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Richard Herndon moved from Colleton County Co. S.C. To Appling Co. Georgia about 1832 and lived there a few years. By 1839 he had moved to Hamilton County Co. Florida, where he settled near the town of Jennings on the state line. He died there in 1852 and his wife survived him about sixteen years. He is buried in a marked grave in Bellville Cemetery on the Withlacoochee River. It is a very hard cemetery to find but I ask and ask and was able to find it. Levi and his wife are buried there with five generations of...
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Richard Herndon moved from Colleton County Co. S.C. To Appling Co. Georgia about 1832 and lived there a few years. By 1839 he had moved to Hamilton County Co. Florida, where he settled near the town of Jennings on the state line. He died there in 1852 and his wife survived him about sixteen years. He is buried in a marked grave in Bellville Cemetery on the Withlacoochee River. It is a very hard cemetery to find but I ask and ask and was able to find it. Levi and his wife are buried there with five generations of this family. The Herndon lot is well kept with a iron fence around it but the rest of the cemetery is over grown.
At least four of the Herndon children after marriage settle in Echols County, Georgia, viz, Isham, Daniel, Hansford and Charles and reared their families there.
From Family History and Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia by Folks Husford.
When you enter Florida on Interstate 75, you will be in Hamilton Co. Before Florida became a state in 1845, this was part of the "Middle District of the Territory of Florida." My Great-Great-Grandfather(Mary Mitchell Clark), a farmer from SC, moved his family to Hamilton District about 1838.
On the 1850 Florida Census Record, I found that Richard Herndon, age 65, his wife Pinky, 48 and several older children were all born i SC. A 13 year old boy was born in GA, an 11 year old boy was born in Fl. This younger child was Levi Herndon, my Great-Grandfather. A little simple math shows that my Florida Pioneers did live in SC, traveled through GA and stayed long enough for a child to be born. They arrived in FL between 1837 and 1839, the year Levi was born.
Richard was the father of eleven children. When he died at age 67, his youngest child was only 3 years old. Pinky was the mother of all 11 children. Large families were common and the babies were born at home. Few, if any, doctors were available and a mid-wife or family member helped with the birth.
Life was difficult for the pioneer woman in the backwoods of Florida. Hard work and constant childbearing caused the early death of many of them. It was not uncommon for a man to have several wives. There were always widows or single women around and the only occupation available was teaching school. The widower wasted no time remarrying and the courtship was short or non-existent.
Most pioneer houses were built of logs. Often the front and back doors of cabins were directly across from each other. They were wider that most doors so horses could entoer to haul in firewood. The backs of the fireplaces were built so that, in case of fire, they could be knocked out of the wall with a long, sturdy log. The chimney was usually made of sticks and clay. The red clay of North Florida gets very hard when it's dry and children made marbles out of wet clay and put them in the sun to dry. Occasionally a child would put a small rock in the center of the marble.
During the winter, the wide gaps between the logs of the cabins were filled with a compound of clay, straw and animal hair. The mixture was removed in the summer to provide natural ventilation. In the autumn, it was replaced by a new mixture of clay.
Double cabins were popular. One cabin was used as the living area and the other as the kitchen and eating area. They were joined by an open ended porch with a roof overhead. This porch was called a "dog-trot." Some say that cabins built on old Indian Trail had a "dog-trot" because an Indian would not go around a cabin but would go right through it!
Neighbors and friends would assist with a "house-raising." This was both carpentry help and social. The women cooked their specialties, loaded it in baskets and took it to the construction site. They spread the food on long tables under the shade trees. The tables were actually long wooden planks placed across saw-horses and covered with clothe or clean flour sacks.
Furniture for the early settlers was "homemade. Bedsteads were made of split pine and the corner posts being joined by wooden crosspieces. Slats were strips of wood, cowhide, and even rope. These would stretch after a few years and have to be replaced. Otherwise you would fall into bed and go almost to the floor. The mattresses were stuffed with horsehair, grass, moss, and corn shucks. Fortunate families had flocks of geese that were picked at regular intervals to make feather beds.
