Economic chaos strikes Jackson County. What should we do?

Dale Cox is a retired business leader and journalist
who lives in the "suburbs" of Two Egg, Florida. He has
received national awards for literature and investigative
journalism and has managed multi-million dollar
media outlets and news operations in locations
across the United States.

The following is an open letter to the people and leaders of our community.

Jackson County residents are awakening to a financial crisis that is striking our community from the top to bottom.

The move to close Fire Rescue stations on some days due to insufficient staffing numbers brought the situation home to many, but the county's budget situation is neither sudden nor unexpected. In fact, it has been building for years and numerous local citizens and business people have raised concerns about it only to be promised callbacks that never came or reassurances that the matter was being studied.

In one case a local businessman was even told by an intermediary that he should get behind a specific county commissioner politically if he wanted to be heard.

So what happened? Where did the money go? What can we do about it?

Here are some answers that you have not read in the Jackson County Floridan or Jackson County Times. In their defense, the former often blames lack of staffing for its inability to cover key stories in the community while the latter sometimes says that it only covers "good news."

What is the problem?

The answer, in short, is that we are in the depths of an economic recession that goes far beyond what the rest of the nation suffered in 2008-2009.

Full-time employment in the county is down dramatically since around 2006 due to NAFTA which was a factor in the closings of the local Russell Corporation plants and facilities as well as other industrial operations; the closure of Dozier School for Boys due to the controversy and publicity that surrounded the facility; the loss or downsizing of businesses that supplied these facilities and, last but not least, a dramatic decline in the number of locally owned small businesses.

The net result of the above is that we have lost thousands of full-time jobs with benefits while at the same time local public assistance rolls have skyrocketed.

Financially, many more people in our community are hurting than our leaders seem to realize.

Consider these two statistics:

• Median income in Jackson County has declined from $36,442 in 2009 to $35,470 in 2016. This is a drop of $972 over seven years. As economic development experts will tell you, that is a shocking decline.
• The number of businesses in Jackson County has dropped from 863 in 2007 before the national recession began to 768 in 2017. In other words, we have lost 10% of our business community since 2007.

As Jackson County is learning the hard way, unemployment numbers do not always tell the true story of what is happening to a community's economy. Unemployment numbers, for example, do not count people who have been unemployed for so long that they no longer receive unemployment compensation. Nor do they count the people once employed here who have been forced to move away in search of work.

Young people are leaving for better opportunities in other places.

You often hear people say that their son or daughter, niece or nephew had to leave Jackson County to find a good job. This is more true today than ever.

Here are the facts:

• Jackson County has 1,906 fewer people in the primary working age demographic (18-65) than it did just 8 years ago. 
• Local officials often blame this on population aging - or as one county leader actually put it - "old people dying off." Census data, however, suggests that this is not the case. The county's population of residents over the age of 65 - many of whom still work to make ends meet - has indeed grown by 1,253 people since 2010. Unfortunately, we have lost 2,715 people in the 18-65 and 17 and under age groups. 
• Jackson County has lost 617 households since 2009. If you think you are seeing more "for sale" signs along our roads and streets, you are.
• The drain in our labor force is a very real problem when it comes to attracting new industry to the community. If we can't demonstrate that we have a strong, prepared labor force, we can't attract industry. No factory wants to open somewhere only to find that it can't hire enough people to run its lines.

Sales Tax collections are down.

The loss of 95 businesses, the decline in population and the loss of full-time jobs are all impacting the retail business in Jackson County. Here are the facts:

• Sales tax collections in the main category are down dramatically over the first 8 months of 2017-2018 when compared to the same line item for the same months in the year before the recession (2006-2007).
• The drop is bigger than you might think. This year, collections in this category are down by $244,823 from their level in the first 8 months of 2006-2007.

Money that one decade ago was helping to fund local government is simply no longer there in the amount that it was back then.

Gasoline Tax collections are down.

Gasoline taxes fund road work and improvements in Jackson County. These monies too, however, are on the decline. 

• Using 1-cent local option gas tax collections to measure this decline, the amount brought in during the first 7 months of the 2017-2018 fiscal year is down by $8,394 since 2006/2007.
• The real number has dropped from $391,034 during the first 7 months of 2006/2007 to $382,640 during the first 7 months of this fiscal year.
• All other gas tax collections that benefit the county are also down. 

