"Early Jacksonville History: Introduction" (3 of 3) Viola Muse Transcription, encoding and edition Mak Kapetanovic

This document was produced as part of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.

 USA Florida Jacksonville Jacksonville Historical Society Viola Muse Collection (1959-18) Folder 18, item 3 A more complete version of the introduction to an early history of Jacksonville based on accounts by African American residents (see 1 of 3 and 2 of 3), with information drawn from notes of Muse's interview with Irene Coates

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Document transcribed and encoded following the criteria of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.

Early History of Jacksonville

By Viola B. Muse

Introduction

Some of the Negroes who came to Jacksonville when it was in it's infancy still live and have vivid recollection of the geography of the town-shiptownship and the changes which have been made.

Talking to one, who relates without hesitation the former location of buildings, bodies of water, railroad tracks, and the like, causes you to believe that her memory can be relied upon and her word taken as evidence that what she says is true.

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When Jacksonville covered only about four acres and the town-shiptownship had not yet been incorporated, the main part of the town revolved around what is now Broad Street, and which at that time was Bridge StrettStreet. Bridge Street got it's name from the bridge which crossed the McCoy Creek at the point where the Broad Street Viaduct is located.

Before sand was hauled into Jacksonville from Georgia to fill in the low places where water stood, forming a creek, a Negro woman named Irene Coates came here with some Whitewhite people.

Irene was one of the many Negro girls who Whitewhite families of the southSouth took into their home to rear, immediately after the Civil War, and in the early reconstructionReconstruction days. The southern aristocrat found hesselfherself some-whatsomewhat handicapped in having her servants taken away so suddenly, and it was a good solution of the servant problem to take a Negro boy or girl some-whatsomewhat as one in the family and still make use of them as a servant.

When Jim and Lou Bedell came to Jacksonville in the early his-toryhistory of the town, they brought Irene with them. Mr. Bedell found a place to lodge on Bridge and Adams AtreetsStreets at the home of Nat Patterson. Now, Mr. Page 2 Patterson's home occupied the block from Bridge to Clay and from AdameAdams to Ward Streets. The house on this ground faced Bridge Street and in the yard running back to Clay were orange trees and grape vines.

There were no fine houses in Jacksonville at that time , the California -style house with boards running vertically being the only kind built.

Down Bridge Street,, on the corner of Forsyth, where Oak and Peters Shoe Store is located now, stood an old grittsgrits mill, which was operated by a wheel turned by water power.

Where the Broad Street Viaduct spans the railroad tracks, was, in the early days of Jacksonville, a wooden foot bridge. Before the land was filled in and Mc Coy creekCreek was sonfinedconfined to it'sits present narrow boundaries, the creek occupied all the section where the railroad tracks are south of Bay Street. It continued though the block between Bridge and Jefferson Streets, being the the dividing line between Jacksonville and LaVilla. LaVilla was not in Jacksonville, but was a separate town.

The creek continued up the center of the blocks until it reached the corner where the coloredColored Masonic Temple is now located, on Broad and Duval Streets. Great Rocksrocks formed bulk headsbulkheads at this point, and men fished with nets and pulled in great amounts of mullet fish.

Where Stanton High School is located was once marsh land, and Irene often carried the baby she nursed for a walk and platted grass and played in the creek which flowed across a part of the campus. The creek continued over to Beaver where Lawton Pratt's Undertakingundertaking Estab-lishmentestablishment stands, meeting a tributary of Hogan Creek about midway the block between Broad and Clay on Union Street.

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A branch of Hogan Creek ran from the section north of State Street at Jefferson and diagonally through the block bounded by Broad, Jefferson, State, and Union Streets. At the corner where Joseph H. James buildingBuilding is located, the stream was quite swift, and even to-daytoday when heavy rains falls in Jacksonville, the old creek runs rampant under the building, tearing up the sidewalk, and makes the street at Broad and Union impassable.

The branch flowing from towardThe original here reads from toward. We have interpreted the former as correct, as this paragraph, like the previous, seems to be describing, from its point of origin, a tributary that flowed into Hogan's Creek. Stanton School location, meeting the one from north of Jefferson and State intersection, rolled on and covered the land where Grant's Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church now stands. It continued toward Caroline Street, and covered much of what is known as "Black Bottom," the section populated by Negroes entirely. Farther on in it's course it joined Hogan creekCreek proper, which itself occupied much more width than at the present time.

In the down towndowntown section, where Cohen Store is located, was the one and only hotel in Jacksonville, known as St. James Hotel. The rest of that section was woods. Few blocks east of Cohen Store and north to Union Street, at the exact spot where Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church is located, Market and Union Streets, was an oak grove, and Irene remem-bersremembers that a few of the Negroes who lived in Jacksonville at that time held church in a log cabin.

Only one train came into Jacksonville in those days, and it came from Fernandina, Florida. The tracks ran down the Bridge Street and turned at Forsyte, and the depot was between Bridge and Jefferson.

At the exact spot where Uncle Neal's Pawn Shop is located, on Broad and Bay Streets, boats landed, and it was at that place that Jim Be-dellBedell bought his little boat to use in rowing up and down the creek to fish.