Palmetto Pioneers: The Emigrants: Palmetto Pioneers, #1

By Cindy Roe Littlejohn

America's attorney general in 1829 said, "no man would immigrate to Florida--no, not from hell itself!" But the Walker families came anyway, and people keep coming. Today, at almost a thousand a day!

 

This award winning first book in the series won an IPPY bronze medal for nonfiction in the southeastern US and three medals from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association for History, Biography, and Cover Design

"Palmetto Pioneers," tells the story of Mary Adeline Walker, an ordinary daughter of a South Carolina low-country cattleman. She moved to frontier Florida only eight years after it was formed as a territory. Within seven years, the family's homestead would be in the middle of guerrilla warfare resulting from the costliest Indian war in the history of the United States, the Second Seminole Indian War.

Floridians, and not just native Floridians, wax on about "Old Florida". To many, "Old Florida" signifies what we have lost, but when I wrote this book I realized that we Floridians have been losing it all along, including the indigenous people who lived here before us. I tried to capture this in "Palmetto Pioneers," especially for these first European settlers who came here when Florida was still a frontier.

The story begins with a pretty 7-year-old girl with dark brunette hair and dark eyes. She is the oldest of her family of eleven children and bears all of what that brings.

She came to Florida from South Carolina in 1829. The book describes the roads and trails down and how Monticello looked when they arrived. It was a village of log cabins and stores. The description comes from diaries and journals kept by people who either came to stay, moved on, or passed through. The story is true and written in narrative.

The story follows her and ends when she marries within a year after the end of this 7-year war. She marries a man from Washington, DC. She cannot read or write, but he can and makes his living from this skill-set. Mary finds herself in "his" political world.

The book is not footnoted but there is an extensive bibliography in the back. The e-version can be used for indexing. Any word can be searched there. The soft cover version has full color pages, but the hard cover one does not.

This book is the first of a series. Book 2 was published March 15, 2024. Book 3 is written but needs editing. All three books follow Mary's life within Florida's history, and at times, she, through her husband, has a front row seat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cindy Roe Littlejohn
• Release date: Jul 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218175405

Book preview

Chapter 1

A Place Called Carter’s Ford, 1827

S

ix-year-old Mary loved to listen to the adults when they thought none of the kids were near. She crawled out of bed and lay in the dark hall on the cool wooden floor.

In the parlor, her dad and uncles talked, sitting near the fire in their straight-backed chairs. Several leaned forward, but her father leaned back, his arms crossed and resting on his chest, watching everything through his unflinching dark eyes. 

The light flickered throughout the room. They were all tall, dark headed, and complexioned men, who took after their mother’s side of the family—the Carters. All had on their jackets and were clean shaven except seventeen-year-old Littleberry, who sported a bushy mustache.

Leaning forward in his chair, twenty-six-year-old Uncle James said, I don’t know, Littleberry. I hear people get real uncivilized with the fevers; but they call it the Florida humours. They say even the best men turn into rogues down there. He hesitated and added, I hear of all kinds of tales about fighting and shootings.

Mary didn’t know where this Florida was, but it didn’t sound good. The uncles talked about people doing bad things, about wildcats, and about alligators so thick you could cross a creek on their backs and never get wet. One uncle called it a frontier backwater.

But the worst were the Indians. She cringed because she had heard stories about her Grandma Walker’s relative killed by Indians; but the threat no longer existed in the South Carolina low country. The Indians were long since gone.

Uncle Littleberry added, But the ground is fertile, and the weather is so good the growing season is long enough for two or three cycles—perfect to grow cotton, raise cattle, and anything else you would want to plant. Plus, there’s few people settled with large portions of lands being swamp and pine barrens. They say there are wild cattle for the taking.

All the while, her twenty-seven-year-old dad leaned back in his chair with it propped against the wall, listening.

Uncle James added, Well, our lands lose soil after every rain; and the gullies get wider and deeper. I’ve heard about this area in Florida where the soil is prime for growing cotton.

