Tag Archives: Florida East Coast Railway

The Monstrous Beauty of the Florida East Coast Railway Bridge at Jacksonville

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The Florida East Coast Railway Bridge is a thing of monstrous beauty. Its story tells of falling deaths, dolphins and swallowtails and the Sunshine Special, oil spills and bomb threats. It’s spanned the St. Johns River at Jax for a century, but it looks older than time.

The Fisherwoman, Poet and Preacher in the Lost Black Community Called Hogan

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The 92 year old black preacher woman recalls Bishop Noah Nothing and on back to Sister Savannah, who ate nothing but the fish she caught, recited poetry, preached and carried her shotgun everywhere. She lived in the lost settlement called Hogan. Here’s what story still echoes in the landscape.

New Story: Epping Forest

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Epping Forest is the grandest historic estate in Jacksonville. Well known, the summits of world leaders here. Well known, its original owner’s personal manipulation of banking in the Great Depression. Why, however, did Alfred Dent believe his grandmother, Jessie Ball duPont, and her brother, Edward Ball, had murdered his grandfather, Alfred duPont? Also, what’s up with the pelicans and squirrels and vampire faces?

Old Philips, w/o Boundaries, Beheadings, the Last Hall-and-Parlor

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Someone stole their heads. Their bodies had been burnt. Police found two axes in the scorched desolation of the shack. Just before Christmas. 1913.

Most of the residents of Philips were the children or grandchildren of former slaves, or were former slaves themselves. Sunken ground in the slope and swale of Philips Cemetery at Craig Swamp might mark older unrecorded graves.

Her husband lived to be 97. She was born in the house in 1922. Surely he’d heard the story when he was young.