He looked and then he looked again. “What in the world is that?”
“Well, it’s like this,” Acre-Foot said. “I’ve got myself a good woman, and we want to raise a family. But I’ll have to make more money than I’m making on the mail route so I’ve decided to take a passenger along with the mail.”
“Why, you can’t do that!” The neighbor said. “Not many horses can carry a man that far through that swamp.”
“I’ve been making better time than two horses,” Acre-Foot replied. “Get in this chair, and I’ll show you.”
Acre-Foot slipped the straps over his broad shoulders and squatted so the neighbor could get into the chair. Then he took off along the wire-road. After he had gone two or three miles in his long stride, he whirled around and headed back home. When they arrived, the neighbor jumped to the ground and noticed that Acre-Foot was not winded or tired.
“Rides better than a horse,” the neighbor said. “Maybe I will ride down to Fort Myers on your back, some day.”
“Be glad to have you, any day you want. Just let me know,” Acre-Foot said.
Well, it looked as if Acre-Foot had found a way to make the extra money he needed, but the Post Office department foiled his hopes. They refused to allow any of their carriers to take passengers.
Acre-Foot was now making more money with his passenger trade than the postal service was paying him. So, after seven years of faithful service as a mail carrier, he turned in his resignation.
His unique business served him well for about a year, but in 1885 the railroad made both the walking mail route and Acre-Foot’s passenger service things of the past.
Telling time: 15-16 minutes
Audience: 4th grade - adult
James Mitchell Johnson was a real person who accomplished many super feats, accounts of which have been told and retold with each teller making the story a little better than the one before, until some of the stories have gone beyond belief. I found more than one account of Johnson walking from Ft. Meade (near Bartow) to Fort Myers in one day. It makes a good story, but I find it hard to believe. A recent conversation with a native of that part of the state revealed that while his mail route ran from Ft. Meade to Ft. Myers, he walked from Ft. Meade to Ft. Ogden in one day and on to Ft. Myers the next. That would be difficult to do, but could be done by a man with super stamina and a long walking stride.
“Bone” Mizell
In Pioneer Park, at Zolfo Springs, there is a historical marker for Bone Mizell. Bill Bevis, the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission, in his dedication speech described Bone as being the hardest working, the hardest playing, and the most colorful cowboy the state has ever known.
The historical marker reads: “Bone” Mizell was DeSoto County’s wag, prairie philosopher, cowboy humorist and prankster. He was beloved for his merrymaking. Bone was christened Morgan Bonapart Mizell. He was born 1863 and died 1921. Bone is buried in Joshua Creek Cemetery, in DeSoto County near Arcadia.
Bone was a topnotch cowboy, but he had only enough schooling to sign his name, and his only clout was his popularity. Yet he was never intimidated by friend or foe, rich or poor, officers of the law or outlaws.
Once a friend of Bone’s was arrested for butchering a cow of questionable ownership. When he expressed to Bone his concern about the outcome of the trial, Bone said, “You buy me a John B. Stetson hat, and I’ll get you out of this in two minutes.”
“How?” asked the friend.
“Just have them call me as a witness.”
At the trial, a number of witnesses were questioned about brands and other facts concerning the case. When Bone was put on the stand, he testified that he had seen the alleged butchering. When he was asked where he was at the time he answered, “Bee Branch.”
“Where is Bee Branch?” asked the prosecutor. “Everybody knows where Bee Branch is. It’s two or three hundred yards over in the next county,” answered Bone.
The defense called for a dismissal on the grounds that his client could not be tried in Arcadia for an offense committed in an adjoining county. The case was thrown out of court, and Bone got his hat.
Bone was proud of his new hat, and walked into a courtroom with it on. He was promptly fined twenty dollars by the judge. Bone took a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it in front of the judge. Then he reached in his pocket, took out another one, and said, “Judge, you better take forty, sir, ’cause I walked in here with my hat on, and I’m gonna walk out the same way.”