As families cut back on expenses or leave the area, their need to buy gasoline here decreases. When fuel purchases go down, money coming into county coffers also goes down. 

Tourism is way down.

Jackson County had a small but thriving tourism industry in 2006/2007. It has dropped by around 10% since that time.

• Tourism tax (i.e. "bed tax") collections in Jackson County were $124,158 for the first four months of 2017-2018 (the most recent numbers available). This is a drop of $12,032 in actual dollars from 2006-2007 when collections totaled $136,190.
• Just as sales tax collections reflect retail sales in a community, tourism tax collections reflect hotel and campground stays. Fewer people are staying here overnight than were doing so one decade ago.
• Attendance at Blue Springs is down dramatically since the county commission doubled entrance fees. Numbers for the 2017 summer season show a decline of nearly 15,000 visitors since 2014, when fees were increased. Money collected at the gate is down since that year. Concession sales are down since that year. Boat rental fees are down. Pavilion rental fees are down. Total revenue from the park is down by around $18,000 from 3 years ago. If that trend continues this summer, the park will make less money than it did before fees were doubled while serving nearly 20,000 fewer local residents and visitors.

It should be mentioned that efforts designed to help attract more visitors to Jackson County have often been blunted or ignored by county administration. Consider the following:

• The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity funded and approved the results of a $20,000 study on ways to improve tourism traffic along U.S. 90 in Jackson County. The plan was prepared by this writer and approved not only by the state, but also by the Tourist Development Council and the Board of County Commissioners. Since that time, several years ago, nothing has been done implement any of the recommendations. One county official even informed a group in Sneads last year that he "hadn't had time to read it" and wasn't sure what he had done with his copy. 
• Local citizens raised and gave to the county more than $5,000 in funding for boardwalks on the Bellamy Bridge trail, an amount matched by the Tourist Development Council. County officials gave assurances that the money was sufficient for the purpose. Despite annual promises to build the footbridges - which will allow access to the popular tourism attraction during most times of high water - they still have not been built. The county now says that it has spent the money donated for the purpose and despite repeated requests has failed to answer specific questions about unauthorized expenditures from the fund.
• Requests that the Tourist Development Council lead a group to organize an annual reenactment of the Battle of Marianna were rejected. A reenactment of the battle staged for its 150th anniversary in 2014 attracted thousands of people. 
• One of the landings on the Merritt's Mill Pond canoe trail has been closed by property owners and has not been replaced. 
• The Upper Chipola River paddling trail, approved by the state after the county promised to maintain it, is barely maintained.
• The county's decade old effort to create an approved plan for development of tourism resources along Lake Seminole from Neals Landing on Highway 2 to Sneads is still not complete.
• The fall in tourism tax revenue is also reflected by the decline of gas tax collections. With our population and median income falling, our failure to return to pre-recession/pre-Dozier controversy levels of tourism has is hurting us in areas far beyond hotel stays.

"Other places have the same problems."

This is a common excuse heard in Jackson County, but is it true? Consider these facts:

• Holmes County to our west and Gadsden County to our east have increased their sales tax revenues during the same time that Jackson County has seen its revenues fall. In fact, those two counties along have increased sales tax collections by $879,000 during the period described above while Jackson County has suffered a decline of $244,000.
• Washington County and Holmes County, on US 90 and I-10 west of Jackson County, have increased their 1-cent local option gas tax collections while Jackson County has experienced a drop. Washington County's collections are up by $8,540 and Holmes County's by $2,076 while Jackson is down by more than $8,000.
• Tourism is increasing in Washington and Holmes Counties to our west and Gadsden County to our east, while falling in Jackson County. Washington County has increased its tourism tax collections over the period described above by $4,896. Holmes County is up by a remarkable $14,794. Gadsden County is up by $25,104. This reflects an increase of more than $40,000 in tourism tax collections by adjoining rural counties while Jackson County's dropped by more than $12,000.

What is the answer?