Chairs had rawhide or cane seats. Long kitchen tables often had benches on each side made on log halves. This make it easier to seat a large family. If there was company for Sunday dinner, the adults ate at the "first table." The children at the "second table." Most children were grown before they knew how a choice piece of fried chicken tasted.
Southern women loved trees and flowers. They would hurry to plant trees such as cedar, magnolia, live oaks, chinaberry, crepe myrtle. Trees that provided food wer pecan, black walnut, mulberry, fig and pear trees.
Flowers were everywhere and roses that bloomed each month were a favorite. They were large and showy and provided color year round. Any neighbor with a pretty plant was sure to be asked for a "cutting."
In 1845 there was no electricity and the sewing machine wasn't invented until 1846. "Running water" was a pitcher pump on the back porch. The wash bench had a metal bucket with a small dipper or gourd with the top half cut off. The face and hands were washed in a shallow enamel pan was filled with water from the bucket. The community towel hung on a nail nearby.
Bath time was on Saturday night in a galvanized wash tub. If you wanted a warm bath, you had to heat water in a kettle. Some wood stoves had a reservoir that held water that was heated by the burning wood. In the winter, baths were usually taken in the kitchen where it was warm. In the summer, you could take a bar of ly soap to the local lake, river, or spring.
Soap was made of animal fat, lye, and potash that leached from wood ashes. The soap was cooked in the large pot that the clothes were washed in. It was then poured into a pan, cooled, and cut in large pieces. Lye soap would clean anything and you had to be careful not to scrub off a layer of skin along with the dirt.
Many farmers frew sugar cane and made delicious cane syrup. It was cooked in a large vat built into the top of a brick enclosure. A fireplace underneath kept the juice boiling. Long stalks of sugar cane were fed between two grinders that were turned by a mule. The mule was hitched to a long bar connected to a rotor. As he walked around in a circle, the rotor turned the grinders. The juice from the sugar cane flowed down a chute into the vat below. When the vat was full, the juice was bokled for several hours.
The foam was skimmed from the top with a long handled, slotted, spoon. When the juice became a thick syrup, it was cooled and ladled into bottles. They were corked and placed on racks with the bottles tilted at an angle so the syrup touched the cork. The bottles were stored in a dark area to preserve the color and flavor.
Rows of ham, bacon, and sausage hung in the smoke house. The animals raised on the farm were killed during the coldest days of winter. The meat was salted, and placed on pine needles to drain. Then they were hung on racks in the smoke house to slowly cure.
In the kitchen, the pantry was a rainbow of colors. Gleaming rows of glass jars contained jams, jellies, preserves, fruits and vegetables. Southern women took great pride in their canning skills. They would enter the best jars in the county fair hoping to winning a blue ribbon.
The food was home-grown. At breakfast there bacon, sausage, and ham from the smoke house. Red-eye gravy was made from the fried ham. Always there were grits and eggs. Fat brown biscuits were vocered with sweet butter, cane syrup, jellies, or jams. Preserves were made from such fruits as peaches, pears, figs and watermelon rinds.
Dinner, at noontime, included chicken, ham, or beef. Often deer, rabbit, quail, squirrel, and dove, from the surrounding woods, were tasty additions to the menu. Vegetables, fresh from the garden were okra, fried squash, pole beans, and butter beans. Greens such as collards, mustard and turnips, were cooked in ham broth. White potatoes were cooked in cream sauce, and yams candied in brown sugar and syrup. In the citrus areas, amborsia was made with oranges, grapefruit, tangelos, coconut and chopped nuts.
Hot biscuits were made again and probably hoe cake, corn bread or johnny cake. Mouthwatering desserts might be pecan pie, fried fruit pies, syrup cake, and all kind of fruit cobblers topped with thick, fresh cream.
The women cooked in the morning and took their naps in the afternoon. Supper consisted of leftovers from dinner that were usually stored in screened cabinets called "pie safes." Typical supper fare was "Potlikker" from cooked greens, along with corn bread, onion and tomato.
In the early days, schools were almost not-existent and children were taught at home. In the old one room school-house, the teacher was a person with limited education. He or she taught the three R's Reading, Righting, and Rithmatic. With any luck, they had a copy of the McGuffey Reader, written in the early 1830's. Attendance depended on the workload at home. When the crops were ready to harvest, school closed and even the teacher became a farmer hand.
