Welcome to the official blog of historian and writer Dale Cox. Articles here explore the history, archaeology, folklore, genealogy, and scenic beauty of the Southeast.
Jackson County lost more than adults over the age of eighteen in the last decade than any county in Florida west of Tallahassee.
The United States Census Bureau released its final 2020 estimates for counties across the nation on August 12, 2021. The numbers for the area still recovering from Hurricane Michael are remarkably good in some counties, worse than expected in others.
Jackson County led the region in adult population loss. In 2020, census workers found 1,568 fewer adults over the age of 18 living in the county versus 2010. As might be expected, the population under the age of 18 also fell - by 859 residents - but drops in numbers of children were common across the region. The county's total population decline between 2010 and 2020 was 2,417.
While some of the population loss in Jackson County is certainly tied to Hurricane Michael, the majority of it was predicted in 2008 before the storm devastated the region (See Economic Chaos Strikes Jackson County).
Among counties in the primary Hurricane Michael strike zone, only Gulf County where the category five storm made landfall experienced an adult population loss close to that suffered by Jackson. Gulf County's 18+ population loss was 1,468. The decline in the 18 and under population there, however, was much smaller, with Gulf County losing 203 younger residents.
Gadsden County actually led the counties west of Tallahassee in total population decline, but much of its drop was due to fewer children in 2020 versus 2010. Gadsden's 18+ population declined by 567 people. Its 18 and under population declined by 1,996. The county's overall population drop was 2,563.
Calhoun County, also impacted heavily by Hurricane Michael, likewise saw its population decline. Calhoun's 18+ numbers were down by 577. The county's 18 and under population dropped by 407.
Liberty County's 18+ population dropped by 81, while the county's 18 and under total declined by 310. Holmes County also saw a small decline, with its 18+ population dropping by 37 and its 18 and under number falling by 227.
Bay County (Panama City/Panama City Beach), which was heavily impacted by Hurricane Michael in its eastern areas, led growth in the region, closely followed by Houston County, Alabama (Dothan).
Bay County reported an 18+ population growth of 7,883, but an 18 and under decline of 1,519, for a total increase of 6,364 people.
Dothan and Houston County saw an 18+ increase of 6,025 people, with 18 and under decrease of 370. The total population increase there was 5,655.
Other counties in the area with growing populations were:
Decatur County (Bainbridge), Georgia - 1,525 total increase.
Franklin County (Apalachicola), Florida - 902 total increase.
Washington County (Chipley), Florida - 422 total increase.
Seminole County (Donalsonville), Georgia - 417 total increase.
Remembering deadly Florida hurricane as Dorian churns offshore
by Dale Cox
Stern of the CSS Chattahoochee at the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
Hurricane “Amanda” was a tropical cyclone that slammed into
Florida’s Apalachicola Bay on May 27-28, 1863. Researchers Michael Chenoweth
and C.J. Mock concluded in a 2013 article that the storm was a rare May
hurricane.
They took the name “Amanda” from the Union warship, USS Amanda.
A six-gun sailing vessel, she ran aground during the storm and was burned by
her own crew on May 27, 1863. For the sailors aboard a Confederate warship on
the Apalachicola River, however, the storm could just as easily have been
called Hurricane “Chattahoochee.” Their vessel, the CSS Chattahoochee,
went down on the same day in Florida’s greatest naval tragedy of the War
Between the States or Civil War.
The Chattahoochee, named for the river on which she was built,
was a powerful warship that mounted six heavy guns, was more than 110 feet long
and carried a crew of more than 100 men. She was built at shipyard developed by
plantation-owner David S. Johnston at Saffold in Southwest Georgia. He had
never built a ship before and many of his workers and slaves had never even
seen one.
CSS Chattahoochee took longer to build than expected due to
the scarcity of necessary supplies, a lack of skilled shipbuilders and river
floods that swamped the construction site in the floodplain forest of the
Chattahoochee River.
Model of the CSS Chattahoochee
The ship was launched at Saffold on January 1, 1863. Her
original captain, Lt. Catesby ap R. Jones of the Confederate Navy, was a hero
in the South. He had commanded the famed ironclad CSS Virginia (sometimes
called the Merrimac) during her famed battle with the USS Monitor. The epic
clash at Hampton Roads, Virginia, was the first battle between two ironclads.
The assignment of Jones to command the Chattahoochee is a
clear indication of the hopes that the Confederate war effort held for her. He
brought with him several of his officers and men from the CSS Virginia, which
was scuttled by her crew in the James River during the Peninsula Campaign as
Union troops made one of their many attempts to take Richmond.
