She’s a cattleman’s ordinary daughter. Trapped in a brutal wilderness, will she sow the seeds of a lasting legacy?
South Carolina, 1827. Mary Adeline Walker is scared. In the middle of a big family, the sharp-eared seven-year-old can’t understand why her family discusses moving to the dangerous Florida Territory. Though she is an independent, quick learner, she worries the fresh start won’t survive the treacherous trip to America’s newest land.
Arriving in Jefferson County during 1829’s winter, Mary’s kin build a homestead amid the animals and disease. And her fears grow when she hears of tension between the local government and the Seminole population.
Will she discover new depths of tenacity in the face of endless struggles?
Employing research from real-life journals, diaries. Cindy Roe Littlejohn creates an immersive window into this remarkable story. As you explore this mix of authenticated details and meticulously crafted nonfiction, you’ll witness unsung moments from Florida’s rich and complex history.
Palmetto Pioneers: The Emigrants is an award-winning work of historical narrative nonfiction and the first book in the Palmetto Pioneers biography series. If you like compelling characters, preserving family stories, and exploring treacherous frontiers, then you’ll love this fascinating look into the past.
Six-year-old Mary, loved to listen to the adults when they thought none of the kids were near. She crawled out of bed and lay in the dark hall on the cool wooden floor.
In the parlor, her dad and uncles talked, sitting near the fire in their
straight-backed chairs. Several leaned forward, but her father leaned
back, his arms crossed and resting on his chest, watching everything
through his unflinching dark eyes.
The light flickered throughout the room. They were all tall, dark
headed, and complexioned men, who took after their mother’s side of
the family—the Carters. All had on their jackets and were clean shaven
except seventeen-year-old Littleberry, who sported a bushy mustache.
Leaning forward in his chair, twenty-six-year-old Uncle James said, “I
don’t know, Littleberry. I hear people get real uncivilized with the fevers;
but they call it the Florida humours. They say even the best men turn
into rogues down there.” He hesitated and added, “I hear of all kinds of
tales about fighting and shootings.”
Mary didn’t know where this Florida was, but it didn’t sound good.
The uncles talked about people doing bad things, about wildcats, and
about alligators so thick you could cross a creek on their backs and never
get wet. One uncle called it a frontier backwater.
But the worst were the Indians. She cringed because she had heard
stories about her Grandma Walker’s relative killed by Indians; but the
threat no longer existed in the South Carolina low country. The Indians
were long since gone.
Uncle Littleberry added, “But the ground is fertile, and the weather is
so good the growing season is long enough for two or three
cycles—perfect to grow cotton, raise cattle, and anything else you would
want to plant. Plus, there’s few people settled with large portions of
lands being swamp and pine barrens. They say there are wild cattle for
the taking.”
All the while, her twenty-seven-year-old dad leaned back in his chair
with it propped against the wall, listening.
Uncle James added, “Well, our lands lose soil after every rain; and the
gullies get wider and deeper. I’ve heard about this area in Florida where
the soil is prime for growing cotton.”
Uncle Stephen, twenty-four, added, “And if we all stay here, we’ll all
go broke.”
Her dad Jesse cleared his throat and said, “The capital city is only
about eight years old, and it isn’t even a state yet. It is hardly a territory.
I’ve heard Tallahassee called a town of public officials, land speculators,
and desperadoes. A couple of us need to go and check it out.” A
lingering silence ensued. Mary waited to see what came next, but she
worried they might break up.
Littleberry said, “I’d like to go. There’s a land agency in Tallahassee.
An article I read says they have special information about the quality
and extent of the most valuable lands.”
Chilled, Mary rolled over on her back and pulled her knees up under
her white cotton nightgown. Her long, thick, dark brown hair of soft
wavy curls puddled behind her head on the rug. She thought, “Florida
doesn’t sound good. I wonder what Mama will say to this, and I can’t
wait to tell Uncle David.”
Her Uncle David, only two years older than she, more like an older
brother than an uncle, was one of her father’s younger brothers. David
grew up playing with Mary, the only other child near his age on the
Walker land. There were eight years between him and Littleberry.
David’s little brother Joel Junior (the youngest), born four years later,
played more with Mary’s younger brother Henry.
Her father and older uncles continued their discussion, but she figured
she should get back to bed. If her dad caught her here, he would skin her
hide. The Florida Indians were less fearsome.
She crawled to the room she shared with her sister Susan and slid back
into the cool bed covers. In the moonlit room, she laid her head on her
pillow, but sleep didn’t come. She worried about this scary place called
Florida.
***
No uncovered documents recorded Mary’s South Carolina home. Nor
did they show why the family later moved to Florida. Only speculations
can be made similar to the earlier created scenario.
