The SLOAN Family
and Memories of Jackson County, Florida
By: Frank Sloan
Part 1; SLOAN Family History
I currently live near Graceville in Jackson County Florida and have for many periods in my life. The Sloan family has been in Jackson County Florida since about 1900 at least and maybe earlier. My grandfather, Major Sloan, and his younger brother, Elijah Sloan, both homesteaded 40 acre plots about two miles south of Graceville with the certificate signature dated 1901. I don't know the exact requirements for that type of land acquisition but I think some of the Sloans may have been in Jackson County earlier than 1900. Several Sloan marriages are recorded in Jackson County as early as 1886. So far no concrete connection has been made.
Prior to Jackson County our Sloan line was in Henry County Alabama and Decatur County Georgia. Major Sloan was married to his first wife, Cindy Cloud, my grandmother, in Henry County Alabama in 1888. The marriage certificate says the ceremony took place in his brother Samuel Sloan's house. Before Henry County Alabama, the Sloan family can be found on the 1830, 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 census records for Decatur County Georgia. As a matter of fact, I think only Samuel and Major moved to Henry County Alabama.
The 1830 census for Decatur County Georgia lists Allen Sloan as head of house at less than 30 years old with 3 boys under 5, 1 girl under 10, 1 female under 30 and 1 female under 70. Later records establish Allen Sloan's wife as Nancy. The 1850 census lists the oldest son; William Sloan as married to Sarah and his place of birth as South Carolina. Next door, his mother Nancy, widow of Allen Sloan, is listed as still having several children at home with the oldest, Allen Sloan, age 22, with a birthplace of South Carolina.
Therefore, it seems logical that the Allen and Nancy Sloan family migrated from South Carolina to Decatur County Georgia in 1828/1829 with at least 3 small children and a somewhat elderly mother in law. What a trip that must have been! And we complain about the hardship and inconvenience of driving 30 miles in an air-conditioned car with a couple of grandchildren squabbling in the back seat!
William Sloan (Slone), the oldest son of the senior Allen Sloan, is my great grandfather and apparently lived his entire life in Decatur County Georgia. William Sloan was a farmer and had 10 children, with at least two coming to Jackson County Florida, Major and Elijah Sloan. I think one, William Lewis Sloan, ended up down near Plant City and still has several descendants in the area.
Several of the others have not been positively located but I'm working on the missing links.
Part 2; Major SLOAN in Jackson County, Florida
Major Sloan was born in 1865, the 8th of the known 10 children of William Sloan of Decatur County, Georgia. As mentioned earlier, Major Sloan and his younger brother, Elijah Sloan, both homesteaded 40 acre plots about two miles south of Graceville in 1901. The original homestead plot (T6N, R13W, Section 23 NW/NE) was not kept for very long before either a sale or a swap took place for another plot of land several miles west of the original location. The details of this plot are murky at the present time but hopefully a record search at the courthouse in Marianna will shed some light on the deal.
Major's younger brother Elijah homesteaded a nearby plot at the same time but didn't keep his very long either. Some evidence suggests Elijah sold out and moved to the area of Bay Minette, Alabama.
Major married Cindy Cloud in 1888 and they had four children that lived to maturity with the oldest born in 1892. These were Dolly, Arthur, Luther (my father) and Ephraim. All except Luther married local girls and stayed in the Graceville area most of their lives. My uncle Ephraim did go down to the Plant City area for a short period to work in a cousin's sawmill but soon returned to the Graceville area.
Major's first wife, Cindy, died sometime around 1903 or 1904. An exact date and the place of burial cannot be pinned down at this point.
The second marriage for Major was to Frances Forehand Bush in 1905 and three children were born that reached maturity. These were King Daniel, Zula and Coy. Frances died in 1925 and is buried at the Beulah Church Cemetery near Graceville.
The third marriage for Major was to a lady named Sally. So far no maiden name has been found and no children were born that lived to maturity. The only known child is an infant that died at birth.
Major Sloan was a small farmer here in Jackson County for much of his life and seems to have left little mark on the world other than a legacy of children that carried on for better or worse.
