James Arthur Rowe

Cousin Art Rowe was more Barber than Rowe in looks and temperament.  He was a large, not fat…large, man with a distinctive voice of strong volume. He was so tall he had to construct for himself an extra long bed, and his sister Nettie made his shirts with extra long tails,

 

He was an artist with wood, designed buildings, and owned his own cabinet shop in Macclenny in the 1930’s.

 

 He married Miss Ruby Hodges of Nassau County, and they had three children – Jack (married (1) Hanita Peake (2) Wilma (nee Kirkland) Lyons (3) Jean Parker), Louise (married a Minshew), and Kathleen (she supposedly committed suicide with poison over a love affair gone awry with Earl Walker).  Cousin Art and Ms. Ruby divorced (almost an unheard of thing in our family in those days), and he lived alone the rest of his life. 

 

His small frame shotgun house was next door to his sister Alma and across the street from his sister Nettie.  In later years, he developed a painful nerve disease in his legs and feet (? neuropathy) that kept his life miserable 24 hours a day.  No amount of surgery (cutting nerves) and medication gave ease (I can sympathize).

 

Each morning after he rose, Miss Nettie came in the back door, made his bed and, once a week, took his laundry home to do.  About 10 a. m. he would make out a grocery list and place it on his kitchen table with just a little over the exact amount of money for the items and return to his chair in the front room.  Miss Nettie would come in the back door with his fresh laundry, either ask curtly if there was anything special he needed, or she would say nothing.  He would boom his answer, “If there was anything special I needed I would have wrote it down.”  Miss Nettie would go downtown and buy the items he wanted and return to cook and lay out the meal on the little kitchen table for him.  She might or might not say, “Art, Dinner’s ready.”  She left by the back door, and he would go in and eat.  When he finished, Miss Alma came in the back door, said nothing, washed the dishes, and went home usually without a word.

 

My granddaddy Barber, their first cousin, would comment on how peculiar they acted, and at the same time, he had not spoken to his brother Will for about 20 years.

 

Cousin Art liked to share his design and building abilities and usually received little compensation.  He designed and was the chief carpenter of the first brick Baptist Church in Macclenny (known to us old timers as the new church and to newcomers as the old church).  He tended to be a bit cranky when things didn’t go his way, and he was often engaged in stormy arguments with the head of the building committee.

 

The committee discussed at length what would go on the new building’s steeple.  Cousin Art stated that it would be logical to place a cross on top.  The committee unanimously turned down the cross as being “popish”…I won’t go into this…I’ll just let the reader muse on it.  Cousin Art muttered, “A cross was alright for Jesus to die on but it ain’t worth a shit on a church I reckon.”  The committee head Mr. Hugh Griffin took it on him self to have a rooster weather vane affixed to the steeple in lieu of a cross.  He had me draw a haughty cock on an aluminum sheet and he got his shop men to cut it out.  When it was placed on top of the building, his cousin Jim Rowe, a deacon and building committee member, said, “What the hell is that thing doin’ up there?”  Cousin Art, not overly fond of the cock weather vane himself but had tolerated it, answered, “Any fool can see it’s a damned rooster.”  “Well”, said Cousin Jim, “I want it down.”  “It’s too hard to get back up there to take it down, you dern fool”, Cousin Art came back.  His cousin Jim snorted, “You can get it down or I’ll take my shotgun and shoot it down.  I’d as soon have a grinnin’ baboon squattin’ up there as that damned rooster.”

 

Mr. Griffin involved himself in the set-to.  Others joined in.  The din was deafening, and most were cursing.  The pastor walked in at the height of the overly heated discussion, and said, “Gentlemen, the building might not be consecrated yet, but it is still the house of the Lord.  Let’s calm down and pray about this matter.”  I can’t remember if there was prayer or not; I do remember that I had a difficult time containing my laughter.

 

The rooster came down.

 

For most of his adult life, Cousin Art was engaged by the county to wind the clock in the tower of the courthouse (now designated a Florida Heritage building).  He climbed the ladder weekly and turned the wheel that brought up the giant weights.

 

Mary Alma Rowe

Miss Alma Rowe was an independent sort.  She smoked, wore shirts and pants (fairly scandalous then), and minded her own business and would quickly suggest, if necessary, that others mind their own and not her’s.   If she were in some families I know she would be considered a black sheep, but the Barbers and Rowes saw black sheep only in other people’s families.

 

Miss Alma worked at the Glen Nurseries from about 1920 to 1939.  Her brother John procured for her the job of Times-Union carrier in the county, but she soon tired of it and decided to remain on the farm and work at home.  I think she was employed at the shipyards in Jacksonville during WW II.  After the war, she worked, I think, in a five and dime in west Jacksonville.  It was rumored that in her young days at the nursery, she was particularly friendly with her boss Mr. “Budder” Mathis.  Later in life, her companion was Ms. Lucille Varnes.  Miss Nettie didn’t care for Ms. Varnes; she thought Ms. Varnes was taking unfair advantage of Miss Alma (I wasn’t privy to the details).  If this wasn’t enough, their cousin Thelma Drawdy (later Wilson), who worked with them, involved her self in the ladies’ feud.  Miss Alma stayed above it.  As usual, she minded her own business.

 

John William Rowe

Cousin John Rowe was a handsome man who had the friendly personality and looks of his father.  This is not to say he did not occasionally exhibit some of his mother’s traits; as half Barber he was known, rarely, to pitch a fearsome temper tantrum.  He had snow white hair, sparkling eyes, and was always well groomed when he left his house.  He was a school trustee for several years and was always community minded.  He married the attractive Miss Minnie Belle Kirkland, daughter of George Sidney and Candace  (nee Hurst) Kirkland.  They had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood – Lucille (married [1] Buddy Webb [2] ________ Klingensmith), James Oliver “Jimmy” (married Bobbie Sue Dugger), Marjorie (married [1] Skinny McGlashan  [2] Junior Lyons), Cecil Benjamin (married [1] Margaret Gilbert [2] _________, and (?) Clarine (died in infancy.

 

His was a working family on a successful farm.  They lived with his mother until her death in 1942.

 

Cousin John was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces in WW I.  His tour of duty was in France, and he often recalled French phrases, ditties, and risqué jokes he picked up among the French.  He also was severely gassed.  Some believed that was partially to blame for his death many years later.

 

Cousin John was witty and fond of jokes that sometimes edged toward the naughty.  He and Cousin Minnie Belle sang duets at church and community gatherings.  They enjoyed dressing in period costumes to do the old songs of their courting days.  My favorite was “When You Wore a Tulip.”

 

He was one of the earliest deliverymen for the Florida Times-Union in Baker County (and, I think, some of the surrounding areas). Being so familiar with the county routes, he also filled in for ailing and vacationing mail deliverymen.

 

 

 

Bessie Rowe Fraser

Miss Bessie Rowe seemed never to be without a smile.  Her attractive looks hardly altered from her childhood into advanced age.  She married Lewis Fraser, a son of Brantley and Miranda Bowyer Fraser.  They were the parents of several children – Charles (married ________ ), Lois (married _________ Holt), Miranda “Ranny” (married Theo Taylor), Sarah Leah (married Pete Sizemore), Fay (married Connie Fiser), Marion (married __________ Raulerson), and Carl Brantley (married Loretta ___________ ).

 

Miss Bess attended, if I remember correctly, the Manntown New Congregational Holiness Church.  She was a firm and loving disciplinarian and insisted her kids be morally upright.  She inherited her mother’s strictness about clothes; she did not approve of her girls dressing in shorts.  “Now, ain’t that a perty sight?”  she would ask sarcastically of a daughter  in shorts.

 

In her older years she moved in with her sister Nettie.  While visiting them, it was the first time I had known Miss Bess to be curt (the Barber coming out); she and Miss Net frequently snapped at each other.  Their cousins confided that some of their attitude might have come from the fact that Miss Nettie had her cap set for Uncle Lewis years back but that Miss Bess had won out. This is not gospel…just gossip.  Uncle Lewis might have been one of the mystery men in her life that Miss Nettie told me about but would not name.

 

Dewitt Talmadge Rowe

Talmadge Rowe was next to the youngest of the Rowe children.  He died young (? 1943).  I remember going with my family over to Aunt Cissy’s (she had been dead a year, but the place remained “Aunt Cissy’s” for several more years) for Tal’s wake.  The family was distraught…Tal seemed to be the favorite of his siblings.  He did not marry.

 

He worked in south Florida (don’t recall his employment details…? Florida Power and Light).  During one of the great hurricanes in south Florida in the ‘20’s or ‘30’s, contact with him was lost for several days, and that threw his family into turmoil.  His sister Nettie recounted their anguish and then joy when the messenger came to their house with a telegram from Tal informing them he was safe.

 

Talmadge was, from all reports, a personable fellow.  My aunt Dorothy Barber Spence counted him among her favorite kin.  She often told that whenever she wanted to get away from home for a while or needed an escort in her youth, she could call on her cousin Tal and he would come to her rescue.  He was one of the few younger members of the clan with an automobile.

 

Waldo Cummer Rowe

Waldo Cummer Rowe was the youngest of the family.  He looked nothing at all like the rest of the Rowes or Barbers, and he acted nothing at all like the Rowes.  He was like the Barbers in that he was argumentative.  I dreaded being around him and my uncle Edward Barber when they got together; they embarrassed us all with their unrelenting vitriolic confrontations.  No matter what one said, the other would rudely contradict him.  Then the fireworks began.