When the sheriff of DeSoto County was advised of a poker game going on at a nearby ranch, he went to investigate. He found some well-known cattle owners and Bone, cards in hand, sitting around the table with poker chips.
“Boys,” the sheriff said, “I’m going to have to pull this game.”
“But Sheriff,” said one of the players, “we are not playing for money. We’re just playing for poker chips.”
“Chips are the same as money,” the sheriff replied.
The next day, each of the card players was fined eighty-five dollars. Bone waited until the others had paid their fines, then he sauntered up and carefully counted out eighty-five dollars in poker chips.
“Wait a minute,” said the sheriff. “This ain’t money.”
“Sheriff, only yesterday, in front of several witnesses, you said, ‘chips are the same as money,’” Bone said, and he turned, and walked out.
Although Bone was not educated, he was no one’s fool. A confidence man came to town and set up a table at the county fair. He began hawking ten-dollar shares of stock in a company producing a new universal solvent. In convincing terms he told how the investment would make a fortune for the shareholders in a few years.
From the rear of the crowd, Bone shouted out, “What’s a universal solvent?”
“Brother, I’m glad you asked that,” the con man replied. “A universal solvent is a liquid that will dissolve anything it touches. Just think of the many uses such a product has …”
“Hold on there!” Bone interrupted. “What I want to know is, what’re you going to keep this universal solvent in when you get it made?”
Once when Bone was on a cattle drive, his horse gave out. He saw an elderly man plowing nearby, and told the cowboys with him that he was going to trade horses. The cowboys told Bone that the plow horse looked better than his horse, and he would need some cash to make the trade. Bone rode over to the farmer anyway. The cowboys watched from a distance. After a short conversation, they saw Bone pull out a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil. He scribbled something on the paper and handed it to the farmer. Then they exchanged horses. When Bone returned to the herd with his new mount, one of the cowhands asked him how he made the deal without any money.
“Well, I gave him a promissory note,” Bone explained.
“Why Bone, you can’t read or write,” said one of the cowboys.
Bone just smiled and replied, “Well, he couldn’t either.”
The crowning stunt of Bone Mizell’s life was written in rhyme by Ruby Carson, put to music by Jim Bob Tinsley, recorded by The Drifters, and sung by many balladeers.
This is the “Ballad of Bone Mizell,” as it appeared in the 1939 February-March issue of The Florida Teacher:
At Kissimmee they tell of old M. Bone Mizell
And the stranger who died on his hands:
How he died in dry season, and that was the reason
He was buried awhile on Bone’s lands.
He was buried awhile on that pine and palm isle
In a swamp under Florida’s sun
By the Cracker who nursed him, who loved him and cursed him
Just before his demise had begun.
“Jes take this news ca’mly,” Bone wrote to the family
The deceased had left livin’ up north,
“I can send the remains when there come up some rains
And us pine island folk can go forth.
“So providin’ yuh ask it, I’ll dig up th’ casket”
<
br /> Which was done when the season brought rain,
And the river could float the flat-bottomed boat
And the dead boy could travel again.
When Bone went with the coffin, he smiled much too of’en,
On the boat and en route to the car.
At the train he said, “Gimme one fare from Kissimmee
To Vermont! Ain’t this corpse goin’ far?”
Thus the money was spent that the family had sent.
And a friend of Bone’s said the next day:
“So yuh shipped that lad hum?” And Bone said, “No, by gum
For I thought hit all over this way:
“As his kinfolks air strangers to all of us rangers,
Why not give some dead Cracker this ride?
Why not make all this fuss over some pore ole cuss
Who in life hadn’t wallered in pride?
So instead of that Yank with his money and rank
Who had been ’round and seen lots of fun,
I jes’ dug up Bill Redd and I sent him instead
For ole Bill hadn’t traveled ’round none.”