Most homes had a Bible and religion managed to thrive on the Florida frontier. An epidemic in 1840 killed much of the small population and caused religious awaking. The Baptist adapting well. They used circuit riders who went from church to church and laymen preached until the circuit rider came that way again. Both Baptist and Methodists had revivals once a year. Converts were baptized in nearby lakes or rivers. The Methodists had "camp meetings"-held after the crops were in. They took place in places that were easy to get to. Nearby a springs, lakes, or rivers provided water for the congregation.
Below Letter written by Mary Mitchel Clarke:
Five years ago, I was bitten by the genealogy bug and have never recovered. I drove south on I-75 complimenting myself on a successful research trip to Georgia. Although I never knew my father's family, I had amassed a wealth of information about them. My father admitted being the black sheep in a prominent Georgia family; they were pillars of the community, he a rolling stone. At age 21 he moved to Florida and never returned.
For years, he told stories about his family. His great-grandfather was a Baptist preacher and surgeon in the Civil War, his father bought and sold cotton and drove in the harness races. I documented his stories and much more for a fascinating history of my paternal ancestors.
My mother's family was from north Florida and when I was a child, I visited them once a year. They were all farmers and I never related to them. All they seemed to talk about was crops and the weather. Could there be anything interesting about these back woods people? I should document that line in order to complete my ancestry chart which was conspicuously blank on my mother's half of the page.
The trip was long and tiring and tension crept down the muscles of my neck and back. The highway was congested with out-of-state cars rushing to enjoy Florida's tourist attractions. The afternoon sun shimmered on the asphalt like a mirage in the dessert. Near the Florida state line, I saw the sign. Large white letters stood out on the green background: Belleville, Fl-next right.
It has been 50 years since I last saw the small pioneer town built on the east bluff of the Withlacoochee River. Five generations of my family were buried there. Was it the need to rest or my guilt feelings about neglecting my mother's family that caused me to take that exit? I never knew.
I left the din of traffice behind as I began my lonely drive into a remote area of my past. The paved road soon came to a fork. Not sure which way to go, Iturned right on to a one lane dirt road bordered by trees and heavy vegetation. The road I remembered entered Bellville from the west, crossed a wooden bridge, and left the same way. Now I approached fro the east and navigated by instinct.
Swirls of dust from the clay road soon covered my white mustang with variable tones of amber. I applauded Detroit for air conditioned cars with snug windows. No signs of civilization were evident as I drove for miles through dense woods. I began to doubt my intuition and wanted to stop and ask directions. I rounded the next curve and spotted a farm house near the road.
It was a typical "Florida Cracker" house of unpainted pine boards with wide eaves and a porch across the front. The house was evenly divided by a "dog-trot," an open ended porch running from front to back and covered by the roof of the house. The design of the house made the hot Florida summers bearable and the "dog-trot separated the kitchen and dining area from the rest of the house in case of fire. An unpainted wood fence surrounded the house and both house and fence had weathered to a medium shade of gray.
A short, haggard, man stood in the front yard as if waiting for me to appear. He wore a straw hat that rested on his ears, faded blue shirt and overalls. He was as colorless as the surroundings and barely detectible.
This man was a "Florida Cracker, " the name given early Florida cowboys who used rawhide bullwhips to round up stray cattle. A Cracker was once difined as, "A Pioneer, backwoods settler who has come to be known as a gaunt, shiftless person." Later, it was updated to, " a native regardless of his circumstances."
I pulled over to the side of the road, rolled down the car window and smiled up at him. His face was a network of lines on tanned leather, devoid of all emotion except suspicion in the faded blue eyes that stared at the trespasser.
In my most pleasant voice, I said, "Sir, would you please tell me how far it is to Belleville?"
No reply.
I waited.
Then he spoke in a deep graveled voice, weighing each word.
"Ain't nothing there."
I said, " I plan to visit the cemetery."
"Ain't gonna find it."
Irritated, I said, "Please just tell me how far to go."
Silence.