 

I didn’t know Waldo well.  He was an automobile mechanic in his youth and operated a fishing camp at the mouth of the Suwannee River in his late years.

 

His first wife was Lorene Powers from Suwannee County, and after she died he remarried (I never learned her name).

 

I don’t think I ever saw him when he didn’t have a cigar stub in his mouth.

 

Thomas McDuffy “Duff” “M. D.” Barber

Uncle Thomas McDuffy “Duff” “M. D.” Barber was the sport of the family.  Dandy dresser, entrepreneur, dreamer, teller of tall tales, and practical joker… few among the north Florida Barbers have had more stories told about them than has Uncle Duff.  His voice was high pitched and nasal (a not uncommon trait of many Barbers).

 

Once when he and some of the boys were standing around in downtown Macclenny, Uncle Duff called one of the local not-so-brights over and asked, “Hey, boy, how’d you like t’ learn how t’ spell?”  Of course, the poor bumpkin wanted desperately to be able to spell and be more like the dudes in Uncle Duff’s clique.

 

“I’m a’gonna learn you how t’ spell cart wheel.  You ready?”  When the boy nodded, Uncle Duff began, “A-double-S cart…W-H-O-L-E wheel.”  He spelled and pronounced it several times, making the unsuspecting dupe repeat after him.  When the boy assured him he could remember how to spell cart wheel, Uncle Duff said, “Now, you go over there and show that man how you c’n spell.”  The gentleman indicated was one of the little city’s leading economic and political figures and was somewhat of a snob (and a Yankee to boot).  Uncle Duff and his cronies immediately removed themselves a distance and watched the reaction.  The yokel stood there in bewilderment that the important man did not seem favorably impressed with his newly learned spelling ability.

 

Uncle Duff dabbled in cattle, alone and in partnerships with his kin. He once said during cross examination as a witness in an estate trial, “I’m a man who likes a good cow.”   He went into real estate selling Macclenny’s marshy lots.  The venture was begun with a giant barbeque and brochures full of hype about the tropical climate and ambiance of the little city.

 

He even tried operating a brick manufactory on the north side of Willingham Branch (forever remembered as “Brickyard Branch”). The brickyard was where the Macclenny Mormon Church was erected many years later.  The bricks produced were of poor quality, and the business foundered.  The old section of Baker County’s old jail building and the structures just south of the railroad on Fifth Street in Macclenny were constructed with Uncle Duff’s bricks.

 

Uncle Duff was an inveterate gossip.  He was sometimes confronted by the person he was bad-mouthing.  Always one not to be on the losing end, he would chastise his accuser (1) for interfering with whatever activity he was involved in and (2) for slandering his good name.  He would not let up until the person he had been gossiping about apologized and slunk away.  Daddy Rowe Barber said his uncle Duff would call after the retreating man with, “And let that be a lesson to you not to go ‘round talkin’ bad about people and inneruptin’ ‘em when they’re a’talkin’ to somebody else!”

 

He remained a kid in many ways.  He and his cousin Charley Barber were cut-ups away from home (I was never privy to all the exact types of cutting-up they were engaged in).  Once when they were on a train coming up from downstate they were having such a good time keeping the car’s passengers in laughter that the people from adjoining cars began to join in.  Among those coming in was their first cousin Joe Barber of Kissimmee.  The north Florida boys had not seen their cousin Joe in many years. Joe asked, “You boys Barbers?”  Then the three of them became so rowdy the conductor begged them to quiet down for fear his supervisors would be displeased.  He was also concerned that he might offend Senator Charley Barber.  It seems the boys received new impetus from the confused conductor’s dilemma.  There is no way I can relate the tale as told by Joe’s son Mr. William I. Barber of Kissimmee.  His details could hardly be heard because of his constant laughter

 

Uncle Duff’s wife was Susan Madonna “Dona” (pronounced with a long “o”) Swain, daughter of George T. and Susan Matilda (nee Norton) Swain (nicknamed “Poss”). Aunt Dona was much younger than her husband.

 

Mr. Swain was a schoolmaster originally from New Hampshire.  He also wrote poetry and had at least one book published.  He had lived in North Carolina before moving here in the late 1860’s.  He and his brother Charles Swain had served in one of the Union Army units that had fought at Olustee and were encamped at Barbers’ Station.  The brother, a merry maker and joker, was killed at Olustee.  Aunt Dona’s mother was reportedly the daughter of Edward Roger Rowe, and her grandmother Matilda Greene claimed to be a love child of Nathanial Greene (greatly doubted…another story from Uncle Duff’s daughter Carmeta Barber Ray).

 

The Duff Barber’s either built or purchased one of the finest homes in Macclenny.  It stood in the center of the block between Sixth and Seventh Streets and just north of Macclenny Avenue.

 

Dona and her parents were Episcopalians and communicants of St. James Church in Macclenny.  Although Uncle Duff was a Baptist, he supported the St. James Church, and when it disbanded temporarily (? early 1900’s), he and Dona took the crystal baptismal bowl and altar linens among other items for safekeeping.  The church was not revived in their lifetimes and the items were never returned.  I saw some of these in the 1970’s at Carmeta Ray’s house near Sanford.

 

Uncle Duff moved to Sanford and operated a cypress lumber business for several years.

 

George Curtis Barber and Carmeta Barber Ray

Duff and Dona had three children – Kathleen Barber (?) who died in infancy, George Curtis Barber who lived and died in Miami, and Carmeta Barber Ray who lived and died in Sanford.

 

George Curtis had one daughter named Elizabeth Ann.  He divorced early in his marriage, and his daughter was unmarried when I last talked with him.  I think he was employed by a fruit importing company.  Carmeta and her husband Troy Ray, Sr. had no children, although Troy had a son Troy Ray, Jr., from a previous marriage.  He was tax assessor for Seminole County, Florida.  I believe Carmeta worked for the state in health services.

 

Curtis, Carmeta, and Troy, Sr. were rather heavy into the bottle.

 

Aunt Dona suffered greatly from arthritis.  Her toes were painfully stacked on top of each other.   She and Duff died in Sanford and are buried in Woodlawn near Macclenny.

 

Uncle Duff’s life overlapped mine, but I didn’t have the privilege of knowing him.  I recall Aunt Dona on Aunt Cissy’s front porch during her visits here.

 

Harriett “Hattie” Barber Bair

Harriett “Hattie” Barber Bair was the quiet one of the family and was known to be sweet and retiring.  She married Samuel Bair originally from Elkhart, Indiana.  Sam operated a grocery on South Fifth Street in a small brick building in the middle of the block south of the railroad (Kathaleen’s Florist occupies it at this writing).

 

Sam and his brothers (twins) Eli and Levi Bair had come down to buy property in the new city of Macclenny in the early 1880’s.  Eli and Levi never married, and returned to Indiana in their last years. The twins lived in a two-story house on the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Seventh Street (still standing).

 

Hattie and Sam lived in a large unpainted house (hardly any houses were painted in old Macclenny) on the south bank of Willingham Branch (Brickyard Branch) high overlooking the Maxville Road on the east.  They later moved into a house on the northwest corner of McIver and South 4^th Street in Macclenny.  The house was moved to the rear of the block by its buyer W. C. Gilbert in the 1950’s.

 

They had three children, Eadie, Charles, and Rosa “Rose” Bair.  Only Rose survived to adulthood.  Aunt Hattie was a Baptist.   Uncle Sam was a Dunkard (German Baptist).  They are buried in Woodlawn.

 

rose worley bair

Rose Bair Worley was an organist at the Baptist and Methodist Churches and occasionally at the Episcopal Church. Rose married Clement “Clem” Worley of South Carolina. He was a barber by trade. She and Mr. Worley had two daughters Helen and Nettie Ruth.

 

Mr. Worley was killed by John McClenny; Mr. McClenny hit Mr. Worley in the head with a Coca Cola bottle during an altercation outside a billiards parlor in Macclenny.  Rose eventually lost her sanity.  She became unkempt, unwashed, and paranoid.

 

Whenever an airplane flew over, and many of them flew over during WW II, she would yell that they were spying on her to see if she was making moonshine.  Once a small single engine plane came over with its letters and numbers identification on the underside of the wings.  The letters were SC.  She hollered to my grandmother, at whose house she was visiting at the time, “See yonder, ‘at air’ns from South Ca-lye’-ner (Carolina).  Come all the way down hyear to see if we’re a’makin’ moonshine.”

 

The daughters were kept from outside contacts and were exposed to Cousin Rose’s paranoia until they were also non compos mentis. The household was a sad one.  Kin, neighbors, and altruistic citizens of Macclenny did what they could to help, but to no avail; Rose refused to be a part of the outside world.

 

Helen’s voice was hoarse and of great volume.  She talked at the same time as her mother, both loud and always of accusations and complaints, so that understanding them was almost impossible.  Added to that was poor Nettie Ruth who said very little on her own but constantly repeated in a stuttering mumble what her mother and sister were saying, and she did her repeating at the same time as the other women’s ranting.

 

Helen had two lovely daughters by a serviceman named Kicklighter.  He had come to town as did so many other soldiers and sailors during the war for some Saturday night good times and wound up marrying Helen.  He got Helen pregnant, and disappeared.  He returned and got her pregnant a second time.  That was enough for the little city’s self-appointed morals keepers.  They put him on a Greyhound bus and detailed some gory things they would do to him if he ever returned (one of those things involved making certain he would not father any more children). 