As the saying goes — What goes around, comes around. Bone’s grave, in the Joshua Creek Cemetery, remained unmarked for over thirty years before some of his friends decided to donate a tombstone for his final resting place, and don’t you know, the small inscribed marker was placed on the wrong grave!
Bone was a hard-working and hard-playing cow hunter, and to his detriment, he was also a hard drinker. Once he told a friend, “Some day when I’m about eighty-five, they’ll find me dead, and everybody will say, ‘Well, old Bone’s dead, and liquor killed him.’”
He was right on target, except for his age. Instead of being eighty-five, he was only fifty-eight when he was found dead, under the influence of alcohol, in the Fort Ogden depot, July 14, 1921.
Telling time: 15 minutes
Audience: 4th grade - adult
Bone Mizell has been described as a cowboy’s cowboy. While there is no doubt he did many humorous things that were never recorded, he probably didn’t do half the things that have been credited to him. However, he was a legend in his own time — a very popular character. Many people liked him when he was alive, and many people still enjoy hearing stories about his capricious life. A word of warning to the teller: do not yield to the temptation to tell one incident after another about Bone Mizell. Almost any Florida cowhunter can tell you a few, and fifteen or twenty minutes of his antics is all that most audiences will want to hear at one time.
Four Female Giants
“Pappy” Smith lived in Racepond, near Folkston, Georgia. He had seven daughters. Three of them were of ordinary size, married, and raised families. But four of his daughters were extremely large — more than six feet tall, strong as field hands, and proficient at jobs that were considered to be for men only. Although two of these female giants married, none of them had children.
The oldest was named Sarah. She was six feet four inches tall, and when she was sixteen, married a man named McLain. Shortly after the wedding, he was hanged for killing a man.
To earn a living, Widow Sarah Smith McLain ran a crosstie camp for a short time, then moved to Waycross, Georgia, and operated a barbershop. She advertised her craft by saying that she could “shave a man three days under the skin.”
From Waycross, she headed south, and in 1905 arrived in Dade County, Florida. Evidently, she traveled the entire distance alone in an ox cart, with a shotgun resting against the seat. The cart was followed by two hounds as scrawny as the oxen which pulled it.
She camped where night caught her, but she had a way of making friends, and people never seemed to mind putting her up. She refused to sleep in a bed, preferring a pallet on the floor.
In Dade County, she worked on a farm, grubbing palmettos, hauling limestone rock, and plowing. Everyone started referring to her as the “Ox Woman.” In Miami, she was a great curiosity. When she went by, people came out of their homes and places of business to see her. Her wardrobe consisted of a pair of men’s work shoes, two dresses, and a black sunbonnet.
After working one season for the farmer, the Ox Woman set up camp and farmed on a key in what is now part of the Everglades National Park. She also hunted deer and peddled the venison among the farmers and grove owners of South Dade.
Back in Racepond, two of her sisters, Nancy, who was called “Big Nancy,” and Hannah, who was called “Big Six,” were cutting crossties and chipping “catfaces” on pine trees. They were never married. But Lydia, who could not write her name, was making money. She contracted the cutting of crossties and operated a turpentine still. She also owned cattle and traded land.
In 1909, Sarah, the Ox Woman, called Sadie by her family, received a letter from them saying that her younger sister Hannah, or Big Six, had left home and was living in the town of Everglades. The family wanted Sadie to check on Hannah to make sure that she was all right.
The Ox Woman inquired about the place where Big Six lived, and found that it was “t’other side of Florida,” seventy-five miles away, beyond the sawgrass-covered Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. No highway crossed southern Florida at that time. She was told that to reach Big Six she would have to drive her oxen north to Melbourne, cross the state to Tampa, travel south to Fort Myers, and then take a boat — a total of three hundred slow miles.
We don’t know the exact route the Ox Woman took, but with only her hounds and oxen, she crossed the Everglades.
In 1910, two years before the opening of the drainage canals, the Everglades were much like the ancient Indians had known them. Indian trails crossed the cypress strands long before the white man came, so the Ox Woman might have been able to follow old trails through the swamps north of Turner River. Although she could have had no accurate charts, she must have talked to those who knew the country.