Part 3; Luther Simon SLOAN
My father, Luther S. Sloan, was the third oldest child of Major Sloan. Luther was a restless soul and moved around Florida throughout his life, often between Jackson County and Hillsborough County Florida, primarily Plant City. Luther worked most of his life in some phase of the timber industry starting at an early age. He was born in 1897, either here in Jackson County or up in Henry County Alabama. Daddy told me that he landed his first job when he was 15(1912) plowing an ox on a farm between Graceville and Chipley. The job was daylight to dark and paid $8.00 a month with room and board included. Considering the hours, it sounds as if the board was probably worth more than the salary. I've had some experience trying to feed a 15 year old boy that did nothing more than play a little ball.
Much of my father's life and some of my early life were spent around sawmills and logging camps deep in the woods of north central and central Florida. The tales he told of those days in the 1920s and 1930s are comparable to stories of the old west. Conditions were very primitive for the most part and the men and the women were rough to say the least.
Although my father had little education, quit school at 8th grade, he was very proud of the fact that he worked his way up to be a steam locomotive engineer on the old narrow gauge railroads that were built to service the logging camps through the 20s and 30s. In fact, he was proud that he had held almost every conceivable job connected with logging or running a log train. At one time or another he did everything from cutting down the trees to running the steam locomotive that hauled the logs out to the mills. Can you imagine wading through snake and alligator infested swamps in all sorts of weather to cut down huge cypress trees with a two man saw? Makes me thankful for my air-conditioned office job just thinking about it.
Luther's hot temper and some bad advice from questionable companions caused him to run afoul of the law upon several occasions. Two in particular were often talked about during my childhood years.
During the Depression years (early 30s) Luther was a steam locomotive engineer with a logging outfit near Cross City, Florida. At that time common labor jobs were paying less than a dollar a day. Luther was making over $4 a day running the train and as such was considered a hot prospect for some of the local businessmen. One in particular, a salesman for a local Ford dealer, would not take no for an answer. Luther said the salesman came aboard his train one day to try to sell him a new Ford car and just would not leave after several increasingly vehement requests. Eventually a struggle broke out as Luther attempted to physically eject the salesman from the train. Since Luther was much the lighter of the two he picked up a ball peen hammer and hit the salesman on the head, rendering him unconscious and easy to get off the train.
However, the salesman decided to press charges and Luther was arrested for assault. The bail was set too high for the cash he had on hand so etion of one of Luther's cousins and a fight broke out. Apparently, the cousins were good instigators but poor fighters and Luther stepped in to help out. Luther was not a big man; although he was 6' tall he only weighed about 135. He did have a hot temper. In any event, Luther said he fought 6 or 7 different ones during the fray, breaking one arm with a 2X4 from the wood pile and biting one thumb nearly off when the owner tried to gouge him in the eye and missed too close to the mouth. In the process his nose was broken and he was hit over the head with a piece of pipe and a pistol butt among other scrapes bruises and contusions.
Another neighbor that had been awakened by the noise finally broke up the fight. The neighbor dispersed the whole crowd with a double-barreled shotgun.
At this point one of Luther's cousins decided the least he could do was take him into Plant City to see a doctor. This too led to disaster caused by the combination of too much moonshine and innate poor driving skills of the now helpful cousin. On the trip into town the driver missed a sharp turn in the main road, taking a smaller road across a drainage ditch with a small wooden plank bridge. The right side wheels of the car missed the bridge and the car toppled over in the ditch, pinning Luther underneath.
The cousin escaped unharmed, as you might expect, but could not get the car raised enough to extricate Luther from underneath. At that point he said; "I'm going for help." And took off on foot.
Fortunately the injuries from the car were relatively minor, either a bruised or broken rib. But, there he was, pinned beneath the car and in considerable pain from multiple injuries caused by the fight and the car crash. I don't recall the amount of time he had to wait but help eventually arrived and managed to get him to a doctor's office.
Luther didn't marry until rather late in life at age 47. Having too much fun I guess. The marriage was never calm, and after two sisters and myself were born over a period of seven years interspersed with several separations, the split became permanent. Luther then reared my sisters and me.
Part 4; Life in Jackson County, Florida
Many of my earliest memories are of life here in Jackson County; Florida and I still have lots of family here.
All of my father's brothers and sisters married young and stayed in Jackson County or close by for most of their lives. All of the uncles and aunts except two are dead now but they all left many memories and children.