So much for stimulating conversation with the natives. I rolled up the car window, turned on the air conditioner, and drove away leaving him in a cloud of dust. The man reminded me of my ancestors!
(I am a Florida Native and kind of take offense of the way this lady has told about this man and her ancestors. If she wants nothing to do with her ancestors, why is she researching them?????)
Five miles further down the road. I passed a crossroads. Instead of stopping, I drove over the crest of a hill and straight down to a new bridge that crossed the tea colored Withlacoochee River. I had just missed Belleville or what was left of it. Driving slowly over the new bridge, I watched the sun sparkle on the currents. The river was low in the steep banks and Indian relics could be found in the sand when the water was at that level. At the end of the bridge, I cautiously made a U-turn in the soft sand. As I drove back over the bridge, I savored the solid feel of concrete structure. The wooden planks in the dilapidated old bridge were loose and clattered as the cars drove over them.
The only sign of life at the dirt crossroads was a rusty rural mailbox that clung to a leaning post. Gone was the old country store that once stood across the road and the wooden houses had disappeared.
In 1845, Belleville was a prosperous river town with a saw mill, grist mill, cotton gin, school, doctor and churches. Barges were built to transport cotton from Rosetter's Ferry to St. Marks on the Gulf of Mexico. When the cotton was unloaded, supplies for the town were loaded on the ruturning barges.
Now, the only inhabitants of the gost town are in the old cemetery. The side road leading to it was overgrown with weeds but the cemetery was soon visible. The rusty iron fence still surrounded my ancestor's graves.
I looked at the discolored stones and thought, These are my Florida Crackers, uneducated but shrewd in the art of survival. My roots were here with these narrow minded, suspicious, peo;le. Why am I different-because I lived in a city?
What brought my ancestors to this isolated place? Perhaps it was in hope of a better tomorrow. Here they could grow cotton and ship it up the river to other ports. Surely they could have found a more convenient location. This area did not have electricity until 1940.
"Ain't nothing there," the man had said. Maybe he was right. or was he?
There is something here. I looked around at the live oaks, ancient sentinels shrouded with Spanish moss, knurled limbs clutched bird nests. A squirrel that made his home in the crevice of a giant live oak tree, scampering and chattering as he went about his chores.
The smell of pine, gum trees, and magnolia was in the air. Wild flowers bloomed but hung limp in the summer heat and their sweetness mingled with the soil and grass.
The soothing sound of the nearby river was accompanied by the sound of birds. A bob-white whistled, the mockingbird sang his medley of pilfered songs and the crabby jay stood guard over his domain.
I reached down and picked a pod of rosary peas and marveled at the perfect red and black beans that were beautiful but extremely poisonous. Had my ancestors discovered this fact, after a child had eaten some and then died?
Time passed slowly.
Long forgotten memories came flooding back of summer vacations on my grandfather's farm and carefree days spent rambling in the woods. My cousins and I boiled peanuts, swam in Blue Springs and enjoyed fish fries on the river bank.
Today, this unspoiled wilderness is a place that few could believe is a part of Florida and fewer still would appreciate.
This was half of my heritage--different but not inferior to the other half of my family which produced the doctore, lawyers, and teachers. That half had the resources to live in comfortable homes and attend schools of their choice. Would this half have fared better under different circumstances?
As the quiet serenity seeped into every pore, a perfect peace flooded my soul. It beckoned me to stay but, alas, I could not.
I got into my comfortable, air conditioned car, and drove back to the highway over the same dirt road. I drove past the Old Crack, still keeping watch on the road.
I waved.
Richard shows up on the SC 1910 census in Colleton Co. Page 329, as being a free white male between the ages of 16-26 and a free white female between the ages of 16-26.
Richard served in the War of 1812 as private in Capt. Isham Walker's Co. of SC Militia, June 29-Oct.2,1812. Discharged at Beauford Island, SC. Pinkey was granted 160 acres of bounty land June 7, 1856, for this service.
When Richard and Pinkey were married she was 16 and he was 34
Richard is on the 1850 Hamilton Co Fl Census
Richard died in 1852 and is buried at Bethelham/Herndon Cemetery. |