Uncle Stephen, twenty-four, added, And if we all stay here, we’ll all go broke.

Her dad Jesse cleared his throat and said, The capital city is only about eight years old, and it isn’t even a state yet. It is hardly a territory. I’ve heard Tallahassee called a town of public officials, land speculators, and desperadoes. A couple of us need to go and check it out. A lingering silence ensued. Mary waited to see what came next, but she worried they might break up.

Littleberry said, I’d like to go. There’s a land agency in Tallahassee. An article I read says they have special information about the quality and extent of the most valuable lands.

Chilled, Mary rolled over on her back and pulled her knees up under her white cotton nightgown. Her long, thick, dark brown hair of soft wavy curls puddled behind her head on the rug. She thought, Florida doesn’t sound good. I wonder what Mama will say to this, and I can’t wait to tell Uncle David.

Her Uncle David, only two years older than she, more like an older brother than an uncle, was one of her father’s younger brothers. David grew up playing with Mary, the only other child near his age on the Walker land. There were eight years between him and Littleberry. David’s little brother Joel Junior (the youngest), born four years later, played more with Mary’s younger brother Henry.

Her father and older uncles continued their discussion, but she figured she should get back to bed. If her dad caught her here, he would skin her hide. The Florida Indians were less fearsome.

She crawled to the room she shared with her sister Susan and slid back into the cool bed covers. In the moonlit room, she laid her head on her pillow, but sleep didn’t come. She worried about this scary place called Florida.

***

No uncovered documents recorded Mary’s South Carolina home. Nor did they show why the family later moved to Florida. Only speculations can be made similar to the earlier created scenario.

***

Early 1800 South Carolinian low country houses resembled Old Florida homes. The low country climate was much like North Florida—humid and harsh. Most likely, Mary’s family constructed their home of timber set on pilings. The floors they raised to keep out the low country floodwater and to allow for cooling breezes underneath.

Carter's Ford Baptist Church

Carter's Ford Baptist Church - Personal Photo

Most homes were one room wide for better circulation, which allowed for better lighting and cut down on mold and mildew. In this story, though, Mary’s room had a long central hallway through the center of the house, which also allowed for central circulation between rooms on each side. Air circulated in a tunnel effect through the hallway; during hotter days, this area was the coolest place on the property.

The low country people raised their ceilings to take advantage of the sinking cooler air and because the rising heat needed a place to go. They made their porches deep to shade their interiors. This late 1700s style is still considered best for a subtropical climate such as Florida’s. These low country houses were like the later cracker houses of Florida.

For this story, Mary lived in Carter’s Ford. One can find Carter’s Ford on maps from this era in the South Carolina low country, seventy miles southwest of Charleston on the Little Salkehatchie River. In western Colleton County, Carter’s Ford is a natural ford northwest of Walterboro, the district seat. One can see the ford from a church of the same name.

Today, the closest community to Carter’s Ford is Lodge, South Carolina. Carter’s Ford is four miles north of Lodge on Highway 217, as is Carter’s Ford Baptist Church near the south bank of the river swamp. See Appendix 1 for more information on Carter’s Ford and its significance to the Walker family.

In the early 1800s, cities were small and clustered around big eastern seaports, such as Charleston, the biggest city nearby. City dwellers purchased their food, but the farmers of the low country produced most of their own. Beef cost 6 to 8 cents a pound, potatoes cost $.56 a bushel, and milk was valued at $.32 a gallon. Shoes cost $2.50 a pair, while the average man made $1,149 a year.

Mary’s home on the Little Salkehatchie River, spacious and roomy, sat high off the ground, with wooden stairs which reached from the yard to the porch, five feet off the ground.

Kids played underneath, and her mama warned them about snakes, though they seldom saw one. Of course, snakes or not, her mom never hesitated to send them underneath to fetch potatoes she had stored under the porch.