This is the question that many of us have been pondering for years. I have discussed the very same trends outlined above with county administrators, county commissioners, tourism leaders, other business people and at the Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Jackson County class for years. Others have done the same. Our inability to get anyone to pay attention has been so frustrating that I have sometimes wanted to bang my head on my desk.

The recent news about Jackson County Fire Rescue was just such a moment. Those who pay attention to such things have known for years that this problem was coming. The problem of our trained employees leaving for other places so they can better support their families is not new, and yet years have passed with no major effort to provide better pay so they can stay here. 

Nothing written here should be taken as a criticism of any person or group of people. My goal is to put the facts and my thoughts on them out there for my friends and neighbors to consider. I am an eternal optimist and I believe that we can reverse these alarming trends - and should have already reversed them - but time is growing short. I am not running for public office and have no plans to do so. I hope that this will be seen as what it is, an open letter to the people and leaders of Jackson County with thoughts and ideas from someone who just wants to help.

Here are some recommendations that I have after studying the numbers. Your ideas may be better than mine. It is time for us to start thinking and listening and - above all else - taking action.

• Clerk of Courts Clayton O. Rooks should lead a full audit of county funding to tell us how much is coming in and where it is going. This would help our leaders see places from which money can be moved or cut to assure that our most important county services - Fire Rescue, Law Enforcement, etc. - are not only funded but improved. Reducing these services is not an option. This would also help us identify any financial improprieties.
• County commissioners should consider an immediate moratorium on non-essential travel outside Jackson County by their employees. This money is needed to keep Fire Rescue running.
• Work with Chipola College, Baptist College of Florida, Troy University, FSU, FAMU, UF and other institutions to provide real training so county employees can improve themselves. We can always get better and improving the skills of the people who work for us is a good way to help them get better and more efficient at their jobs.
• Do not, under any circumstance, increase another tax or fee until our economic situation is turned around. Real people are suffering here. Median income is down. Our working age people are fleeing and taking their children with them. Use the money that we have to make things better. It can be done. Private businesses do it all day, everyday. 
• Don't assume that every thought, criticism or idea is political. Most people here just want to see things get better. 
• Work together. The county should work together with Sneads, Marianna, Graceville and other municipalities to find areas of agreement that all can support (and vice versa). Communities in specific parts of the county should work together. Malone, Campbellton and Graceville, for example, have Highway 2 in common. Perhaps they could work together to improve that corridor of the county? The same is true for the Historic Highway 90 Corridor that passes through Sneads, Grand Ridge, Marianna and Cottondale and the US 231 corridor that connects Campbellton, Jacob City, Cottondale, Alford and the Compass Lake area.
• Clean up! Make our interstate exits the cleanest and prettiest in Florida. You never know who is going to come off that highway to look around while out scouting locations for a new business or industry.
• Lower the entrance fees at Blue Springs back to $2 per person so local families - especially those with reduced incomes as a result of this situation - can afford to go.
• Work to make it easy to do business in Jackson County. Reduce fees for startups. 
• Find a way to fix our awful cell and internet service. Let's face the fact: If we want to have a 21st century economy, we have to provide the infrastructure to attract 21st century businesses. Large swaths of Jackson County have no cell phone service and substandard (or no) internet service. Hold the feet of our existing providers to the fire and seek out other companies willing to solve the problem at THEIR expense in exchange for a chance to make money here.
• Invest in our young people. Seek out high school students here in Jackson County who want to major in business, tourism, engineering, law enforcement, fire rescue services, parks and recreation and more. Invest in them by helping with their college expenses in exchange for a commitment that they will return and work here for a set length of time. Provide them with internships and mentoring. If we can afford to help only one, that is one more than we can count on now.
• Listen to local business owners. They can tell you their stumbling blocks to growing and hiring more people.
• Seek out success stories in other places, not to duplicate but to learn how they created success. We have our own special place and want to keep it that way. We can always learn from others, though, about how they made their communities better places.
• County and city administrators and elected officials should return calls and answer emails from constituents.
• Finish projects that are on the drawing board. Get the Historic Highway 90 Corridor plan going. Washington and Holmes Counties are already ahead of us. We want to be a part of the success that they are already realizing.
• Dream. Look for ways to do something good instead of searching out stumbling blocks.
• Stop blaming others. Let's work together. We know that we need to. It means that some of our ideas will be pursued and some won't. That's fine. Movement is better than no movement.
• Take advantage of our human resources. We have many people in Jackson County who have achieved remarkable things in their lives. Listen to the advice and suggestions that they can offer.
• Improve our own corners. In other words, make our own neighborhoods better through elbow grease and cooperation. Not everything takes money to do. If we all improve our own neighborhoods, the whole county will improve.
• Get involved. This is a message to citizens especially. Attend meetings. Offer advice. Run for office. I admire anyone willing to put their name out there. I appreciate the service of all of our current elected officials, just as I appreciated the service of those who served before them and will appreciate the service of our next round of leaders. It is the American way.
• Care. We all have to care for each other and our communities. Churches, we need you now more than ever. Community organizations, we need you too. Individuals, you as well. Do everything you can to make things better.

