Riverside Cemetery turns 190 years old

The old section of historic Riverside Cemetery in Marianna.

Riverside Cemetery is a historic burial ground in the southeast corner of the charming old city of Marianna, Florida. It turns 190 years old this year.

Riverside was laid out by Robert and Anna Beveridge in 1827. They new that their soon to be developed town would need a public burial ground. They selected a spot on a separate hill just beyond their planned community.

The Beveridges had come down to Florida from Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Beveridge was a successful merchant and with his wife possessed strong political connections. Their investors included many prominent allies of Andrew Jackson.

Grave of Arthur Lewis
Killed in the Battle of Marianna

Sadly, one of the first people to be buried in the cemetery was Mrs. Beveridge herself. She was only 24 years old but already the mother of three children when she came down with the fever and died on March 24, 1830.

She was buried in Riverside Cemetery, but the location of her grave site has been lost to time. It is certainly possible that she is buried in one of the ancient brick crypts in the oldest part of the cemetery.

The section includes some of the oldest oak trees in Marianna.

The former area where both slaves and free African Americans were buried is just downhill from the crypts and markers of Marianna's earliest white settlers. The wooden markers that once designated the burial places of early African American residents have long since rotted away, although indentations in the ground still mark their graves in the southwest corner of the oldest part of the cemetery.

Burial trenches of Confederate soldiers at Riverside Cemetery.

Two burial trenches contain the remains Confederate soldiers who died at the Marianna Post Hospital in 1863-1865. Most of these men were the victims of illness or infections and their graves are marked by small headstones. Near them rest several of the local citizens and soldiers who died in the Battle of Marianna on September 27, 1864.

Separated from the area of oldest graves is a single monument to a Union soldier, Lt. Isaac Adams of the 2nd Maine Cavalry. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Marianna.

Adams no longer rests at Riverside, but his monument remains.  He and other Union dead from the battle were exhumed during the late 1800s and their remains taken to Barrancas National Cemetery near Pensacola.

Monument to Lt. Isaac Adams, 2nd Maine Cavalry

The lieutenant's grave played a key role in the Reconstruction era confrontations that rocked Jackson County. Several young girls - relatives of men and boys killed in the Battle of Marianna - removed the flowers from Lt. Adams' grave and scattered them in the dirt. They were hauled before a military court, but showed up with backing from almost the entire community.

The Carpetbagger officials who ruled Marianna after the War Between the States (or Civil War) backed down in the face of this show of support and released the girls. The incident is remembered today as the "Battle of the Flowers" and was the beginning of the local uprising that eventually drove out the occupying force that controlled Jackson County from 1865-1876.

Riverside Cemetery is a peaceful and beautiful place. The azaleas and dogwoods bloom each spring, giving the cemetery a surreal charm.

A stroll through its acres and acres of stones and graves offers you the chance to walk not just through the history of Marianna and Jackson County, but through the history of Florida, the South and the Nation.

The main entrances to the oldest part of the cemetery are on Franklin Street, two blocks south of Jackson Street, in Marianna, Florida. It is open to the public during daylight hours.

Jackson County may not own Courthouse Square

The beautiful oaks on Courthouse Square were planted by
Aesop Bellamy, one of Marianna's first African-American
business owners in ca. 1873.

Is the Jackson County Board of County Commissioners on the verge of cutting down trees that the county doesn't even own?

That question has unexpectedly come to the surface as citizens await a final decision from their county commissioners on the fate of the historic live oaks that surround the Jackson County Courthouse in downtown Marianna. The last vote from the board took place nearly three weeks ago when the commissioners agreed to seek cost estimates on the removal of all of the trees.

The question now rising, however, is whether the county actually owns the historic oak trees - or the ground in which they grow?

Part of the Battle of Marianna was fought on Courthouse
Square on September 27, 1864. This scene is from the
150th anniversary commemoration of the battle.

A thorough search of both public and private archives of deeds and other records has produced no deed or other document proving county ownership of the courthouse square. In fact, it appears that the City of Marianna may actually own the trees, the square and even the ground on which the county courthouse stands.

This unexpected discovery results from political maneuvering that took place in the earliest days of Jackson County's history.

The county was created by the Florida Territorial Legislature on August 12, 1822. The territory had been part of Spain just one year before and it would take another twenty-three years for Florida to secure admission into the union as a state. Jackson County was named for Andrew Jackson, the former major general who served as Florida's U.S. first governor. It included all of the land between the Choctawhatchee and Suwannee Rivers.

The "Widow Hull's Place" was near today's Waddell's Mill
Pond in rural Jackson County, Florida.