Mary loved the woods around the house and the river, full of hickories, bays, magnolias, and pines, a dappled canvas of shadows and sunshine. The fields beyond stretched far to the west, where her father and his brothers worked cotton and tended their cattle. She could not understand why her dad and uncles wanted to leave all this behind.

Sitting on the porch steps in a bonnet and a faded dark green cotton mid-knee-length dress, she had an awful thought. Would Grandma and Granddaddy Walker come too? And what about Granny and Papa Wilson? Surely they would come; but she wasn’t so sure, especially Granddaddy Walker. His horse threw him the other day, and he had been bedridden ever since.

She looked toward the river and wanted to go there, but all the babies would surely follow. When she was five, after she learned to swim, her mama took a gall berry switch to her for going there. Mama said if she went, the rest would go too.

It was her place, because she came before the others, to keep the kids outside and out from under her mama’s feet. Thank goodness for David and Joel Junior, though they were actually her uncles, who ran free on the place. They were her playmates because there weren’t any other kids their age nearby. The uncles were more like brothers and spent a lot of time in her yard.

She remembered last month when her Wilson cousins came to visit. They were older, and she, David, and Joel Junior got to go to the feeder creek to play with them. There, they dammed a little stream of water, which created a small pool. Later, the older boys threw a rope over a branch and made a rope swing. It was still there. She, David, Joel Junior, and her brother Henry couldn’t wait for them to come back so they would have someone older to play with.

She actually got into trouble for swinging off the rope swing. Her mama said she was too old to be swimming with the boys. She didn’t understand. When she was five and learning to swim, she was too young to go there at all; and now she was too old to go swimming with them. It was a puzzle.

When the Wilson cousins come back, she thought, I’ll tell Joseph what I heard last night in the hall. Both she and Joseph were about the same age, and they were both the firstborn. So they shared experiences. They had secrets between them. She smiled, and her little brother Henry noticed. Mary, what’cha grinning about?

Aw, nothing, and she got down off the steps and walked around back to see how long before dinner.

Mary’s mother Elizabeth, in the kitchen setting out ingredients, floured a section of the table for making dough. Her mama, a pretty woman, medium in stature, with her long light brown hair pulled back in a low bun at the base of her neck to keep it out of her way, worked from dawn to dusk cooking, cleaning, hoeing, and doing anything else needed to keep her family self-sufficient.

The kitchen was a stand-alone room with a table and shelves. In the fireplace, Elizabeth boiled a couple of sweet potatoes in a pot over the open fire. Mary leaned over the pot and said, We’re having mashed sweet potatoes tonight?

No, said her mother, We’re having sweet potato buns. Elizabeth got out nutmeg, sugar, yeast, and butter.

It would be a while before their noon meal, which they called dinner. She watched her mama make these buns many times, and the sweet potato dough had to rise, once as a whole and again when made into rolls. In another pot over the fire, Mary noticed a hearty beef vegetable soup cooking.

Dinner, their biggest meal of the day, gave reason for the men to come with big appetites after a hard morning of work. Those buns went a long way to fill them. They would miss her biscuits, though. Her mama’s biscuits were big as a cat’s head, which is why her mama called them ‘cat-head biscuits.’ They filled you up too.

She watched her many a time throw flour leavened with salt and soda into a big wooden bowl, use her fist to make a hole in the middle, and add lard or butter, which she cut through the flour with a fork and a knife, until the little pieces of lard and flour were the size of buckshot or smaller. She would add a little buttermilk, kneading and adding until she got it right. In her floury hands, she formed the biscuits; and her children loved a piece of the dough to play with. The boys held dough fights.

Mary’s family ate what her father and his family grew or hunted locally. Corn and beans were common, as was pork. Venison also provided meat. They preserved their food either by smoking, drying, or salting. Vegetables were kept in a root cellar or pickled. Because their family had cattle, they also had milk, butter, and beef.

