together without any problems.

Annie loved to dance. And she admits, "Before I met, Fred I was a big flirt with the boys."

She had lots of boyfriends who would visit her at home, where they listened to the radio or just talked on the front porch.

When the Rhodens' neighbors had square dances in their homes, the family would hitch up the mule and wagon and attend. But the ride home was dark, with only the twinkling stars and beaming moon offering them dim light as they rumbled along the sandy country road.

No one even thought of danger like being robbed or harmed in any way. In fact, there were no locks on their door at home because, she said, "There were no such things as intruders.

Annie remembers seeing her first car one day when she and her family were traveling do the dusty dirt road in their mule and wagon on their way to a singing convention. The car was driven by Mr. Knabb.

"He pulled up beside our ol' mule and invited my daddy and mama to take a ride with him. Some of us children got to come along too, while my oldest brother drove the mule on home. It was a great invention, that car," she said.

Church was also the family's social life. in turn-of-the-century Baker County. It was at a Sunday School box supper that Annie had prepared a delicious box dinner for a lucky bidder... Fred, she hoped, But Fred lost his bid to another boy who was anxious to impress Annie.

"They almost fought, but I still had to eat with the other boy,". said Annie. "However Fred came over to me later on and said, 'Let's get married.' And I said, 'Well, I'll have to think about it,' but it didn't take me long to say 'yes,'" she said.

The Rev. Earl Taylor married the couple Feb. 1, 1925, on the front porch of her parents' home. Annie was 18. Fred, who was born in Baker County on Sept. 17, 1904, was 20.

"My older sister had tried to tell me what to expect after I got married, but I didn't believe it," she said, shaking her head. "But I believed it later!"

Life for the couple was not easy, even though they lived with Fred's parents. It was during the Great Depression. the family ate a lot of lima beans and white bacon. Fred would often go into the woods to kill birds for their supper or catch fish in the nearby river or creek.

He worked at a sawmill for a while and Annie described their home as resembling a chicken house that was thrown together. She had her first child, Willie, on Nov. 25, 1925.

At the sawmill, or log camp as it was often referred to, she and her little son Willie rode up and down the tracks on the log train to pass time. During that time, Fred taught Annie to drive a log truck. Sometimes, she said, they'd even go into Lake City on the log train to see a movie.

When his sister-in-law, Agnes, died from complication in childbirth 11 days after her son Was born, Annie and Fred took the baby in. Fred's brother, Russell, who was the baby's father, had named his little son Fred Combs Jr. in Fred's honor. The couple called him "Bunny" and he became one of their own.

Until they could get the baby's formula regulated, he was nursed by Rosa Taylor, who had a small son named Aubrey. In later years. Bunny married Rosa's niece.

And two older siblings, Betty Lou, aged two, and Russell Jr., aged four, remained with their father after he married Corene Raulerson. The couple had nine children of their own.

It was 15 years after the birth of her first child, Willie, that Annie gave birth to her only daughter, Mary Carolyn.

Like many other men. in the county, Fred indulged in drinking, but after his marriage and birth of the children he gave it up and became a minister.

Often during his sermons he would preach about his conversion. He would tell personal stories, like the time he stole a Bible from a restaurant in Lake City. After he was converted to another way of life, he returned to the restaurant to make restitution.

During the early 1930s, the couple met in the homes of friends and neighbors to practice their Congregational. Methodist religion but, when the group began to grow, Fred, with the help of some other men built bush arbors throughout the area to house the growing attendance.

Then in 1936 Fred and some other members of the local congregations, who were seeking a deeper spiritual experience than the Methodists at the time was offering, heard about the Congregational Holiness Church.

They traveled to the church's headquarters and campgrounds in Carrolton, Ga. to attend one of the denomination's conferences and to learn more about it. They were impressed with the Holiness doctrine and movement and returned to Baker County to share their new-found knowledge with the other local church members.

Many, like Fred, were looking for a doctrine that had the laying on of hands and one that believed in receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. And too, locally there was much discontentment over the subject of music. Some members did not believe the church should have music and some, like Fred. did.

Many of the Congregational Methodist members converted to the new movement and thus began the first Congregational Holiness Church movement in Florida.

Fred served as State Superintendent of the Florida Church, Conference for 18 years. Today there are 16 such denominations throughout Florida, two active in Baker County, one in Sanderson, and another in Manntown south of Glen St. Mary. At one time there was a church of that order in Taylor, but it has since been abolished.

In 1946, the couple bought a modest little home in Sanderson for $1,200. The family did without indoor plumbing until 1956, but Fred had installed a bathtub for the family on the back porch and they hauled water from a hand pump in the back yard to fill it when they bathed.

Many couples married on the front porch of their home and until his death not one couple he married had divorced.

Fred served as Baker County's road superintendent for 19 years. In those days, it was Fred and a three-man crew who tended to all of the county's roadways.

Fred preached wonderful sermons at the Sanderson Congregational Holiness Church and he and Annie often sang duets together.

As the children grew Annie enjoyed her role as a minister's wife and mother. She hosted many visiting revival ministers and once kept a missionary from India in their home.

She was an excellent seamstress. In addition to sewing for individuals, she was contacted annually to make the graduation dresses for the student graduates in the black elementary school in Sanderson

For a short time, she worked as a cook at the Sanderson school cafeteria. At the time, Mary Carolyn was four and the teachers let her sit in the first grade class with the other students while Annie worked. When she turned five, the first grade teacher, Eunice Dobson Burnett, was willing to have her stay in the class, but said , she would have to study the same as the other children.

When the school term ended that year, Annie gave up her cafeteria job, but her bright little daughter passed easily into second grade and eventually graduated from Baker County High School at age 16.

As the church's superintendent in Florida, Fred was often invited to participate in revivals and deliver sermons for other Congregational Holiness churches. He worked for the county from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m.

Annie would have supper prepared when he arrived home and then the couple, with Mary Carolyn, would drive as far away as Palatka to preach. Most of the time it was late into the night when they would drive back home to Sanderson. With little sleep, Fred reported for work early the next day and Mary Carolyn to school.

Sometimes the revivals would last as long as two weeks, but Fred would faithfully drive back and forth each day and night.

There were many times when he had to pay his own travel expenses. Sometimes the church would take up a "love offering" or supplement his expenses by giving him food from members' gardens. He was dedicated to his ministry regardless of the sacrifice.

Annie and Fred loved gospel music and often sang together during church services and in revivals accompanied by their daughter on the piano. Annie's favorite song is "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There."

19 Music in the church was so important to Fred that he started his little daughter in piano by the age of six. Mary Carolyn became the first piano student of Virginia (Crews) Combs, who's grandfather, Willie Crews Sr., pastored the church at Manntown. The piano lessons cost 25 cents. Today she is one of the most accomplished, pianist in the county.

Church and family were the most important things in the couple's lives. They adhered closely to the strict church doctrine, however they allowed their children a certain amount of freedom of choice. For example, their son Bunny played, basketball, even though they didn't attend the games. Mary Carolyn was a member of the school band, but they never attended a performance.

As time went on, they reluctantly purchased a television. Annie did not cut her hair or wear makeup. It was against church doctrine. Her daughter had to comply to those rules, as well.

Annie's mother, who was of the Primitive Baptist faith, lived the last five years of her life with Annie and Fred and they saw that she regularly attended her church services until she became an invalid.

Fred and Annie never turned down a calling, regardless, how far away it was. They enjoyed the opportunities they had to share their faith and testimonies.

On one such occasion, in 1964, the couple had gone to Douglas, Ga. Annie rememberd that Fred was preaching a good sermon when suddenly he stopped speaking and went to sit down. Other ministers quickly gathered around him. In minutes an ambulance was summoned and Fred was hospitalized. It was his heart.

"I was standing outside his hospital door. I knew it was bad. Then they came and told me he was gone. He was the joy of my life and, oh yes, I look forward to being with him again someday," she said.

After Fred's death, Annie had little income. She was an excellent cook, and obtained employment with the Macclenny School Cafeteria where she worked for many year

She underwent open heart surgery at the age of 78 in 1984. In 1985, she suffered a stroke. Her once-beautiful waist length hair that was never cut because 'I kept the old ways in our religion," is now bobbed short for easier maintenance.

Her rosy complexion is almost as smooth as it was in her teens, and she tells her secret for beauty.

"I've always used Jergens, Ponds or Avon Moisture Cream, she notes proudly.

She respects the "old-timey ways" of her church and wears no makeup, except for Coty power.