The first meetings of the county's government took place at the Widow Hull's place, a home that stood on the south side of today's Waddell's Mill Pond not far from Springfield A.M.E. Church. Mrs. Sarah Hull provided lodging and food for the County Court, a predecessor of today's Board of County Commissioners. The court then included three members.

A controversy soon developed over where to place the permanent county seat. The legislative council first designated the Widow Hull's as an interim location but later changed the interim meeting place to Webbville, a community about half way between Campbellton and what is now Marianna.

Richard Keith Call was a protege of
Andrew Jackson and the
Territorial Governor of Florida.

The controversy intensified when Robert Beveridge, a Scottish merchant from Baltimore, secured title to 160-acres of prime Chipola River land on November 1, 1827. The patent included the site on which the Jackson County Courthouse stands today.

Beveridge pushed forward the development of a new town that he called Marianna. His business partners included Richard Keith Call, an ally of Andrew Jackson and future governor of Florida. With such powerful influence on his side, Beveridge soon lobbied the legislative council to designate Marianna as the permanent county seat for Jackson County.

The developer offered to deed to Jackson County the public (courthouse) square and two downtown lots if the legislature would give Marianna the county seat designation. The town's citizens also offered to donate $1,500 to be used in building a courthouse and jail.

The offer met with a friendly reception in Tallahassee and a bill designating Marianna as the county seat of Jackson County was passed on October 20, 1828. A second act approved the incorporation of the town of Marianna eight days later on October 28, 1828.

Webbville as it appears today. The "ghost town" is still the
actual county seat of Jackson County, Florida.

The news was met with outrage in nearby Webbville, which was then the county's largest town. Unable to sway the members of the legislative council, Webbville residents took their case to the U.S. Congress.

Marianna's developers, meanwhile, went forward with their first sale of lots on January 25, 1829. Bids were opened for the new courthouse and jail on the same day.

Robert Beveridge maintained possession of the courthouse square during that sale, along with the now lost Masonic and School Squares, the future site of Marianna's Riverside Cemetery and the triangular park then called "the Plaza" (today's Confederate Park).

As the incorporation of the community took effect and Marianna's citizens elected their first leaders, these holdings became the property of the town. Beveridge continued to pay taxes on the lands until the organization of Marianna's government could be completed.

The Jackson County Courthouse in the late 1800s, about
20 years after Aesop Bellamy planted the Courthouse Oaks.
He was one of the county's first black business owners.

Robert Beveridge still owned the future site of the Jackson County Courthouse when the U.S. Congress intervened and annulled the legislative council's action designating Marianna as the county seat. Since Florida was still a U.S. territory, Congress and the President held ultimate power over local governmental decisions. In a rare display of this power, Congress overturned Marianna's designation as county seat on January 21, 1829.

Officials in Washington, D.C., followed on March 2, 1829, by giving congressional approval to Webbville, provided that the proceeds from the sale of one-half of the town's lots be spent on public education. Webbville followed through, raising $7,000 for the construction of a public school.

The beloved old Jackson County Courthouse as it
appeared on a postcard during the mid-20th century.

The Federal courts followed the decision of the U.S. Congress. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Florida convened in Webbville in September 1829, as did the Superior Court for Jackson County. 

Webbville thus became - and remains - the official county seat of Jackson County. The town no longer exists, but its designation by Congress has never been overturned.

Marianna, meanwhile, went forward with the construction of its courthouse and jail. Robert Beveridge, however, never deeded the square on which these were built to Jackson County. The legislative council finally imposed a fine against any public official that did not conduct business from the new courthouse, a move that had the result of shifting the county's public business to Marianna although Webbville still remained the official county seat.

As has been noted, Beveridge's lands became the property of the City of Marianna as the city was formally organized. He payed taxes on them until that time.

The beautiful live oak on the northeast corner of Courthouse
Square was planted by Aesop Bellamy in 1873 and can be
seen in the far left of the 1880s photo above.

A thorough search of the deeds and other records in the Clerk of Courts office and archives of the Jackson County Courthouse, as well as the private records of Florida Land Title & Trust, reveals no deed or other document showing that the city ever gave the county title to the square.

Jackson County has since spent untold dollars maintaining and operating five different courthouses on the square, even though the square has apparently remained the property of the City of Marianna the entire time.

Which brings us to today and the controversy that has grown over the future of the live oaks that surround the Jackson County Courthouse. 

Unless the county can provide some long lost proof that it actually owns the square, then its own records indicate that the trees and the dirt in which they grow - as well as the dirt on which the courthouse stands - actually belong to the City of Marianna.