Elizabeth’s kitchen wasn’t in her home, but in a room attached to the house by a raised walkway. Kitchens made a house hot, good for the winter but unbearable in the hot, sultry South Carolina summer. The walkway they called a dogtrot because the family’s dogs waited there for someone to drop food on their way into the house, where they served meals.

Kitchens also caught fire easily. Having a kitchen separated from the house was safer. Plus, it provided a warm place for baths in the winter or to hang out.

Mama, do you need any help?

No, Honey. Just make sure those young’uns stay out of trouble. Then they heard the hoard tear into the house, slamming the front door. Her mother looked at her with her serious time to get to work face and said, Well, at least they closed the door. You better go see what they’re in to. Elizabeth watched Mary run down the dogtrot and into the house.

She worried about Mary who, unlike her, was tall and grown up for her age with long, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Most six-year-olds were still playing and running without a care in the world, but Mary asked questions far beyond her years. She was bright and centered, too centered for a six-year-old.

In fact, Elizabeth thought Mary might be bored. She wished they had put her in school this year, but people around here usually waited until the kids were eight. Jesse could read and write, but he did not have the time to teach the kids himself.

Exhausted when he came in at night, Jesse had a few chores left after supper. It would be good for the boys to get old enough to help him more.

No known photos exist of Mary; but most likely, Mary’s hair darkened into the brunette seen in photos of her sister and a daughter.

Laura LightseySarah 'Susan' Walker Pillans

Mary's Youngest Daughter Laura & Oldest Sister Susan

Please note: All photos from these early eras show people as somber and not smiling. They weren't necessarily unhappy. It was impossible to hold a smile for the several minutes the technology needed to capture an image. If they moved their mouth or eyes at all during the sitting, the photo was blurred, and the significant dollars needed for the one photo were wasted.

No primary documents exist which show Mary’s parents. The author used a proof argument to determine her parentage. See Appendix 2

What Was America Like when Mary Lived?

Most likely her parents were farmers, as later documents attest. Four out of every five Americans still lived on farms, as did Mary and her family. They had to make their own goods by hand. They used these goods and also bartered and sold them, goods such as barrels, furniture, and even horseshoes.

Though the population increases were mostly due to high birth rates, still a low life expectancy persisted. If Mary lived long enough to see her twentieth birthday, she could expect to live another eighteen or nineteen years. It was lower for a man. The rates for slaves were lower still.

Mary would most likely die of disease or in childbirth. The main causes of death in her area were malaria and tuberculosis. Children, though, died of measles, mumps, and whooping cough.

In the 1790s, over thirty-five years earlier, the invention of the cotton gin changed the economic, social, and political life of South Carolina. It and the introduction of a new variety of cotton, which grew entirely throughout the southeast, increased cotton production rapidly. South Carolina’s economy did well under the invention and new variety.

With cotton production, the institution of slavery increased. Large plantations and slave labor became the norm for the Low Country with the seat of power in Charles Town (Charleston), where the people shaped their laws and government to perpetuate the institution.

Textile production grew in America, though mostly in the New England states. By 1830, textile production became the nation’s largest economy, and Mary’s part of the country was where cotton production excelled. Farm laborers earned $12 to $15 a month. A male teacher made $10 to $12 a month, and a female teacher $4 to $10. A servant earned only $2 to $2.50 a month.

In Mary’s part of the nation, draft animals mostly pulled commerce, whether by wagons, buckboards, or stages. Even trains were pulled by mules. Colleton District’s cotton and cattle commerce went by river down the Edisto River system into the Atlantic. Up near Carter’s Ford, though, the Little Salkehatchie was little more than a swamp stream, so their cotton had to be transported by wagon further southeast or taken to Charleston. Cotton factors in Charleston and Savannah were important to this system.

People traveled long distances by horseback, wagon, or an uncomfortable stagecoach. Her father and uncles may have grappled with whether to make a trip to Florida by ship or by land. If by land, should they use mules or oxen? The roads were rutted at best. Cargo moved at a rate of about twenty-five to thirty miles a day by a horse team.