 

The older daughter was Arlene Frances and the younger daughter Rose Marie.  Arlene was a slender attractive quiet young lady.  She exhibited high intelligence.  Rose Marie was the lively one, full of mischief, and very cute.  Like her sister, she was quite smart.  It was obvious to relatives and townsfolk that the children were headed in the same direction as their mother, aunt, and grandmother if matters were not taken in hand.

 

Cousin Rose’s tenuous hold onto the past – being popular, married to her idol Mr. Worley, having luxuries and money – was represented, I believe, by her block of land and large two story Bair house.  She was approached by a local dealer in land and various other ventures about trading her block of prime Macclenny land for a small back corner with a “modern” house of concrete block.  The very fear she had hidden behind most of her life was now realized as she and the girls gave up the land she had so tenaciously held onto.   It was at this time that some of her generations-old furniture, glassware, and china disappeared.

 

At least, the Worley women had some comfort with electricity, plumbing, and heat for a few years before they left their hometown.  The first day the electricity was turned on in her new little home, Rose turned on all the house lights, beginning on the front porch and ending on the back porch.  She then put her hands on her hips and yelled so that her cousin Nettie Rowe across the street could hear, “See hyere, now, ever’body, ol’ Net Rowe ain’t the onliest one in town with the lights.”

 

She offered me priceless photos of our Barber ancestors.  They can be seen on Carl W. Mobley’s website for Baker County (see address at the end of the narrative).

 

Rose’s first cousin John Rowe worked with the county judge and others to step in and rescue the children and save what was left of Rose’s property for the girls.

 

For the sake of the girls, the older women were committed to the state hospitals, Rose in Chattahoochee and Helen and Nettie Ruth in NEFSH at Macclenny.  The children were first placed in the Baptist Children’s Home in Jacksonville and later were taken in by families who completed their rearing.

 

The girls were faithful to visit the older women, and eventually, Arlene and her husband took Helen into their home.  Nettie Ruth was taken out of the state hospital and given a home with a private family who, I heard, taught her to be a hair stylist.  The transformation in Nettie Ruth was amazing once she was separated from her sister and mother.

 

It reads like a cruel thing to have been done, but it saved two young women from the same hell their older generations had suffered.

 

Archibald Aaron “Arch” Barber

Mose’s son Archibald, known as Arch, was listed in a census as having been born in Florida, but he and his family disputed that and claimed that Isaiah and Nellie were the only two of the Barber kids to be Georgia born (this remains a conundrum for Barber family researchers).  He sometimes styled himself “Archibald E.” or “Archibald Edward.”  It must be remembered that names were not as set in stone in olden times as they are now.  Usually a name change was for a reason no more romantic than a sudden whim.

 

Arch had received schooling in his youth but was never considered very literate.  He swore he couldn’t count, but he became a rich man with a tater bank of gold.

 

Arch homesteaded on the west side of the South Prong near his father’s plantation between the site of the present Baker County High School and the river. This was after he married Miss Martha Belle Geiger.  Several of Arch and Martha’s descendents told me Martha was a sister of Harriett who married Isaac, but the research of Grace Bates (a Joshua Geiger descendent) and Thomas Lindsay (an Arch and Martha descendent) informs me that Martha Belle was a daughter of John Martin Geiger.

 

Later Arch and Martha moved to the east side of Turkey Creek just south of the present I-10.  This was the crossing of the Jacksonville-Alligator (Lake City) Road, the Alachua Trail Road, and the Yelvington Trail.   When Arch moved to Horse Prairie (the present Dixie County area) a short time before he enlisted in the CSA Army, he sold this land to his nephew George Washington Barber.  George sold part of the land to his Tanner in-laws and to his cousin Charles F. Barber. The land was eventually inherited in pieces by Charles’ children, and I live on a small part (2002).

 

Martha operated a boarding school on the last land they owned in Baker County.  Aunt Martha also ran a Sunday school for the kids of the family and neighborhood and for a few slaves.  Her sister Harriet married Arch’s brother Isaac.

 

According to his family Arch held much land in Baker County, but evidently he began to divest himself of it after the war.  He and Martha sold much of their property in 1869.  His heirs were still settling up the Baker County land portion of the estate as late as 1911.

 

Arch was living in Lafayette County (that area now Dixie County) when he was conscripted into the CSA Army and placed in the infantry (there was an Archibald Barber in Co K of the 2^nd Fl Cav…don’t know if this is the same Arch).  He always walked home and back to duty when on furlough no matter where his unit was serving.  Some of his descendents said he once used up his entire leave time by walking to his home and back; he spent one night at home before heading back to his unit. 

 

Upon release from service, he found his farm neglected almost beyond salvaging. His slaves were gone.  He suffered a serious setback in his farm and cattle business.  His cattle had been stolen by deserters and hungry neighbors.

 

Soon after 1870, Arch packed up his family and belongings and returned to his old home site on the South Prong.  He and Martha remained in Baker County until moving back to the Gulf Hammock area in 1884.  I have postcards from Martha to her sisters-in-law mailed from the new little community of Glen Saint Mary.

 

He and Martha kept three or four large families (15 or more per family) around his homestead “to wait on him”, said his grandchildren.  He fed them well on potatoes, fresh vegetables, and one or two beeves a week.

 

Later he was joined by his relatives Samuel Jeremiah “Sam” Barber, Virginia “Jenny” Barber, William Jasper Barber, and Moses Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Barber (and maybe others).  Another Barber known to have been with him for a while was “Crazy Isaac” Barber his brother Isaiah’s son by his first marriage.  None but Sam and William Jasper remained; the others continued to roam and re-locate.

 

During the period of Reconstruction, Arch got himself in deep trouble for allegedly fatally shooting a law officer in Clay County.  He was traveling down the Saint Johns from Brevard County and debarked at Green Cove Springs for the last leg (overland) home. Why he killed is yet to be discovered; I couldn’t find any records save this that follows.

 

Lt. Col. John T. Sprague of Saint Augustine HQ District of East Florida wrote court clerk R. B. McRae of Clay County that Arch Barber and Elam J. Daniels fatally shot Hiram Prescott (said to be connected in some manner with Joe and Ellen Barber Hale) in the head on the second day of July of 1866.  Sprague was exasperated that no justice had been served, and he threatened to hold in custody the members of the coroner’s enquiry until Clay County secured Arch and Daniels and sent them in custody to Lt. William Logan at Jacksonville.

 

There are no records that either man was taken into custody or that the coroner’s jury was held.

 

Arch was tried for murder three times (oral history gave him credit for 12 murders), and each time he was acquitted.  His last trial was in 1897 for killing Bunk Cason, his sister Jenny’s boyfriend (see the story in Jenny’s sketch later).  The trial was set in Mayo, and on the day of the trial, Arch instructed one of his sons to, “go to the tater bank and dig up the sack there.”  The boy brought the sack in and was further instructed, “Count it out.”  There was $1,100.00 in gold.  “’At awrta be about enough.  Le’s go.”

 

On the day he was tried and acquitted, his half brother Sam’s seventh child was born.  Sam named the boy Archibald.

 

Arch had a mule that flicked his ears forward when he sensed anyone approaching.  Arch would back his mule into the bushes, and if he saw it was an enemy coming, he did away with him.  He was always acquitted of his murder charges until he was too old for bringing into court (courts were different then).  It was said there might have been one final judgment against him and he was sentenced, but the sentence was not carried out (some of the oral tradition differs from court records on this subject).

 

Martha died, and about nine years before he died Arch married Mrs. McEwen, a widowed lady.

 

In 1896 a huge storm blew across the state from Cedar Key to Fernandina.  It passed through Arch’s farm piling up some sections of the rail fences like “crows’ nestes” and relocating other complete sections hundreds of yards away with apparently no damage or re-arrangement.  The new Mrs. Barber pleaded, “Arch, they’se a storm comin’…we’d better get out a’ heanh!”  Arch sat placidly, as only a Barber male can do even in impending danger, “No need to run; we’re as safe heanh as anywheres.”  As soon as he advised his wife they had naught to fear, the wind blew a rafter from the house and killed their horse.  The barn disappeared in the wind, and their house blew down from around them.  Giant trees flew through the air like straws.

 

They rushed for a stand of palmettos and grabbed hold.  “Nothin’ll holt like a stand uv ‘meter fans”, his nephew Moses E. told me many years after the storm.  The wind beat them about until their bodies had dug holes over a foot deep on the leeward side of the blasts.

 

I was told it was disastrous on the old gentleman’s arthritic back and that it plagued him to his end in 1903.

 

Neighbors joined together to erect another home for the couple.  His nephew Moses Ed Barber assisted with the shingling of the roof.

 

Arch was a very tall man, almost seven feet tall with a massive frame to match.  Even though he was severely bent forward at the waist with arthritis, he was considered an expert horseman.  He could manage the thickest “tie-eyed” (also called “tight-eye”) swamp on horseback.  He and his sons kept large herds of cattle in the Gulf Hammock/Horse Prairie area.  He, his half brother Sam, and Sam’s son Moses Ed chased feral hogs on horse back.  They tied the wild swine with bear grass, which they kept in their pockets.

 

Uncle Arch was labeled “a mighty rough old man”, and was supposedly frightening to a lot of people.  Some said, “If a body didn’t do ‘eem no harm, they wutt’n no need uv being’ a’scar’t uv ‘m.”  “Ever’body liked ‘m…all ‘is enemies an’ the people what didn’t like ‘m wuz done kilt”, was how one of his descendents put it.

