Thanks, Mike!

What a happy thing to have been working down in the lower part of my front yard the day Dr. & Mrs. Michael McKenzie happened to drive by, and we exchanged our family histories with this old house! It’s long distance yet, but I feel I’ve found a new friend -- or a new friend has found me! Mike has corresponded by mail and email, sending me parts of the St. Andrews Bay News, the local newspaper here in the early part of the twentieth century, with its news about the loss of my father’s brother Alfred in the wreck of the fishing smack, a twin-masted schooner, the Annie & Jennie. More news arrived yesterday, which is published below. We look forward to having Dr. & Mrs. McKenzie visit us their next trip to Panama City, so he can look around this old house that his family owned and where he lived for awhile as a boy.

At church Sunday morning a friend commented to me that my blog has been sad lately. I can see that, but it has not been meant so, as I’ve gratefully received and eagerly published bits of my family history that are so dear to me. Things have come out that I did not know, adding to what I did know that was told me by my grandparents, my father, and my aunts in my growing up years, and correcting some things. Here in the house at the time, besides Mom and Pop were my father, age 6 1/2, his older sisters Evalyn Godfrey (whom we called E.G., who I think was twelve at the time) and Ruth, and his baby sister Marguerite. All but my father are buried in the same plot in St. John’s Cemetery and I will look at their tombstones when in Pensacola for a day next month, to remind myself how old each one was at the time.

     

St. Andrews Bay News

Vol. 3 St. Andrews, Florida, February 5, 1918 No. 36

MR. ACKER THANKS PEOPLE

OF ST. ANDREWS

Mrs. Acker,of Nova Scotia, in a

letter to Mrs. A. D. Weller, received

last night, asked that her gratitude

be expressed to the good people here

for their kindness and the Christian

spirit manifested by them in the

search for and care of the remains of 

her son, Charles, who was lost on the

ill-fated Annie & Jennie.

The search yet continues for the

body of Leonard Stephens, nor will it

be abandoned while there exists the

slightest chance to recover the re-

mains.

THE GULF GIVES UP ANOTHER

OF ITS VICTIMS

Remains of Alfred Weller, Jr. Re-

covered. Burial in Pensacola

On Wednesday afternoon last the

new spread quickly thruout the town

that the Nancy Lee was again com

ing up the Bay with her flag at half-

mast, and those who gathered at the 

ice plant wharf learned upon her ar’

rival, that the body of Alfred Weller,

Jr., had been recovered, having been

found on the shore of Crooked Island

by Odom Melvin, one of the survivirs

of the wreck in which Alfred was lost.

As it was desired that interment

be made in Pensacola, services were

held at the Weller home, conducted

by Rev. James Lapsley, after which

the casket was borne to the railway

by friends of the deeply-mourned

young man.

The services at the home were at’

tended by many of Alfred’s friends,

and those of the family, who came

to pay a last tribute to the lovable

lad who had claimed so large a share

of the friendship of them all.

Mr. and Mrs. Weller and the child-

ren and Bert Ware accompanied the 

remains to Pensacola, where the bur-

ial service was conducted by an Epis-

copal clergyman the following after-

noon.

It has previously been recorded here in my blog that one evening a couple of years after Alfred’s death, my grandparents loaded up their two automobiles, a Model T Ford and a Hudson touring car, and moved away from the sea, trying to escape from their desolating grief by starting life anew in another place. Pop drove the Hudson, in which he, Mom and Marguerite rode, and E.G. drove the Model T. Both cars were loaded with belongings, cages with Mom’s chickens strapped to the running boards. They headed north on winding dirt roads, two ruts through the woods, some only marked with signs nailed to trees. It was the first of several futile relocations over the next few years, futile because you cannot walk or run away from your heart. That first stop was Ocilla, Georgia, where my grandfather was a Ford dealer for a few years.

In other news from that edition of February 5, 1918,

The W.C.T.U will meet at the

Baptist church on Tuesday, the 12th

instant, at 2:30 o’clock p.m.  All inter-

ested in the work are earnestly in-

vited to be present and help the work

along. A special message from the

State President will be laid before

the meeting. 

Tom+ in +Time