***
Early 1800 South Carolinian low country houses resembled Old
Florida homes. The low country climate was much like North
Florida—humid and harsh. Most likely, Mary’s family constructed their
home of timber set on pilings. The floors they raised to keep out the low
country floodwater and to allow for cooling breezes underneath.
Most homes were one room wide for better circulation, which allowed
for better lighting and cut down on mold and mildew. In this story,
though, Mary’s room had a long central hallway through the center of
the house, which also allowed for central circulation between rooms on
each side. Air circulated in a tunnel effect through the hallway; during
hotter days, this area was the coolest place on the property.
The low country people raised their ceilings to take advantage of the
sinking cooler air and because the rising heat needed a place to go. They
made their porches deep to shade their interiors. This late 1700s style is
still considered best for a subtropical climate such as Florida’s. These
low country houses were like the later cracker houses of Florida.
For this story, Mary lived in Carter’s Ford. One can find Carter’s Ford
on maps from this era in the South Carolina low country, seventy miles
southwest of Charleston on the Little Salkehatchie River. In western
Colleton County, Carter’s Ford is a natural ford northwest of Walterboro,
the district seat. One can see the ford from a church of the same name.
Today, the closest community to Carter’s Ford is Lodge, South
Carolina. Carter’s Ford is four miles north of Lodge on Highway 217, as
is Carter’s Ford Baptist Church near the south bank of the river swamp.
See Appendix 1 for more information on Carter’s Ford and its
significance to the Walker family.
In the early 1800s, cities were small and clustered around big eastern
seaports, such as Charleston, the biggest city nearby. City dwellers
purchased their food, but the farmers of the low country produced most
of their own. Beef cost 6 to 8 cents a pound, potatoes cost $.56 a bushel,
and milk was valued at $.32 a gallon. Shoes cost $2.50 a pair, while the
average man made $1,149 a year.
Mary’s home on the Little Salkehatchie River, spacious and roomy, sat
high off the ground, with wooden stairs which reached from the yard to
the porch, five feet off the ground.
Kids played underneath, and her mama warned them about snakes,
though they seldom saw one. Of course, snakes or not, her mom never
hesitated to send them underneath to fetch potatoes she had stored
under the porch.
Mary loved the woods around the house and the river, full of
hickories, bays, magnolias, and pines, a dappled canvas of shadows and
sunshine. The fields beyond stretched far to the west, where her father
and his brothers worked cotton and tended their cattle. She could not
understand why her dad and uncles wanted to leave all this behind.
Sitting on the porch steps in a bonnet and a faded dark green cotton
mid-knee-length dress, she had an awful thought. Would Grandma and
Granddaddy Walker come too? And what about Granny and Papa
Wilson? Surely they would come; but she wasn’t so sure, especially
Granddaddy Walker. His horse threw him the other day, and he had
been bedridden ever since.
She looked toward the river and wanted to go there, but all the babies
would surely follow. When she was five, after she learned to swim, her
mama took a gall berry switch to her for going there. Mama said if she
went, the rest would go too.
It was her place, because she came before the others, to keep the kids
outside and out from under her mama’s feet. Thank goodness for David
and Joel Junior, though they were actually her uncles, who ran free on
the place. They were her playmates because there weren’t any other kids
their age nearby. The uncles were more like brothers and spent a lot of
time in her yard.
She remembered last month when her Wilson cousins came to visit.
They were older, and she, David, and Joel Junior got to go to the feeder
creek to play with them. There, they dammed a little stream of water,
which created a small pool. Later, the older boys threw a rope over a
branch and made a rope swing. It was still there. She, David, Joel Junior,
and her brother Henry couldn’t wait for them to come back so they
would have someone older to play with.
She actually got into trouble for swinging off the rope swing. Her
mama said she was too old to be swimming with the boys. She didn’t
understand. When she was five and learning to swim, she was too
young to go there at all; and now she was too old to go swimming with
them. It was a puzzle.
When the Wilson cousins come back, she thought, I’ll tell Joseph what I
heard last night in the hall. Both she and Joseph were about the same age,
and they were both the firstborn. So they shared experiences. They had
secrets between them. She smiled, and her little brother Henry noticed.
“Mary, what’cha grinning about?”
“Aw, nothing,” and she got down off the steps and walked around
back to see how long before dinner.
Mary’s mother Elizabeth, in the kitchen setting out ingredients,
floured a section of the table for making dough. Her mama, a pretty
woman, medium in stature, with her long light brown hair pulled back
in a low bun at the base of her neck to keep it out of her way, worked
from dawn to dusk cooking, cleaning, hoeing, and doing anything else
needed to keep her family self-sufficient.