I hope that at least someone out there will take the time to read through this long editorial and that it benefits you. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

This was written as a "stream of thought" so please excuse me if I made any errors or typos.

Thank you.

Dale Cox

May 6, 2018

Ghosts of Aycock: Was 1905 fire one of Florida's worst mass murders?

An Aycock Brothers locomotive on the tracks at Aycock,
Florida. This may have been the locomotive that brought the
bodies from the logging camp back to the sawmill town.

Aycock was a prosperous lumber mill town that once stood along the L&N railroad between Cottondale and Chipley in Northwest Florida.

The town took its name from the Aycock, timber and naval stores barons from& Georgia. They secured a massive timber tract in western Jackson and eastern Washington Counties in 1904 and expanded existing sawmills on the railroad near today's intersection of Aycock Road and Historic U.S. 90. A mill town soon grew around this operation.

Little remains of Aycock today, but an incident associated with the town gives it special significance in U.S. history.

The following is excerpted from my book, The Ghost of Bellamy Bridge: 10 Ghosts & Monsters from Jackson County, Florida.

-Excerpt-

 

A stand of longleaf pines in the Florida
Panhandle. Aycock was in the business
of turning hundreds of thousands of
such trees into lumber.

   IN OCTOBER OF 1905, NEWSPAPER READERS ACROSS THE NATION learned with horror that one of the largest mass murders in Florida history had been enacted at a logging camp just west of the Jackson County community of Steele City. The incident claimed the lives of eight county inmates and a man employed to stand watch over them. 

On visiting the site of the camp today, it is difficult to imagine the horror once enacted there. The surrounding scene is one of farms and woods, with no visible trace remaining of the camp where the crime took place. Few people in the vicinity know the horrible history associated with the site or of the ghostly figures long said to haunt the woods there. Truth be told, however, if there is any place in Jackson County with the tragic potential for a real mass haunting, this is it.

The story of the Aycock Ghosts begins with the purchase of a vast tract of timberland in the area by the Aycock Brothers of Georgia. Already well-known lumber barons, the Aycocks lived in the city of Moultrie but chartered their Florida operation in nearby Cordele in 1904:

…Application for a charter for the Aycock Bros. Lumber Co., composed of W.E. and T.J. Aycock and Evans Reynolds, has been filed with the county clerk. The capital stock of the proposed corporation is to be $50,000. The main office will be in Cordele, but the principal operations of the company’s manufacturing department will be in Florida.^[i]

Aycock Road crosses today's CSX Railroad west of
Cottondale in Jackson County, Florida. The town of Aycock
once stood in this vicinity. The 18-wheeler visible in the
background is on U.S. 90.

Construction began almost immediately on an industrial complex at the small railroad siding of Allie, located four miles due west of Cottondale on the L&N Railroad between that town and Chipley. It was the railroad, in fact, that had drawn the attention of the Aycock Brothers to the site. The trains provided a way for them to get their lumber and rosin out of the woods and to market. By the spring of 1905, construction of the massive plant at Allie was almost finished:

The Aycock Bros. Lumber Co. have now nearly completed their large saw mill at Allie, six miles east of town (i.e. Chipley). This will be one of the largest and most modern saw mills in West Florida with a cutting capacity of one hundred thousand feet per day. With three large brick dry kilns and a big planning mill they will work about 150 hands.^[ii]

Even today, an operation of the size and scope of the Aycock mill would be considered impressive. The initial hiring of 150 hands to run the mill and harvest the timber also created the need to house them, preferably on-site. The firm handled this by building one of the largest “company towns” ever constructed in Jackson County. In addition to homes for perhaps 500 people (workers and their families), the community also included stores, a railroad station and a post office as well as the various mills and other facilities associated with the company’s operations.