She enjoys having her children stop by for visits, and they faithfully do. Bunny, who has worked for 30 years as a correction officer in Raiford, and his wife Faye (Yarborough) have five children: Charlotte Jared, Renee', Clayton and Bruce. Willie who in Folkston, served in World War II and the Korean War. He later retired as a diesel mechanic. He has a son Freddie. Willie and his wife Alice, who died during open heart surgery, had an adopted daughter Dana,. a daughter Durenda and a son James, who are all deceased. Mary Carolyn and her husband, Watson Goodwin, operate Watson's Supermarket in Sanderson. They have a son, Ricky.

All together, they have presented her with 10 grandchildren.

"Life in Baker County has been good to me and if I could leave a message to my family and friends that I'll always be remembered by after I'm gone," she said, "I'd say, 'Live a good life and raise your children right. Then, when the roll is called up Yonder, we'll all be there."

NOTE: cwm. Annie Mae Rhoden Combs b. 11 Sep 1906, d. 13 Feb 1994 Fred Combs b. 17 Sep 1904, d. 23 Feb 1964

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There was no special welcome for this Baker County hero

The Baker County Standard, December 29, 1993

by La Viece Smalllwood
Standard staff writer

Fifty years ago this month, when Edgar Kirkland stepped off the Greyhound bus on Main Street in Macclenny, there was no hero's welcome. Although in his frayed and shabby dufflebag, he carried many hero medals.

Among the medals were the Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Good Conduct, World War II Infantry and, ETO medals. The Baker County farmboy had come home without fanfare and that's the way it has always been, because, until now, Ed Kirkland has never talked about what made him an unsung hero.

Tbe 20-year-old Kirkland left Macclenny on Nov 22, 1942,after being inducted into Uncle Sam's Army to help win a raging war being fought on European soil. With little combat training, he left Virginia on a boat that took 26 days to reach his destination of Italy. He had lost 26 pounds from sea sickness.

Kirkland was immediately tagged as a rifleman and sent to the front lines, where he found that his Baker County training as a poor backwoods sharecropper's son had prepared him for survival; moreso than many of the fallen city soldiers from across America who fought with him.

Kirkland's luck ran out when his unit from the 85th Infantry Division was ambushed by Germans on a routine patrol about two years later.

The Germans just run out and cut us down with bullets, then they threw hand grenades at us. When I came to that day my body was covered with blood, my head was coiled around on my stomach and I could feel the heel of a German soldier's combat boot slightly touch my body. He was straddling me with a bayonet in one hand and a hand grenade in the other," Kirkland recalled. "Then suddenly I felt him reach down and touch my body, ripping off my watch, which had been a gift from my brother-in-law. Thankfully, he walked away and left me for dead."

Kirkland was thirsty but had no water. In his pocket were a few sulfur pills he had been warned not to take without water. His pain was too great, so he chewed them up anyway. Next to him, a young 17-year-old soldier began to moan.

"Water, water, please give me some water," he begged. Kirkland told him there was no water. Not long after, the young soldier's voice. grew faint, then ceased. Everything was quiet, and Kirkland said he realized he was the sole. Survivor of the attack.

American medics slipped in after dark to reach the carnage. Kirkland, barely alive, was loaded on a stretcher and carried halfway down the mountain. At that point, the task was turned over to German prisoners of war, who stumbled and fell on the rough terrain, rolling Kirkland off the stretcher three times.

When Kirkland reached one of the MASH units, his wounds were cleansed. He had shot six times. One bullet was lodged in his lungs. A buckle from his combat boot was embedded in his ankle.

Kirkland was flown to Naples where he underwent an operation for his injuries.

Back in Baker County, Kirkland's mother, Dollie Kirkland Johnson, was dutifully notified by telegram of his injuries. Joe Kirkland, his father, had deserted the family before his birth, leaving Dollie to manage their 10 children alone.

"I guess he had all he could take," Kirkland said. In about three years, mama remarried a man named Ealie Johnson, who had 10 children, too. Then he and Mama had three of their own, so that was 23 all together.

We moved around a lot, sharecropping, and the old houses we lived in, you could throw a cat through the walls. We never did have anything but an old fireplace to keep us warm, and all us kids would gang up together to sleep at night with warm quilts that Mama made us.

Kirkland said he never saw his biological father

"He died when I was 17 years old. He never sent Mama one dime for us kids. I didn't, go to his funeral, " he said.

Kirkland said he'd always been told that when he was born he was so tiny he had to be carried around on a pillow and his skin was so transparent you could see the intestines in his body.

"Mama was so undernourished and I'm sure that's why. My daddy had left her with 10 kids and nothing else," he said. We were both lucky to survive.

"I only went to the 6th grade in school, then I had to quit and help Mama sharecrop." We mostly raised what we ate. Us kids would go out and pick a bushel of peas in the field and Mama would cook 'em in a big ol' pot and we'd have grits and cornbread and some kind of hog meat.

"We drank cow's milk when we had it. Back then, there was no fence law and the piney woods cows would roam up to the house to sleep in the road at night. Us boys would go out there to catch 'em and hold 'em until one of the other kids could milk 'em. Sometimes we'd get 'em up side the fence and stick one of his old horns through the fence and we'd hold the other horn and then milk 'em while she'd kick. We'd take a pot and sit it down under her. Her little udders were so little we'd have to milk with our fingers like this," he said. pressing two fingers together with his large rough hands.

"Us boys stayed in the river fishing when we weren't working in the fields. That was food on our table. Sometimes, we'd go at night, and even if we got home at midnight, Mama would got up and fry 'em so we could all eat. We knew where every log was in that river," he said. "We learned early on how to survive.

"Mama's livelihood depended on us children because my stepfather, who. really was very good to us, had a stroke when I was about seven, and never could do anything else again."

That early survival helped him endure the long patrols and meager conditions through Italy, outsmarting the enemy, surviving three major battles and numerous attacks. Kirkland found out he was as strong as the strongest. Today he realizes that even more.

Some of them soldiers would just cling to us, crying and hollering for their mama," he. said. "We'd stay out for weeks in the cold with only a rock for our heads, and even when they'd pull us back for a couple of weeks for R&R it was hard on most of 'em trying to sleep and rest in the cold and damp army tents. Some of 'em just wasn't cut out for it like I was.

I walked all the way through Rome ruinning the enemy to the other side and I walked all over the little Alps." he said. "My job was to hunt Germans. We'd march continually, camping at night, sometimes we could even hear them talking, we were so close. When we'd come up on 'em, or them on us, we'd have it out right there. Most of the time we'd beat 'em," he said.

"There were many times when I'd be on the front lines for two weeks at a time that I wouldn t even pull my shoes off or change my clothing. The Army would try and send someone up every night with three little cans of rations each. Then they would fill our water canteens. Sometimes they didn't come so we'd do without. We never had enough food and water but we always had plenty of bullets.

"When we'd kill the Germans, we used a little shovel to dig a shallow hole to put him in and cover him up, all except for his feet. We'd leave them sticking up."

Kirkland said there were no injured Germans to care for.

We wouldn't injure 'em. He'd be dead when we left him," he said emphatically.

Kirkland said if his patrol came upon a dead German soldier they never took anything from the body or touched him in any way."

"We learned never to take anything off of 'em, because if you did the Germans might have a booby trap on him, like a hand grenade, and, when you turned the body over the pin would pull out and blow you up," he remembered. "Americans put booby traps on our soldiers too, and if the Germans came to rob him they'd get blown up."

Then came the day in December 1945 when he had accumulated enough points to come home.

Was he I prepared? Had he received psychotherapy to deal with the trauma of frontline wari and the serious injuries he'd received?

"No," he'said. "There were too many of us wounded. You just toughed it out or died."

The Greyhound bus doors swung open, let him off, and hissed closed. He looked around. Not too much had changed. Hopefully, he would find his mama at home. No one had notified her of his home-coming. There were few phones back then and his mama wasn't one of the lucky ones who had one.

An old friend, Leonard Mikell, came by in his car and offered him a ride home. He was glad. He was anxious.

"I got out of Leonard's' car and saw Mama sitting at her sewing machine," he said.

"She was... his voice broke as tears welled up in his piercing blue eye and fell gently down his rugged checks... "she was, well, she was real glad to see me.

"She and my sister Rosie began spreading the word to the family that I'd come home. We gathered together and sat up all night talking. They were all real happy to see me."

No one mentioned the war, or his injuries that night or ever. Maybe they were waiting on him, and maybe he was waiting on them. He doesn't know. So he pushed it to the back of his mind where it has been hidden until now.

"The government gives me a small pension and all of my medicines," the veteran said. "I've had open heart surgery twice. They give me glasses but not dental.

