The Historic Seminole Inn

good evening and welcome to Stewart Heritage this is the April meeting of the serve heritage museums Incorporated I gotta get it all in there I have a lot to tell you tonight we have a lot of things planned so tonight I'm a muse notes I think it's a good idea usually I try to go off the top of my head and I miss uh I want to start the night off first with some it's very very important uh to myself and to the museum April is volunteer month and without all the volunteers we would not have what a museum that we have today so first of all I want to introduce you to the board

and then the board will come up here and thank the volunteers I want to start with holy but I don't know if totally you don't feel like coming up then standing or you told me you can stay right there and we'll just walk by all right back next vice president is always president Alice Alice is our corresponding secretary it does the wonderful articles in the paper okay this is complicated because some of our volunteers are also more advantage okay as you come up would you please stop over there and Shake Toby's hand it's kind of hard for him to get up um a lot of my board members are not here tonight it did not

work out very well Barbara I don't think Barbara's here she called in sick today so I don't think she was here Donna Donna Junior are you here no I'm Glenda I know you were here and they also all work at least one Saturday a month every two months next we have board members that also volunteer uh this lady is not here tonight either and she got their tears three days a week plus takes her Saturday and that's Tony Henry and she is my right arm and I wish she was here but she's not she's cruising up already next we have Judy and I don't think Judy's here either because she's taken care of her mother

Judy Woods she volunteers two days a week plus that's her Saturday we have Lee Jones now we worked at the Museum today but I don't think he's here either he works uh one day a week and does his Saturdays about Martin boy am I striking out time the valve's not here Gail and okay Randolph Rollins okay Gail's also a volunteer go-bye Gail will shake their hands and then go by and shake up here okay okay now I want to introduce our employees who are also volunteers Betty Hardaway if you're out there counting money come on in while she's up here we also have roof house that works on the weekends as an employee and she

is not here today okay the other volunteers Nancy Crawford what would I do without Nancy she makes our Museum beautiful come on up Nancy and shake hands go by and Shake toes and let us know how much we appreciate her she keeps a museum beautiful she decorates she dug the windows so if you've appreciated the windows she knows someone uh beanie Rico beanie thank you yeah she wants to hide back there come on she's a wonderful volunteer she comes every Wednesday we appreciate her PSY and great appearance can come up together they're kind of new but they are afraid they really do um a lot of work at the museum that we appreciate them okay

Carol Walker almost got to be here Carol is a great worker and she comes on Wednesdays and she's always cleaning Doug arvo I don't think Doug is here but he spent our Sunday in person for years and he does a wonderful job the same as Al layaway Jim from Wednesday okay Karen Morrisette she's not here Ginger yeehaw Ginger's not here too okay Gloria fine tired where is for you come on up here Gloria she is also kind of an employee when I get into real life every Thursday does a fantastic job and if you ever want a tour she'll do a picture Debbie Skidmore our brand new now he's only been here once but she's

gonna work out and be very good thank you Debbie we want to thank all of you and you're much appreciated because much more than the rest of us all put together thank you this is going to take just a minute then I'm going to let Johnny get up here because she's been waiting for quite a while but may is full of events and I want you to know about it May 1st is Preservation day it's the serpent preservation month that is going to do it and now we can it takes me great pleasure to introduce Johnny we've been to the Seminole land with our volunteers and our board and had our dinners out there and

Johnny and Iris get up and they talk and they are unbelievable they can keep you sitting there with all that good food is there and yeah if you're still interested in what they're saying so if she can keep you interested long enough while you wait on your food she's doing good and also Trinity you want to come up again this is how many generations of football six she is going to be just like her great grandma Iris and her grandma John okay okay so um I was actually September and now I'm April so um I said what you want me to speak about and she said anything you want to so I have more time

than I ever have to speak to you guys are in trouble I am one of the three daughters my mother is oldest living resident born in Indian Town she was born there in 1929 she was delivered by Aunt sister delivered all the black babies all the Indian babies and all the white babies on her dining room table she also was responsible for saving the life of Betty jumper tiger who became the first woman chief of the Seminole Indian she was born in Indian town and Aunt sis hid her when they came to kill her so there's quite a rich history there my mom is 87 this year she has lived her entire life in Indian