Travel by train to Florida was not possible. By Mary’s birth about 1822, there were few steam railroads in all of America. Only five years earlier, in 1818, the first steam railroad crossed the Appalachian Mountains and fostered western expansion. None were operating between their area and Florida.

Steamboat travel was popular, as the first steamboat ferry service opened in 1807, six years after the birth of her father. During the War of 1812, when her father was only eleven, Andrew Jackson steamed back up the Mississippi from the Battle of New Orleans and on the Ohio to Pittsburgh, proving the feasibility of steamboat navigation and our nation’s mighty river system.

Andrew Jackson was now their president. Steamboat travel did take place between Charleston and St. Marks, Florida, the closest port to Tallahassee by sea.

…

Dressed in a dark blue, mid-length calico dress fitted at her waist, seven-year-old Mary sat down on the wooden pew next to her little brother Henry, who sat between her and her mother Elizabeth. On the other side of Mary sat her grandmother and grandfather Walker. Her grandfather was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a weathered, dark complexion. He reached across her grandmother and poked Mary in the ribs, giving her a tickle. She giggled and tried to hide behind her grandmother for protection.

The noisy Carter’s Ford Missionary Baptist Church housed congregants, filing in family by family, greeting each other, and catching up on the latest news. The little church, cooler inside because of its big windows which were opened to catch any breeze, posed a respite from the hot and muggy air outside.

While another gentleman distracted her grandfather, who rose to shake his hand, Mary looked down the pew at her Uncle Joel, who was close to her own age and sitting on the other side of her grandparents. He grinned, got up, and walked down the pew. His mother, Mary’s grandmother, made room for him to sit by Mary as the preacher started the service.

With hardly any time to visit, though, the two began whispering. Said Joel Junior, Why aren’t you coming to dinner today?

Shhh, said Mary’s mother with a frown at them both.

Mary waited a few moments. We have to go to Grandma Wilson’s.

Joel frowned. He didn’t like feeling left out, plus his next sibling David, at ten, always tried to get rid of him. He leaned back over to Mary, Do you think I can go with y’all?

Sure.

Shhhhh. This time it came from both sides, and Mary’s Grandmother Walker took a firm grip on Joel’s right wrist and yanked him to the dreaded seat between her and his father Joel Senior, who grinned at them both.

***

There is a tangled web of Walkers, Carters, and Wilsons in Colleton County. See Appendix 3 for a more in-depth description.

Mary’s Father Jesse Walker

From descriptions of other family members and from a DNA test on one of his descendants, Jesse was a tall man with dark hair and a dark complexion. He’s described here as tall, dark, and handsome. Below is a photo of his son, Archibald Jesse Walker, also known as Arch. This photo was used to describe Jesse.

Archibald Jesse Walker

Arch Walker

Jesse married Elizabeth Wilson about 1821; Mary, their oldest child, was born around 1822. They talked about migrating from Colleton District, South Carolina to Jefferson County, Florida, around 1828.

Mary’s father Jesse was the oldest child of Joel Senior. But in 1790 the state legislature wrote a new state constitution which abolished primogeniture or inheritance by the firstborn son. Jesse must have known he would have to build his own wealth, and this provides another reason for these brothers to leave South Carolina and begin afresh in a new land.

Who’s Who among the Groups of Walkers Who Moved to Jefferson County?

There are three different sets of Walker families who moved from Colleton District to Jefferson County, Florida. Mary’s came down in 1830, another set came in the 1850s, and a third moved into the county in the 1890s. For more detailed information on these three families, see Appendix 4.

#

Chapter 2

Good Soil and the Thrill of Adventure

M

ary’s mother Elizabeth remembered well the first time she heard her husband Jesse talk about Florida. One summer Sunday afternoon on the porch, while the younger children ran and squealed in the yard, he read from a Charleston paper several days old. With her long, light brown hair pulled back into a tight bun at her nape, she sat next to him, rocking and listening.