For example, during the mid fifties (1956, etc.) some of my uncles were farmers here and were still plowing and cultivating with mules. I can remember going to the farms on weekends and playing around the barnyard in which the mules were kept. The grown sons and daughters (my 1st cousins) would arrive by mule and wagon or pickup truck from nearby farms or houses.
I was talking to one of the cousins the other day and he remembered his father buying the farm (100 acres with house and well) for $2700 in either the late forties or early fifties. The deal was struck between my uncle and another local farmer while riding back from an inspection of the place on a mule drawn wagon. My cousin said that my uncle paid half of the money up front in cash and promised to pay the rest as soon as possible. A handshake sealed the deal. The remainder of the money was paid within two years.
The farm had a large frame house that consisted of two huge rooms with a double fireplace between the rooms and a long shed roof kitchen/living/dining room that ran along the entire length of the house. The entire family of up to nine persons lived and worked from these three basic rooms. The front had a full-length porch that served as the social center in all but the worst weather. The facilities were a dug well for water in the front yard and an outhouse behind the corncrib. A large ramshackle hay barn with stalls for the mules and general storage space took up most of the yard on one side of the house. On the other side of the main house was a smokehouse for home cured meats and sausages. Depending on the family recipe, homemade smoked sausages are one of my fondest memories. Beside the smokehouse were several peach trees that would have so many peaches that the limbs would literally break at times.
Hog killing time in early winter was a big social occasion as it has been in this part of the country for many decades. Another fall social occasion was the peanut harvest and the peanut boiling socials. Around here, a favorite method of preparing peanuts is to boil the green peanuts with lots of salt. Boiled peanuts are an acquired taste and many Northerners don't like them at all. Before freezers were common, the green peanuts were only available at harvest time. Lots of families, churches, and clubs would have large socials that included boiling and eating large quantities of peanuts.
Later on my uncle swapped the 100-acre farm and $1000.00 for another farm of 80 acres nearer to town and with more cultivated land. This deal was with the same person that had sold the first farm.
Some time later, after the swap, my father, sisters and I spent a year, including the winter, in the old three-room house. Hot in summer and impossible to heat in winter. Most home life prior to bedtime was conducted in the kitchen around a wood burning stove. The double fireplaces were totally ineffective. During that period, all hardware stores stocked blackened tin wood-burning heaters that were cheap and relatively effective but only lasted one or two seasons before the combination of heat and the moisture in the wood rusted everything out.
That was a bad year for us economically, with a good portion of our protein diet consisting of rabbits and squirrels my father hunted on the property and fish from nearby Holmes Creek. My father was by no stretch of the imagination a gourmet cook but he was inventive at times. One of our favorite dishes in the spring was blackberry dumplings. Not knowing how to do traditional pie crusts, Daddy just boiled fresh blackberries with lots of sugar and made thick flour and water dumplings to drop in the brew. Simple but good.
Another of the highlights of life in the country here in the fifties was the rolling store. A trip to town was no trivial matter in those days because many of the farm women still didn't drive and the men didn't have the time during the week. So, once or twice a week a mobile store fitted out on the back of a truck would make the rounds of the backcountry roads stopping at every house along the way. The stock was basic necessities such as staple foods, minor sewing supplies, cold soft drinks, candies for the children, chewing tobacco and cigarettes or rolling supplies for the men and snuff for the ladies. Often fresh and salted or smoked mullet from down on the Gulf were also available and was considered a special treat at our house.
Mullet was plentiful and cheap, usually only a few cents per pound. A large family could be fed for a small amount of cash. In addition to the rolling stores, mullet and other types of Gulf seafood was routinely peddled through the backcountry roads by itinerant peddlers. A peddling route also often served as an interim job for local people temporarily down on their luck or out of a job. Any sort of pickup truck capable of making it to Panama City and back could be turned into a peddling vehicle. The back was outfitted with one or more abandoned refrigerators to serve as insulated iceboxes. These were filled with fish and ice down on the Gulf coast and then peddled through the countryside. Any leftovers were either eaten by the peddler's family or salted and smoked just one step ahead of going over.
Another of my uncles gave us the use of a log cabin that was even further back in the woods for the next year's winter season. That place was really primitive and my father almost died that winter from pleurisy. Regardless, I have fond memories of both places.
I guess I was too young to realize that we were in dire economic straits most of the time and just enjoyed the country life. I remember most playing in the woods when the weather was cooperative. Cowboys and Indians is much more fun in the woods.