Lt. Jones supervised the rest of the fitting of the ship and
saw her become a full-fledged warship. The decision of the Confederate army to
place obstructions in the Apalachicola River at “the Narrows” near present-day
Wewahitchka, Florida, however, prevented the Chattahoochee from reaching
Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. A disappointed Jones was transferred
and command of the vessel was given to Lt. J.J. Guthrie. A number of the men
from the CSS Virginia remained aboard.
The ship was tied to the Arsenal wharf at today’s River
Landing Park in Chattahoochee, Florida, when news arrived that a Union boat
party from the USS Port Royal had entered the lower Apalachicola River. The
U.S. sailors had and captured the blockade runner Fashion in Brushy Creek north
of today’s Prospect Bluff Historic Sites (Fort Gadsden) and were towing her
downriver to the Gulf.
Lt. Guthrie ordered the crew of the Chattahoochee to raise
steam. He intended to go down the river and recapture the blockade runner even
if it meant he had to blast the army’s obstructions out of his way. The ship
left her home port at Chattahoochee on May 26, 1863.
She was forced to stop later that day by shallow water flowing over a sandbar at Blountstown, Florida.
The Apalachicola River as seen from Neal Landing Park at Blountstown, Florida, scene of the Chattahoochee disaster.
Neither the captain nor his crew knew that a major early-season hurricane was about to blow in from the Gulf of Mexico. A light rain was
already falling and the barometric pressure began a sudden drop as the
Chattahoochee rocked at anchor in the Apalachicola River. By the time Lt.
Guthrie made it back to the ship on the next morning, the storm was whipping up
whitecaps on the river. Realizing that it was impossible to catch the Union
raiders and concerned over the severity of the storm, he ordered his men to
turn the vessel around and take her back upriver and out of danger.
Hurricane conditions likely contributed to what happened
next.
The crew was preparing to raise steam for the trip when an
argument broke out below decks. A gauge was not working properly, and they could
not tell how much water was in the boiler. The chief engineer was sick with a
fever. He rose from his bunk to see what was wrong, but before he could
intervene, the CSS Chattahoochee was suddenly rocked by a massive explosion!
Shipyard crews later found that the malfunctioning gauge had
allowed the boiler to grow red hot before crew members opened the valves to fill it with
water. The cool water hit the red hot iron of the boiler and instantly
vaporized to high-pressure steam. The steam to burst through piping attached to
the boiler and sprayed out in a deadly jet into the engine room of the ship.
Sixteen members of the crew were killed instantly, scalded
to death where they stood. Another man was mortally injured, two others were
severely scalded, and another four received minor burns.
Site of the CSS Chattahoochee disaster at Blountstown.
Panicked that the gunpowder in the ship’s magazines might
explode, other crew members opened the plugs in the ship’s hull and let the
proud Confederate warship sink to the bottom of the storm-tossed Apalachicola.
The horrible accident was described by C.S. Navy officers:
…No description, I am told, could possibly be given of
the scene on the deck of the Chattahoochee, men running about frantic with
pain, leaving the impression of their bleeding feet, and sometimes the entire
flesh, the nails and all, remaining behind them. The dead and wounded were taken
onshore, where they remained until the next afternoon, most of the time with a
terrible storm raging.
The wounded men spent more than 24-hours in miserable and
muddy conditions on the riverbank at Blountstown before a paddlewheel steamboat
finally reached them. They carried to Ocheesee Bluff where a makeshift
hospital was set up at the historic Gregory House, which can be seen today
across the river at Torreya State Park. They were tended there by the ship’s
surgeon along with the doctors and ladies of Ocheesee. As soon as they could be
stabilized, the victims were carried by boat for extended treatment in
Columbus, Georgia.
The dead were taken to Chattahoochee where they were buried
south of the Apalachicola Arsenal complex. The burial site was forgotten
over time, but a 20th-century construction project uncovered the graves. Archaeologists exhumed the bodies. A monument was placed not long after and can be seen today at the
original gravesite on the west side of Main Street about 1/2 block
south of U.S. 90.
The scene of the deadly explosion can be seen from Neal Landing Park in Blountstown, Florida.
Military and newspaper accounts from 1863 indicate that more than 150 people died in the hurricane, making it one of the 25 deadliest tropical cyclones ever to strike the United States.