"I've been trying to get some more out of 'em for about a year now, but they won't do anything about it. They can carry it off and give it to these other countries you see, but they won't give it to us." He recently framed his medals. He hopes his two children, Penny and Jeanine, who were biological sisters that he and first wife Camilla adopted, will want them someday, or perhaps his grandchildren.

Today Kirkland lives with his second wife, Nona Holloway, on the banks of the St. Johns River, next door to his son and daughter-in-law, Rex and Flo Holloway. Flo is the daughter of Harold and Fay Milton of Macclenny.

"I fish when I want to, and keep the grass mowed," he said. "It's real peaceful there. I don't think about the war. I don't even watch war movies on TV. It upsets me when I hear the guns.

"Where I live I can only hear the birds chirping and sounds of the woods."

Kirkland treasures the memories of his family. He considers his heritage one of great wealth.

His mother died in 1966. He misses Her. She may never have known about his war experiences, or his many hero medals, but that's OK.

One thing he knows for certain and it matters the most. It was the endurance through his earlier days with a strong family background of love and survival together that made him a hero. He saw that in his family's face when he came marching home, alone, that day. And that was the best, most lasting, and most necessary hero's welcome of all.

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A lifetime of helping
Sippie Hartenstine's still going strong

The Baker County Standard, November 3, 1993

By La Viece Smallwood
Standard staff writer

It has been as American as apple pie, the life of Sippie Canady Harris Hartenstine.

Like the ornate plants and colorful flowers she grows all around her modest frame home on north College Street, she has lived an embellished life. Always neat and orderly, always making things beautiful, she is as remarkable as the era of time she has thus far lived through.

Like her many plants, her life has been varied,. but with lots of tender loving care, she, like them, has blossomed.

Born in Charlton County, Ga., 83 years ago, Sippie was the last of eight children born to Aaron Canaday, it prosperous cattleman and farmer and his wife Alice Crawford Canaday. Her mother died in childbirth when She was two.

The oldest of her sisters, Sarah, who later married Benjamin Foy Fish, became her mentor until her father remarried. And, though the marriage to Rosa Mae Rhoden dissolved after a few years, she acquired A brother, Otis, from the union that she adores.

"When I was a little girl, my father would catch a train in Moniac about twice a year and go into Jacksonville to buy staples in large quantities, such as a barrel of flour and large sacks of rice and sugar," she said. "He'd buy large bags of green coffee and then we'd roast it and grind it with an old-fashioned hand grinder."

Sippie said she and brother Lennie would usually get to go with him.

We'd buy our supplies and arrange to have them shipped to us. Then Daddy would take me and Lonnie across the St. Johns River on the ferry boat to the south bank where there was a zoo. In those days, there wasn't a bridge across the river like today," she said.

As she grew up in those lean Depression years, she. became indispensable to the community and her name became synonymous with charitable work.

it was a time when neighbors helped neighbors and she assisted everyone possible. She taught others how to sew and cook and when a neighbor died, she helped to make the casket linings for the homemade cypress caskets.. At the time there, was no local funeral home available to residents. The chore would usually take all night.

Many times she helped bathe the corpse and lay the body on a cooling board, covering it with a sheet. Two pennies were placed on the eyes to close them. Then she helped dress and ready the corpse for burial.

In those days, all the women wore their hair long and would usually style it in a large ball on the back of their heads," she said. "That's the way they were laid to rest in those days."

Sippie helped widowed neighbors care for their young children, cutting their hair, sewing their clothes, teaching them responsibilities around the home and how to prepare for life in many ways, never wavering in her generosity.

As she grew older, her thirst for knowledge was strong and she'attended South Georgia Junior State College in Douglas to pursue a teaching career. After she passed the test and acquired a teaching certificate, she joined other area natives like the late B. R. Burnsed and his wife Myrtle, the Rev. George Chism, former Baker County Sheriff Paul Thrift and Rubye Crews teaching school in the county.

While still in the grip of the great Depression, Sippie married county native Vandie Harris at the home of the Rev. Rhoden in Macclenny. The year was 1929. The couple moved in with her mother-in-law, Emma Harris, who was widowed. They also shared the house with Vandie's brother, Isaiah, and his wife Bertha Mae.

The day her son Van was born, the family gathered as was customary. It was cold, and they pushed her bed next to the fireplace for warmth. The county's physician, Dr. Brinson, delivered her son.

In about a year the little family found a place of their own near Taylor. Another son, Dwight, was born delivered by a neighbor midwife, Phanie Harvey.

Sippie settled into housekeeping, Vandie farmed, and . she became the first president of Taylor PTA. She sewed all the family's clothes on a pedal machine and used cloth diapers for her babies, washing them without modern equipment such as running water or electricity.

Then things changed for the family in 1941. Vandie took a job with United Life Insurance Co. and the couple purchased the little white frame house at 64 College St., where she has lived for 52 years.

"When my father died I used my inheritance to attend school, something I had always wanted to do," she said. After she graduated six months later, she took a job with Mrs. Della Dykes at Dykes' Beauty Shop. Later she opened her own shop on the south side of her home which became "Sipipie's Beauty Centre."

From her work station, she has been able to watch the bustling activity on Main Street as well as the neighbor children grow up and away for more than five decades.

When the Harris family moved onto the block, they were surrounded by. neighbors with small children who played cowboys and Indians together, as well as marble's on the then unpaved sandy road. Some grew up, like her son Van, to play on Macclenny's first football team. Dwight played both football and basketball.

The Telephone company was directly across the street and the operator kept everyone abreast of anything eventful going on. The neighborhood was always full of activity.

We only had to walk straight down the block to the Morris House to eat, and we did regularly because I couldn't cook as cheap as we could eat out," she said. "And, too, I was busy with my flourishing business from sun-up to sundown."

The two-story landmark Morris House was a gathering place for almost everyone in Macclenny, especially those who worked. It was operated from 1940 to 1957 by Georgia natives P.L. and Mary Jane Morris, who moved into the county in 1929. Their boarding and dining house was renowned and patronize by governors and U.S. senators.

Because Mrs. Morris felt it was more economical, the food was always cooked on a wood stove. Sippie, Vandie and the boys, joined other town people, estimated at one time by the Morris couple to be 150 a day. They sat at the long banquet table while they were served bowl after bowl of hot, delicious, home-cooked food that was available to customers three times a day, seven days a week.

"When they first started serving dinners in 1940, they charged 35 cents for weekday meals and 50 cents on Sunday.

During the war, prices were frozen at 50 and 75 cents," she said.

"When the Morris family closed the famed dining room in 1957, dinners were $1.29 including tax, and 50 cents for small children."

Sippie said the eatery was closed in 1957 because the couple's earnings exceeded the maximum amount permitted while collecting benefits from social security retirement. That, she said, ended one of the last of its kind that faded from the American scene.

The family also enjoyed Baker County's other landmark eatery, the famous Hotel Annie which was a block in the other direction, near the present-day Chamber of Commerce on Main Street.

"People from Jacksonville and other surrounding areas would drive out to eat, especially on Sundays," she said. "And they were famous for their delicious fried chicken.

"It was a great time to be raising children," she said. "We didn't worry about them so much in those days."

Former neighbor Dickie Davis remembers when he and the other neighbor children would hide behind the trees with sling shots, particularly when Martin Barber came to town on Saturday.

"He always came in his horse and wagon for grocery shopping at Ira Walker's store, located where the present-day Senior Citizen Center is, Davis explained.

"We'd hit the old horse and cause him to rear up, said Davis, who also remembers the area children gathering at the local bowling alley directly across from the, downtown Chevron station.

"It was run by Billy Walker's daddy," he said. "It was the first bowling alley I'd ever seen and we could bowl for 10 cents. All of us had a had a good time hanging out there."

Davis said many good times were had on the block and remembers Sippie's family with fond memories. He remains close to her children and others who lived on the block as well.

"Back then we were really like a big family," he said.

At the time Sippie was raising her sons, the county had a large community center where the children gathered to play basketball and hold community events.

"I traveled all over when my boys played ball," said Sippie. "There were four of us mothers who never missed a game and we all rode together for years."

Her friends, all gone now, were Carrie Davis (mother of Dickie), Anna Newmans (mother of our former sheriff Joe), Mable Chessman (mother of LuClare and Dewitt) and Beatrice Piatt (mother of Alvin).

In 1958, after 29, years together, Vandie died. Sippie kept working in her beauty shop with regular customers she had coffered for two decades.