town we have cattle ranch City in town in Indiantown for about a hundred years now my grandmother came to Indian Town in 1919. and someone was talking to me earlier and they said oh man it must have really been wild I said it truly was the Last Frontier it still is the Last Frontier anyway when I was growing up all I wanted to do was leave that downtown I can remember sitting on the road and thinking I am never going to get out of this town there was one car every two hours that goes down this driveway you're down to 710 and I'm never going to get out of here well I'm back and I

wouldn't be anywhere else in the world I can remember my mother saying I could live anywhere I want to she said every now and then your father-in-law right over Stuart a little shop shopping shop and look at these houses and that's why they're looking and say honey let's go home so we have a long deep history in Indian Town how many of you are from Florida a lot of you so I'm speaking to a bunch of Floridians born here he's born oh my goodness how many of y'all have had to listen to me speak already I'm not too many good I have to do with you to do great with them um I say to

people if you want to understand specifically Florida if you want to understand Indian Town you have to understand what Florida was like in the 1800s you have to know the history of Florida I've been studying the last year the Seminoles and how they settled in Indian town where they settled and why they settled and what became of them so in that year I've developed a timeline that the tribe just came down and met with me and I said is it right and Willie Jones looked at me if any of y'all know that he's not particularly talkative and he said yep it's right except there's only one seminal War and it's not over yet I painted

it on the wall I had to say the Seminole War and the year it started and that are still continuing anyway Indian town why do people come to India why did they come to Florida any of y'all that know anything about Florida know that Florida was a swamp that it had a Sand Ridge it ran right down the middle of the state to the east was swamped to the West was swamped and from India Town South was the Everglades Lake Okeechobee used to be a hundred miles across now it's 30. it also flooded two to three times a year and it flooded almost 200 miles to the South it fed the Everglades any of y'all

that know the history of Florida know that it was basically uninhabitable we had mosquitoes I said to somebody they were laughing I said do you know that when I was a young girl and I count on it and even read a land remembered the mosquitoes were just like that okay I can remember how do we put a bandana over my face because when the mosquitoes hatched out after the dry season they would literally suffocate our cattle they would go to their knees because every breath they took was full of mosquitoes so that's not so long ago that was Indian Town not so long ago that was Florida so you know Spain owned Florida France on

Florida Spain on Florida France on Friday they said we can't keep this thing we're going to give it to the United States we own a bunch of money anyway so we're going to give it to the United States so they gave us to you know they gave Florida to the United States and then they said nobody wants to live in Florida kind of quite a different story today right we can't get anybody to move to Florida what are we going to do now you have to understand what it was like most of the people lived in the Northeast okay they lived in Boston they lived in master you know the Anna Maria and all the

ships landed in the Northeast and they were there well the problem was is that they can only grow food to two seasons a year so what did they eat for the other two seasons so they begin to turn their eye towards Florida as a way to feed them I found on the internet a promotion that in 1927 called Indian Town Farms and it was soliciting people to come to Indiantown and farm it said you can you can buy land for ten dollars an acre you can get 10 acres we'll have it all ready for your seeds when you get here and you can grow four crops a year and you can make twelve hundred dollars

so back then they were realizing that one thing Florida could do because of the weather was grow things now those of you that know the history of Florida I spent some time up in the uppalaha River Basin up in up by Ocala we opened the first nature base Lodge in the State of Florida there and when we were there they were rerouting the okawaha river because in our Infinite Wisdom we shake it straightened everywhere we hatched okay we decided that we knew more than God did and so we were going to straighten out all these Rivers but what we did was we fast forwarded every pollutant that made its way all the way down from

the Saint John's all the way through the aqualaha into the rivers in Orlando polluted all them Lake George Lake Apopka and then we'd straightened the Kissimmee and we fast forwarded all that into Lake Okeechobee and then we fast forwarded into the Everglades so what happened well we said but what happened was that guess what happened to that land when we straightened it you can grow anything in a river bank that muck has been there for thousands of years and so when you're draining those rivers and you straightened those Rivers you create the best farming land in the world and so if you looked back in history you would see that there was money Changing Hands

there were bills being made between the truck farmers and the government and that's how we all followed apocal a little about straightened that's how the Kissimmee group they didn't straighten them because they thought they would be better straight they straightened them so you could Farm the Riverbanks you could cut off a piece of Cypress and stick it in the ground and it would grow just like Pokey okay anyhow y'all have been focusing the Black Gold seeing the ground there it'll grow anything well that's what they were doing we set out to supply the Northeast with food and we want to do it fast and we want to do it quick and so we drained our