 

One day when Arch was plowing, a stranger approached, climbed up and sat on the fence, saying nothing. Arch waited for the man to speak, but not a word was forthcoming.  Arch continued plowing, and the man continued saying nothing.  Finally, his patience strained, Arch picked up his shovel, slapped it aside the stranger’s head and knocked him off the fence.  “Now, Sir”, Arch addressed the dazed man at his feet, “the next time you come t’ see me, say, ‘Good mornin’, Mr. Barber’.”

 

About eight years before his death, Arch joined himself to a church and lived an exemplary life.  He had mellowed into a fine old gentleman who was greatly respected in his section of Florida. 

 

Arch and Martha are buried in the Barber-Robinson Cemetery north of Cross City.

 

A Cross City street is named for his family.

 

Children and grandchildren of Arch and Martha

The children of Arch and Martha were Elizabeth D., born 1855; Margaret “Maggie”, born 1856, married John Cason; Martin Moses, born 1859, married Mattie Chewning; Charles Franklin, born 1861, married Alvie Poore; Archibald J. born 1863; Emma Nora, born 24 July, 1866, died 15 August, 1941, married John J. Robinson; Nathan N, born 15 January, 1875, died 29 January, 1934, married Ella Mikell; Lemuel L. “Lem”, born 13 September 1898, died 26 March, 1957, married Idell Lindsey; and Belle, married John McCullers.  All but the last four were born in the area that became Baker County.

 

Lem was an elected official of Dixie County and was well known throughout the state.  He and Martin were the two we Baker County Barbers had heard about.  Perhaps it was because they were reported to be financially very secure and we were always impressed with “financially secure.”

 

I met four of Martin’s children – Charley, Warren, Leah, and Pearl.  I wasn’t privileged to meet Bell, and their brother Gene (a game warden) had been murdered some years before I visited.  Uncle Charley was a good-natured farming gentleman who was a gracious host whenever I visited.  His knowledge of the family was invaluable.  Warren was a county commissioner, quiet, and a good businessman.  Leah (some of the family said “Leer” like good Crackers should) was a pretty lady, quite reserved.  Pearl was a good-looking lady with a head for business (real estate and promotions) and a heart for fun.  I enjoyed my association with her and even helped her in a couple of business deals in the Macclenny area.  Her hand sagged with diamonds.  I was invited to accompany her to the Bahamas for a getaway, but my job prevented me from taking advantage of it.  She advised me that I had to let go and live.  I didn’t take her good advice until late in life.  I always remember her telling me, “Hey, man, life WILL pass you by.”

 

Margaret E. Barber hancock

Margaret (other spellings are given in some records) married Durham Hancock (born 1820 in Georgia) from Columbia County. Durham Post Office was named for him. Durham was in Co C of the 8^th Florida infantry.  His was an old established family of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.  He was a son of Cader and Mary (nee Vinzant) Hancock, late of Georgia.  Cader was also married to Penelope Newman, and I am not certain that she might not be Durham’s mother…more research will tell. Margaret Pearce Pasteur and Selma Gladdin have done much work on this family.  Margaret and Durham had a farm near the present Lulu on the road to Olustee.

 

Some rogues in both the Barber and Hancock families whispered that Durham had a habit of poisoning his wives.  To my knowledge he had but one wife – Margaret.  Nothing has ever turned up casting suspicion on him for anything except being a martinet.  For some reason never learned wife-poisoning rumors were not uncommon in the area between Olustee and Lake Butler (never learned why).  Durham and Margaret’s son Bill married several times, according to family tradition, and it was said some of the wives died under suspicious circumstances. This has also been relegated to the trash bin of unfounded rumors.

 

Durham and Margaret’s children were Margaret E., born 1850, married John Harris; William M. “Bill”, born 1852, died 1923, married Mary Marcum/Markham (? and several more times); Mary Leah, born 11 July, 1855, died 22 July, 1889, married 1872 to James Cader Pearce, son of John David Pearce; John Wesley “Wes”, married Alice Markham (see her photo on the Baker County website); Perry, lived at Olustee.  Nancy W. lived with the family, but her relationship isn’t known to me.  She married John Landford in 1859.

 

Durham was a successful cattleman and farmer.  In 1860 his worth in real property was $5,000 and his personal property $10,000 (mostly in slaves).

 

Family and non-family remember Wes and Perry well.  Wes’ grandson George Hancock was a resident in Baker County for a while and is a friend to the Barbers here.  Perry was severely bent with arthritis according to an acquaintance of his L. W. Douberly.  Wes and Perry were considered excellent horsemen.

 

Bill sold cows to C. F. Barber in 1915 for $3,000.  The bill of sale stated he was a resident of Lake City.

 

I was told by some of her descendents that Aunt Margaret died about 1855, but her sister-in-law Lizzie, on her way to the battlefield at Ocean Pond, left her children with Margaret on the 20^th of February, 1864.  I personally don’t think an almost 10 years old corpse, no matter how nice and dependable, would have made a good baby sitter.

 

James Edward Barber

Mose and Leah named two of their sons Edward – James Edward and Moses Edward, Jr. Giving two siblings the same name or derivatives of the same name, while not a frequent practice, was not unheard of in the 19^th century rural South.  Changing of names by parents or the children themselves was more common.  A rumor heard but once (from a niece of James Edward) has it that Ed was a sickly baby and his parents, thinking he might not survive, named his younger brother Moses Edward.  Ed grew into such a robust young man that it seems unreasonable to think of him as a near-death infant; I haven’t brought myself to believe this rumor.

 

James Edward Barber, also known as Ed, Edderd, Big Ed, and Little Ed, was supposedly the first of Mose and Leah’s children to be born in Florida.  He quickly grew to be a giant of a man, pugnacious of spirit, given to hard drinking, and not always faithful and prudent in his private life.  His photo taken from a tintype is on the Baker County website.

 

Physically, he was a striking man because of his size – six feet, eight inches.  It was said of him that he was often forced to duck when passing through most home doorways and his bulk filled tavern doors. Several of his nephews claimed a hush fell over the crowd when he entered the taverns of Jacksonville, Baldwin, Sanderson, Olustee, and Lake City…he was respected with a healthy fear in them all. He borrowed the habit of wearing a large black mustache from his father, and he dressed in black, complete with a broad brim hat of black and astraddle a tall black horse.  Like his father, he was possessed of blue eyes, aquiline nose, and fair skin.  From his mother he inherited his black hair and good looks.  See his tintype on https://sites.rootsweb.com/~flbaker.

 

Some said only his father-in-law Mose Thompson could out drink him.

 

Ed learned the cattle raising business better than did his brothers.  His father made him chief cattle driver, and as such he was away from home almost as much as he was there.  This did nothing to keep the fires of marriage going after he wed Miss Victoria Eugenie (or Uceney) Regina Thompson, daughter of Moses and Mary (nee Wells) Williams Thompson.

 

There were two children born to Ed and Vic.  They were Charles Farmer “Charley” “C. F.” who was born in 1859, died in 1937, married Mary Elizabeth “Mollie” “Polly Ann” Rowe; and Florida Pauline, born 1861, died around 1930 in New York City, and married (1) Leon David (2) David Knapp. 

 

Ed and Vic lived for the first few years of their married life in Baldwin near the holding pens close to the rail junction.  Vic assisted her sister Lizzie in her Baldwin boarding house venture.  Bear in mind, Ed and Isaiah were brothers and they married sisters Victoria and Elizabeth, respectively.  The boys had been appointed to live at Baldwin because of their positions in the business (see Isaiah and Lizzie’s stories earlier).

 

 “Edderd” was usually away as his father’s chief cattle driver, and Vic’s status was little more than a widow (the stories were that he was not an attentive husband when he was around…perhaps due to his concupiscence and maybe due in part to Victoria’s cold nature).  Vic was a shrew, and her personality must have made her husband’s absences from her quite easy for him.  Ed was given to adultery (some of his affairs were attributed to his father and brother Mose, Jr.).

 

He died a young man, a victim of his impropriety.  After delivering a large herd of cattle to Charleston, he celebrated on the return trip home by carousing in a tavern on the north bank of the Savannah River.  His brothers and hired drivers made ready to catch the last ferry of the night across the river.  They urged Ed to cut short his drinking and amorous conduct and join them.  He laughed loudly, so they said, and told them to go on…he had “business” to tend to.

 

They went on and waited at the ferry.  It was mid January, raining, sleeting, and windy.  The ferryman could wait no longer, and he refused to make another trip on that miserable night.  All were loaded, and the ferry shoved off.

 

They were far out on the river.  They barely heard Ed holler from the shore.  The ferry operator would not return.  Ed shucked off his coat and tossed his hat and shoes aside making ready to jump in.  The boys yelled and wildly motioned at him protesting his plan.  He waded out and then dove forward.

 

He and his brother Mose, Jr. were widely reputed powerful swimmers, but all on the ferry knew a drunk spent of energy could not survive the long distance and frigid waters.  They prevailed on the ferry operator to turn back and pick up the now faltering swimmer (I was told by Ed’s grandson Rowe Barber that the persuasion was in the form of some kind of firearm…can’t remember the make and type he told me).

 

Ed was brought home to the plantation and died soon after of what the old timers labeled consumptive fever (? pneumonia).  He was interred near his mother.  His father used to say his and Leah’s son Edderd was “always his ma’s favorite.”  The year was 1868.

 

The widow Vic was left with two small children – Charley and Florida.  She moved from Baldwin back to the Barber plantation section and homesteaded some unclaimed land near the old plantation and near her parents (known for years afterward as the Brince Barton Place). 