This fact raises serious questions over whether the Board of County Commissioners has any authority at all for any of its actions regarding the trees or square. The city, probably through lack of knowledge that it still owned the square, has never intervened in the construction of courthouses on the site so it is possible that the county may legally own the actual footprint of the the courthouse.

The rest of the square, however, is unfenced public land and appears to be owned by Marianna and its citizens. Unless the county commissioners can prove otherwise, the City of Marianna is the entity that should be making decisions about the courthouse square and its trees.

Note: To learn more about the early history of the area and the political battle between Marianna and Webbville, please consider:

Book:  The History Of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years

Kindle E-book:  The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years

#99 Riverside Cemetery (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

Riverside Cemetery in Marianna, Florida

This is the second post in a series on "100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida."  Click here to see all of the posts as they come online.

#99 on our list of great things about Jackson County, Florida, is historic Riverside Cemetery. You may not think of a cemetery as a "great place," but this one is special.

Part of the original plan of the City of Marianna, Riverside Cemetery was laid out by Robert and Anna Beveridge when they surveyed the future community in 1827. The two developers moved down to Florida from Baltimore, Maryland, where Mr. Beveridge had been a successful merchant. Wealthy and with strong political connections, they selected the modern site of Marianna and were its original owners and promoters.

Grave of Arthur Lewis
Killed in the Battle of Marianna

All planned communities needed space for a cemetery, so the Beveridges designated a hilltop just to the southeast of their planned town for that purpose. With the fevers and illnesses that then routinely swept over Florida and the Gulf Coast, the burial ground quickly came into use.

Sadly, one of the first people buried there was Mrs. Beveridge herself. Only 24 years old but already the mother of three children, she came down with the fever and died on March 24, 1830. She was buried in Riverside Cemetery, likely in one of the brick crypts still seen there today, but the exact location of her grave has been lost to time.

The old section of the cemetery includes some of the most ancient oak trees in Marianna and is nestled on a hilltop surrounded by nearly 190 years of graves. The former slave section is just downhill from the historic crypts and markers. The wooden markers that once designated the burial places of African Americans who lived and died either as slaves or in Marianna's small antebellum community of free blacks have long since rotted away, but the indentations in the ground that mark their graves can still be seen.

The burial trenches where Confederate soldiers who died at the Marianna Post Hospital in 1863-1865 are marked by small headstones. Nearby rest several of the local citizens who died in the Battle of Marianna.

Monument to Lt. Isaac Adams, 2nd Maine Cavalry

Separated from both the old slave plot and the area of oldest graves is a single monument to Lt. Isaac Adams of the 2nd Maine Cavalry. A Union soldier, he was mortally wounded in the Battle of Marianna. He no longer rests at Riverside, but his monument remains.  Adams and the other Union dead were exhumed during the late 1800s and their remains taken to Barrancas National Cemetery near Pensacola.

His grave, however, played a key role in the Reconstruction era confrontations that rocked Jackson County. Several young girls - relatives of men and boys killed in the Battle of Marianna - removed the flowers from Lt. Adams' grave and scattered them in the dirt. They were hauled before a military court, but showed up with backing from almost the entire community. The Carpetbagger officials who ruled Marianna after the War Between the States (or Civil War) backed down in the face of this show of support and released the girls. The incident is remembered today as the "Battle of the Flowers" and was the beginning of the local uprising that eventually drove out the occupying force that controlled Jackson County from 1865-1876.

Riverside Cemetery today is a peaceful and beautiful place. In the spring, when the azaleas and dogwoods bloom, it takes on a surreal charm. A walk through its acres and acres of stones and graves is a walk not just through the history of Marianna and Jackson County, but through the history of Florida, the South and the Nation.

The main entrances to the oldest part of the cemetery are on Franklin Street, two blocks south of Jackson Street, in Marianna.

Remembering Northwest Florida's "Great Tide"

By Dale Cox

Port St. Joe – Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Gustav have had all eyes on the Gulf of Mexico lately. This always brings my mind back to the legend of Northwest Florida’s “Great Tide.”

That was the name given by novelist Rubylea Hall to a legendary hurricane tidal surge that supposedly wiped the city of St. Joseph, Florida, from the map. St. Joseph stood on the present site of Port St. Joe and during the 1830s was the largest city in Florida. Little remains today other than tombstones and a museum to remind visitors that the city ever existed.

Hall’s story of a “city so wicked that God wiped it from the earth” is a Gone with the Wind like tale of life on the plantations of Jackson County and our area’s close connections to the lost city. In the novel, as in real life, St. Joseph prospered only to be devastated by a deadly yellow fever epidemic. The survivors in Hall’s story were at last driven away by a hurricane driven surge that rose from the Gulf and swept St. Joseph into history.

