Tag Archives: Timucua

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: The Ancient Timucuan Community of Sarabay

Posted on June 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

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This is the ancient Timucuan Indian community of Sarabay. For more than two decades, UNF archaeologist Keith Ashley suspected it. Now he’s sure. European pottery found here matches notes in French and Spanish writings from the 1560s to the early 1600s. For the Mocama, the Timucuan people who lived here for thousands of years, European contact meant the beginning of the end.

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Tagged Auburn archaeology, Big Talbot Island, Daniella Kapuschansky, Denise Bossy, Fort George Island, Francisco Pareja, Grand Shell Ring, Jacque Le Moyne, jax psycho geo, Jean Ribault, Jody Gilmore, John Cottier, Keith Ashley, Laudonniere, Little Talbot Island, Majolica, Matt Soergel, McKenna Lenoir, Mocama, Mocama Indians, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, San Juan del Puerto, Sarabay, Theodor de Bry, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, Timucuan Indians, UNF archaeology, University of North Florida archaeology, William Jones, Zephaniah Kingsley

Wesley Plott’s Downtown Bottlescape

Posted on August 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

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He knew all the best places to dig downtown, in Springfield and in Riverside for hundred year old bottles. He found Indian pottery, toys, newspapers, parts of skulls and Civil War munitions. His 40 year old 50 page book, Antique Bottles Found in Northeast Florida, contains chapters called “Locating Dumps,” “Known Bottle Dumps” and “Hidden Treasures Just for You!” He also claims to have unearthed an ancient body, then reburied it, downtown on Adams Street. Click below for the story.

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Tagged A Century of Medicine in Jacksonville and Duval County, A.S. Baldwin, Antique Bottle Club of Jacksonville, bottle collecting Northeast Florida, Dr. A.S. Baldwin, Duval County Board of Health, Florida history, Henry John Klutho Park, Independent Life Building, Jacksonville Free Public Library, Jacksonville history, jaxpsychogeo, McCoys Creek, Old St. Luke's Hospital, Purple Petunia, Springfield Jacksonville, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, Timucuan Indians, Tudor Revival, Webster Merritt, Wesley B. Plott, Windsor Hotel

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

Gilmore Cemetery and Settlement

Posted on December 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

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Irish immigrant Archibald Gilmore founded this settlement in 1885. The Gilmore train station stopped somewhere along today’s Gilmore Heights Road North.

Bill Hawley trudged through the dark wooded night in fear of the escaped convict. The Timucuans were here five millennia before all that.

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Tagged Archibald Gilmore, Arlington, Boggy Branch, Cleve Powell, Eggleston, Gilmore, Gilmore Cemetery, Gilmore Heights, Gilmore Train Station, Hawley, James Shields, JM&P, Mill Creek, Rio St. Johns, Rondette Lake, Shields Mound, Timucua, Turner's Fish Camp, W.F. Hawley, Yellow Fever

Searching for Gonny’s Head, Finding the Ruins

Posted on March 22, 2017 | 1 comment

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I was joking when I told her I wanted to find the old man’s bearded head. She’d watched me for a moment, sly-smiled, and called me a resurrectionist.

When Gonny lived here, harvested his home, and built his house, small wild horses still roamed these coastal marsh islands.

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Tagged August Heckscher, Florida wild horses, Fort George Island, Gonny Gonzales, greenbrier, Heckscher Drive, jaxpsychogeo, John Bartram, Pine Island, Sisters Creek, T.H.E. Webb, tabby, tabby house, tabby ruins, Terrence H.E. Webb, Theodore Roosevelt Area, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, Timucua shell middens, Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve, wild horses, William Bartram, William Jones, William Marcus Jones, Willie Brown