 

Mother Vic farmed the land with her children.  Neither was of much help to her.  Charley considered himself a gentleman farmer and spent much of his time finagling others into doing his work for him.  He also had his wild oats to sow.  In the Official Papers of the Rebellion (I think that is the correct title), I recall a paragraph describing Klan activities in the area, and a young Barber boy, the same age as Charley, was reported to have escaped the Klan’s capture and punishment for the operator of a house of ill repute (a Mr. Griffis) and its customers. 

 

According to her cousins, Florida was a dreamer who liked the idea of going to the city (Jacksonville) and looking at dresses and hats.

 

Mother Vic was a tough taskmaster, and she brooked no foolishness from anybody, including her children.  She was quick with a whip or anything else that was handy when she was involved in her favorite pastime…beating young’uns.   Most who knew her did not like her.  Even her father Moses Thompson was not blind to her sour disposition.   Once while propped back on the porch of his daughter Lizzie’s Hotel McClenny, he said of his wife Mary and daughter Victoria, “That Mary Thompson’s meaner’n Hell a mile, and Victorie ain’t slow a quarter.”

 

Even in old age, Mother Vic, as the family knew her, instilled fear in all who knew her.  Mr. Hance Raulerson, one of the hands on her son Charley’s farm, related that, “Mother Vic could fell a dog with a stick of stove wood at twenty paces.”   He also remembered the time he accidently chopped down one of her pennywinkles (periwinkles) and was subjected to one of her heated lectures and a stick on his head.   Her white sand yard was swept almost daily and no one was dasn’t (dared not) to step on it to disrupt the swept pattern.  Kids and animals that strayed from the walks felt her tongue and hand.

 

She was single but a couple of years when she married Samuel Neil Williams, Jr.  Sam was evidently not to her liking, or perhaps she was as cold to him as she was to Edderd, because they separated about the time of the birth of their son Thomas William Williams, called Willie.  Vic called her husband “worthless.”  He wound up in Whitehouse where he married Florida Virginia Harvey, daughter of John Harvey.

 

I was told in a whisper by one of her nieces that since Mother Vic was expecting her son Willie before her marriage to his father, that a kindly clerk later altered the wedding date information.  I can’t prove it, nor is there any way I know to check it out due to our old Southern much favored excuse…the courthouse burned.

 

Mother Vic moved in with her son and daughter-in-law Charley and Mollie immediately after their marriage.  Her favorite Barber grandchildren were Ollie and Will.  She disliked Maime and Rowe something fierce.  She insisted on being seated between them at the table so she could pinch them under the table, make them cry, and then slap them above the table for disrupting the meal with their crying.  Charley was fearful of incurring his mother’s wrath, and Mollie tried tactfully to soften her mother-in-law’s attitude toward the children.  Nothing worked.  Maime and Rowe would run away from home when their parents were away and stay in the woods all day rather than be under the care of their grandmother.  Even in advanced age, they spoke her name with dread and had nothing good to say about her.  Rowe said she was like a desperado bent on destruction and ill will.  He said, “Well, she never killed us, but I sometimes wondered if she might’n do it.”

 

His grandmother was the only person I ever heard him say a negative word against.

 

I never heard of her attitude toward Ed.  Some of the family said he was much like her through most of his life, but he mellowed in his old age.  I have my theory why both of them, plus some others in the family were so hateful, but it’s best left unsaid and let future generations analyze their unpleasant personalities.

 

I had Mother Vic’s Bible for many years.  It was marked with passages to be read when one needed to rein in a straying daughter (must have failed with Aunt Florida), talk the heat out of a burn, and staunch a flow of blood.  I gave the Bible and one of Mother Vic’s sterling tablespoons to my cousin Melissa Barber Stuart Adams.  Our granddaddy warned me not to give the items to her until I thought she was mature enough to handle them…Daddy Rowe was a strong believer in the supernatural.

 

 

 

 

 

Children and grandchildren of James Edward and Victoria

 

Charles Farmer “Charley” “C. F” Barber

From information he submitted to The Florida Times-Union in 1913, it was learned that Charley was born in 1859 in Baldwin where his father was headquartered as chief cattle driver for his grandfather’s cow business. 

 

Charley received his nickname as an infant (? Source or reason).   He was not legally named until he was a strapping boy, and he named himself…Charles Farmer Barber.

 

He was nine years of age when his father died.  He was a tall young fellow and considerably strong for his age.  Charley had his sights set on more than following mule and ox.  His mother would check on him and find the mule tied to a post.  The mule was the sole audience of Charley who had climbed on a stump and was giving an oration.  In later years it was said of “Uncle Charley” that if he found as many as three people together, he would find a set of steps to put him self a bit higher than they and deliver a speech.  A story, probably not true, has it that when the silver tongued William Jennings Bryan heard Charley speak on his behalf, he said his oratory title should be passed to him.

 

Charley was sent to his aunt Martha (nee Geiger) Barber to enroll in her boarding school that was not far south of the present I-10.  After three months, Aunt Martha sent him home as uneducable.  She informed her sister-in-law Vic that Charley was a dreamer who spent his time speechifying to his classmates rather than learning his lessons.

 

Charley returned home and continued his education on his own (he had learned more than was evident to his aunt).  He borrowed and purchased books and learned to read them with a little help from kin and neighbors.  He was especially fond of the old classics and Shakespeare and often quoted from them in his speeches.  He became quite proficient in numbers and fairly good in grammar (he did not use the best grammar in casual conversation but rolled off his version of classical English when on the speaker’s platform).  Some of his speeches were copied in newspapers in the cities where he spoke before his organizations, and they are flowery.

 

The following clipping came from a North Carolina newspaper.  Unfortunately, the clipper neglected to pen in the newspaper’s name.  It is copied as best as is possible…don’t know if the sentence structure is G-grandpa’s or the reporter’s.

 

“Charlie Barbour [sic] grows eloquent.

Hon. Charles F. Barbour of McClenny made the following poetic speech at the Southern Nurserymen’s Association.

 

“Mr. President, I have spent the past week in this beautiful, progressive and therefore advancing state of North Carolina, I have stood on the lofty mountain tops of the western part of this state and viewed as magnificent a panorama of forest, stream, valley, and mountain recess and range of four states as there can be any where in this great world. I have felt while feasting on this lovely sight somewhat akin to Moses where he gazed at the promised land and felt that is was not for him but could rejoice that the fair land could be enjoyed by others in his generation and would be a heritage to his posterity.  I have this past week in that same region, under the feet of these mountains, amid the valleys and from the rocky founts where are born your beautiful rivers, Junaluskie, French Broad, Swannannoa, Linville, and other delightful streams, I have drunk the ice cold water in August trickling from moss covered granite sides as pure and good as could have been the fabled nectar of the gods.

 

“From these splendid natural scenes, I have visited the cities and towns of this magnificent state, and coming down to the hill country approaching Greensboro, I have viewed with wonder and amazement the busy industrial life with smoking chimneys of factories, splendid evidences of scientific agriculture, and above all your excellent roads, your beautiful shade trees, fruits, flowers, and evergreens, parks, fountains, boulevards, hedges, and byways.  These beautiful landscapes of the hill country are a combination of man’s and the Creator’s handwork as compared with the wild rugged magnificent and more extended view of your mountain regions.

 

“These parks and fountains, these beautiful fruit and shade trees with their tops towering toward the elements are living monuments to some who are dead and gone, a memorial of men and women whose loving hearts and poetic nature planted them that other generations might reap their beauty, their share of their profit.  And thinking along this line, Mr. President, that in some future day, where shade trees now make beautiful memorials of these poetic loving lives of ancestors, the graceful tall nut bearing pecan will tower aside your hills, your valleys, and in your parks signifying…(the bottom has deteriorated beyond legibility).

 

It will come as no surprise that the speaker was pushing pecan trees from his Turkey Creek Nursery near Macclenny.

 

He never learned penmanship, (Barber men just don’t write legibly). He was in Macclenny on a shopping errand, pulled his little notebook from his shirt pocket (Barber men love their little shirt pocket notebooks), and tried to read his memorandum to himself.  He finally gave up and asked some of the fellows around him to interpret his writing.  Among them all they were able to come up with, “cow feed, a gallon of milk; chicken feed, a dozen eggs; hog feed, bacon.”  Grandpa’s comment?  “That’s a helluva note.”

 

G-grandpa Charley was a large framed man – well over six feet tall – with a typical Barber aquiline nose and blue eyes.  He grew a mustache when he reached his majority and kept it until he retired from public service.  Folks said it was a memorable day at the Barber house when the facial adornment was shaved off.  Some dated events based on “the day Grandpa shaved his mustache off.”

 

As a young man he became a member of the Bethel Baptist Church (founded in 1877 at the site of the present Woodlawn Cemetery) along with his mother and Thompson kin.  About the same time some Rowe families from Nassau County moved into the area near the Church.  Edward Roger and Eliza Frances (nee Tanner) Rowe’s very attractive daughter caught Charley’s eye.  She was Mary Elizabeth  “Mollie” Rowe.  Charley and her parents called her Polly.

 

Charley was four years younger than Mollie (she was born in 1854), but it was no impediment to their love affair, and on the fourth day of April in 1880, they were married by the Rev. Kinsey Chambers, pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church.  Not that it is important here, but the Rev. Chambers was born in Ireland.