To learn more about the CSS Chattahoochee, please enjoy this free documentary from Two Egg TV:
Recreated path of Hurricane #4 in 1877. Map and data from NOAA.
A hurricane devastated a wide area of Northwest Florida in October 1877. The Chattahoochee area was particularly hard hit by the storm, which researchers have dubbed "Hurricane #4."
The National Hurricane Center believes that the storm made landfall somewhere between Apalachicola and present-day Panama City Beach on October 3, 1877. It is believed to have been a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour.
After making landfall, the storm tracked to the northeast across today's Bay, Washington, Calhoun and Jackson Counties until the eye passed over or near Chattahoochee. Damage reports were stunning, as is explained by a letter written from Chattahoochee on October 6, 1877:
The Apalachicola River at Chattahoochee, Florida. The river was still crossed by ferry in 1877.
...The freshet and gale has done much damage in this section. The gale began on Monday and continued till Wednesday. It was very heavy during Tuesday and Tuesday night. Twelve mills and water gins within a few miles of here have been swept away. There is only one mill, that of Mr. McMillen, standing in twenty miles of here. - Report from Chattahoochee dated October 6, 1877, Marianna Courier, October 1877.
The railroad did not yet cross the Apalachicola River into Jackson County, but had reached Chattahoochee by 1877. The storm did so much damage to the tracks and trestles that no trains could reach the city:
...All the bridges are gone, and the railroad is so washed
up that we have had no train since Tuesday, and it is not thought that the road
and bridges can be repaired under eight or ten days. So we are cut off from all
communication with the outside world. - Report from Chattahoochee dated October 6, 1877, Marianna Courier, October 1877.
The Tallahassee newspapers reported that the storm did extensive damage all along the Gulf Coast. A storm tide of 12-feet above normal was reported at St. Marks, a large schooner was driven completely ashore on St. James Island and parts of the wharves and several boats were wrecked at Cedar Key.
The old Apalachicola Arsenal at Chattahoochee as it appeared when the 1877 hurricane struck the city. The structure at left, with verandas, remains in use as the Administration building.
The damage around Chattahoochee was even worse. Newspapers reported that roofs were torn from homes and businesses, trees were uprooted and that even the crops of the region were devastated. Cotton plants were literally blown out of the ground in the fields. Farm workers tried to salvage what the could by digging the cotton bolls out of the mud, trying to save enough to make their loan payments:
...The damage to the cotton crop is heavy,
having been blown out and beat under the ground by the heavy rain, but with dry
weather much of it can be saved. It will be impossible for planters to meet
their notes for guano and other supplies, which mostly come due about the 15th.
The railroad was quickly repaired. - Report from Chattahoochee dated October 6, 1877, Marianna Courier, October 1877.
The death toll from the storm was not broken down locally so it is difficult to know how many people lost their lives along its path through Florida. Along its total path from the Caribbean up through the Atlantic Coast states of the United States, however, the storm claimed at least 84 lives.
It crossed over Georgia and the Carolinas, its feeder bands reaching into the Atlanta Ocean, and then moved up the coast to the north, causing floods and doing heavy damage all along its path.
While conducting some research on Jackson County a few years ago, I came across the following article from the Marianna Patriot of November 2, 1856. Since it is one of the better historical accounts of a hurricane passing through Jackson County, I thought it might be of interest:
We were visited on Saturday and Sunday last with a repetition of the storm of August 23d, 1850. Trees, outhouses and fences were swept down and our beautiful town made almost a complete wreck. Majestic oaks and strongly implanted mulberry trees - which had, for years, stood as ornaments to our village, and which had braved all former gales, were either rent assuner or uplifted by the roots. - Two of the chimneys of the Corut House, and others about town, some of them newly built, were blown down; but we are glad to say none of our dwelling houses were materially injured, and fortunately no lives lost. The surrounding country, we are afraid, suffered severely. We have heard that Gen. Milton, Messrs. Wynn, Battle, and James L. Robinson, had their Gin Houses blown down, and Mr. F.R. Ely lost his Sugar house and a number of other houses, and had two yoke of oxen killed. Dr. R.A. Sanders had two mules killed. The roads are impassable, from the quantity of logs across them.
We understand that the new Methodist Church at Greenwood was blown down during the gale, and that the Chipola river has risen very rapidly since, from the immense quantity of water fallen.
The crops are completely ruined in this county. - Cotton and Corn have been blown down and beaten in the ground. One gentleman had only one boll of open Cotton left standing on his plantation, and another had one third of his corn buried in the sand.