1823 Map Middle Florida

The area before Tallahassee and Monticello were founded.

"It says here: two men struck out, one from St. Augustine on the Atlantic Ocean and another from Pensacola on the Gulf of Mexico, and they met at a point in between. They named the place Tallahassee. The area is hilly and crisscrossed with streams and creeks with sand and clay soil good for agricultural crops."

Jesse’s father Joel Senior, mother Elizabeth, and his brothers also sat on the porch. The older kids dangled their legs off the porch or lounged on the steps. "The red hills around Tallahassee are good soil for cotton."

Jesse and his brothers discussed the opportunities and adversities of this strange new land. There’s going to be a big auction in Tallahassee, and land will go for cheap.

Joel Senior, who leaned with his chair back propped against the exterior wall of the house, puffed on a cigar and said, Well, it’s a big chance to go so far and not know what you’ll find when you get there.

Eighteen-year-old Littleberry added, But it’s the only possible way to know for sure.

Joel Senior took a long breath and exhaled it. He stared off across the yard while the others stared at Littleberry in silence. The younger Elizabeth heard a breeze moving high through the pines, filling the air with its fragrance.

Jesse filled the void. Well, we know for certain to stay here is an even bigger liability—for it will eventually break us all.

Joel Senior added, Well, you boys are gonna bust a gusset until you get it out of your system. You may as well check it out.

The land on their farms eroded and leached out the clay soil. Problems grew with fluctuations in cotton prices. The Walkers noticed their cattle fortunes, of a more meager return, did not fluctuate like the cotton economy.

Middle Florida

When the Florida Territory opened in 1821, it provided plentiful, cheap land with rich fertile soils and a long growing season in a temperate climate. In Middle Florida in the northern part of the state between the Apalachicola River to the west and the Suwanee River to the east, the area around Tallahassee, especially to its north and east, led a land rush. People who bought in the auction of 1824 resold their lands at a profit by 1825.

In the Tallahassee Intelligencer, dated August 20, 1827, the land is described as, "rich lands, susceptible of the culture of the most important and valuable among the productions of the United States" with an "ample supply of fish and fowl, on the small lakes, fed and sustained by springs of the purest water . . . a desirable place of residents . . . to the planter or farmer, the man of business or leisure."

The state had its detractors, though. John Randolph of Virginia once said, "Florida . . . is not worth buying. It is a land of swamps, of quagmire, of frogs and alligators and mosquitoes. . . . No man would immigrate to Florida—no, not from hell itself!"

Formed in 1824, Leon County, where two men placed the capital Tallahassee, stretched from the Ochlockonee River to the Suwanee River and reached as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. They formed it from Gadsden County to its west, which was created earlier from Jackson County, now west of Gadsden County. When they added Leon County, there were no Jefferson, Wakulla, Madison, Taylor, or any other counties between those two rivers.

The Treaty of Fort Moultrie in 1823, a treaty with several Indian nations, included this land. Spain held this land on two different occasions, as did the British, as part of the colony of West Florida.

Congress hired Abram Bellamy to build a road from Tallahassee to St. Augustine, the first federal road in the state. He built the road using slave labor in 1824. One can find parts of this road either as the Old St. Augustine Road, found in Leon and Jefferson Counties, or as Federal Road 1 in Madison County. Settlers created a town called Joaquina on the road, naming the village after a Spanish lady. They later spelled it Waukeenah. Though the Walkers didn’t know it, the Bellamys would become their neighbors.

David B. Macomb, Esquire, editor of the Tallahassee Intelligencer, described Tallahassee, the largest city in the region, as a distant eight miles from the Ochlockonee River and within ten to twelve miles of the head of navigation on the St. Marks and Wakulla Rivers. Near Tallahassee were three fairly large lakes: Miccosukee, Jackson, and Iamonia. In the 1820s, everyone expected a canal to be built from Lake Jackson passing through Tallahassee down to the head of the navigable rivers south of the city.

