Chapter Four
Hog Drives & Cane Syrup
From the DeVane collection
Lake Placid, Florida
June 18, 1967.
Mr. D. B. McKay
2405 Bayshore Blvd.
Tampa, Florida.
Dear Mr. McKay:
I am enclosing two articles on interview I have made that I thought perhaps you could use on the Pioneer page. I do not recall whether your page has touched on early hog drives or not.
After talking with the very old timers, they tell me it is equally as fast as a cattle drive and if cool weather, much faster. Willie Williams tells me of another hog drive of 200 head from Ft. Center on Fisheating Creek to Punta Rassa when there was cool weather with a sprinkle of rain. The drive was made one day ahead of the cattle, both starting from the same point at the same time.
It has always to me seemed hard to believe the narrators’ story of DeSoto’s march through Florida driving their hogs along with the march, but now knowing what the early old-timers tell me, I no longer doubt the accuracy of their journal. In fact, hogs have been driven from Georgia to Hillsborough County before railroads.
Ceylon Carlton of Lake Placid, who has lived in this vicinity since 1906, tells me he has made many drives from this area with from one to three hundred head, to both Zolfo Springs on the railroad and to Punta Rassa on the Gulf.
Kindest personal regards to yourself, your family and staff.
Sincerely,
Albert DeVane
In a recent interview with Willie Williams and his wife of Sebring, who have recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary attended by their nine children and grandchildren, I found they were both born in Polk County over 80 years ago and relate many pioneer stories of the frontier. Their fathers both fought in the last Seminole War; also the Civil War. Their Grandfathers both fought in the Second Seminole War.
I shall now relate a story as told by them. (A. DeVane)
In the latter part of the 1890’s in Hernando and Pasco County, a feud existed between the Whiddens and the Ashleys, which finally resulted in the killing of one of the Ashleys by Tillet Whidden. Immediately following the killing, Tillet Whidden and family moved to DeSoto County on Deadman’s Branch, about five or six miles northeast of LaBelle. Judge Ziba King of Arcadia gave him a job riding his beef pasture fence which ran from south Okeechobee Lake by Bear Hammock to the Calloosahatchee River. This was known as the stockade pasture.
Joe Ashley, brother of the slain Ashley, with his family also moved from Pasco County to DeSoto County. Some say to avenge his brother’s death. Be as it may, he and his sons hunted alligators and plume birds for a living. A few months passed and one day while riding the fence when passing Boar Hammock, Whidden was shot with a rifle. His horse dashed and he was able to stay astride of him until his horse carried him home, about eight miles away. He was laid up for a while but recovered.
Rations began to run low and it became necessary that a trip be made to the store for groceries and feed. Yoking up his oxen to the wagon, also his horse to the Jersey wagon, he and his 17 year old son started out for Fort Myers. On the following day, the wagons being loaded with groceries and feed, the trip home began. Everything went along fine until when about five miles from his home “calamity struck.”
The boy, who was driving the horse and wagon, was about half a mile in the lead ahead of his father who was driving the oxen. Someone hidden in ambush walked into the road after the boy had passed, slipped up from behind poking the gun between a barrel of grits and a barrel of flour and shot the boy; then fled into the woods. His father heard the shot and saw someone leave the wagon and run into the woods. He correctly guessed that someone had shot his boy mistaking the boy for himself.
Leaving his oxen, he ran to the boy, finding him badly shot but still alive. He fired a few shots from his rifle into the thicket where the assassin had fled. He then got into the wagon with the boy starting for his home at a double pace and left the team and supplies to themselves.
After about a mile he met Willie Williams, Jerry Whidden and his son, Charlie, who were driving 200 head of hogs to Punta Rassa, 50 miles away, to sell to the Spaniards for the Cuban trade.
It was just before night and they were making plans to feed the hogs and bed down for the night when Tillet Whidden and his boy drove up. He wanted Willie to go to LaBelle, phone for a doctor and Frank Tippens, the sheriff. Tillet gave him a sack of shorts bran he dumped into a palmetto patch for the hogs. Willie, Jerry and Charlie left for LaBelle to telephone. They returned to Tillet’s home. Willie gave the boy a dose of morphine. The doctor arrived on horseback about 4 A.M. Frank Tippens, the sheriff, and his deputy, about an hour later.