 

The young couple made a promise that if one sensed an argument coming on between them, he or she would leave the house until they both had cooled down.  It was said that G-grandma Mollie spent a lot of time leaving the house.  The old folks said she would take her bonnet from a peg on the porch and go hoe in the garden whether it needed it or not while G-grandpa raged for an hour or more back at the house.

 

Great Grandma Mollie was one of those people who truly believed and practiced, as she often tenderly admonished, “If we can’t find something good to say about the person, let’s not talk about him at all.”  If the conversation did not change its course, she simply removed herself from the company with no fanfare.

 

One of Charley’s first jobs off the farm (not that he was known to do many jobs on the farm) was as sawyer at Capt. C. B. McClenny’s sawmill north of Darbyville. 

 

Soon after his marriage, Charley and his brother-in-law John O. Thompson were hired by the county to mark the Alachua Trail Road in Baker County (incidentally, Mr. Thompson was also his maternal uncle…Vic and Lizzie’s brother).  The Alachua Trail ran from Traders Hill to Brandy Branch, then by Big Creek (Deep Creek), crossed the railroad at Trail Ridge at what would later be known as the Lil Walker Blume farm on Trail Ridge, and ran along the east side of Frozen Pond south of Darbyville.  At that point it forked, one route turned toward Middleburg and the other ran to Highland, Kingsley Lake, Starke, Hampton, Waldo, and ended at Gainesville.  At the Blume place, a secondary road, called the Alachua Trail Road, ran south-southwest to just south of Darbyville, and that was where the marking began.

 

They made a cartload of mileposts of both litered and cypress carved with Roman numerals and   attached a piece of wire to the cartwheel so that it struck the cart body with each turn.  With that device they measured several feet with each turn of the wheel.  As the correct number of feet was measured by the wheel’s turning to indicate a mile, they stopped and planted a milepost.  The cypress markers rotted away, but the litered ones remained for the lifetime of the route.

 

The first marker was on the present SR 228 about a mile and a quarter south of the railroad.  The second was planted just south of the present I-10, and the third was near a small swamp called Frozen Pond immediately north of the old Atlantic Coastline railroad (Frozen Pond was so named because a man’s corpse, presumably frozen to death had been found there during one of the bitter winters that sometimes hit this area).  This was where the old Alachua Trail and the Alachua Trail Road met and soon separated again (see the above paragraph re/ to Middleburg and to Highlands).

 

The Alachua Trail Road from Trail Ridge to Highland eventually fell into disuse.  The local merchants and aldermen of the new city of Macclenny (Charley Barber was among the first aldermen) wanted the traffic routed through their little community.  Charley’s brother-in-law Dave Rowe closed the Baker County section of the route when he was a county commissioner (the road lay in his district).

 

It was soon after this that G-grandpa was struck by yellow fever in the summer of 1888.  He reached what the old timers called “the black vomit stage”, from which no one was supposed to survive.  But survive he did.  For the rest of his life his stomach was sensitive and he kept him self on strict diets.  His liver was severely damaged.  The ravages of the malarial attack remained with him until his death.

 

Charley and his father-in-law Edward Rowe tried their hand at the mercantile business for a while in Glen Saint Mary.  The new little community did not grow as rapidly and as well as they had hoped, and they sold out after a couple of years.

 

His Turkey Creek Nurseries flourished from the late years of the 18^th century into the early decades of the 20^th.  The business was an elaborate affair with its own photography processing shop, a book bindery, gas light factory, dormitory for single workers and housing for families, and a small band.  The band eventually was joined to the Macclenny town band.  As one can read later, it was G-grandpa Charley’s habit of choosing the wrong partners that was the undoing of the nursery.

 

Had there been such an expression in the last decades of the 19^th century, one could have said that Charley Barber was on the cutting edge of just about everything he involved him self in.  In some matters he remained a steadfast conservative in his politics.  His one great wish was to see the State of Florida return wholly to the Democratic fold.  He spent several years in the state senate and house where he pushed programs for agriculture, horticulture, the state fair, beef cattle improvement, humane conditions in the state prison system, and women’s suffrage.

 

An article in the Times-Union in the early years of the 20^th century spoke of Sen. Barber’s campaign for road paving in the state.  Incidentally, he also presented the editor with a huge lemon (? Ponderosa) while visiting the newspaper office. 

 

Charley Barber was elected state senator from the 29^th district and served in the extra session of 1889, was Sergeant at Arms in 1893, and served two more terms in 1897 and 1899.  He was Baker County’s representative to the House in 1899, 1917, and 1919.  Senator Edwin G. Fraser introduced a resolution in the House in 1937 honoring Sen. Barber for his devoted and tireless service to the people of his district and his state.

 

G-grandpa was not as progressive in securing equal rights for racial minorities.  His past was too ingrained in him and he saw no need to break tradition.  His attitude almost lost him a race for the senate once when a black candidate came close to tying him for his seat.   He was, however, one of the first in the county to hire blacks on his horticultural nursery at the same wages as his white workers and to include them in all photographs of the nursery and farm hands.  His black workers and families received his generous Christmas gifts the same as his white laborers.  In this, he was more progressive than most of his peers.

 

One of Charley Barber’s greatest achievements was convincing the state to abolish the inhumane convict lease system (begun under the governorship of Drew) whereby any private business could take state prisoners under its own control, the state would pay a certain amount for the prisoners’ upkeep, and the state would look the other way in regards to treatment of the convicts (see the book American Siberia by Powell for a complete and sordid story).  Senator Barber and his committee made an inspection of central Florida’s phosphate mines and the turpentine industries over the state and brought a horrifying report to Tallahassee.  Men convicted of old fashioned breach of promise, young women who bounced checks and other lesser offenses, and men and women falsely convicted were all chained together with hardened criminals, starved, tortured, subjected to unspeakable indignities, and forced to work for private enterprises such as the Flagler Rail Road company.   It was claimed one time that the longest cemetery in the world laid long side the tracks of Flagler’s railroad from the Saint Mary’s River to Miami.

 

The Senate and House overwhelmingly voted to abolish the system.

 

In the early years of the 20^th century, the cattle fever tick was about to decimate the beef and dairy industry of Florida.  Senator Barber was convinced that the radical idea of running cattle through a vat of arsenic laced water would eliminate the ticks and thus save the cattle of Florida.

 

G-grandpa began traveling the state drumming up interest in a state cattleman’s association, with the eradication of the fever tick the main item on its agenda.  In December of 1912, a group met at the University of Florida and organized, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Senator C.  F. Barber president, Z. C. Chambliss of Ocala vice president, and Professor C. H. Willoughby of Gainesville secretary.  They dubbed their organization the Florida State livestock Association.  Among the group’s first project was to attack the fever tick with dipping vats.

 

“Our president, Senator Barber, was very enthusiastic and began building a vat on his ranch the next week….It was a race between these two – but McDonald yielded to Barber and the new association called a meeting at the Barber ranch to celebrate the first cattle dipping in Florida on February 22, 1913.”   Thus informed the Gainesville newspaper.

 

The association celebrated by throwing a gigantic barbeque and inviting dignitaries to speak.  Soon, cow owners from far away in Georgia were hauling their stock to Baker County for the treatment.  Others finally believed his foresight was not misguided, and they too began running their cattle through vats all over the state.  The original vat is still visible on West Barber Road south of Macclenny.

 

I recall seeing the last of the dipping in the old vat when I was quite young.

 

No one ever knew of Charley Barber being anything but kind toward all, regardless of age, gender, or race.  All who knew him were aware they could receive help from him at anytime of the day or night.   His advice and assistance was solicited by rich and poor.  I recall the words, almost identical, of two of Baker County’s older citizens – Tate Powell, Sr., and Tom Taylor:  “Charley Barber helped everybody.  If anybody needed anything, he could go to Charley Barber and get it.”

 

One of Baker County’s oldest businesses – THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS – owes much of its beginnings to Charley Barber.  When Tate Powell, Sr., arrived in town and asked around for a backer, it seemed everyone recommended Charley Barber.  Mr. Powell approached Mr. Barber, and Mr. Barber said, “Let’s go to Jacksonville.  I know somebody who can set you up (by that time, G-grandpa was broke).”   They motored to the city, and the gentleman at the bank (can’t remember his name) responded when asked for money, “Yes, you can get it.  Anybody recommended by Charley Barber is alright in my book.”

 

Mr. Tom Taylor, a local barber by trade, said that when he arrived in Macclenny from near Waycross with nothing, Uncle Charley, as he called him, took him in and gave him a start.  He gave him a job, a place to stay, and a suit of clothes.

 

Charley helped others until it was his downfall.  He gave until he had little left for him self.  If he ever resented it, no one reported seeing or hearing it.

 

About the most negative remark ever heard about Charley Barber was by a kinswoman:  “Physically, Uncle Charley was not smart [energetic], but he knew how to work others.  There was nothin’ Uncle Charley couldn’t do”, she said tongue in cheek, “when he put YOUR mind to it.  Uncle Charley worked his mind; he didn’t have to do anything else.”

 

G-grandpa Charley Barber was honored to be president emeritus of several organizations including the Florida Cattleman’s Association, the Southern Nurseryman’s Association, and the Florida Nurseryman’s Association.

 

He was a supporter of the Lake City Normal College, later to become part of the University of Florida.  He enrolled all his children there except the youngest.  To facilitate the kids’ college education, he moved his family to Lake City for a few years.