Then she met county native Earl Walker in 1960, remarried and continued to live in the same location. In 1966 Earl died. In 1969 she married retired Lt. Col. Ralph Hartenstine and until his death last year the two spent 23 happy years together.

The house holds many memories," she said. That's why I'd never want to move away."

Her son Van is a retired engineer who lives with his wife Sharon in Atlantic Beach. Dwight is pharmacist with large firm in Orlando where he and his wife Sara live.

She enjoys tending. Her yard and still busies herself in the beauty shop with faithful customers, one who is 97 and another 100. Her prices once 50 for a shampoo and $2.50 for a perm, have kept up with inflation, of course.

Gone are the days of the antiquated heated-clamp perming machine that was easy to burn her customer's hair. Gone are the neighbors, except for Marjorie Wells, and the hustling, bustling days of the active neighborhood families. Gone are the Morris House and Hotel Annie, the bowling alley, movie theater and community center. Gone are her three husbands, and most of her friends.

But still around are memories an still around is the enormous desire she has to be of service. Last year, the local Sertoma Club bestowed on her its most coveted tribute, the annual "Service to Mankind" award.

If she is not in her yard, she can be found mingling and reminiscing with the few old friends left around who remember the good old days. She is active in the Woman's Club and cherishes her relationships with many friends she has made throughout her long life in the county.

Often her brother Otis drops by laden with fresh vegetables from his garden, and she cooks them up for her friends. She not only tends her flowers and shrubs, but she is still assisting anyone in need.

So, though the world around her may have changed, and in some instances even disappeared, Sippie Hartenstine still rates the same. She is just as down-home as apple pie has always been.

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What was it like around late John D. McCormick's home about seven decades ago in Baker County?

THE BAKER COUNTY STANDARD July 22, 1993 By La Viece Smallwood
Standard staff writer

Well, two of his surviving daughters say it went something like this: "John, my kids and your kids are fighting our kids."

That's because John brought seven children to his November 26. 1923 marriage with Lillie Deliah (Leigh) who brought seven Children of her own. Together they had four children, and that made a total of 18 children beneath the McCormick roof.

And that's another story. The two daughters say they could lie in bed and look up through their roof at the stars, or look down through the floor and count chickens!

Sound extraordinary? Well it was. Though times were hard, and it was in the biggest drought of the Depression, 'John D. McCormick never let his family go without food, clothes or a roof over their heads. The McCormick family was taught Christian principles, spiced with laughter and music. And today, his two youngest daughters like to remember the past with great fondness.

Humble may have been their circumstances, but Lorayne McCormick Rhoden and Lillian McCormick Dubose roar with spirited laughter at their memories of home.

The wind blew through the cracks of our home. The children this day and time would freeze slam to death in it," said Lillian.

It was during the deflation years, and our farm was foreclosed on." Said Lorayne. "Daddy never did own any more property and we moved around and farmed, but daddy always took good care of us."

"Yeah he always provided," said Lillian. "He'd find work as a carpenter in the winter or he'd help make syrup. He has cooked syrup all over this county."

"And he could build a fireplace chimney that would blow all the smoke out and throw the best beat around in the home of anyone in the county. He's worked all over the county building chimneys for people," said Lorayne.

"And he built many homes here in the county," remembered Lillian. Today, they live next door to one another, each in a house he built.

Lorayne agreed. "I would sit down and work with him after I got in schoold and learned fractions, and he'd have me figure out the footage he'd want in timber to build a house. Then I'd write it up so he could go to the mill and get the order filled," she said. "He always managed to figure it somehow before I got old enough. I don't know how though, because he only had a third-grade education, but he did. After I had it figured, I'd always have to add a quarter inch to it to it to make sure he had enough lumber.

The two women reflect mostly about their lives when they lived in the Manning section of the county, renting the same farm their father lost to the mortgage holder during the Depression. As the older children moved away, the work fell on the two youngest girls. Their mother was ill and died while they were in their beginning teens. They remember her beautiful brown hair was down to the (??)

She never cut her hair except for a few inches to keep it from dragging on the floor," said Lillian.

I did all the house work even when mama was with us because she was not always well" smiled Lorayne." I learned to cook at an early age. I had to get up at 4 a.m. to cook breakfast and clean up the house, make the beds and finish my homework before catching the bus at 7 a.m. to go to school."

And where was Lillian while you were doing all the housework?

"I was milking the cows, feeding the horses and mules the chickens and the pigs," she said, roaring with laughter. "I didn't like the inside work, I preferred working in the fields and tending the animals. Anything that had to do with the outside work."

"I'd go to school during the week, and have to wash and iron on Saturday to get our school clothes and the men's work clothes clean on Saturday," said Lorayne.

"Sometimes I helped by pumping the water," said Lillian. But usually they agreed she was needed in the fields hoeing cotton or corn.

"I had use three No. 3 wash. pots filled with water, and lye soap that Mama made, to wash our clothes," said Lorayne." We used those ol' flat irons that had to be heated on the wood cook stove or in the fireplace to iron with," she explained.

After the clothes were washed we'd take our bath out in the yard in those tubs of soapy water," said Lillian. "We only bathed once a week, otherwise you just sponged off every day. We'd always arrange for our tub to be put back behind the shed or house to bathe, and the boys were very respectful. Daddy saw to that."

"When it was cold weather we moved the tubs inside to the living room or into the kitchen and we'd go in one at a time to bathe, all lusiong the same bath water," said Lorayne. "We didn't think a thing about it, that's just the way it was back then," said Lillian.

During the depression, the two women remember that they seldom had eggs for breakfast.

"We used them to trade for sugar, coffee, flour and such," they said. "We'd eat our own grits and bacon and have gravy and our own butter from the farm, but we'd trade our eggs."

They remember their first radio experience. "We'd walk three miles to Jim Starling's house to listen to the Grand Old Opry on a battery-powered radio. My daddy loved to hear Uncle Dave Macon sing," said Lorayne. "We all thought that invention was wonderfull."

"We had a graph-a-phone," said Lillian, "and when the spring would get broke we'd turn that thing with our fingers to hear them old 78s."

It was a good life, they say. They seldom were punished, but when they were it was with a leather strap.

"We didn't get it often because we were too scared to disobey," Lillian said.

Lorayne quit school in the ninth grade to marry 26-year old Ollie Johns from Lake Butler. Together they ran three service stations, one in Hilliard, another in Lake Butler and one in Macclenny. Ollie also drove a taxi once in Macclenny for U.C. Herndon.

"It didn't stay in business long," . said Lorayne. The couple had five children: Porter who lives in Waycross, Ga; John lives in Tampa, Mamie, (Mrs. Martin Cole) lives in Macclenny, Butch lives in Glen and Joan lives in Macclenny with her mother. (When Ollie died, she married Obie Farris, then Rachie Rhoden, who died in 1990).

Lillian takes understandably great pride that out of all her parents' children, she was the only one to graduate from high school. She married Charles DuBose, a military man, after graduation and the couple had four children, Lillie Mae (Mrs. Tommy Christian) who lives in Arizona, Grace; (Mrs. Fred Paul Conner of Glen), Martha, Mrs. Sorin Margean who lives next door and J.L. who lives in Lake City. Charles, who was a machinist at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, died in 1979. They have seven grand children.

Lorayne says her greatest treasured memory is the time she spent with her parents.

"They taught me the Christian way, the right and wrong of life, it was just everyday talk in our family," Lorayne said. Daddy would read the Bible along with me when I got old enough to read it. He'd try to explain it to me and of course I didn't always understand it, but it became a part of my life." She belongs to the Faith Baptist Church in Macclenny.

Lillian agrees that their lives are a wonderful time to reflect upon.

I think the kids this day and time have it too easy," Lillian said. "I really do. They have TVs, VCRs and radios. If they aren't listening to one of them in the house, they got 'em. hung to their ears outside. They've got telephones, and strictly have it too easy and they don't care if anything else, is done, or not, except they get to do what they want to do. They got cars, go where they want, have money to spend. They aren't developing the character and appreciation of thing's like we did."

Lorayne agreed. "They're only interested in their self."

"I know they've got a hard life before 'em if they continue like they're going now because life hasn't changed, the people have. Life's problems are the same and one way or the other they're going to have to face life's problems and deal with them," Lorayne said.

"Today, parents don't have much control over discipline because if you do, the HRS will get you," said Lillian.

The two widowed sisters love visiting each other and talking about the "good ol' days," and they each put their early training to use. Lillian, an excellent seamstress, loves sewing and is grateful to her mother, who taught her at age 11.