There must have been times when the Ox Woman had to chop her way, but she was handy with the ax. Her knowledge of living off the land afforded her plenty to eat and water to drink. But how about panthers, bears, snakes, and alligators? The Ox Woman was well acquainted with all these critters and reptiles long before she came to Florida, for she was reared on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp.
The Ox Woman found her sister Hannah, or Big Six. She was earning a living cutting buttonwood for the making of charcoal. She could cut more wood than any man. Ox Woman preferred to farm, and finding no land which was suitable for farming in the town of Everglades, Ox Woman decided to go to Immokalee, thirty-five miles north. Several miles east of Immokalee, along the edge of a cypress swamp, she found an Indian mound, about ten acres in size. Here, near a canoe landing used by pre-Columbian Indians, the big woman built herself a palmetto shack.
Shortly after her sister left, Big Six went to work for Ed Watson, who had a sugarcane farm and syrup factory at Chatham Bend in the Ten Thousand Islands, twenty miles south of Chokoloskee Island.
It seems that Ed Watson was hiring labor on the mainland, taking them to his place on the island, and when they became too insistent on their pay, he would do away with them and go hire more laborers. It is believed that “Bloody” Watson killed as many as fifty of his workers. Some of the bodies he buried, others he weighted and threw in a nearby river. When Big Six wanted to get her pay, Watson paid her in his usual manner, then slashed open her abdomen, tied sash weight to the body and dumped it into the bay — but that was his undoing. The body was so large that it came to the surface.
It was in the middle of October, 1910, when a clam fisherman and his young son were going up the Chatham River and the boy spotted a huge foot sticking out of the water. But the father was nearsighted and reprimanded his son for imagining things. When they returned later, the body to which the foot belonged had risen partly out of the water. The fisherman recognized the body as that of Hannah, or Big Six. The fisherman and his son spotted two other bodies. They hurried to Pavilion Key, a clam-fishing center, and spread the alarm.
A posse was f
ormed. They found the bodies, then went looking for Watson. Watson was killed in the shoot-out that followed.
And what happened to the Ox Woman? About 1915, she pulled up stakes at her Indian mound farm near Immokalee and moved to a site near Fort Denaud, north of the Caloosahatchee River. In 1919, she died after suffering a stroke and was buried in the Fort Denaud Cemetery.
Telling time: 12-13 minutes
Audience: 4th grade - adult
This story of four sisters is fascinating, and the story of Bloody Watson is gruesome, and each gives us a glimpse of the life and culture of its day. You might want to explain that buttonwood is a hard, slow-burning wood which is difficult to cut but excellent for cooking cane juice into syrup. “Catfaces” is jargon for the way pine trees are scored to gather pine rosin for making turpentine. This is an excellent story to use in connection with Florida geography.
How Orlando Got Its Name & Kept Its Courthouse
It was full moon, in September of 1835, when a company of U.S. soldiers, reinforced by several cowboys, were trailing a band of hostile Indians through the Lake Jessup swamp. The setting sun gave warning of approaching night, and the captain commanded the company to make camp at Sandy Beach Lake (the old name of Lake Eola).
Quickly, camp was pitched and the horses fed. Soon the coffeepots were bubbling and frying pans sizzling. The hasty meal over, all the soldiers lay down to sleep. That is, all save one: a tall young man with dark hair named Orlando Reeves, who drew sentinel duty. He was trustworthy, eagle-eyed, and quick on the trigger, so the men felt secure with him on watch.
Faithfully, he paced back and forth in the bright moonlight. The hours dragged slowly by, and he was fighting drowsiness and fatigue. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. Strange, he thought, he had not noticed that log near those bushes. He continued on his patrol, and then retraced his steps. Now, there were more logs, and, even as he looked, they started rolling toward him.
Tellable Cracker Tales Page 5