 

G-grandpa went into many ventures with several partners.  The most unusual for this area was his try at silkworm farming.  He tried three locations – one just east of the present Baker County courthouse, one behind the present Baker County Press building, and one south of his home in rural south Macclenny.  Mulberries were planted, two Japanese families and silkworm eggs were brought in, and the farms began operation.  One big insurmountable problem – the mulberry trees were the wrong species and the worms died of starvation.  So ended the silkworm farms (information from the late Mr. Ambler Dowling, an employee of the farms). 

 

Unfortunately, he was not always a good judge of character, and most of his partners proved to be unscrupulous.  Regardless of how much their embezzlements and other dishonorable acts hurt him, Charley Barber never sued or pursued.  He said, “They’ll have their rewards.  The Lord will take care of them if needs be.”

 

Probably the person who most unfairly used Charley Barber was a man named Aubrey Frink.  He was taken into Great grandpa Charley’s Turkey Creek Nurseries as an equal partner even though he had no capital to invest in the business.  He promised good bookkeeping, and he was as good as his word…the good bookkeeping was all in his favor.

 

One of his worst business situations was G-grandpa Charley’s attempt at banking.  He had considerable stock in the old Citizens State Bank of Baker County and he founded the bank at Lawtey (then a thriving truck farming center…especially for strawberries), Florida.  A relative and friend embezzled funds and broke the Macclenny bank.  To avoid jeopardizing family ties, I won’t go into particulars.  When the Lawtey bank failed, Charley’s kin and in-laws insisted he return their money.  He did so out of his pockets, without argument or regrets, and he was ruined.

 

He and Mollie traveled extensively for Cracker folk.  They attended functions and conventions for church and for trade and fraternal organizations throughout the state and southeast.  They visited the Chicago and St. Louis World Fairs and brought treasures home to their kin.  I recall seeing a large set of cut crystal trimmed with ruby and gold they had brought from St. Louis as a wedding gift for a cousin’s daughter (Rose Bair Worley).  There was fine china and silver pieces the likes the Cracker kin and neighbors had never seen.

 

No day of the week passed, that in addition to the large and extended family, there were not a few to several guests for dinner (at noon…where it should be) and supper (at night…where it should be).  Charley was in town every week day for business and exchange of gossip, and he was at church every Sunday, and every day, weekday or weekend, he invited all he came in contact with to join him for dinner that day.  Among his guests were Gov. Sidney Catts (most controversial), Governor elect Bloxham, and (it is said) Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.  Other governors and legislators were not infrequent dinner guests.  Some mighty important legislative business was reported to have been started and agreed on while lawmakers were relaxing on the porch.  Charley Barber had been gone to his reward about ten years when another guest who would eventually be world renown – a young Billy Graham – sat at the Barber household table.

 

Charley was an early member of the Bethel Baptist Church and voted to disband the small church with its dwindling membership and join themselves to the struggling Macclenny Baptist group.  For many years, the First Baptist Church of Macclenny existed under the incorrect name of Bethel Baptist Church.  G-grandpa was a deacon and a messenger to Baptist conventions.  When the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville was experiencing difficulties, several members of that congregation invited him to come to the city and help them save and reorganize the church.

 

When his grandfather Moses Thompson died in 1882, Charley’s brothers-in-law gave land for a cemetery beside Bethel Church for G-g-g-grandpa Thompson’s interment. For several years, known as the Rowe Cemetery, Charley, his kin, and some of the newer residents of the area (and late of the North) established the Woodlawn Cemetery Association.

 

He kept family ties, near and distant, alive by visiting his kin throughout the state.  He and his brothers-in-law Asa and Ben Rowe instituted the annual family re-union that has been held every year since 1881.  The exceptions were the war years from 1941 through 1945.  They met with picnic dinners on the banks of the Little Saint Mary’s River on the grounds of the old Barber Plantation until the new owners of the land fenced them out.  From there they gathered at Aunt Cissy Rowe’s place and later moved to the C. M. Barber home.

 

When his beloved Polly died from pneumonia in 1929, life was over for Charley.  That was the beginning of the end for him. Observers said he sat on his porch with his head in his hands while some of his offspring emptied the house of their mother’s belongings (vulture-ism can be one of the least honorable traits of some Barbers).  It was said they even took canned goods from the pantry and that G-grandpa Charley had to borrow sheets for his bed that night because they had taken all the linens.  His sons Ed and Rowe would shake their heads in disbelief in years to come at the actions of their siblings.

 

Second to his beloved Mollie dying, G-grandpa suffered most when his youngest son Will sued him for Mollie’s cattle and other assets.  Family members, even the less honorable ones, were horrified.  Such a thing was unheard of…and this was not even in the litigious late 20^th century!  I donated a copy of the court proceedings to the Baker County Historical Society where the shocking details may be read.

 

Like most great people who put others first, Charley Barber died in circumstances not unlike those he was born into…short on cash but long on pride.  His life can best be summed up in a speech he made before the National Nurserymen’s Association in Mont Eagle, Tennessee:  “Let us try to live for something other than dollars and cents.” 

 

He suffered from leukemia the last several years of his life.  He took blood transfusions weekly and tried to build up his blood naturally by an old fashioned diet of pureed beef liver and apple jelly plus a glass of red wine daily.  Nothing worked; he died in March of 1937, when I was less than two years old, but I remember him on two occasions – once when he entered the back door of his old home where we all lived (I recall my granddaddy Barber saying to me, “Looky heanh!  Who is that?”, but I couldn’t answer) and again when I was holding onto his cane on the front porch where my parents told me later he was teaching me to walk.

 

Few people have had more photographs taken of himself than G-grandpa C. F. Barber.  Some of these are posted on the Baker County website (https://sites.rootsweb.com/~flbaker/).

 

Charley and mollie’s children

Charley and Mollie had the following children:  Ollie Frances who married (1) her first cousin Cornealius “Neal” Drawdy, son of Cornealius “Neal” and Charity “Chat” (nee Rowe) Drawdy (2) Frank Dorman, son of John and Jane (nee Harvey) Dorman; James Edward “Ed” “Big Ed” who married Winona “Nona” Godwin, daughter of Jacob “Jake” and Kate (nee Raines) Godwin; Mary Magdalene “Maime” who married Newton “Newt” Eldred Andreu, son of Alexis “Lex” and Carolyn (nee Wynn) Andreu; Charles Monroe “Rowe” who married (1) Pearl Inez Garrett, daughter of George Washington and Elizabeth “Lizzie” (nee Simmons) Garrett (2) Minnie (nee Bullard) Whiddon; and John William “Will” who married Susie Belle Clayton, daughter of George Washington and Molly Elizabeth (nee Hiers) Clayton. 

 

ollie frances barber drawdy dorman

Aunt Ollie Barber Drawdy Dorman (born 1881) was an impressive woman.  She was tall, erect, somewhat imperious, and very good-looking.  Her hair had been red in her youth, but she was resentful of the nickname “Red.”  Nothing but the best in couture for her.  Heels accentuated her height.  She might have been a country girl to begin with but her manners and bearing were those of a finishing school lady.  Her parents had done all they could to expose their children to a better quality of life than that which surrounded them in Baker County (It took on the girls, but the boys fell somewhat short).  She attended the Columbia Normal College (forerunner of the University of Florida) and with her sister was among the stars of the cotillions.

 

Against the parents’ wishes she married her first cousin Cornealius “Neal” Drawdy, a rambunctious youth who was forever getting himself into bad scrapes.  After the birth of their second child his escapades cost him his life (see the Times-Union story which is inserted below).  Aunt Ollie was left with two infant girls – Ethel and Thelma - to rear.  She moved back into her parents’ home, and that is where she left the girls when she began seeing eligible young men. 

 

The following account, with all the superfluous commas, incorrect spelling of some proper names, improper plurals, etc. is from the Florida Times AND CITIZEN of Jacksonville, 1902.

 

“DRAWDY KILLING

FURTHER DETAILS OF THE TRAGEDY AT MACCLENNY STARTED IN A DISPUTE TUESDAY – THE PARTIES FOUGHT THURSDAY NIGHT.  MET AGAIN AND SHOT IT OUT.

“Macclenny, Dec. 27 – The shooting last night from which Neal Drawdy lost his life and Ed Drawdy is now lying dangerously wounded with a load of buck shot in his lower body, grew out of a misunderstanding which occurred between Neal Drawdy and J. O. Milton, Clarence Milton, and J. R. Rodgers at J. O. Milton’s store Tuesday evening (Christmas Eve) over the purchase of a toy pistol, at which time a serious difficulty was narrowly averted.

 

“It was thought by many that this had been settled, until last night, the first time any of the parties have met since the misunderstanding in the store, in which Rodgers was a clerk.  Walter Drawdy, Neal, and Del met Rodgers first, near Pons’s store, and a fight ensued, in which Rodgers was considerably worsted.  A few minutes after this the whole party, Walter, Neat, Ed, and Del Drawdy, with friends whose intention was to preserve peace, were at different places near the depot.  Neal and Del went across the street, they reached the corner of Powers’s store across from the depot, Rodgers appeared at Howell’s corner with a gun.  Some say a Winchester rifle and some a repeating shotgun.  Almost simultaneous with his appearance a general fusillade of shotgun, rifle, and pistol shots occurred, Neal Drawdy had no pistol, but it is said he had a knife in his hand and was running at Rodgers when shot.  Del and Ed Drawdy, it is said, returned the fire with pistols.  Neal and Ed Drawdy were shot down.  Neal died a few hours after without having spoken.  Ed is seriously wounded, but the doctor thinks not necessarily fatally.