The Great Tide mirrored real history in many ways, with some artistic license. Jackson County did indeed have many strong connections to St. Joseph. Robert Beveridge, the founder of Marianna, moved to St. Joseph less than ten years after he and his workers carved Marianna from the wilderness. He died at St. Joseph during the great yellow fever outbreak and is buried in an unmarked grave in the old cemetery there.

Connected to St. Joseph by direct road, Marianna naturally developed many business and social ties to the coastal boomtown. Residents of Jackson County built “summer homes” in St. Joseph to escape the brutal heat and humidity of the interior. Many original promoters of Webbville also became involved in the new city on the coast, establishing businesses there. St. Joseph’s newspaper, for example, was published by a former Webbville entrepreneur.

By the time that St. Joseph hosted the Florida Constitutional Convention in 1838, the city had grown to become the largest in Florida and its promoters envisioned the day when it would become a major coastal city to rival New Orleans.

It was not to be. A massive yellow fever outbreak hit the city, sending residents fleeing into the interior. Newspapers across the South reported the death toll from St. Joseph. How many people actually died from fever may never be known, but the list was large and the sickness showed no respect for wealth or position. It inflicted a death blow from which St. Joseph never recovered.

During the early 1840s a hurricane did hit the city, but the legends of a “Great Tide” that wiped St. Joseph from the earth grew significantly in the telling. By the time of the Civil War, however, St. Joseph had disappeared as the forest reclaimed the streets, cemetery and ruins of the city.
By the mid-1840s, many Jackson County families that had relocated to St. Joseph returned to their former homes in and around Marianna.

A visit to Port St. Joe today provides a fascinating glimpse back in time. Visitors can explore the history of the lost city at the Constitutional Convention State Museum located on the site of old St. Joseph. Exhibits there include artifacts from St. Joseph and a replica of Florida’s first railroad locomotive. The old St. Joseph Cemetery also survives as a somber reminder of the fever outbreak that doomed what once was Florida’s largest city.

If you would like to learn more about historic St. Joseph and what remains of "Florida's Lost City," please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/portstjoe.

Riverside Cemetery - Marianna, Florida

One of the oldest cemeteries in Northwest Florida can be found in the southeast corner of Marianna.

When Marianna was founded and settled during the late 1820s, the hilltop now occupied by Riverside Cemetery was set aside for use as a community burial ground. The original owners of the property, Robert and Anna Beveridge, were also the founders of Marianna.

The oldest graves at Riverside are believed to date from the 1820s. Some of the stones and crypts marking these early burials still exist, but the names have long since faded away.

Among those known to be buried here is Mrs. Beveridge herself, one of the women for whom the city of Marianna is named. She died at Marianna in 1830, shortly after relocating to Florida from Maryland and had not yet reached the age of 30. Her exact burial site is unknown, but the oldest section of the cemetery occupies a hilltop in its western sector.

The Site of Webbville

This hilltop a few miles northeast of Cottondale is the site of the Jackson County ghost town of Webbville. I've received a number of questions recently about Webbville, so here are a few of the facts.

The community was founded during the 1820s, just ahead of the founding of Marianna by Robert and Anna Maria Beveridge, and named for a prominent local attorney. Originally a rival town to Marianna, Webbville battled with the Beveridge's settlement for the status of County Seat of Jackson County. The fight turned into one of the greatest political spats in Florida history.

Although Webbville was a prosperous little community, it was hampered in its political dreams by the fact that it was located on a 16th Section. Under law, these sections were reserved for school purposes. In addition, Marianna was located on the Chipola River and Webbville was pretty much high and dry (although there was a small spring nearby). This was significant because the Chipola was then used to barge bales of cotton downstream to the Gulf of Mexico.

As the political forces of the two communities battled, both the Florida Territorial Council and the U.S. Congress became involved. At one point, an entirely new county (Fayette County) was even carved from eastern Jackson County in an effort to break Marianna's voting success. Fayette County was shortlived, however.

The battle finally seemed to be at an end when the U.S. Congress finally designated Webbville as the County Seat of Jackson County. The Territorial Council (same as today's state legislature), however, fired a final shot that settled the issue for good. Legally unable to overrule the U.S. Congress, the Council voted to impose a fine on any public official in Jackson County who did not conduct business from the courthouse in Marianna.

The threat of paying fines solved things fast and all of the county's public officials moved to Marianna. Webbville eventually faded away and today is nothing more than a dirt road leading across a pine covered hill.

Curiously, though, unless the action of Congress that designated the community as county seat has been changed, Webbville remains the official County Seat for Jackson County.