Cracker Times And Pioneer Lives

Brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, the two shared the adventure, hardship and tragedy that characterized Florida's pioneer era.

Wild and wooly recollections from the Florida frontier Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives brings together the reminiscences of two pioneers who came of age in antebellum Florida's Columbia County and the nearby Suwannee River Valley. Though they held markedly different positions in society, they shared the adventure, thrill, hardship, and tragedy that characterized Florida's pioneer era. With sensitivity, poignancy, and humor, George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams record anecdotes and memories that touch upon important themes of frontier life and reveal the remarkable diversity of Florida's settlers. Keen's story typifies that of many "Cracker" families. Born in Georgia, he moved with his parents to the Florida Territory in 1830 in search of a better life. He grew up in a dangerous yet exciting setting, and as an old man at the turn of the twentieth century recorded his colorful memories with a verve and vernacular reminiscent of the Georgia humorist, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. Keen writes about subsistence farming, cattle grazing, the Seminole wars, marriage customs, medical practices, politics, the abundance of wildlife, and the paucity of educational opportunities. Admittedly not a Cracker, Sarah Pamela Williams was the daughter of a nationally recognized man of letters. In 1847 she moved to Columbia County's seat of Alligator (Lake City) and later married into one of northeast Florida's prominent planter families. She recorder her recollections of a life brightened by social functions, travel, and cultural endeavors. Offering a rare glimpse into Florida's Civil War homefront, Williams tells of making clothes of homespun, tithing crops to the Confederacy, fearing hostilities just thirteen miles from her home, and surviving as a widow in the lean postwar era. Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives features biographical sketches of more than 280 persons mentioned by Keen and Williams in their writings, many of whom subsequently pioneered settlement in the Florida peninsula.

This Florida Book Awards Gold Medal-winner in the Cooking category celebrates the Sunshine State’s culinary heritage—from turtle soup to boiled peanuts. Though starting in one-story shacks in the piney woods of the Panhandle, Cracker cooking in Florida has evolved with our tastes and times and is now just as home in high-rise apartments along the glistening waterways. When supplies were limited and the workday arduous, black coffee with leftover cornbread might serve as breakfast. Today’s bounty and life’s relative ease bring mornings with lattes and biscotti, biscuits and sausage gravy. What’s on the plate has changed, but our heritage infuses who we are. As we follow the path laid out by gastronomic pioneers, this culinary quest, guided by sixth-generation Cracker Joy Sheffield Harris, will whet your appetite with recipes and sumptuous reflections. Pull up a chair and dig in.

Austin Colony Pioneers is a collection of many families that came to Texas in its earliest days and the German settlers and their influences upon the growth of Texas. The book is filled with many anecdotes, short stories, obituaries and articles gleaned from area newspapers. These early families intermarried and not only filled Austin’s original colony but their descendants went to every corner of America. The book traces many of these early pioneers into the present day and also gives their roots before they came to Texas. Colonel William Barret Travis of the Alamo has been a constant element of Betty’s historical research because her family was connected to him in many ways. There are descriptions of persons of historical note such as that of General George Custer and his command of Hempstead, Waller County, after the Civil War. There are stories of towns that once flourished and today are no more. The pages are packed with accounts such as the Bell-Schaffner feud and Shootout in Sealy, Texas and tales of infamous Six Shooter Junction, of Elizabeth Ney, the famous sculptress, and many other historical places and persons of interest.

After killing a man in a duel, Louis Fran ois was forced to flee Florence and his privileged life of a nobleman. He started over in the French colony of St. Domingue (Haiti). He married, took on the Richard surname of his extended family, started his own family and a successful plantation. The Slave Revolt of 1791 forced them to flee. They made their way to Florida, a Spanish colony. Despite enduring the privations of pioneer life and Indian attacks, the Richards survived and even prospered. During the Patriot War of 1812, Georgian rebels devastated the area and forced the Richards to abandon their plantations. Francis Jr. returned and operated a sawmill plantation. He fathered 11 children with his slaves; educated, and provided for them all. Raising 15 children on his plantation during the "Seminole Wars," brother John Charles became the progenitor of a long line Florida Richards. While most members of the "Richard Clan" were prominent citizens, quite a few were of dubious character, and met violent deaths.

This unusual, richly illustrated guidebook details Florida's historic pioneer and cracker villages, describing the homes, work-ways and folk-ways of the states early settlers, through preserved and tangible objects and structures. Across the state, dedicated local historians and community groups have carefully preserved and moved 19th- and early 20th-century structures, including both homes and workplaces, to specially created villages in order to display the lives of Florida pioneers. The tools, houses, farms, gardens, barns, sugar and turpentine mills, churches and schools that are gathered into twenty separate sites are described here, for the first time in a single volume. Through the rich collections of household utensils, mills, and structures, the visitor can appreciate the details of the everyday life, work, hardships, and recreation of past generations of Floridians. The book is an indispensable handbook and guide for the casual or dedicated historic tourist as well as for parents and teachers seeking to expose young people to the vanishing lifestyles of Florida's pioneers. Contact information, hours, special events, and detailed descriptions of each structure at the sites provide the casual or dedicated visitor with both practical facts for arranging trips, and the specific family histories of the pioneers who built and lived in the homes.

Focusing on three key stages of the criminal justice process, discipline, punishment and desistance, and incorporating case studies from Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia, the thirteen chapters in this collection are based on exciting new research that explores the evolution and adaptation of criminal justice and penal systems, largely from the early nineteenth century to the present. They range across the disciplinary boundaries of History, Criminology, Law and Penology. Journeying into and unlocking different national and international penal archives, and drawing on diverse analytical approaches, the chapters forge new connections between historical and contemporary issues in crime, prisons, policing and penal cultures, and challenge traditional Western democratic historiographies of crime and punishment and categorisations of offenders, police and ex-offenders. The individual chapters provide new perspectives on race, gender, class, urban space, surveillance, policing, prisonisation and defiance, and will be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of criminal justice, law, police, transportation, slavery, offenders and desistance from crime.

This book brings into sharp relief the way in which gender, race, slavery, and status shaped the lives of children in the American South before, during, and after the Civil War. She argues that the identities children developed in the antebellum era shaped their responses to the upheavals of the war years and their lives after the war's conclusion.