I use to ride over to Hilliard, to the chicken farms, and buy the prettiest feed sacks to make my daughter's dresses. Everyone thought they were beautiful. I just love to sew," she said.

Lorayne enjoys crocheting and lap weaving. She makes her friends gifts of her lovely hand work, and makes things especially for her eight grandchildren.

Most of the family has died now, only a few still live, but they visit together and stay close. William Carl and Ola Belle (Burnett), the only two children from John's second marriage to Clarinda (Clark), live in Jacksonville. One halfbrother, Ellis McCormick, died recently. He was one of five children from John's first marriage to Lou Vernie Rawl. He became one of the county's first circuit ministers who had a 74-year career in ministry.

"Daddy was real proud of him," said Lorayne. "He started preaching when he was about 15 years old, standing up in the cotton field. Instead picking cotton he was preaching to the kids and the other workers in the field. Daddy used to tell Ellis he was preaching more hard shell than he was Southern Baptist doctrine, so that is why Ellis went over to the hard shell Baptist.".(His parents Were Southern Baptist). Other children of this marriage were Mary (Mrs. Ernie Johns), Oscar, Bessie Hilliard Steele and Vernie.

The sisters do not think they'll run out of things to talk about or to tell their grandchildren. Their laughter and sunny dispositions are on-going, and contagious.....that is if they can just get this younger generation to sit down long enough to listen.

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THE BAKER COUNTY STANDARD August 12, 1993


John Calhoun & Bertha Mae Bennett Crawford Family

By La Viece Smallwood
Standard staff writer

Dealt a heaping of hardship, sisters came out on top

Just before her 13th birthday, Sarah Lee Crawford was like most other girls in rural Baker County. It was the era of the Great Depression, but if her family was poor, she wasn't aware of it.. She had enough to eat, enough to wear, and parents who loved her.

But things changed one damp and dreary day, just after a frightening rainstorm passed through the north Macclenny area where she lived. Sarah remembers the mammoth oak tree in the side yard steadily dripping glistening raindrops as it cast a dismal shadow outside her ailing mother's bedroom window. It was July 10, 1926.

"My father was out of town working during the fruit-picking season," reminisced Sarah recently in the comfort of her cozy frame home. "Mother wasn't feeling well and the other children and I were sitting with her when three of her friends unexpectedly arrived. They were Vallie Burnsed and her mother, Mrs. Hogan, and Lula Yarborough. They had no more than said hello to her, when she began to make a funny noise and I began to tap her on the face. But she died instantly. There were six of us children home alone with mother that day.. I was the oldest. We had no phone, no close neighbors, no car. By chance, those three women stopped by, just as if the Lord had sent them to be with us that moment. I'll always believe he did."

The six children were Sarah, Lee, Mamie Frankie, Dan Edison, Bernice Mae, Geneva and the baby Virgil Robert. Their parents, Bertha Mae (Bennett) and John Calhoun Crawford were poor tenant farmers, but good and caring parents. The home, instantly shattered with tragedy would leave a lasting impression on each of the children's lives.

"People don't realize how wonderful it is to have a mother," said, Mamie (Combs) in a recent interview as she and her older sister talked about their Baker County heritage. "We never had our mother to go home to and we missed that very much. Their mother was the daughter of Hiram and Safronie (Rewis) Bennett.

"We cooked on an old wood-burning stove, cleaned house, washed the family's clothes in a big old-timey iron wash pot out in the yard. Then we had to press them with those old heavy irons we heated on the Wood-stove or fireplace. We mopped with an old corn shuck mop, and tended the garden -- whatever needed to be done, we did it," said Sarah.

"Daddy got lonesome for mama and about every few months he'd get to drinking, but he was never mean to us, he was always good, said Mamie. "I really look back now and realize even more all he did for us and what he must have gone through to keep us all together."

John Crawford moved his family around a lot after the death of his young wife. He often took seasonal jobs picking fruit. Mamie remembers one dark night when they were driving a small two-seat Model T Ford down a crude rocky road on their way to pick fruit in Plant City.

"Our car was packed with all our things, plus six children. You can just imagine the scene," Mamie said. "I was about 14 years old and sitting in the open door of the car when I started to stand up and lost my grip and fell out. At first they didn't even miss me. The last thing I remember was standing up. I was knocked unconscious. They took me to a doctor, and after I woke up I was OK.

That was not the only close call the children had. Once when the family was. grinding cane, Daniel was feeding the mill while the horse was making its circular sweep. Suddenly, his head was pushed between the mill and the long wooden pole. Sarah screamed for the horse to stop and it did -- just in time.

"I'm sure it would have pulled his head off if Sarah hadn't got the horse stopped," said Mamie. The incident resulted in Daniel having a large, permanent scar on his face.

The children never had a Christmas tree and to them the holiday was "just another day."

"Once when I was real small, before my mother died, I got a small doll and I. was so proud of it," remembered Sarah. I tied a string around it and hung it on the living room wall so nothing would happen to it.

Their grandfather, John Calhoun Sr., and his grandfather, Giddeon Crawford, were Primitive Baptist ministers.

John Calhoun Sr. died in l912, the same year Sarah was born, and though she never knew him, personally, she displays a large picture of him in her home.

Sarah left home when she was about 16 years, old to live in Jacksonville with cousins, Lawton and Sallie Crawford, and to work at the King Edward Cigar Factory. She visited home often and on one such visit she attended a party in a neighbor's home, While playing a game she found herself standing directly across from another player named Lautice Robert Dugger. The two instantly liked each other. After a brief courtship, they married in September 1930 at the home of Judge Beard in Baldwin. Lautice was a young, popular barber in Macclenny making a scant living giving 25-cent haircuts and 15-cent shaves.

The young couple 1ived in several locations, including an apartment over the old Macclenny post office, before hiring local contractors Lacy and Jesse Mobley in 1935 to build them a home on, S.R. 228 north. They never moved again.

Their first daughter, Bobbie Sue, was born in the front bedroom, deliverd by Dr. Edward Crockett on Jan 30, 1936. Another daughter, Martha, came along 11 years later.

It was important to their father that both of his daughters play musical instruments. They each became accomplished musicians on the piano and accordian. Martha majored in music at the University of Florida.

It was years before the petite young mother would have electricity or running water. She would wash up to 150 towels weekly that Lautice used at the barber shop, ironing them with a hot cast iron. She pumped water from an outdoor hand water pump, still visible in her backyard today, to do the family's laundry.

The one thing the couple loved to do more than anything was to "go to frolics."

"I loved it so much, and we'd go anytime there was one," Sarah said with a twinkle in her eye. "Back then we danced in people's homes like Mr. Jim Sands. And we also had street dances in Macclenny, and in the old community center west of town. Someone would come around with a loud speaker on their car announcing where it would be, and we'd always go. I just plain loved dancing and we went every chance we'd get."

Then one day that changed.

"I joined the Primitive Baptist Church in September 1950 she said, tears falling from her pale blue-green eyes. "It is now my life, my everything. I'll never forget the day I was standing outside in my backyard beneath that big pecan tree and that car came around announcing a big dance going on in town. I didn't have one bit, I mean not even one little bit, of desire to dance, and I never have since.

"There just comes a time when you just trade one life in for another. It's just as simple as that.

Mamie belongs to the same church, but she joined in 1980.

Sarah and Lautice were baptized in a deep ditch filled with water from the swollen St. Marys River at Twin Bridges.

The resourceful 5-foot 3-inch lady has her own vegetable garden and spends much of her time stashing away the food it produces into her freezer and canning jars.

Husband Lautice, who retired from his barber shop after 40 years, died May, 23, 1980. He had suffered from Parkinson's disease for the last 13 years of his life.

He was a good man and we were real happy," she said with a smile.

Today, all her time is devoted to the church and her family, the two most important things in her life. Daughter Bobbie Sue, a talented floral designer, married Jimmy Rowe.

Martha is a former music teacher and is married to Tim Starling, Baker County School Superintendent.

Mamie married Lester Combs from Sanderson at the age of 16 and the couple have three children, Daniel, Shirley and Wayne. She and Lester ran Combs Grocery at the corner of 23A and Macclenny Avenue for 26 years.

"I often think of our mother and wish she could have seen how her family turned out," Sarah" said. "I think she would be very proud of her children and their families."

NOTE: cwm Lautice R. Dugger 23 May 1908 - 7 Sep 1982 Oak Grove cem.

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THE BAKER COUNTY STANDARD February 4, 1993

At home at Miltondale

By La Viece Moore-Smallwood
Standard correspondent

Often times Fay Milton sits at the piano with husband Harold at her side as they sing many of their old favorite songs that remind them of days gone by.