 

“It is alleged there were several shotgun shots fired, but it is difficult to obtain any further particulars as those who witnessed the shooting are slow to express themselves.  So far as is known, no other shots took effect.  There have been no arrests, and probably will be none until the finding of the coroner’s jury”

 

I found the coroner’s report in the Baker County Clerk of Court’s office that read something like “died from gun shot or shots from either the front or the rear.”  I replaced the one sheet report and never could find it again.  Like so many old records in our courthouse, it disappeared.

 

Her next husband was the handsome, and younger, Frank Dorman, originally from Sanderson.  He was a carpenter engaged by Charley to erect worker’s houses on the nursery, and he was quick to start calling on the young widow.  A vicious story went the rounds of the county that Frank’s brother Tilman M. “Til” “Jack” Dorman had plotted the death of Neal so that Ollie would be free to marry Frank.  It was rumored that Mr. Til, an up and coming entrepreneur saw opportunities in Great Grandpa Charley’s assets and political power.  Since Mr. Til was already married, and married tightly to a strong willed lady named Nettie “Love” (nee Bynum), some folks figured he would have to use his brother’s marriage to Aunt Ollie as a route to Charley Barber’s pockets and power.

 

It’s undoubtedly evil of me to record this story for posterity, but it makes for good reading.  I knew and admired Mr. T. M. “Jack” “Til” Dorman and considered the story nothing more than low class rumor until many years later when I sat on his widow’s porch and kept her company.  She talked all around the above tale and hinted at it strongly.  It was frightening.  She related much else, but since it would be damaging to some family members’ reputations, I’ll let it stay on the shelf.

 

Aunt Ollie was, as mentioned earlier, a smart dresser.  My granddaddy used to shake his head in disbelief when relating her statement, “I’ll promise my belly to take care of my back.”  And so she did; her family was never guilty of overeating at home (when they visited their relatives and friends the story was different), and she was downright stingy when it came to feeding her guests.  I recall a lunch at her house when she made a small lettuce and tomato salad for each of the six of us, laid out six slices of light bread, and opened a can of Vienna sausages.  Another time my grandparents and my mother stopped by her house for a visit, and she stated that the grandparents were invited to eat but she didn’t have enough for my mother.  Since mixed company and minors might read this some day I shan’t record for posterity what Miss Pearle (my mother) had to say…and never stopped saying until the day she died.

 

Aunt Ollie suffered a stroke, lay almost totally immobile for a long while, and died in 1958.

 

Read more about Aunt Ollie later toward the end of Aunt Florida’s story.

 

Aunt Ollie’s children

Ethel Drawdy Reddish was a lively attractive lady who lived to an advanced age.  She and her sister Thelma lived their childhood and teen years with their grandparents Barber south of Macclenny.  Her grandfather Charley put her through Massey Business College in Jacksonville.  She used her business skills later in life as secretary of various organizations, the City of Lawtey, and her churches (Woodlawn Baptist in Jacksonville and the Lawtey Baptist Church). 

 

Her grandfather sent her to her aunt Winona Barber for piano lessons.  She put those to use as a young lady playing during intermissions at the town’s silent movie house.  She also filled in as pianist at the Macclenny Baptist Church when the regular pianist was absent.

 

Ethel married Bryant Reddish, son of Volly and Mary Ann “Sis” (nee Hicks) Reddish.  Their children were Mary Elizabeth (married Jack Pons) and Ray (married Nell _______).

 

Bryant was a jokester.  One of his favorite stories to his grandchildren ran like this:  “We wuz a’fightin’ Indians over on Trail Ridge, and though we beat’m they like to wore me out.  I crawled along the ridge, hongry and a’honting uv some water when I come up on the old Charley Barber place.   And there wuz a cute little thing named Ethel.  I married her and tuk ‘er away.”

 

She and her family lived on College Street in Jacksonville for several years and then moved to near Bryant’s family home in Lawtey.  He farmed and raised prize beef cattle and Aunt Ethel busied herself as town clerk.  After Bryant’s death, the widow moved to Tallahassee to be near her daughter.

 

She was a snappy dresser, but like her grandmother Charity Rowe Drawdy, she disliked shoes.  No matter how well she was dressed, and sometimes regardless of the occasion (a reception for the governor or our outdoors family reunions), she kicked off her shoes immediately upon arriving at the affair.

 

Aunt Ethel was witty, one of the best conversationalists I’ve ever known.  She, Big Sister Spence (my aunt Dorothy), and I have killed a bottle or two of wine while discussing current gossip and events and family history.  She knew much more about our background than she was willing to tell.  A few glasses of wine usually jogged her memory of the past and brought out frankness about living members of the family and sometimes evoked mild shock about those passed on.

 

Aunt Ethel enjoyed the past but didn’t live in it.  She was current.  She stayed involved in all that was going on about her…particularly politics, sports, and grandchildren…but never a fool about any of her interests.

 

When she died I lost a dear friend.

 

Aunt Thelma Drawdy was a spinster for her first 50 some odd years.  She dressed to the nines, loved being waited on, and called everybody “Sugar.”  Putting it charitably, she was not attractive like her sister, but she was never anything but groomed perfectly.  Some of the cousins said of her and her sister, “Ethel and Thelmer (yes, that’s the pronunciation) were like two hot house plants.”  This meant they appeared perfect and delicate and could not survive ill treatment.  Both girls received the greater part of their looks from their Drawdy background, but the Barber genes were there also.  They were sharp-faced, possessed of aquiline noses and prominent high cheekbones, and had unblemished skin.  The voices were definitely Barber.

 

Aunt Thelma was sickly as a child and received much extra attention from her grandparents even to the point of being spoiled.  She remained somewhat spoiled the rest of her life.

 

Aunt Thelma married MacDonald “Don” Wilson, originally from Folkston, Georgia.  He struck me as a rather unpleasant person.  I never learned to be comfortable with him.  He was a heavy drinker.  They lived in a modest home on Gilmore Street in Jacksonville until the Gilmore Bridge (later named the Fuller Warren Bridge) project bought them out.  They moved to Macclenny on West McIver Avenue in the 1960’s.  They eventually had to break up housekeeping because of age and infirmity.  He went to a nursing home in west Jacksonville and she to the Frank Wells Nursing Home in Macclenny. 

 

Until they had to enter the nursing homes, we took their meals to them from our Turkey Creek Restaurant.  Aunt Thelma was always grateful; Mr. Wilson just growled if, indeed, he uttered a sound at all.  He was probably too weak from carting home on his feet the 12 pack of Busch every morning to respond to any kindnesses tendered him.

 

Some of us made certain she was brought to all our family doings.  My Uncle Edward, himself not always of the purest quality (no stones cast…just mentioning he was typical Barber), didn’t care for his cousin Thelma.  Whenever one of us would bring her into the house for a family gathering, he would comment, none too quietly, “Well, I see y’all brought the old slut again”, or “There’s the old slut.”  There was never any indication that the epithet he laid on her was warranted.   I don’t remember any of us visiting her nursing home bound husband but once.

 

Her cousin Frank Wells was head of the local hospital commission, and Aunt Thelma used their kinship to the fullest.  She was quite demanding at times and threatened to reveal any and all inadequacies and inattention to Mr. Wells.  As a result, she was catered to…and she enjoyed it to the hilt.

 

Aunt Ollie’s two sons by Mr. Dorman were very different from their sisters.  The boys were the yuppies of their day. The older, Frank Dorman, Jr., was a sporty handsome man who was totally aware of his good looks.  He dressed as if he were the editor of GQ and occasionally came to the re-union in a low-slung sports car.  I don’t think he was ever as rich as the image he rather successfully put across.

 

I have to hand it to Frank, Jr., although I didn’t care for him like I did his sisters, he was the best at promoting his own image.  He did stand out in a crowd.  He was noticed.

 

 His first wife was named Billie (can’t recall her maiden name…Davis I think).  She was a strikingly good-looking woman.  They had three children as I remember – Charles, Sandy, and _________.  They divorced, and Frank married an attractive personable lady named Nancy (don’t know her last name either).  There were no children by the second marriage.

 

Frank, Jr., worked for the Duval County Sheriff and hung around the dog track a lot where he reportedly lost all his Baker County land inheritance.  He was known to boast and to re-work the truth.  In fact, many of the fake stories of the Barber history was invented and promulgated by him.  Sorry to have to say that, but it’s a fact.

 

His uncle Rowe Barber (my granddaddy) was not in the habit of talking bad about anybody, and when Frank, Jr., borrowed my granddaddy’s grandfather’s (James Edward) pistol and didn’t return it, and when he took knives from Granddaddy’s kitchen out into the back yard and broke them while practicing knife throwing at a camphor tree, Daddy Rowe just commented, “I don’t reckon Frank, Jr., will ever grow up.”

 

Frank, Jr., was an excellent artist.  His specialty was meticulous watercolor rendering of airplanes.

 

Ray Dorman was one of the first of the family to complete college.  He attended the University of Florida.  He was a naval officer (can’t recall his rank).  He had the burly appearance of the football player and sports enthusiast he was.

 

His wife was the former Helen Higbee, a member of an established Jacksonville family involved in real estate.  Her mother’s Pacetti family was of the old Minorcan people of the area and of the Morales of Cuba, and her father was born in Cuba.  She had the dark good looks of her background.  Ray and Helen had two sons – Peter and ________, one of whom died young. 

 

Ray was a go-getter and promoter.

 

No matter how successful the Dorman boys were and no matter what cosmopolitan crowds they hobnobbed with they did not neglect their kin, especially their half-sisters.

 

Revised 12/8/02