While the Walkers discussed Florida, Middle Florida grew. In 1825, the federal government held a public auction, where a crier put up land in 80-acre sections. The bidding began at $1.25 an acre. People hurried into the state.

One of the more famous buyers was Prince Achille Murat, great grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his wife Catherine Willis, a great grandniece of George Washington. In 1825, they moved to what would become Jefferson County but was still Leon County. They built their home on land which they called Lipona, located north of present-day Wacissa. Murat was an exiled prince of Napoli (Naples), and Lipona was Napoli with reversed syllables. The prince was the eldest son of Carolina, Napoleon’s youngest sister. Murat’s famous uncle had died four years earlier in 1821.

Others who moved into the part of Leon County now called Jefferson County were Bellamy and William Bailey, who gained their lands from original settlers and the government. Bellamy settled land west of the area called Elizabeth Community on the east side of Monticello. Sometimes speculators came, bought land, and sold tracts to later arrivals, something repeated over the history of Florida.

In January 1827, the territorial government divided Leon County. They formed Jefferson County within a few months after President Thomas Jefferson passed. The new county reached from the Leon County line, a part of which was bordered by the St. Marks River on the west and Lake Miccosukee. The county ran as far east as the Suwanee River. It stretched from the Georgia line to the Gulf of Mexico.

Early residents of Jefferson County included relatives of the oldest families of Virginia and the Carolinas, such as Randall, Wirt, Gamble, Gadsden, Epps, Randolph, Denham, Lewis, White, Mathers, and Wirick. A visitor to Waukeenah in 1828 said, "there is more intellect and intelligence to be found among the settlers of Florida than in the same population in any other new state."

***

Letters and journals described Jefferson County as picturesque and known for its "springs of pure water and a healthy climate with productive and valuable acreage." They described rolling hills, red clay, and deep pine forests.

By the end of the year, though, the territorial government divided the county to form Madison County. Except for an area north of Greenville, around Ashville, everything east of the Aucilla River became Madison County. For the genealogist, Jefferson at different times was in the provinces, colonies, or counties of East Florida, West Florida, Escambia, Jackson, Gadsden, and last Leon. Jefferson County would become the chosen home of the Walker family in Florida.

The territorial news promised a better life for the Walkers because of its cheap land, choice farming, and better opportunities for their offspring. For younger men like Littleberry, it offered the thrill of adventure and the opportunity to clear and settle new ground.

About a year later in 1829, on a beautiful spring morning, Jesse ate breakfast in Elizabeth’s kitchen and read a newspaper about Florida. Elizabeth, making biscuits, had her back to him. "The North-Carolina Star has an ad entitled ‘Florida Land Agency.’ It says there’s ‘An office for the purchase and sale of lands open in Tallahassee and that Florida has rich lands well adapted to Sea Island cotton and sugar cane.’" Elizabeth listened because, eventually, they were moving.

Richard C. Allen & Co. ran the ad. Florida’s territorial governor was William P. Duval, and the territory was less than ten years old. They would sell government land in Florida from the 1820s until after 1900, over seventy-five years.

Several weeks later, Mary watched her dad do something that she had never seen him do before. He hitched an older steer to a wagon and let him run, with the wagon bouncing along behind him. Daddy, she said, what are you doing?

He stood there watching the animal try to relieve itself of its new appendage. He replied, Nothing, except getting him used to pulling. I’m breaking him in to pull a wagon. This one’s going to be an ox. He turned and headed toward another older steer.

Oxen, Wikipedia

#

Chapter 3

Leaving Carter’s Ford, 1829

M

ary’s mother Elizabeth wiped her hands on her apron and pushed an escaping tendril of hair back into her bun. Sprinkling more salt into a large barrel, she looked back up to Carrie for another section of meat. Carrie and Sarah came to help from her mother-in-law. Jesse didn’t want to own slaves, but he thankfully didn’t complain when his parents offered their hands to help with the work. They sent Hinx to help Jesse too.

