Calhoun

A look back at Blountstown High School

June 20, 2010

by Lisa Grice The original part of the building pictured above, identified as Blountstown High School, was constructed in 1904, and was a T-shaped frame building with four rooms. The front room and the steeple were added around four years later. This picture, from 1908, commemorates that addition. This school was located across the street from the current Blountstown High School on Main Street between present day State Road 20 and State Road 69. This building, along with a two story frame building built in 1888, served students in the Blountstown area until the first brick building was finished...

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The John W. Callahan: 1907-1923

June 20, 2010

by Norman Krentzel The John W. Callahan , pictured above, was named for the owner of the Callahan Line. She was built in Apalachicola in 1907 using parts taken from an earlier vessel known as the Gertrude. She was 153 feet long by 34.6 feet wide. Captain Poley McDaniel, one of the last of the riverboat captains who lived until the 1980s, related many stories about his experiences on the Callahan. Poley was 12 years old when he started working on the riverboats in 1907. He worked with his father, W.A. McDaniel, who was a captain on various riverboats....

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The W.C. Bradley at Neal’s Landing in 1910

June 20, 2010

Pictured above is an old postcard featuring a photo of the W.C. Bradley as it passes Neal’s Landing in Calhoun County. The picture is thought to have been taken around 1910. The sternwheeler was commissioned in 1898 and worked the rivers until she sank at Aspalaga in 1919. The Bradley had cabins and a dining salon on the second tier, which was called the sun deck. The third deck, known as the Texas, served the same purpose as the dome on an observation railroad car. At the top was the pilot house, where the captain had an unobstructed view...

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Taking a spin in “The Chicken Killer”

June 20, 2010

Albert Cayson, father of retired Blountstown postmaster Gerald “Bug” Cayson, is pictured above back in 1905 when he went for spin with Dr. Elmore (at the wheel) in a car that quickly earned the dubious nickname of “The Chicken Killer.” Cayson said his father was about 25 years old when the photo was taken. At that time, he was in the timber business and later had a cattle ranch. He later went on to establish a ferry that took vehicles, people and animals across the Apalachicola River between Blountstown and Bristol. While the information accompanying the photograph in the...

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Miss Chaffa returns to her family home

June 20, 2010

by Norman Krentzel Miss Chaffa returned to Ocheesee to reclaim her father’s property in 1895. After hiring an attorney, Francis C. Carter, she accomplished the task, recovering 2,700 acres, and refurbished the Gregory House built by Jason Gregory. “She made the surrounding lands and the house a place of beauty,” said Mrs. Sam Gay of Altha in an interview in 1956 by C.H. Schaeffer. Mrs. Gay was a child at the time and lived on a farm four miles to the west of the great house. She recalled that all the rooms in the house were painted in different...

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“Miss Chaffa” – An Extraordinary Woman

June 20, 2010

By Norman Krentzel Miss Chaffa returned to Ocheesee to reclaim her father’s property in 1895. After hiring an attorney, Francis C. Carter, she accomplished the task, recovering 2,700 acres, and refurbished the Gregory House. “She made the surrounding lands and the house a place of beauty,” said Mrs. Sam Gay of Altha in an interview in 1956 by C.H. Schaeffer. Mrs. Gay was a child at the time and lived on a farm four miles to the west of the great house. She recalled that all the rooms in the house were painted in different colors, and the furnishings...

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The late T. Drew Branch recounts his one and only steamboat adventure

June 20, 2010

by Joe and Monica Cook, from “River Song: A Journey Down the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers” Sumatra, Florida, sits on the east bank of the Apalachicola in the Apalachicola National Forest. It is a tiny community once kept busy by railroads, steamboats, and the production of lumber and turpentine. There we met T. Drew Branch, the eighty-seven-year-old town postmaster, marking time in his ten-by-twenty-foot whitewashed clapboard post office. Yellow flies and gnats swarmed at the entrance, which was flanked by a pair of yaupon holly bushes. The building’s interior was stifling, but Branch, a town native and a former...

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Ocheesee Landing was once a busy place

June 20, 2010

by Norman Krentzel “If the water’s knee-deep with no snags, we can land,” the riverboat captains would yell at those on shore. And it was true ‑ the riverboats seldom drafted more than 18 inches of water, many of them less. The Apalachicola River was a mighty trade route through the Panhandle of Florida that continued, via its tributaries, on up into Georgia and eastern Alabama. It forms at the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and the Chipola joins it downstream at Wewahitchka. However, the riverboats serviced landings as far north as Bainbridge on the Flint River...

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Engine #444 was the last steam locomotive on the M&B Railroad

June 19, 2010
Engine #444 was the last steam locomotive on the M&B Railroad

Steam locomotive Number 444 was built in 1911 at the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia for the Brinson railroad. It was subsequently owned by Savannah & Albany Railroad Company. It operated as late as 1947 as a “stand-by” locomotive after the first M&B diesel locomotives had arrived. Engine #444 was the last of seven steam locomotives that served on the M&B. The M&B Railroad operated for 63 years (1909 – 1972) between Marianna and Blountstown. It provided passenger service until 1929. After that, the M&B shipped agricultural products and lumber. During its operation, the 29-mile line was Florida’s shortest...

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Railroad had a vital role in Blountstown’s growth

June 19, 2010

Written in 1949 by Wallace Finlay Blountstown Railroad Company–Incorporated in June, 1908, the Marianna & Blountstown Railroad Company rolled its first train into this little town in September 1909. People came in from Calhoun’s swamps and pine barrens, from the Jackson County line all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, which at that time was the southern boundary of Calhoun County. Many of them had never before seen an iron horse. From that day the trains have continued to roll. Rufus Pennington, head of Blountstown Manufacturing Company, served as first president of the road, and was the man...

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