Rivers we're still paying for that today so we did that and so still people kind of trickle down had a lot of criminals I've got a lot of people in trouble with the law and about the war between the states what happened was that we were still owned by Spain in those days you remember that and what happened was the slaves would flee into Florida because the queen of Spain was against slavery so they could come here and seek aside only the southern plantation owners didn't like that very well because a grown man's slave cost a thousand dollars in those days a woman cost 550 dollars and a child cost two hundred and fifty dollars

so every time they came across the border into Florida and they were harbored by the Seminoles which were then the Creek Nation they lost their money so Zachary Taylor one of our most famous Heroes decided that he would come there was a big settlement of what was then Creek Indians and blacks living in Brooksville okay up by Ocala and they had built a bunch of houses they had 50 houses so about 50 families were extended groups of families were living there Zachary Taylor came down and burned to the ground and that was the beginning of many many many years of hostilities between the Creeks who later became the Seminoles and the United States government and

that we wanted the land and they wanted their slaves back now the seminals the name actually is simoli and it means the wild ones and the reason they got that name was because they broke off from the creek Federation now the creek Federation was about 10 or 12 different tribes in the southeastern United States so these guys would runaways the ones that actually became the Seminole didn't like the rules okay they like being part of the Federation so they came into Florida they then intermarried with the black slaves they also kept them as slaves they found out really quick that they knew a lot about white people and so many of them had their man

slave who did all their negotiations all they're talking for them all their deal making for them because those of you that know the mitsuki language and the soaking language know that it's a very harsh language it's very aggressive and so when they would speak to Weiss we would think they were going to attack us so they didn't get along very well in their negotiations so they use their black slaves to do their negotiations for them and out of that was one of the Seminole tribe at the height of the tribe there were 2 000 Seminoles after the war there were less than 200 left we massacred or shipped out about 1800 of them okay so

fast forward back to Indian town and what we found was that we couldn't meet anybody to move any people to move here there weren't criminals and so they said well you know what we're going to bring the railroad into Florida because they'll come my rail they're having cars you got to remember this and so Flagler they made an offer you've got to remember this was the period of the land grants you could come here and they'd give you 165 Acres free you just had to farm them don't treat you 165 activities but anyway if you came here and farmed attended the land you could stay for it for seven years they would give you that

at the same time they told the railroads if you'll come into Florida we will give you a thousand acres of land no 10 000 acres of land for every mile of railroad that you bring into Florida so Flagler b-lined it down to Palm Beach and he actually came up with a very smart marketing strategy what a lot of you don't know at this time can you hear me okay madam what a lot of you don't know at this time that the Northeast was really the tuberculosis they had gotten it on the ships they had brought it over they had huge respiratory problems and lots of tuberculosis Terriers I know that because I later tell you

the story of Solomon warfields while response Simpson whose mother died and his father died however he was smart enough to say to come to Palm Beach you're going to get well they're going to sit in the sunshine you're going to swim in the ocean and your respiratory problems are going to disappear guess what a lot of them did a lot of them did they weren't in the dam they weren't in the smog they weren't in the cities they were sitting on a beautiful therefore they got better so if I ever did that late 1800s 1889 came into Florida 26 years later Solomon Warfield came in in town he had a company called southern land and

Timber he bought up about 25 000 acres of land in Indian town and he built the Seminole in the railway station The Warfield school and he shipped in about 20 houses of which I still owned three that are that stood in and he set the town he developed a town now growing up in India town I was all that these that this was to be to turn around for the railroad that he was going to come here and then he was going to turn around and go back to the north he was going to bring Citrus he was going to bring a fish out of the lake in those days they say it was not

that we have 80 pound fish coming after they go to children and they had run it they could ice them on the cars and bring them in bring them to their normally so his intent was not to bring people but rather to what I was everybody was told but whether to be the turnaround Seminole Wind was a private hunting lodge for his wealthy friends and hunters and for Seymour people and then he was going back to the north well when I did my historical Abomination I found out I was alive when we perpetrated all those years the truth was that he intended to drain and develop the other ones and Indian Town used to be

the headquarters for that so we can be very thankful that six months after opening the similarly and he died I say when people make that killed him but he didn't have a lot of time information and the way I knew that was when we begin to reach Ed about that he planned this huge trip from Florida he stopped an Arcadian they brought out belly dancers and he went to Miami and he the Seminoles walked down the railroad trackers old pictures of him with the Orange Blossom Special and he brought down investors attorneys and money and he was looking to fund his project because he had been given land all the way to the Port of