The simple lovely strains filter through the quiet and peaceful setting and drift away with the breeze. Sometimes Harold builds a cozy fire in their comfortable living room and sits nearby in his, favorite easy chair listening to the soothing crackle while reading his Bible.

Towering millennial oaks spread their majestic branches graciously down the terraced terrain toward Dick White Creek that borders Miltondale, which was named for a former slave who lived there until his death.

It is from this modest home that, side by side and hand in hand, the Miltons have helped to mold and build a community by serving their fellowman and painstakingly developing the lives of countless youngsters. Some say that maybe more than any other two people in Baker County, Harold and Fay Milton have influenced our society.

Their steadfast generosity in sharing their God-given talents and wisdom has touched the lives of countless people. Their gift to others is a legacy and heritage that, to some, is bound to be felt eternally.

Saturday, the Miltons will be honored at a program and reception, "Down Memory Lane," for their contributions to education and, activities in Baker County. The program will be Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Baker County High School Auditorium.

The Miltons live in their modest home called Miltondale, surrounded by God's loveliest gifts of nature on the outside and a spirit of His peace and harmony on the inside.

Placed in inconspicuous places throughout their abode are plaques and framed certificates of recognition and appreciation for their untiring, unselfish and devoted service to their country, state and community.

In the winter, there's almost always a fire burning in the fireplace at Miltondale, to warm their welcome visitors.

Harold Milton, now 87 began teaching school when pay was low and the hours were long. One had to love children and teaching to overcome the obstacles. Cars were almost unheard of. Most teachers walked to school on dusty, unpaved country roads, despite the rain or cold. They had to bring in wood to use in wood-burning heaters to keep their classrooms warm, and in the summer, they tolerated the heat, fought mosquitoes and other insects that would come in through windows and doors of the non-insulated, clap-board make-shift rural school houses.

Harold began his teaching career in Olustee. He was a bright and dedicated 17-year-old with a ninth grade education. He joined a staff of two teachers, and the three educators used the old Rose primers and Wheeler's Readers to teach the 60 plus students in first through eighth grades. School ran for seven months of the year to accommodate the farmers' planting and harvesting season because most students were needed on their parent's farm to help out. Many children arrived at school, rain or shine., in the back of an old horse-drawn wagon, sitting on the side benches and floor boards. Others walked, toting their meager lunch of grits, sweet potatoes, bacon and biscuits in small tin pails.

Harold boarded during the week in Olustee. On Fridays he traveled by train and went home to his parents for the weekend. They lived north of Macclenny on the land where he was born in 1905.

Within a year, Harold was made principal of the Olustee school. He stayed on the job for three years before moving to a small schoolhouse in nearby Possum Trot. Progress was being made in Baker County, and Harold could now ride the bus home on weekends on newly paved Highway 90.

During the time school was not in session, Harold studied to obtain a graduate degree. When he obtained it, he moved to Yellow Water and White House before returning to Macclenny. In 1929, at the age of 24, he was elected superintendent of schools for Baker County.

In 1934, along came a pretty young lady from Hawthorne seeking a first-grade teaching position. Her name was Fay Matthews.

I came to Macclenny to apply for a teaching position and married the school superintendent," laughed Fay. "Harold was the youngest school superintendent ever elected in the state of Florida, and was the first person I ever voted for. I was 21. He was 24.

Harold courted her and won her hand three years later.

Fay was taking room and board with the Baptist minister and his wife when the minister's wife decided to play cupid. She asked Harold if he wouldn't like to meet Fay formally. But Fay said she wasn't impressed at first.

"He phoned me to say he needed to see me because there was something wrong with my register. I was so frightened. Then he came over, and you know what? He didn't even ask me about my register."

The couple's wedding took place in Fay's hometown. Fay was Presbyterian and Harold belonged to the Church of Christ, but they were married by a Baptist preacher in a Methodist Church in Hawthorne. This unique couple has transcended boundaries that would perplex most of us.

"It was a big change in my life," mused Fay. "Life and lifestyles were different in Hawthorne, near Gainesville, where I grew up. The people there had better opportunities for education and fine arts. Macclenny had no paved streets, cows roamed all over town, there was very little opportunity for higher education and no ballet or piano. Many people were void of electricity and phones. I learned quickly to love the people. Baker County has been so good to us."

The young couple lived in a downtown Macclenny apartment and attended the Baptist church where she played the piano. Their first child Billy, was born in 1936.

In 1941, Harold took his beautiful bride to look at some land he had found for sale north of Macclenny. The beautiful wooded area was once a large plantation where Union troops camped before marching westward to participate in the Battle of Olustee.

When Fay saw it, she thought the world had come to an end.

"It was out in the middle of nowhere, near the farm where Harold was born," she said. "The only way into the land was an old pig trail. And the price tag was high. The 120 acre plot was selling for $6 an acre. I thought we'd never get it paid for." The property is rich in history and has yielded a massive collection of Civil War relics and Indian artifacts.

The Miltons had a pig named Porky, who would greet them as they came out to clear land and prepared to build. They added a horse named Madam, which from time to time they would ride into town.

The couple drew the house plans and constructed their home with timber from their land -- even building their first furniture. Throughout the home most of the furniture represents his handicraft or, pieces that once belonged to their parents.

"My father had been a carpenter, so I learned the trade," said Harold, as he pointed proudly to their dining room. "That's our original table and china hutch. "

"We still use the same bedroom. furniture Harold made when we married said Fay. The baby crib is now used for grandchildren.

"Our home had no indoor plumbing, electricity, or running water for the first 10 years, " said Harold, pointing to some beautiful Aladdin lamps now converted to electricity. As the children were born we'd knock out a wall and build an additional room.

Their children all grew up in Miltondale: Flo Ann, a former Gator Bowl Queen; Billy, an educator at Raines High School who has won the most spirited teacher award and most valuable teacher three times; and Alice Fay, who recently built a home on the 25-acre site next to them, which was cited as Better Homes and Garden's House of the Year. They loved swimming in the cool clear creek that flows at the foot of the slopping glade.

Their mother often washed the family's clothes, pioneer style, in the creek on a big rock and then hung them to dry in front of the fireplace. The outdoor privy was always shown off with pride each time the family had visitors.

"When we first moved here, our maid said she wouldn't stay out here with us at home, much less not at home, so I quit teaching school and started teaching piano," said Fay. "Many of my piano students are married with families of their own, and I now teach their children."

For 23 years Fay Milton taught the first grade. Her students fondly penned the name "Miss Fay" to her and it still sticks today.

Through the years as she taught more than 500 piano students, gifts of love and appreciation accumulated. As those students marry or have house warmings, she wraps the gifts up with tender loving care and returns them to her former students as tokens of her love and appreciation.

Former Macclenny band director, Denny Wells, was one surprised recipient when, at his housewarming, he received a beautiful cake dish with matching smaller dishes, given to his favorite music teacher many years ago.

"I can just see Denny now, coming up the walk with a box almost as big as he was," Miss Fay said. "People don't know what fun is. Harold and I spent our time doing what we loved best, serving the community and enjoying our family. That was our recreation.

"When Harold was school principal, he organized the first high school band in Baker County. I was PTA president, so we raised money for their uniforms. " Both have helped organize many of Macclenny's clubs and organizations, serving as president more than once, whenever they were needed. In 1971, Miss Fay was honored as Woman of the Year by the Macclenny Woman's Club.

In 1965, Harold retired from the Baker County School system after holding almost every position.

Harold and Fay are dedicated members of the Church of Christ in Macclenny, and find great joy serving there and anywhere else they are still called to do a job.

In their cozy homespun kitchen is an old-fashioned fireplace, "the kind our Grandmas used to cook in," explained Fay.

"Harold always had the fire ready to start on winter mornings. When the grandchildren are here, they love to roast wieners and marshmallows over the fire," she said.

Fay organized the Friendly Fellowship Club for senior citizens, which was the forerunner for the present-day Council on Aging, and this effort won her statewide recognition from the National Federation of Women Clubs.

She organized the Junior Woman's Club and the first county choir. She helps with all community Projects when called upon, and Miltondale has been used for group Easter egg hunts, Boy and Girl Scouts, school functions, campouts, club and church socials.

Elected president of the Women's Club twice, she was asked to help supply books for the county library as a project.

Quickly she formed a unique idea for a celebrity book shelf. She mailed letters to as many famous named people as possible requesting they donate an autographed book to the county library. The first letter went to her brother, former Congressman DR "Billy" Matthews.

