Tag Archives: Fort Caroline

The Myth of Ancient Floridian Giants

Posted on June 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

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The fiction that the Timucua and other indigenous Florida peoples were seven to nine feet tall spread rapidly in the 1950s. My mother believed it, told me we were descended. Another fiction. Willie Browne and Father Dearing believed it. D.B. McKay — Tampa mayor, newspaper editor, and chief organizer of the White Municipal Party — believed nine foot tall ancient Floridians populated the Garden of Eden. So where did these ideas come from?

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Tagged A Land Remembered, Athore, Cross and Sword, Cross and Sword: A Symphonic Drama of the Spanish Settlement of Florida, D.B. McKay, Father Frank Dearing, Fiction Fix, First Presbyterian Church Jacksonville, Fort Caroline, Fort Caroline National Memorial, Garden of Eden Florida, Great Fire of 1901, In Abraham's Bosom, Jacque Le Moyne, jaxpsychogeo, Jean Ribault, Juan Alonso Cavale, Mocama, Mocama Indians, Oriba, Patrick D. Smith, Patrick D. Smith A Land Remembered, Paul Green, Purple Petunia, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, Saturiwa, Theodor de Bry, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, Timucuan Indians, Timucuan Village U.S. Capitol, Wesley B. Plott, White Municipal Party, William Sears, William Sears archaeologist, Willie Browne

New Story: Round Marsh (by the Willie Browne Trail)

Posted on March 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

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People have theorized Round Marsh the result of a meteor, others that it’s the remains of a British rice paddy and a 4,000 year old cypress pond. Willie Browne led friends on hikes around the pond and archaeologists have combed its shores. The World War II airplane and its pilot, meanwhile, are still in the marshes to the north. Willie Browne often said he could hear “the thunder of horsemen racing by in the distance,” when no one was there.

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Tagged Bill Goodyear, Colorinda Creek, conservation history, Craig Morris, Ellis and McClure, Florida history, Fort Caroline, Frances Brewster Smith, Jacksonville history, Jay Huebner, John Nathan Spearing, Keith Ashley, Lorraine "Rainy" Clarke, National Park Service, Nature Conservancy, Round Marsh, Saxon Browne, Shell Mount, St Johns Town, Sub-Tropical Exposition, Theodore Roosevelt Area, Tim Gilmore, Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve, William Jones, Willie Browne, Willie Browne Trail

50 Years Ago, Willie Browne Died

Posted on December 20, 2020 | 1 comment

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This week marks 50 years since Willie Browne died. The hermit was famous in his own time, but his gift of hundreds of acres to The Nature Conservancy has made him a kind of conservationist saint. If you visited his cabin in what’s now the Theodore Roosevelt Area of the Timucuan Preserve, he always knew when you’d stepped onto his land.

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Tagged Bill Goodyear, Carolyn Gentry, Craig Morris, Eliza Browne, Fort Caroline, Frances Brewster, Frances Smith, Frances Smith Brewster, George Carter, Joan Vinson, John Nathan Spearing, Lynne Raiser, Margaret Spearing, Nature Conservancy, Round Marsh, Saxon Browne, Theodore Roosevelt Area, Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve, William Browne, William Goodyear, Willie Browne, Willie Browne Theodore Roosevelt Area, Willie Browne Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, Willie Browne's cabin

Remembering Craig Morris

Posted on October 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

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In praise of Craig Morris, who passed away on September 22nd. Craig spent his career here at the 46,000 acre Timucuan Preserve. This place had called him. He’d never forgotten the vision. When he was a child, having just moved into a Fort Caroline subdivision, he went for a walk and saw “human bones by the hundreds eroding out of the bluff.” He honored them his whole life.

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Tagged 8DU14, Craig Morris, Fort Caroline, Grant Mound, jax psycho geo, Kinzey’s Knoll, Matt Soergel, Shields Mound, Tim Gilmore, Timucuan Preserve

Gilmore Settlement and Homes Built into Burial Mounds

Posted on December 13, 2017 | 1 comment

I try not to wince at the street sign that warns me this road’s a “dead end.” It dead-ends at Grant Mound.

https://jaxpsychogeo.com/east/gilmore-2-dead-end-at-grant-mound/

When UNF archaeologists and students were able to scan the Petherbridge site after bulldozing, they “found thousands of pieces of pottery, and pieces of human remains”.

French colonial artist Jacques Le Moyne called them “hermaphrodites.”

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Tagged Buzz Thunen, Cahokia, Clarence B. Moore, Craig Morris, Fort Caroline, Grant Mound, He-Who-Wears-Human-Heads-as-Earrings, Jacques Le Moyne, jaxpsychogeo, Keith Ashley, Leanne Moye, Milanich, Mill Cove Complex, NAGPRA, Pat Petherbridge, Robert Thunen, Shields Mound, Spiro, Tamara Shircliff Spike, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, UNF

New Story: Death and Life of a Spanish American War Fort

Posted on November 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

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The guns never fired. Behind concrete parapets, the two eight foot long, 16-ton “rifles” peered over the bluff, waiting for the Spanish ships to take the St. Johns River into Jacksonville.

Perhaps the spirits they believed haunted these grounds and witnessed walking up from munitions tunnels were the ghosts of their virginities.

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Tagged Arlington, Camp Cuba Libre, Cleve Powell, David Radcliffe, Duval County, Elizabeth Guthrie, Fort Caroline, Fort Caroline National Memorial, Genevieve DeLoach, Jacksonville, North Florida Land Trust, Spanish American War, Spanish American War Fort, Tim Gilmore, USS Maine