After an examination by the doctor, he said the boy would recover.
Daybreak came. Willie, the sheriff and others visited the scene of the shooting but were unable to get much evidence. The oxen and wagon were about 300 yards from where he left them. Willie, Jerry and his son Charlie, rounded up the hogs, having accounted for all of them and again started their hog drive for Punta Rassa. The hogs were sold for 5 cents a pound.
On the way back they stopped at Ft. Myers, purchased a load of groceries and returned to their borne on Grasshopper, six miles east of Venus. Tillet Whidden was later killed from ambush while riding fence.
The Ashleys moved soon after to the East Coast near Hobe Sound. Through unscrupulous dealings, killings and robberies they became known as the Ashley Gang. However, through the energetic police work of Sheriff Bob Baker of Palm Beach County, the gang was killed, captured or imprisoned, thus ending the outlaw sagas of the Everglades.
- - - - - - -
A recent interview with W. Gettis Driggers of DeSoto City, the youngest and only living child of Jacob Driggers, Jr., and his wife, Ella (Underhill) Driggers, disclosed they were early pioneers into Polk County prior to the last Seminole War. Gettis tells a most interesting story of experiences as a young man one I shall relate.
In 1906 while in Key West, J. Edd Watson, known as the “Notorious Watson” of the Ten Thousand Islands, came to the city to recruit labor to make up his crop of sugar cane into syrup and the skimming’s into moonshine whiskey.
Watson offered him a job. He replied, telling him he was a first class steam engineer. (His former experience firing a coffee pot sawmill.) The pay offered was good. Being large and much of a man, full of vim and with a craving for adventure and with much self-confidence, he accepted the challenge to match wits with Watson and took the job as chief engineer.
With a 45 Colt pistol and a cardboard suitcase, he and the other recruits went aboard the boat and headed for Watson’s island on Chatham River. Except for a few fishermen and some escapees of the law, the only settlement for miles was on Chokoloskee Island, 16 miles to the north.
On Watson’s Island built upon a shell mound, was a large two story house painted white, where Watson resided. There were also houses for laborers; a large shed for the steam boiler and steam engine; a steam-powered cane mill, a syrup house with a 250-gallon open kettle fired by buttonwood. Also on the inside of the kettle was a steam coil used as an auxiliary in the process of syrup making. There were ten acres of cane and one acre used for gardening.
The boiler was fired up and syrup making began. The skimming’s were saved and made into moonshine whiskey. In three and one half months the job was completed. 10,000 gallons of syrup had been made, and much moonshine whiskey was stored away in quart fruit jars. The hardest season was over - - and payday. Those wishing to go to Ft. Myers were Cox, Waller, Walker and Freeman (the syrup maker.)
After spending the night on the boat, Watson went to the bank the next morning, got the money and paid them all off. Watson and Gettis who had worked hard with no questions asked won the admiration of Watson. When paid off he gave him a ten dollar bill extra, telling him to visit his people and then come back and work for him; that he would give him an attractive interest in the business. He never went back.
Gettis stated that from previous stories and hearsay he heard about Watson, in fairness to him he had never been better treated by an employer. However, four years later, in 1910, the tragic climax of murder on the island happened. A woman was found, who had been killed, with some iron boiler grates tied to her body, by some clam fishermen. They went immediately and reported it to the residents of Chokoloskee. A party was formed to investigate. They also found the bodies of two men who had been killed. The evidence seemed conclusive to them as to who was the killer.
Watson, at the time, had gone to Marco to have Capt. Collier do some work on his boat. He started home the following day, going by Chokoloskee to pick up his mail. He was met at the dock by the residents. He was asked to surrender his gun by McKinney, the storekeeper. His reply was shooting McKinney.
Almost instantly, a volley of bullets from the enraged islanders riddled his body killing him instantly, so ending the role in life of the mystic man of the Ten Thousand Islands. The only evidence left of this once famous farm and hideout is a large Poinciana tree marking the site of Watson’s home. A tree of beauty; a sentinel of peace in the islands for almost a half century.
Albert DeVane
(This article is reprinted from Bulletin Number Twenty Two.
Sebring Historical Society, January 1977. Pages 671-674.)