The response was overwhelming," she said, opening a book compiled of 45 letters from such celebrities as Governor Reubin Askew, former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, former governors Claude Kirk and Leroy Collins, Rep. Charles Bennett, ex-governor Spessard Holland, and State Cabinet members. The celebrity book shelf is a treasured addition to the library.

Miss Fay once noticed that Several retired teachers were residents of the local nursing home, so She suggested to some of her Women Club friends that perhaps they could form a singing group and entertain all residents in the nursing home.

"Down Memory Lane" was born, and today has evolved into "The Charmers," a group of women 50 to 85 years old who perform everything from "The Charleston" to "Moonlight and Roses." They still entertain at the two local nursing homes. In 1992, the group won first place in the statewide FFWC talent and music division.

Both Fay and Harold are active in the Retired Teachers Association and are recognized for their creativeness in state and national projects. Through the efforts of Fay, a Retired Teacher's Day was proclaimed by Florida's governor, and she wrote the official song that has been adopted for the group.

In Baker County, both Harold and Fay serve on historical preservations projects and the Community Improvements Association.

Harold, a trustee of Lake City Community College, was honored when the new industrial Building was named in his honor.

Beneath the shaded woodland sky, Fay and Harold hold their annual Milton and Matthews family reunions, and have seen their two beautiful daughters marry beneath the outdoor splendor.

Today the retired couple enjoys the fruits of their labors -- children, grandchildren and friends who stop by to reminisce.

"The house that your children grow up in is the house you always remember," said Harold.

And it takes a heap of living to make a house a home,." commented Fay.

If you are ever so fortunate as to visit Miltondale, you will find, that a special traditional spirit prevails and awaits the arrival of family and friends. The table will be adorned with great grandma's ancestral heirloom china. A miniature punch bowl, used by Fay as a child, will serve the younger children and traditional butter cookies and lime sherbet will be served after a luscious dinner.

The fire will crackle, and cast a peaceful glow. Sweet music will fill the air as Fay's talented fingers twinkle out with precision renditions of your favorite golden oldies. Voices will sing in unison, hearts will beat in rapture, and you can be sure you will forever remember your memorable visit with the Miltons at Miltondale.

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THE BAKER COUNTY STANDARD January 26, 1994

Old times are full of Rhoden memories

by La Viece Smallwood
Standard social editor

Hardy Rhoden was a determined young man when he went courting Carrie Hogan. He would walk as far as he could through the dense woods and, when he got to the big river he would take his clothes off, hold them up over his head, walk across to the Georgia Bend side, put them back on, to court Carrie.

She was 13 and he was 23 when they married amid the peach blossoms in the yard of her parents Joshua and Rosetta Rhoden Hogan in 1900. The first of their 13 children was born the following year. The couple left a family legacy that vividly endures in the lives of their descendants.

Celebrating and keeping family together were important to their parents, say the children of Hardy and Carrie. So they often meet and remember how life used to be for them and their parents back in the early days in Baker County.

Today, the three boys and two girls surviving from Hardy and Carrie's family are Fred, Belle (Bennett-Coleman), Edwin, Joshie and Ellie (Lauramore).

Gone from their family circle are Lillie (Taylor), Lossie (Johns), Vallie (Johns-Crews-Taylor), Ethel (Johns), Violet (who lived to the age of three), Rosa (Taylor), Mertie (Crews) and Paul (killed in an auto accident at the age of 19).

Meeting in the home of Ellie, the group reminisced of a time gone by.

One of the most vivid memories they enjoy talking about is the time when they would gather around the fireplace with their parents, and other siblings, shelling peanuts to be used in planting the next year's crop.

"Peanut shells would be this high," laughed Ellie, measuring up to her waist.

"Yeah, and I remember Papa sat in a chair on one side of the fireplace, spitting his tobacco, and Mama sitting on the other end spitting her Buttercup snuff," said Fred.

The children said they seldom got to eat the peanuts, so a big treat was when their mother would let them roast a few after the shelling in the hot coals from the fireplace. To this day, they remember the delicious roasted taste and enticing aroma from that experience.

"They'd let us youngins' eat the shriveled-up peanuts that were not good for planting," reminded Belle. They all shook their heads in agreement, remembering.

Joshie said he vividly remembered a time when his mother made an exception and parched him some peanuts in the oven. He promised not to tell his father.

"But," he said, "when Daddy walked in, I got excited and started shouting, 'Daddy, we didn't parch any peanuts. We didn't parch any peanuts.

Daddy, they say, was very strict. He never spared the rod, to spoil a child. They dared not disobey his rules, and he was known and respected as head of the house.

"But, oh, how I loved that man," said Ellie. Again, the others nodded in agreement.

"Our mother was the heart of our home, and we thought she was perfect," said Belle. The others agreed. They said their parents were good Primitive Baptist.

And they remember the big church meetings.

The night before the big meeting, their parents, would invite the revival ministers and their wives and many others to their home for preachin' and singin'.

"Back in those days, we'd read a verse of the song, and then sing another verse," said Ellie.

They lived in the Cuyler section of the county in a big two-story house with a fireplace that furnished heat. They cooked, their food on a wood burning stove and used candles for light. They never felt deprived of conveniences even though the house had no bedroom closets, and they had to use nails or door knobs to hang their clothes.

"I remember very well when we got our first remodeling," said Edwin. "We went from a one-holer privy (outdoor toilet) to a two-holer. Now that was something."

"And remember when we got our first bath tub?" asked Belle. "Daddy set it up in a room. We didn't have any running water, but we thought it was so pretty and the sides so slippery we'd play in it."

As children, they grew up happy and had lots of fun. They had the regular get-togethers with friends and neighbors.

"We'd have cane grindings, candy pullings, peanut boilings and frolics," said Ellie.

"And remember our first radio and how great it was to hear the Grand Ole' Opry?" asked Edwin. "It had a dry cell battery. "

The family had food in abundance, everything a farm could produce.

"Daddy believed in working. Working all the time, even when we'd take a lunch break after working in the fields hoeing. He'd be saying 'While you're resting ya'll go shell some mill corn,' or 'Pull up those weeds,' or 'go stack that fodder,"' said Joshie.

"The only time we'd eat breakfast after daylight was on Sunday," said Joshie, "because every other morning in the week you were out in the field sitting on a plow waiting on the sun to come up.

"It didn't matter how young or old you were, you worked," he said.

"We'd bury our water in holes to keep it cool while we worked," said Edwin.

"Mama would put her crawling babies at the end of a row to play while she worked in the fields," said Belle, "and the babies would crawl around in the dirt and be so dirty. Mama made their diapers from flour sacks."

"I remember we had flour sack underwear," said Fred.

"And the girls slips were made from flour sacks. I remember Pillsbury's Best stamped on the back of them."

"Some of that flour sack material was so pretty and made beautiful. dresses," said Belle.

When the children got sick, the parents seldom took them to a doctor. Instead, they had a shoebox full of remedies.

"If you sneezed, you'd get a dose of castoroil," Joshie said.

"If they put a little Coke in it, you could tolerate it better," reminded Fred. "And I remember they'd add a little turpentine to work on the kidneys and castor oil for the bowels."

"What was it they called it?" someone asked.

"Regulators," came the answer.

"Remember the -Black Draught?" Everyone squealed. "It tasted terrible, but they believed those laxatives would cure anything," said Joshie. "Well, they do make you feel better," quipped Fred.

At night the family would sit on the front porch and listen to music they played on the wind-up phonograph. There were no phones.

The children said they lived a good life and were taught to be honest and respectful.

"Daddy would put a hurt on you if you did anything wrong," said Joshie. "I remember going to town with Daddy once and he looked over at. me and noticed I had my lips painted red with lipstick for the first time," said Belle. "He told me my lips looked like a fox's tail and I never put lipstick on again."

The family traveled to church with a horse and wagon. The children would put a blanket in the wagon and look up at the stars as they rode home. That seemed to be one of the fondest memories they shared.

They remember the winter weather being so cold cows would freeze to death. "And all the heat we had back then was from the fireplace," said Edwin.

Joshie said, "We didn't go swimming back in them days, we went washing." "When we didn't bathe in the wash holes in the river, we bathed in the wash water on wash days," said Edwin. Their mother washed clothes in a large iron boiler and, after she had scrubbed the clothes, she would put the children into the boiler with the wash water to bathe.

As the family reminisces, they find great pleasure in remembering the days of their youth.

They thought of the time when their father was first learning to drive a car. He hit a wagon, knocked down the railing fence and was hollering "Whoa, whoa, I said, damn it whoa!" He never learned to drive well, they agreed. Their mother tried to learn to drive, but never succeeded.