In those days, a livery barn was still available just off the main street of Graceville for farmers still coming for weekend shopping by mule and wagon.
As a matter of fact, my aunt, my father's oldest sister, was thrown from a wagon with a runaway mule and killed in 1934 while on the way to town.
All through the fifties and sixties this area was a strange hybrid of the old and new. Now, with TV and instant communications anywhere, Graceville has more or less joined the mainstream. However, the population of the main cemetery in town is probably larger than the living population within the city limits. Graceville and all of Jackson County is a nice place to live.
Part V - Personal History
My father moved us to Plant City on a more or less permanent basis in 1959 and I attended Tomlinson Jr. High for 8th grade and went on to PCHS, graduating in 1964. Most of that time we lived out at the Knights community also called Knights Station.
I had no real prospect of going to college at the time so a local friend and I took a job with a construction company immediately after high school. They sent us to Micanopy, up in central Florida to work on the construction of I-75. After three days of carrying concrete chunks in the July sun, we both decided that there had to be a better way of making a living and hitchhiked back to Plant City.
A few days later I took the entrance test for the Navy and scored well. Since Vietnam was just beginning to heat up a little, before I really had much time to think about it, I was in San Diego, California going through boot camp. After boot camp the Navy sent me to several electronics and radar training schools in California and Virginia and I didn't get back to Plant City until 1966, nearly two years later.
On the way home for my first leave I stopped back in Graceville to visit aunts, uncles, and cousins that I had not seen for several years. All of my relatives welcomed me with open arms and one of my cousins introduced me to the girl that was to become my wife.
When I got home to Plant City, I painted a rosy picture of the warm reception by the home folks around Graceville. At that time my father already had a strong desire to return to Graceville where the majority of his brothers and sisters still lived and I helped them move before my leave expired.
After helping to move my father and sisters back to Graceville, I reported to a ship in Long Beach, California, the USS Gridley DLG-21, and left soon afterward for an extended cruise to the Far East and Vietnam. Except for seeing some new places (Philippines, Japan, etc.) the cruise to Vietnam was uneventful. I saw no real hostile action and only a few times when we thought something might happen.
I kept in touch with the girl I had met in Graceville by mail and when I got home on leave we almost immediately decided to get married. The knot was tied at my mother in law's house on August 11, 1967. The honeymoon was short because I had to report back to the ship in Long Beach.
My wife soon joined me in Long Beach for a few months before the next scheduled cruise to Vietnam. Our first child was on the way, so, when the ship left Long Beach she returned to her mother's place near Graceville. My oldest son was born in 1968 while I was at sea.
After Long Beach and the USS Gridley, the Navy sent me to another advanced electronics school in the Great Lakes area near Chicago for several months and then on to another ship, the USS Columbus CG-12 homeport, Norfolk, Virginia. The tour aboard the Columbus was almost two years during which we made two long cruises to the Mediterranean and southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, etc.). A second child (girl) was born in 1970 and soon afterward I went to Roanoke, Virginia for a year and then to Key West, Florida for two years. A third child (boy) was born in 1973 in Key West. After Key West, I returned to the Norfolk area for another radar electronics training school at Virginia Beach, Virginia.
In 1975 I reported to the USS Constellation CV-64, a very large aircraft carrier, homeport San Diego, California, for a long tour of duty as the senior search radar technician. I served on the Connie, as she was affectionately called, for almost five years and made three or four cruises to the Far East during that time. At the end of the tour on Constellation, I served my final tour on shore duty at the Naval Technical Training facility at Saufley Field near Pensacola, Florida. While there, I wrote training manuals for electronics and radar.
I retired from the Navy in 1984 after twenty years service and my wife and I decided to return to the Graceville area for the small town life. We had both had enough of big cities and wanted a quiet place to finish raising our children.
Fortunately, Enterprise Electronics Corporation, a weather radar manufacturer, is located just up the road from Graceville in Enterprise, Alabama. After one short-term job at Ft. Rucker, Alabama, with my military radar background I was able to go to work at Enterprise Electronics and have been there ever since.
My job still involves a good bit of travel and over the years I've visited more than twenty foreign countries and many of the states here in the U.S. The old saw is right; "There is no place like home".
Frank Sloan
[email protected] (Frank
Sloan)
November 2, 1998
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