With the completion of its houses, stores, sawmill, drying kilns, railroad station and planning mill, it was logical that the company owners would stamp their name on the community itself. Allie ceased to exist and on May 31, 1905, the Pensacola Journal reported that, “The Aycock Bros. Lumber Co. have changed the name of the post office and telegraph office and railroad station to Aycock, Fla.”^[iii]

Another early 20th century photo of one of the two
locomotives that operated on Aycock's logging railroad.

To support the industrial facilities at Aycock, the company built or acquired a system of logging roads, a naval stores camp and a small railroad that ran south from the L&N tracks for about ten miles through the edge of Washington County and then back into Jackson County again. It carried rosin and timber from the outlying naval stores camp west of Steele City and just north of Alford to the main complex at Aycock.^[iv]

Although they hired more than 150 people to run their operation, the Aycock brothers were as interested in securing cheap labor as other timber barons of their day. An opportunity presented itself to them in the form of the convict labor leasing practice then in operation across much of Florida.

The convict leasing system had been initiated in 1877 and allowed counties to lease convicts from their jails to private businesses. The money gained from the practice went into the county Road & Bridge Fund and was a vital source of revenue for local government. The practice also eliminated the need for counties to maintain large jail facilities, since the employers leasing the inmates were responsible for housing and feeding them.

Florida convicts leased as laborers to a timber company. The
victims of the Aycock fire were attired much like these men.
State Archives of Florida

The Aycock brothers entered almost immediately into leasing contracts with the Board of County Commissioners for Jackson County. The use of convict labor may even have been part of their business plan before they ever started building their company town west of Cottondale. To house the inmates turned over to them, they established two convict stockades: one on the grounds of the main operation at Aycock and the other 10 miles south down the logging railroad at the remote naval stores camp. These locations allowed the company to house convicts at both ends of their massive 25,000 acre timber tract. Both stockades, generally described as wood-frame buildings, were finished and in use by the end of the summer of 1905.

The convict leasing system was not without its critics. The early 1900s were a time of great social reform in the nation and newspaper editors and private citizens alike railed against the system, which they equated with slavery. Counties were literally leasing human beings to private companies and these individuals were then worked, often in substandard conditions, with no choice in the matter and receiving no compensation for their labors.

The conditions at the Aycock stockades were far from ideal. Not only were the convicts worked long hours under harsh and dangerous conditions, they were chained inside the stockades at night to eliminate any possibility of escape. It was a recipe for disaster and that is exactly what happened in the early fall of 1905:

On the night of October 7, Aycock Brothers Lumber Co. convict camp burned in Jackson County. In this fire, James Longino, the guard on duty, and eight convicts, were burned to death. Four or five of the bodies were cremated. The only two remaining victims…barely escaped with their lives and are now lying in Aycock’s stockade at Aycock, Florida, in a badly burned condition.^[v]

Aycock can be seen on the railroad just west of Cottondale on
this 1909 map of Jackson County, Florida.

One of the two survivors, identified as William McCoy, was so severely injured that there seemed but little chance that he would recover. His escape, and that of his fellow survivor, was gruesome almost beyond imagination:

I remember hearing how some of them climbed as far as their leg chains would let them through the windows and begged witnesses to cut off a foot to free them from their chains and from being burned alive.^[vi]

News of the fire stunned people in Jackson and Washington Counties and as the story spread, the nation was equally appalled. The cause was first thought to be accidental, with speculation focusing on the explosion of a faulty oil lamp. The theory was so convincing, in fact, that a coroner’s inquest was considered unnecessary.

