Davis Point
Looking across StAndrewsBay at Davis Point a lovely Saturday morning, moving back and forth between 7H porch rail and my Bay side chair with its windowsill lined with old model cars, some of my favorites including a black Citroen 11BL sedan with yellow wheels, made in France; but then no favorites, I love them one and all, some my son Joe gave me, some my mother gave me, one my father got for me from Karl Wiselogel when he was the Dodge Plymouth dealer in the late 1940s and early fifties, during which Time my father bought three large Dodge trucks, our green 1948 Dodge sedan, and our Plymouth woody station wagon from Karl; most acquired by self over the years, it more manageable to collect scale models than real cars. Some favorites I've given away to little boys I loved, including Christian and Ryan.
But looking across at Davis Point again wondering where its name derived, easy enough to solve. This article, scroll down, by Marlene Womack tells the story. And yes, about their grief at losing their land and towns when USGov seized it earliest 1940s to build Tyndall Field, now TAFB, quite a large military installation. While sympathizing with them, we are so fortunate that it happened, otherwise the beautiful natural land across StAndrewsBay from Panama City would be as developed an obscenity as PCB now is. TAFB is primal land of beautiful memories, including that our first Camp Weed, where my father told me he went to church camp as a boy, was first located. Just around Davis Point, about where the Tyndall yacht club is, looking across to what is now called Shell Island.
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(Editor’s note: This article first published on Sunday, July 12, 1992, the first in a three-part series on remembrances of Farmdale, gathered at the Davis Reunion held the prior month. The town of Farmdale existed on what is now Tyndall Air Force Base property from 1886 to 1941.)
Family reunions are popular this time of the year. They bring relatives together, honoring older family members and friends. On June 28, 1992, descendants of L.C. and Josephine E. Davis gathered for their annual reunion at Cooks Bayou. The Davises lived first at Iola, where Josephine’s father, J.B. Stone, operated a store and grist mill. Stone also sold firewood to steamboats plying the Chipola and Apalachicola rivers.
In this swampy location along the river, malaria weakened many of the residents. By 1884, Davis became tired of fighting “the fevers.” He told his family he was moving to the bay “even if he had to survive on cornbread.” Before settling at Farmdale, the family lived at Allanton, where Davis built and operated the Piney Woods Sawmill. This mill supplied the lumber used to build many of the first homes on East Bay.
Both Davises are buried in the Farmdale Cemetery. Josephine Davis died in 1923; L.C. Davis in 1932. The following are some remembrances of Farmdale, including stories of childhood adventures and life in the old community. A common theme woven into many of the happy recollections of the past, however, is the plight families faced when the government seized their property to build Tyndall Field.
Time has eased some of the heartaches and pain these people endured. But the resentment still lingers among many.
“We rode the mail boat down the bay. In rough weather it made some people sick. We used to travel on Saturdays to Panama City,” said Joe Fern Davis. Born in Farmdale, he attended the community’s one-room schoolhouse before graduating from Bay High School in 1929. His father was M.B. “Mood” Davis.
The mail boat stopped at places such as Allanton, Belle Isle, Auburn, San Blas and Cromanton, all communities on East Bay. Eventually the route was extended to Wetappo and Overstreet. The Davis family owned a small boat they used for fishing up Sandy Creek and other locations.
“I can remember when we came home with 75 saltwater trout apiece in the fall of the year,” Davis said. In his youth, Davis enjoyed attending square dances.
“We always seemed to enjoy everything back then. We’d often go over and swim in the Gulf at night. Once we got roads where we could get there, we’d go down to where the old lighthouse stood. Sometimes they’d invite us down and we’d have a party there,” he said.
In the beginning, Davis worked at his father’s turpentine still, which had several wooden houses nearby for those employed at the still. Fishing, naval stores and truck farming served as the main industries in Farmdale. Davis remembered a still operated by Hamp Covington at Belle Isle. William Parish and other individuals took over the still in later years. M.G. Lewis ran a store, post office and ferry at Belle Isle. Electricity was not provided on the East Peninsula until the 1930s.
“I remember the road to Cromanton, then when they put the road in to Redfish Point. It was wonderful when they put the bridge across the bay. We had to get up pretty early to make the long bus trip,” he said.
Roy Daniels was born at Farmdale. Mood Davis offered Daniels his first job, on Davis’ truck farm for 25 cents per day. Then Daniels began working at his family’s “scallop house” in Farmdale. They dragged for scallops about six months of the year. “We got scallops in St. Andrew Bay and Crooked Island Sound before the paper mill ran them out,” he said.
In the late 1920s, the government began building U.S. 98. This road followed near the course of the old 1836 blazed wagon trail that ran from Ferry Point to St. Joseph. “I remember seeing the mules and wagons they used to build the new highway,” Daniels said.
After workmen completed the roadway and the DuPont Bridge across East Bay in 1929, the state charged a toll of 50 cents per vehicle and driver. Each additional adult had to pay 10 cents and children above six, 5 cents. “A lot of people tried to hide in their cars so they didn’t have to pay the toll,” Daniels said.
Daniels recalled the bitterness everyone felt when they lost their land for the construction of Tyndall Field: “The government taking the property was the worst thing that ever happened. It disrupted many families. What hurt the most was people were just getting over the Depression. Many of the businesses were just being developed.”
Those living on the East Peninsula, the area now covered by Tyndall Air Force Base, were given about six months to relocate. They were ordered off their land and received no reimbursement for several years.
“We were allowed $850 for our home, seafood house and 50 acres. They wouldn’t even let us move a rose bush. We just had to leave it all,” Davis said.
Eugene Fay, whose family settled at Farmdale, recalled his school days and walking a mile and a half each way to attend class at Farmdale School. “I always went barefooted in summer and mostly in winter. Most of us didn’t have shoes,” he said.
After Fay completed grammar school, he went to Bay High. He graduated in 1936.
“When we went to high school, we had to ride the bus 20 miles each way. We still had a lot of fun and didn’t know we were that bad off,” Fay said.