Their father, who was the son of Hansford and Nancy Rhoden, died in a car accident on Jan. 5, 1944,. when he was age 66. Some of the family think the accident was caused when he had a heart attack or a stroke. Mother Carrie lived to an old age and died Feb. 11, 1970. Both are buried in Taylor cemetery. The couple had 51 grandchildren and more than a 100 great-grandchildren, 122 great-great-grandchildren and several great-great-great-grandchildren. Most live in Baker County.

"I tell everyone we had a good life," said Fred. "And I can tell them why, because we were all taught to work."

"And we were taught to treat our fellow man like we wanted to be treated," said Belle.

That's the secret. We survived in the toughest of times, and we were happy. There's no poverty in this country, it's plain. laziness," said Fred.

Gone are the days when they all sat around the fireplace together shelling peanuts for seeds, the hard work in the fields planting and harvesting the crops, the old-time church revivals, sitting on the front porch listing to phonograph music, swimming in the wash holes and countless other recollections.

Gone from the scene but still living in their memories.

It is a rich heritage money cannot buy, nor can time fade. A legacy they hope to leave to their children and children's children.

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THE BAKER COUNTY STANDARD April 6, 1994

The 'good ol' days' bring fond ' memories for Elva Dinkins

by La Viece Smallwood
Standard social editor

Elva Combs Dinkins was born on the banks of the Middle Prong of the St. Marys River on May 5, 1908, in northern Baker County. She traveled to Macclenny with her parents in a horse and wagon before the streets were paved and remembers the special beauty of the towering shade trees that lined the lanes.

She recalls how she romped and played in the bright sunshine as a cool breeze graced her brow. And she fondly recalls home, where, in an atmosphere of love, she was indulged with kindness and devotion by God-fearing parents.

"I didn't think of it being the good times at the time," she said in the comfort of her Sixth Street home where she has lived there for the past 52 years, 34 of them as a widow. "I thought at the time we were having the worst time in the world."

Her parents', James Jackson "Boss" and Martha Dowling Combs, dealt with the times in which they lived in a remarkable way, remembers their youngest daughter.

They were the parents of 14 children, rearing the 12 who survived and one grandchild on their 300-acre farm.

"My oldest sister, Belva Elizabeth, died in childbirth three weeks before Mama gave birth to me," Elva said." And Mama raised her baby, also named Belva Elizabeth, right along with me. We were like twins. Sometimes I think we were closer than twins."

Their rambling country-home was built by Elva's grandfather, Jim Combs. Later, Elva's "Papa" added a kitchen set apart from the main house, yet connected by the large front porch that graced the front of their home.

Martha had a wood-burning cook stove where she prepared her family's meals, but when company came and bigger pots were required, she made a fire in the fireplace and simmered large containers of greens, beans, peas or whatever she grew in the garden along with a huge pot of chicken pileau.

"Mama went to the garden daily to get food for our table, then she'd come home prepare and cook it for us," she said.

"After dinner, I remember that Daddy would always stretch out on one of the two large church-type benches on our front porch and tell us younger girls, who he always called his dolls, to fan him," she said. "And oh, how we enjoyed doing it for him."

Martha raised chickens and turkeys to sell. The money afforded shoes and clothing for her children. She would load her wagon with the fowl, drive as far as Marietta, spend the night with her sister, then with either her husband or one of her sons drive the horse and wagon all the way to Jacksonville to sell her stock.

"Mama would buy whole bolts of material. She could look at the picture of a dress in a catalog and make me and my sisters and Belva dresses that looked just like the pictures," remembered Elva. "Even our neighbors would ask mama to sew like that for them.

"We had lots of cows, and always plenty of milk to drink," she recalled. "As we grew older, Belva and I had to help with chores. I remember sweeping our yards every Saturday with the broom brush.

"And if mama washed clothes during the week, then we had, to iron them with the heavy cast irons we heated in the fireplace on Saturdays as well. If Mama didn't get to wash during the week, then we had to help with that too."

When her mother washed clothes it was done in handcrafted logs called troughs. One was used for washing, one rinsing. The sugar boiler was used for boiling the dirt out of the clothes, she said. And the sugar boiler was used for Saturday night baths.

"We'd build a small fire beneath it, just enough to warm the water, and on Saturdays we all got a good bath," she remembered.

Her parents were Primitive Baptist and in those days attended the monthly meetings with eagerness.

"Mama and Daddy would bring home up to 25 people sometimes to eat and spend the night because they'd come a long way, usually by horse, and wagon," she said. "The all-day meetings often lasted into the night.

"Mama would fix beds on the floor for the children. Our house would be full of people."

It was at one of those Primitive Baptist meetings that Elva met handsome Dunk Dinkins, 10 years her senior. She was sitting in the car with a good friend, Nora Mae Dowling, when he walked up. He was, she remembered, a neat dresser and very nice. They courted for two years, then on July 2, 1925, the couple married at the home of her parents, who had moved north of Glen to a much smaller farm by this time.

Belonia Robert Dinkins III was nicknamed Dunk. He was working in Miami during the land boom when he married 17-year-old Elva. He was 27, had his own car, and had learned to-do a variety of things to make a good living.

After two years the couple moved back home to Baker County. For awhile Dunk farmed, then dipped cattle, before moving to Macclenny in 1932 and running a filling station. Some of their young friends in the community were Myrtie and Verge Walker, Edna and Hardy Harris and Ira and Eva Walker.

"There wasn't much to do during those days but go to church, and most of us, especially us ladies, were church-goers," she said.

Elva was kept busy tending to the couple's four children, Verna, Lois Lorraine, Robert and Linda. They were actively involved in school and community activities.

Dunk acquired the Ford Dealership which he operated for 25 years, until his death from a heart attack in 1959 at the age of 61.

Elva, with an eighth grade education, was fortunate to obtain work at Northeast Florida State Hospital, where she was employed for 10 years.

At the age of 61 she returned to school to acquire a GED degree, the equivalent of a high school diploma. Inspired at what she was learning, she continued her education by enrolling in Lake City Community College.

"I might have finished the whole four years, but at the time I would have had to drive to Gainesville," she said, explaining that was before Jacksonville instituted a four-year college.

Today, only Elva and one, sister, Lois, are the surviving siblings of Boss and Martha. Gone are Belva Elizabeth, Mattie, Ethel, Sarah, Eddie, Joel, Virgil, Ernest, Forrest and Glen. Roy died as an infant, as did another little son.

Her niece, Belva Elizabeth, lives in Miami Springs. She is 85 years old, the same as Elva.

They often talk on the phone for an hour, reminiscing about the good old days.

"We talked just last week," said Elva. "We like to relive the memories we share, like the one we especially remember that happened on a bright sun shining morning when a fresh wind swept across our faces as we ran down the lane that ran in front of Mama and Daddy's house.

"We could see Papa across the fields plowing, and Lois and Virgil pulling weeds in the corn and peanuts.

"Me and Belva were little," she said, "but we decided to help, so we, climbed the ' fence and jumped over in the field where we saw these tall weeds growing right in the same rows that Virgil and Lois were weeding. Belva took one row and me another and we pulled up a third of two rows before we hollered at Papa to look at us helping to pull weeds.

"We saw papa stop.... and look.... And then he started running toward us. We could see he was mad. We didn't know what for, though, so we started running. I made it over the fence before Papa caught up with us, but he caught Belva and swatted her.

"I was running as fast as my long legs would take me, thinking 'I've just got to find Mama. She won't let him whip me." she recalled.

"I saw Mama standing on a fence rail throwing some swill to the hogs, but Papa caught me before I reached her. He tapped me. I think it was the first time he ever had, and it hurt my feelings lots more than it hurt me.

"We had pulled up his corn, thinking it was weeds," she laughed.

She loves to remember those days, times when her parents were strict, but also loving and kind.

'We did what they wanted us to do, not what we wanted to do," she said. "And that was good for us, we found out later in life."

What does she enjoy most? Well, of course, her children and grandchildren, although none of them live in Baker County. Her walls are filled with their pictures, though.

Across the street from her home is where her heart dwells. It's the Church of God, where she has held membership for 67 years.

"I joined the church when I got saved, and that's the best feeling in the world. I'll never forget the peace I felt," she said with conviction.

And neither are those, feelings of yesteryear something she'll likely be able to forget, she said, as she reflects back on the family she remembers growing up with and the home they each filled with their love.

NOTE cwm:

B.R. "Dunk" Dinkins 1898-1959 - Woodlawn cem.
Elvo O. Combs Dinkins 1908-4 Nov 1996

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