Information came to light over the coming days, however, that quickly changed opinions about the fire. Alarmed by the horrible tragedy and undoubtedly concerned over their own liability in the matter, the Aycock brothers hired a private detective from Chipley named Tom Watts to look into the fire.  Watts had established a reputation investigating cases of fraud against the L&N Railroad and quickly became convinced that the fire was not accidental at all, but was “one of the most horrible crimes ever committed in the state.”^[vii]

Two railroad spikes from the site of Aycock are among the
artifacts from the town on display at the Washington County
Historical Society Museum in Chipley, Florida.

Watts discovered something that the failure to empanel a coroner’s inquest had prevented from emerging already: the heads of James Longino, the guard over the stockade, and an unidentified convict had been smashed with a blunt object. Sam Jones, a misdemeanor convict who served as the trusty of the camp, told the detective that he had seen a man named Jim Glassco enter the guardroom at the entrance of the stockade. A few seconds later he heard two heavy blows, saw fire suddenly rise up from the building and then watched Glassco come out and run away.^[viii]

Convinced that Glassco was involved in starting the fire, Watts arrested him and took him first to the Washington County Jail in Chipley. From there the suspect was carried by rail to the Jackson County Jail in Marianna:

I find the motive for the crime to have been robbery. Longino had on his person $48.10 and the convict had $5. Longino had drawn a gun (for cause) on Glassco the same night of the fire. The weapon used by Glassco was a spike maul, such as commonly used by railroad trackmen.^[ix]

A first appearance was held for Glassco at the courthouse in Marianna and the county grand jury was ordered to convene. Although Detective Watts believed that a “strong case was made out” against the suspect, the grand jury did not agree. No indictment was returned against Glassco and the grand jurors instead recommended that the county commission cancel the Aycock Brothers’ contract and do everything possible to bring those responsible to justice..

A sawdust chain from the site of Aycock is now on display at
the Washington County Historical Society Museum in Chipley.

One of the Jackson County Commissioners, J.M. Barnes, went out to the naval stores camp to view the scene of the fire firsthand. After conducting a brief investigation of his own, he determined that “whiskey was very much in evidence.” It was his conclusion that the “guard being drunk probably caused the fire.” Strangely, there is no indication in county records that the Sheriff of Jackson County was ever asked to investigate the matter.^[x]

Detective Watts, as might have been expected, vehemently disagreed with Commissioner Barnes. He wrote to Governor N.B. Broward in Tallahassee, calling for a state investigation. Expressing his belief that eyewitness Sam Jones was somehow involved in the crime, the company detective warned that time was of the essence:

The scene of this terrible crime is some ten miles from the railroad in the logging woods of the lumber company. There is much yet to be learned in this case by careful investigation, and I am sure you will appreciate the importance of looking into the matter fully.

The witnesses, some of them, have already scattered off – one of the most important ones now being in Atlanta, Georgia.[xi]

The company detective expressed his view of the incident plainly to Governor Broward, “I regard this as being one of the most horrible crimes ever committed in the state.”

Gov. Napoleon B. Broward of Florida, for whom
Broward County is named, ignored a request for
a state investigation of the Aycock fire.
State Archives of Florida

The determined detective’s efforts aside, no justice was ever obtained for the nine men who died as a result of the terrible fire at the Aycock Brothers naval stores camp. Their bodies were taken up the logging railroad to the main community of Aycock where they were buried in a now forgotten plot by the L&N (today’s CSX) Railroad. The most any of the fatally injured men ever got from the county or the Aycock company was the money paid to the doctor who amputated their legs in an unsuccessful effort to save their lives after axes had been used to cut off their feet so they could be pulled away from the chains that attached them to the burning building. Dr. J.S. McGeachy of Chipley was paid $624 for “amputating Six Legs, Visits, Dressing.”[xii]

The survivors of the tragedy, along with the family members of some of the dead, brought suit in federal court against Aycock Brothers Lumber Company for their losses. John Bryant, who had lost his feet when they were cut off to free him from his chains, sued the company for $25,000, as did the families of several of the others. After two years, the Aycock Brothers settled with Bryant for $5,000. Of that amount, $1,500 went to the lawyers who represented him. The unfortunate former convict received $3,500, the apparent value that the parties agreed to place on the legs and feet he left behind at the naval stores camp:

Upon a consultation of the counsel for the plantiffs and defendants to these suits a compromise was effected by the company paying to Bryant and the other plaintiffs a sum of $3,500 and bearing the costs of the litigation. The suits were based upon injuries received by Brant and the deaths of a number of convicts in a stockade, which was destroyed by fire a year ago. Relatives of some of the men burned to death in the stockade, brought actions for damages, but settled for very small amounts.[xiii]

At the time the Aycock Brothers paid John Bryant $3,500 for the loss of his feet, their company was worth roughly $500,000. In fact, their mill town four miles west of Cottondale continued to thrive for a number of years, at one point even boasting a jewelry store. The old growth longleaf pines were finally all harvested, though, and Aycock faded into history like so many of the Florida Panhandle’s other sawmill towns. Not a single building stands today.

Aycock may have faded away, but the terrible tragedy enacted 10 miles south of the town lingers. The publicity over the fire helped end the practice of convict leasing in Florida and elsewhere, but no formal law enforcement investigation of the incident ever took place. Was it mass murder, as Detective Watts believed? Or was it a case of drunkenness gone bad, as a Jackson County Commissioner concluded? No one can really say. 

Perhaps it is this lack of concern as to their fate that keeps those unfortunate men lingering close to the place they died. Local legend holds that both the old naval stores camp site, where the tragedy took place, and the cemetery where the unfortunate men lay buried are haunted by their spirits. At the secluded stockade site, it is said that the ghosts of the dead still walk in the night. Shadowy figures have been seen moving through the trees and on certain nights it is said that the moans of dying men can be distinctly heard echoing through the bays and swamps.

At Aycock itself, legend holds that blue lights can be seen in the night at the spot where most of the unfortunate victims were buried. The graves themselves are unmarked, even though the men were the prisoners of Jackson County and under its protection at the time they died. The simple wooden markers placed on the graves by coworkers rotted away long ago.

Some believe that the ghosts appear in two different places because their legs and feet rest in the dirt at the site of the naval stores camp, while the rest of their bodies lay forgotten under the dirt of Aycock itself. Perhaps they continue to appear because justice for them has never been done?

Artifacts from the site of Aycock are on display today at the Washington County Historical Society Museum in Chipley, Florida. The museum is open on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

If you are interested in reading the true stories behind this and other ghost stories from Jackson County, Florida, please consider my book: 

The Ghost of Bellamy Bridge: 10 Ghosts & Monsters from Jackson County, Florida.  

---

[i] Augusta Chronicle, September 20, 1904, p. 4.

[ii] Pensacola Journal, April 19, 1905, p. 1.

[iii] Pensacola Journal, May 31, 1905.

[iv] E.W. Carswell, Washington: Florida’s Twelfth County, 1991, p. 313.

[v] Tom Watts to Governor Napoleon B. Broward, October 1905, Carswell Collection.

[vi] Gilbert Keener, Washington County Commissioner, 1978, quoted by E.W. Carswell, Washington: Florida’s Twelfth County, p. 313.

[vii] Watts to Broward, October 1905.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] J.M. Barnes, quoted by E.W. Carswell, Washington: Florida’s Twelfth County, p. 315.

[xi] Tom Watts to Gov. Napoleon B. Broward, Octonber 1905, Carswell Collection.

[xii] Bill of Dr. J.S. McGeachy, November 6, 1905, Jackson County Archives.

[xiii] Montgomery Advertiser, March 14, 1907, p. 5.

The Attack on Sarah Jane Bryant (July 8, 1866)

The road along which the Bryant girls were walking.
It was dirt at the time. The attack scene is just north of Cottondale.

The event considered by many Jackson County residents to have been the first unprovoked sign of tension between the races during the Reconstruction era was an alleged attack on Sarah Bryant by two freedmen, Henderson and Lewis White. (Note: The family name is spelled Bryan on some documents, Bryant on others).
Although she was described by one recent writer simply as a "white woman," Sarah Jane Bryant in reality was still a young girl. The teenage daughter of a poor laborer named James Bryant, she was one of at least nine children raised by a man credited on the 1860 census with a personal worth of only 75 cents.