Palm Beach okay I mean I'm sorry the Port of Miami Port of Miami so he he was soliciting money and development to do that bush under the other place it would be a very different Florida today if that were the case would it not so a railroad comes into Indian town and builds his houses he opens a Seminole in what is his claim to fame explained to things that he was the uncle of Wallace Ortho Simpson so the king of England advocated a strong turmeric the twice divorced America now why was that important our uncles aren't that important in our lives it was that important because her father died of tuberculosis when she was seven

months old and so she and her mother lived in the house with Solomon Warfield and his mother who was very protective you've ever seen pictures of her sitting maybe faceless because they had their hair back so tight could have held in the face of them and then one of those black dresses that wasn't that much shed and long boy she was scary the problem was that Wallace Warfield was not in love with the whole South but of course Sal was in love with wireless Warfield he loved her his entire life and she married four times and she never married him so Grandma decided she didn't like this little tip attack and so she threw out

while this Warfield and Betsy Warfield and they went to live in the morning house and there are those that say that was where she honed her skills for listening and making me feel like he was the only person in the world which eventually captured her the heart of a king now the number one question did she ever come to the seminal end I'm told that she was a social hostess at the opening event because in 1927 you don't have an event unless you if you're an unmarried man unless you've had a female Hostess and so she was a Hostess of the end of the opening I'm also told that she came by in 1936 they

were granted the house at Mira larko by Meriwether post and they spent several years in Palm Beach and I'm told that the train came through any Town stopped and they stepped out on the landing and waved at the four or five people that were sitting in the old Seminole Cafe and later the Palm Beach paper said Duke and Duchess stopped to see the town that her uncle built I can't tell you whether either of those stories are true they make great stories I think what I can tell you is that in 1985 when we were renovating the end for the second time I had a Bentley pulled up in front of me and moved closed

and outstepped a man with his spats and everything on he walked up and he said my mistress would like to visit the inn and I said well the Inn is not open in fact the entire living room is full of furniture he said she doesn't care if she wants to come in so African event they've got this little tiny woman with a black veil all in black small and she walked in and I did not exist okay I didn't even want a word and she walked by me and she walked all through the end and there was an old clipping on the wall that my grandfather had told the story and she walked up and

she tapped it she said see they still remember who I am and died two years later 1986 so that can attest you she suddenly didn't walk up and shake my hand and say I want us more Bill Simpson but I don't know who else it could have been so that's our Rich history if you've been to the end you'll see that we have Dayton County Pine on the floor spoken 26 you'll see that we have pecky Cypress on the roof cut out of the allopata flats you'll see that we have Mediterranean architecture the laws are 22 inches thick it has survived all the big hurricanes the hurricane of 28 the hurricane of 29 although my

last hurricane I decided I would no longer be open for hurricanes it was quite an adventure but anyway we have been there we've rested the end in 1974 they were going to tear it down they were tired of messing with it it was owned by by the Seaboard Airline Railway to 1954. in 1954 it was sold to Mrs famel who was a French investor that on the the bank to set in everything it was on but this is for now and she bought the end she sold she was gonna she was done and so I was telling someone the other day I remember she came to meet with my father and then y'all know my

dad is six three big old guy he sees this little tiny French woman and they were sitting at the bar and what's now the Windsor room and she said to my dad do the liquor license and he said no man what's up with that and she said well what are you going to drink um he said well we'll drink milk and we'll drink tea and we'll drink orange juice and she said that just announces me but I haven't I must have been a fairly young well I I was just in the senior in high school and I can remember sitting there listening to that conversation so we bought it and we renovated it we knew

absolutely nothing about him keeping our restaurants what we knew about was cattle and lumber so we bought it and we're going to read it and we opened it it was enormous success we used to just at 700 people subbing brunch we opened at seven in the morning we closed at seven at night and they would fly their helicopters up from Miami and that whole empty lot across the street would be full of airplanes wow however there was a little problem called the chef and what would happen is about every other Sunday the chef wouldn't come to work and my mother Iris would be the chef now mother has taught Sunday school she told me that