The kitchen was a stand-alone room with a table and shelves. In the
fireplace, Elizabeth boiled a couple of sweet potatoes in a pot over the
open fire. Mary leaned over the pot and said, “We’re having mashed
sweet potatoes tonight?”
“No,” said her mother, “We’re having sweet potato buns.” Elizabeth
got out nutmeg, sugar, yeast, and butter.
It would be a while before their noon meal, which they called dinner.
She watched her mama make these buns many times, and the sweet
potato dough had to rise, once as a whole and again when made into
rolls. In another pot over the fire, Mary noticed a hearty beef vegetable
soup cooking.
Dinner, their biggest meal of the day, gave reason for the men to come
with big appetites after a hard morning of work. Those buns went a long
way to fill them. They would miss her biscuits, though. Her mama’s
biscuits were big as a cat’s head, which is why her mama called them
‘cat-head biscuits.’ They filled you up too.
She watched her many a time throw flour leavened with salt and soda
into a big wooden bowl, use her fist to make a hole in the middle, and
add lard or butter, which she cut through the flour with a fork and a
knife, until the little pieces of lard and flour were the size of buckshot or
smaller. She would add a little buttermilk, kneading and adding until
she got it right. In her floury hands, she formed the biscuits; and her
children loved a piece of the dough to play with. The boys held dough
fights.
Mary’s family ate what her father and his family grew or hunted
locally. Corn and beans were common, as was pork. Venison also
provided meat. They preserved their food either by smoking, drying, or
salting. Vegetables were kept in a root cellar or pickled. Because their
family had cattle, they also had milk, butter, and beef.
Elizabeth’s kitchen wasn’t in her home, but in a room attached to the
house by a raised walkway. Kitchens made a house hot, good for the
winter but unbearable in the hot, sultry South Carolina summer. The
walkway they called a dogtrot because the family’s dogs waited there for
someone to drop food on their way into the house, where they served
meals.
Kitchens also caught fire easily. Having a kitchen separated from the
house was safer. Plus, it provided a warm place for baths in the winter
or to hang out.
“Mama, do you need any help?”
“No, Honey. Just make sure those young’uns stay out of trouble.” Then they heard the hoard tear into the house, slamming the front door.
Her mother looked at her with her serious “time to get to work” face and
said, “Well, at least they closed the door. You better go see what they’re
in to.” Elizabeth watched Mary run down the dogtrot and into the
house.
She worried about Mary who, unlike her, was tall and grown up for
her age with long, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Most six-year-olds
were still playing and running without a care in the world, but Mary
asked questions far beyond her years. She was bright and centered, too
centered for a six-year-old.
In fact, Elizabeth thought Mary might be bored. She wished they had
put her in school this year, but people around here usually waited until
the kids were eight. Jesse could read and write, but he did not have the
time to teach the kids himself.
Exhausted when he came in at night, Jesse had a few chores left after
supper. It would be good for the boys to get old enough to help him
more.
No known photos exist of Mary; but most likely, Mary’s hair darkened
into the brunette seen in photos of her sister Susan and a daughter Laura.
Please note: All photos from these early eras show people as somber and not
smiling. They weren't necessarily unhappy. It was impossible to hold a smile for
the several minutes the technology needed to capture an image. If they moved
their mouth or eyes at all during the sitting, the photo was blurred, and the
significant dollars needed for the one photo were wasted.
No primary documents exist which show Mary’s parents. The author
used a proof argument to determine her parentage. See Appendix 2
What Was America Like when Mary Lived?
Most likely her parents were farmers, as later documents attest. Four
out of every five Americans still lived on farms, as did Mary and her
family. They had to make their own goods by hand. They used these
goods and also bartered and sold them, goods such as barrels, furniture,
and even horseshoes.
Though the population increases were mostly due to high birth rates, still a low life expectancy persisted. If Mary lived long enough to see her
twentieth birthday, she could expect to live another eighteen or nineteen
years. It was lower for a man. The rates for slaves were lower still.
Mary would most likely die of disease or in childbirth. The main
causes of death in her area were malaria and tuberculosis. Children,
though, died of measles, mumps, and whooping cough.
In the 1790s, over thirty-five years earlier, the invention of the cotton
gin changed the economic, social, and political life of South Carolina. It
and the introduction of a new variety of cotton, which grew entirely
throughout the southeast, increased cotton production rapidly. South
Carolina’s economy did well under the invention and new variety.
With cotton production, the institution of slavery increased. Large
plantations and slave labor became the norm for the Low Country with
the seat of power in Charles Town (Charleston), where the people
shaped their laws and government to perpetuate the institution.