These were not wealthy people. They were not politically involved. They had not owned slaves. They worked hard and struggled to survive. There is no indication in the county's records that they were anything other than law abiding people. And in the hard times immediately after the War Between the States, they undoubtedly were suffering far more than they had during the years before the war.

Sarah and her nine year old sister had gone to visit her brother, who lived nearby. It was a Sunday afternoon and the two girls stayed until an hour before dark and then started walking the two miles back their home along the old Campbellton Road. When they were within one-quarter mile of their own house, they saw two black teenagers approaching them. They had never seen them before.

Old tree near the scene of the attack.

In her testimony given in open court on October 31, 1866, Sarah described what happened next. The testimony was written out by hand as the girl spoke:

...It took place a quarter of a mile from home in an old field. They was very close when she first saw them. Prisoner [i.e. Henderson White] first stood and begged, then caught hold of her. They were black and ragged. He exposed part of his person, came in contact. She tried to keep from it. Prisoner didn't do any thing till the other threw her down.

Sarah identified both Henderson and Lewis White in court and pointed out Lewis as the one that had thrown her down. Both, she said, then raped her. Her mother, Margaret, testified that she heard Sarah "crying and moaning before she entered the yard." She also told the jurors that her daughter had been "in delicate health for two years past and sickly."

Word of the attack spread through the community and an immediate search was launched for the assailants. The victim's brother, John H. Bryant, found the suspects at a nearby farm. He tried to question them, but Henderson White refused to say anything. John then went to the Justice of the Peace with his father, who signed an affidavit swearing that his "daughter, 14 years, was caught on the 8th day of this month and ravished and that he has good evidence that Henderson White and Luis White... did commit the offence there."

With a warrant in hand, the two men went back to try to arrest Henderson and Lewis, but the former refused to go with them. According to John's testimony, Henderson told him that, "They had no body to prove he had done the act." They then summoned Captain Alexander R. Godwin, who lived nearby. He had commanded the Campbellton Cavalry, a home guard unit, during the war and was generally regarded as the leading man in the community. Godwin examined Henderson himself and testified against him before the Jackson County Grand Jury a few days later.

Before the grand jury could act and he could be taken into custody, Henderson White was accused of raping another teenage girl.

George S. Hawkins
Defense Attorney for Henderson and Lewis White

The trial of the two teenaged freedmen was held in Marianna on October 31, 1866. They were defended by one of the most prominent attorneys in Florida, former U.S. Congressman George S. Hawkins. Testimony was heard from three prosecution and three defense witnesses and the case then went to the jury.

Henderson White was found guilty of rape and sentenced to hang, but Hawkins had been able to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors with regard to Lewis White and he was acquitted.

The testimony from the case was included in thousands of lost documents from the Reconstruction era recently discovered in Jackson County. It reveals that despite the heinous crime committed against their daughter, the Bryants tried to follow the law and allow the judicial system to function. The suspects were provided with an attorney. In fact, they were provided with the services of one of Florida's most notable attorneys and the testimony reveals that he waged a strong defense on their behalf.

Although they were tried by an all white jury, it is significant that the testimony of the three black witnesses was carefully considered and Lewis White, who like Henderson had been charged with raping a white victim, was acquitted. He was still living in Jackson County years after the trial.

Sentenced to hang, Henderson White was granted a temporary reprieve by Florida's federally-appointed governor. That reprieve expired in March of 1867 and he was executed by hanging in Marianna.

The Bryant family left Jackson County after the trial and moved to to Clarke County, Alabama, where by 1870 James Bryant was farming and still trying to provide for his large family.

The trial itself is especially significant because it was the first time freedmen faced a post-war jury in Jackson County. The trial took place while local residents still had control of the judicial system and the outcome clearly demonstrates that they tried very hard to be fair and that the testimony of black witnesses was heard with the same consideration as that of white witnesses.

Control of the local courts soon would be ripped from the hands of the people of Jackson County and the Federal government would seize control of affairs in Florida and the county with an iron grip. The newly discovered records, however, raise serious questions as to what might have happened and, more importantly, what might have been avoided had Florida's citizens been allowed to continue their peaceful efforts to adapt their society to the new order of things in the years after the Civil War.

I will continue to post on the Reconstruction era in Jackson County soon, so be sure to check back often.