There were wood boxes and barrels everywhere, in the house, the smokehouse, the springhouse, and in the barn. This morning, they packed the smoked meats from the smokehouse in salt, one of the last chores. Earlier, they had stored the flour, cracked corn, and lard. Carrie stood on a barrel with her head in the rafters, passing down the sections of smoked meat. Miss Lizbeth, the Missus says there’s Indians where you’re going. Ain’t you ’fraid?

Elizabeth looked around to make sure the kids weren’t near enough to hear. Yea, I am a little; but Jesse says they got it all worked out and everybody is living peaceable now. She wasn’t sure, though. From hearing the old people talk, the Indians can get peaceable and get all riled again as easily.

Smokehouse

Smokehouse, Wikipedia

She especially didn’t like what the Carters had to say about them. Since the Indians killed Jesse’s own Carter kin, none of the Carters trusted them any further than they could spit. No, she wasn’t sure at all.

The family packed for days. They packed only the essentials and sold or gave the rest away. When they realized they were overloaded, they had to go back through the essentials and cull again. Elizabeth hated leaving behind several of her grandmother’s items, extra pots and pans. An old rolling pin was in sorry shape. Keeping them was silly, but she liked to look at the old pin and remember her grandmother in her kitchen.

In the house, she and Jesse lined the wide hall with chests of clothes, linens, and the handiwork of the women—embroidery, tatted items, and quilts. She also packed her dining room table to which Jesse objected because of its weight.

She won. The Wilsons were known for their stubbornness. It had been a running battle about the weight of their household belongings. She lost enough and would leave behind her mama’s sideboard, her own china, and the chairs to her dining room table. In her kitchen one morning, she stood facing him with her hands on each hip, her lips pursed. I have no intention of leaving behind my table.

Monticello was a new town and the county itself less than two years old. It might lack larger stores and a variety of goods like Walterboro had. Afraid of what might be unavailable, she packed an old loom and spinning wheel in case they couldn’t get fabrics.

They would use her mama’s china while on the trail, either that or leave it at home. She couldn’t part with it. Jesse went along with the idea at first but said one night, We’ll look plain stupid eating off those fancy dishes beside a tent and fire. His mama stepped in and gave them a set of tin plates and cups which weighed practically nothing.

They packed a barrel with those dishes, along with a wooden box filled with plenty of warm quilts to keep off the cold when they camped during the chilly October and November nights. She made sure these got packed on top, where they could find them when needed.

They were almost finished packing. The family planned a farewell party at Jesse’s parents’ home late that afternoon. She and the girls wore their Sunday best, the dresses Elizabeth made from the fabric Jesse brought back for her birthday from his last trip to Charleston. She packed the dresses too, in the chest with the linens, which she squirreled away unbeknown to Jesse, not to be seen again until they got to Monticello.

Early the following morning, Elizabeth packed all the new clothes while Mary anxiously watched the new dress disappear. Florida, Elizabeth thought to herself. The next time I see this dress, I’ll be in Florida. She heard her sister coming up the front steps to help her do the final packing and get ready for the following morning. They were leaving at first light. She dropped what she was doing and went to the front door.

Charity burst through and tears formed. They might never see each other again since the distance was so great. Jesse said it was a little over four hundred miles to where they were going in Florida. It would take them over two months to make the journey. She would follow Jesse anywhere, but she would surely miss her family.

She tried to study Charity’s face to etch it into her own memory. She stared at her upturned nose and dark brown hair, looking much more like their mom every day. Charity, like Elizabeth, was an attractive woman. Gathered around her in the folds of her skirt were her children. They stood in the long hall, staring at all the boxes and barrels.

The two women moved to the kitchen. Strung high over the hearth were shuck beans hanging to dry. Working together, they took them down, removed the strings, and stored the beans in a cotton feed sack. Weeks earlier, the dried pole beans were picked, and Elizabeth stringed and snapped