Textile production grew in America, though mostly in the New
England states. By 1830, textile production became the nation’s largest
economy, and Mary’s part of the country was where cotton production
excelled. Farm laborers earned $12 to $15 a month. A male teacher made
$10 to $12 a month, and a female teacher $4 to $10. A servant earned
only $2 to $2.50 a month.
In Mary’s part of the nation, draft animals mostly pulled commerce,
whether by wagons, buckboards, or stages. Even trains were pulled by
mules. Colleton District’s cotton and cattle commerce went by river
down the Edisto River system into the Atlantic. Up near Carter’s Ford,
though, the Little Salkehatchie was little more than a swamp stream, so
their cotton had to be transported by wagon further southeast or taken
to Charleston. Cotton factors in Charleston and Savannah were
important to this system.
People traveled long distances by horseback, wagon, or an
uncomfortable stagecoach. Her father and uncles may have grappled
with whether to make a trip to Florida by ship or by land. If by land,
should they use mules or oxen? The roads were rutted at best. Cargo
moved at a rate of about twenty-five to thirty miles a day by a horse
team.
Travel by train to Florida was not possible. By Mary’s birth about 1822,
there were few steam railroads in all of America. Only five years earlier,
in 1818, the first steam railroad crossed the Appalachian Mountains and
fostered western expansion. None were operating between their area
and Florida.
Steamboat travel was popular, as the first steamboat ferry service
opened in 1807, six years after the birth of her father. During the War of
1812, when her father was only eleven, Andrew Jackson steamed back
up the Mississippi from the Battle of New Orleans and on the Ohio to
Pittsburgh, proving the feasibility of steamboat navigation and our
nation’s mighty river system.
Andrew Jackson was now their president. Steamboat travel did take
place between Charleston and St. Marks, Florida, the closest port to
Tallahassee by sea.
…
Dressed in a dark blue, mid-length calico dress fitted at her waist,
seven-year-old Mary sat down on the wooden pew next to her little
brother Henry, who sat between her and her mother Elizabeth. On the
other side of Mary sat her grandmother and grandfather Walker. Her
grandfather was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a weathered, dark
complexion. He reached across her grandmother and poked Mary in the
ribs, giving her a tickle. She giggled and tried to hide behind her
grandmother for protection.
The noisy Carter’s Ford Missionary Baptist Church housed congregants, filing in family by family, greeting each other, and catching
up on the latest news. The little church, cooler inside because of its big
windows which were opened to catch any breeze, posed a respite from
the hot and muggy air outside.
While another gentleman distracted her grandfather, who rose to
shake his hand, Mary looked down the pew at her Uncle Joel, who was
close to her own age and sitting on the other side of her grandparents.
He grinned, got up, and walked down the pew. His mother, Mary’s
grandmother, made room for him to sit by Mary as the preacher started
the service.
With hardly any time to visit, though, the two began whispering. Said
Joel Junior, “Why aren’t you coming to dinner today?”
“Shhh,” said Mary’s mother with a frown at them both.
Mary waited a few moments. “We have to go to Grandma Wilson’s.”
Joel frowned. He didn’t like feeling left out, plus his next sibling David,
at ten, always tried to get rid of him. He leaned back over to Mary, “Do
you think I can go with y’all?”
“Sure.”
“Shhhhh.” This time it came from both sides, and Mary’s
Grandmother Walker took a firm grip on Joel’s right wrist and yanked
him to the dreaded seat between her and his father Joel Senior, who
grinned at them both.
***
There is a tangled web of Walkers, Carters, and Wilsons in Colleton
County. See Appendix 3 for a more in-depth description.
Mary’s Father Jesse Walker
From descriptions of other family members and from a DNA test on
one of his descendants, Jesse was a tall man with dark hair and a dark
complexion. He’s described here as tall, dark, and handsome. There is a
photo of his son, Archibald Jesse Walker, also known as Arch. This
photo was used to describe Jesse.
Jesse married Elizabeth Wilson about 1821; Mary, their oldest child,
was born around 1822. They talked about migrating from Colleton
District, South Carolina to Jefferson County, Florida, around 1828.
Mary’s father Jesse was the oldest child of Joel Senior. But in 1790 the
state legislature wrote a new state constitution which abolished
primogeniture or inheritance by the firstborn son. Jesse must have
known he would have to build his own wealth, and this provides
another reason for these brothers to leave South Carolina and begin
afresh in a new land.
Who’s Who among the Groups of Walkers Who Moved to Jefferson
County?
There are three different sets of Walker families who moved from
Colleton District to Jefferson County, Florida. Mary’s came down in 1830,
another set came in the 1850s, and a third moved into the county in the
1890s.
For more detailed information on these three families, see
Appendix 4.
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