they for 70 years she's 87. she has taught Sunday school since she was 17. so about the 20th time she had to cook she said to my dad home I'm done with him and she said he would go out and sell the biscuits and then come back and she would activate them and she said mama if you sell one more biscuit I'm going to divorce you to make good cat call biscuits from scratch so they said okay this is it not for us so we sell them so we need to keep them and it lasts about three or three and a half years and it goes bankrupt and we buy it this is important we

buy it back we actually pay money for it we didn't get it back on the default we actually went out and wrote another check and bought it back this is the years 1984. we uh I ran it for about three years and decided I was going sailing and sold my house and bought a boat and went to the Bahamas well it lasted about six months after I left and Dad sold it again so the fast forward the year is 1992 and I've been running one of our lumber yards in West Palm Beach and I am over it I send my dad it's by the Seminole man he said n o I have not buying a

seminal men again and I said if you buy it I want it he said oh no you'll get married and move off and I'll be left with it and I said no I promise you if you buy it I'll take care of it until I die so it goes in a bit the small business administration and they sent him a note they denied it he was so happy just deliriously happy and then they sent him a better Saint Mr wall who decided to accept your offer so as God would have it we closed on a Friday evening we signing papers and that night we get a phone call John the lumber yard is on fire

we had not even onboarded the windows of the Seminole and he still boarded up from the movie we go down and we watched our lumber yard which housed all 18 of our secretaries all of our computer systems burn to the ground and so the next morning we went to the Seminole Inn we onboarded the windows we cleaned it up and we set up our offices in what is now the winter in those days there were no cell phones so anytime company came in strong lines across the ceiling and look at those phones we headed your scales so we could pick them up didn't have rotary phones we had you know uncomputed pencils and papers and

the open for business that year my father built me a home renovated the Seminole Wind and rebuilt the lumber yard we opened it in April of 94. he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in June of and died in September so I'll often say to people hey you've been a lot I probably would have weasled out of my bill to my degree when I first bought it you know Dad I just like to decorate you know and clean up I was one of those people I think the major pretty you know well when the plumbing didn't work my dad knew what to do you know when the electrical panels went out he where they were and

one day I was sitting out thinking I must have been out of my mind you know I called upon they'd say where where are your shutoff valves and I would go I have no idea where are your electrical panels I have no idea you know it was just unbelievable and I often laugh I just sounded like my 17th I'm in the 24 years event I just thought about my 17th anniversary and I said my husband says I married him so he could keep the Seminole in it he's a general contractor however unlike the shoemaker's daughter I'm the last one to get it but that's true he has helped me keep it open so we've been

there 24 years this year in the encounters before we're going to have a birthday party and we're going to celebrate 90 years in October so mark your calendars we're going to bake the cake mini cakes to be everybody that's coming the last event we had we had 1100 people and that was our 76th birthday so 90 I think deserves a bigger crowd than that so mark your calendars so anyway last year I decided I have upstairs how many have you been to the end okay how many have you seen the mural upstairs okay well when I hit the Seminole girl this is a funny story when I did the mural I did all the research

the timeline and all and I gave it to this little man that lives in anything I said now you're the artist you interpret it you do whatever you want to do to it so he paints and he paints and he paints and he paints it I go up there and he has he beats from the very first time to the very last we have a small problem and so I called Chief Billy and I said Chief what did they live in when they came you know like in Brooksville what did they live in he said they lived in houses they lived in wooden structures that were suspended and so I went back I said you

got to paint the TVs off and you got to paint these houses on so he very happily left a few treaties and the travel tears those of you have seen the big seminal crying I see that he got to keep a few of his teepees but he did the rest of that Betty jumper was a lifelong friend of my mothers she left me a town when she was four years old I had the blessing and the experience of getting to spend some time with her now unfortunately for my mother she was born the year that the last Seminoles left Indiantown in 1929 okay the last of the tribe left Year my mother was born however

her lifelong friend was my aunt Nettie and then he was 11 years older than my mother my mother so she had great stories of coming down to my grandma's store and for a nickel they could bathed in a tub with fresh water and so oh there were just this Rich history that was passed on orally now those of you who know the Seminoles know that they have no good language did you know that so anything that's preserved about the seminals is preserved orally the story tellers tell them now I'm so excited because I'm really good friends of the museum the albatake and the ladies there have started a project they have a new oral history

