Liberty

Hosford native Lonzell Duggar has contributed much to his community

June 19, 2010
Hosford native Lonzell Duggar has contributed much to his community

submitted by Ruby Duggar and Wanda Musgrove Lonzell Duggar was born June 3, 1927. He was one of 14 children born to Wright Duggar and Blanch Peacock Duggar. His father died when Lonzell was eight years old, leaving 10 living children. Shortly thereafter he went to work to help support the family, driving a mule and wagon hauling two barrels of turpentine to the loading ramp which was located in front of what is now the Blue Creek Methodist Church. When he was 10 years old he went to work sawing logs. He worked three days and went to...

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Remembering Wade Hampton Stoutamire

June 19, 2010
Remembering Wade Hampton Stoutamire

by Deborah (Jean ) Stoutamire Ris Danial Stoutamire was born in Orange County, South Carolina in 1818, of Swiss/German heritage. As a young man, he moved south settling on the Ochlocknee River in Liberty County in 1852. Elizabeth C. Gardner, whose family immigrated from Scotland in the 1700s, was born in South Carolina in 1838 and moved with her family to Florida in 1852. The Gardners, with the exception of Elizabeth, later moved on to Texas. She married Danial Stoutamire in 1857. They had eight children (three daughters and five sons): Dee Mordecai, J.D., William David, Hadassah (Bradwell), Carrie...

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Hester Gary Rankin, Sr. was one of the first Navy SEALs

June 19, 2010
Hester Gary Rankin, Sr. was one of the first Navy SEALs

Written and submitted by Thomas Morgan Rankin My father, Hester Gary “Hester”  Rankin, Sr. (1927-1979), has the unique distinction of being one of the first of an honorable and prestigious group of sailors now recognized as United States Navy SEALs. Like many young men in Liberty County during World War II, he answered his country’s call to serve in the military to do what he could to stop the German and Japanese war machines.   In 1944, at the age of seventeen he approached his parents, Alto Thomas Rankin (1880-1963) and Nettie Forehand Rankin (1888-1946), for permission to join...

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Fence Post Tells A Story

June 19, 2010
Fence Post Tells A Story

by Fran Rigsby Topical Story Chairman Liberty Heritage Book A weathered pine fence post once on the property of the Butler-Morgan Funeral Home in Quincy holds pieces of Liberty County history. Charles McClellan worked at the funeral home in 1962, became a partner in 1976, and was overseeing the paving of the parking lot in 1977. He decided to save two feet of that pine post. He took it inside and stored it until some future date. Firmly nailed to the post are now only thirteen pieces of five inch by almost two inches of weathered aluminum tags with...

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Early memories of Telogia, Florida

June 19, 2010
Early memories of Telogia, Florida

by Bobby G. Pickron, Bristol When I was about three years old, my family moved into a “section house” along the railroad tracks in Telogia. Mr. John Wynn and his wife, Vera, operated a store in the southeast corner of the intersection of what is know today as Highways 65 and 67. The Wynns lived on the second floor above the store. Also located in the building, on the south end, was a garage owned by Mr. Wynn. My uncle, Francis Marion (Bill) Pickron, was employed there as a mechanic. Injured in the woods One event that stands out...

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When Hogs Roamed Free

June 19, 2010
When Hogs Roamed Free

by Randall Musgrove of Hosford One of the things that has always fascinated me was working with wild hogs in the woods. What I like was catching several in a pen and being able to tell which pigs belonged to which sow, and then catching and marking them according to the mark on the sow. When all the pigs were marked with the same mark as their mama, the small males or boars would be “cut” (castrated) so they could get fat and become food for the table as soon as they got in good shape. A lot of...

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The history of the Langston Ferry

June 19, 2010

by Reddick Langston My grandfather, Reddick Langston, moved to Wakulla County, Florida, with his family from Florence, South Carolina, in 1870. In 1876 or 1877, upon completion of a road through a virgin forest which ran across Stoutamire property in Liberty County, Florida, to the West bank of the Ochlockonee River, and also upon completion of a road through Langston property in Wakulla County to the east bank of the Ochlockonee River, Langston constructed a barge capable of ferrying traffic across the river. The traffic included horsedrawn buggies and wagons and, in later years, cars and trucks. The most...

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The lives of Jabez and Catherine Victoria Harrell

June 19, 2010
The lives of Jabez and Catherine Victoria Harrell

Submitted by Maxwell Harrell of Bristol Jabez and Catherine Victoria Harrell set up their homestead in Bristol, Florida, next to the First United Methodist Church, in 1908. Having four acres to start, the couple raised 11 children in that home. The children of Jabez and Catherine Victoria Harrell were sons Jack, Clayton, Fred, Leo, Jabie and Maxwell and daughters Susie, Dollie, Jessie, Sadie and Ruby. There was a 10-year age difference between the oldest child and the youngest. Jabez served as the Postmaster in Bristol for 35 years and was elected County Judge in 1937. He also sold real...

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Liberty County’s first phones installed to monitor fires and summon help

June 19, 2010
Liberty County’s first phones installed to monitor fires and summon help

by Teresa Eubanks As the area’s first forester, Bertus Eubanks had a rare luxury for folks living in Liberty County in the late 1930s and early 1940s: a wall-mounted hand crank telephone. It wasn’t for casual chatting, it was a vital link for activating firefighters when a blaze broke out among the thousands of acres of forestland that made up the state’s least-populated county. At that time there were probably less than 10 telephones scattered strategically through the county. One was at the home of Ross and Elenezar Summers in Orange. Another was at Wynn’s Grocery Store in Hosford....

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Travels with John Hosford’s ghost

June 19, 2010
John Hosford

by David Morrill When I make the two-hour trip from my home in Tallahassee to the North Florida Gulf coast, I cannot escape the fact that I pass through a territory that was once familiar to John W. Hosford. The countryside, mostly state and national forest, probably looks much as it did to Hosford 140 years ago. From north to south it unfolds from rolling hills to flat coastal plain, from live oak and long-leaf pine to cabbage palm, slash pine and scrub oak. Even the small communities along the way, Sumatra, Carrabelle and Magnolia Bluff, would be familiar...

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