Nevada and so they are capturing all these stories and putting them on tapes in the museum now what's funny about it is you might not get to listen to them because many of them unless you're a seminal if you have no access to it and within that sometimes it's only your clan so if you're the panther Clan that's the only one that gets to listen to the table okay if you're in Mississippi and you sum up in that language that's all but I have been so privileged that they have allowed me access to some of those old tapes and in fact last year they came and taped my mother to add to that because she

had a white person's Story the views of growing up with the Seminoles and friendships with them that they were able to capture so that's part now the oil history so I got to I wanted to do it downstairs timeline printing account and I kept reading and studying and reading and studying and everything I read started in 1889 with Marianne Platt and it just didn't feel right didn't feel right to me I kept starting to paint it I thought this doesn't feel right and all of a sudden I realized that we had managed to skip 28 years of the Seminoles which were who they actually sent in town we've managed to just erase them from our

history so I went back last year and I put in to find out now Betty said she died five years ago in fact I don't think there's any living of the tribe who were in Indiantown and so I was left with little tiny shreds of stories and little tiny pieces I found in books to try to reconstruct the story of the Seminoles in Indiantown and that's what I just met with the tribe and they gave me their stamp of approval they said it is correct to the best of their knowledge and that is this that in 1862 The Cow Creek Indians which were the tiger and gopher clam left the edge of Lake Okeechobee and

moved Northwest 18 miles I found two old old books written in 1931 by a Seminole one of the Indian agents who counted the analogica counting them I think we were afraid they were going to come back and murder us we spent years down here when there was like 189 of them we kept marking them on laps and sending people out to find out where they were I'm not sure why anyway so they moved in the account I found an old map that showed where the settlement was and then I pieced together all this information and where they said it was in was in the body rubber spot as far apart to the best of our

ability to reconstruct it why do we say that we know by this time that the Seminoles no longer lived in villages because they were hunted Day and Night by us the Indian Removal Act had been put into place they were paying a thousand dollars for every male Indian that you could put on a boat to Oklahoma we bred dogs specifically in Europe Justified just to hump in the incident and so they no longer could live in villages they lived in small settlements within hearing distance of each other but they didn't live like they had lived in Brooksville any longer the the area from highway 710 which is where the railroad lives along to West Orem

roads is two miles okay we know that they live scattered throughout that swamp because they track it up and down West Farm Road they went to my grandma's store which was on West Farm Road they went over and picked oranges and and stayed in that community so we know that they were in that area we also know there's a great story about the chief that was he died he was queuing a canoe that was the other little incident that helped me place them they said they settled in the last old growth swamp that had cypress trees that were big enough to build duck out canoes they had to be 60 feet tall ly Barber was

the last strand of that kind of Cyprus between there and the river so it's where they had to have settled and so TOM tiger Chief TOM tiger is shooting a canoe he gets hit by a lightning and he dies and and true to Seminole style that cut the canoe in half they put him in it and they put him in a tree which is typical of what they did however this uh Florida comes down and tells all over okachogan that he's from the Smithsonian and he's looking for Indian artifacts and so Robertson says you know there's this old man named barley barley and he lives in the swamp over by Indian town and he knows

where a chief died so when he gets up with Bobby Barber and Molly Robert takes him into a swamp and he steals Tom Tyler's bones and he leaves well the Indians say that almost was the fourth seminal Skirmish but lucky for us it was a sheriff in Fort Pierce named Collier and they put now I don't know how they did this okay they had no telephones so they must have put out the drums and said we're going to find you and when we find you we're going to kill you so you better send our bones back so they weren't at a Smithsonian that was a lie he took him to some sort of failed Under

Pennsylvania and was showing off the bones well he got the word that they were going to come kill him so guess what he called he didn't call up and he got word to sheriff caller and that he was sending the bones back and so Chief Smith who lived up outside of of Okeechobee came over and they actually came in on the train and he put him in the wagon to take them back to Barney Barber and he said to me right if he said no me no rib of homes so he walked back to crazy I mean not to break the passenger because he wouldn't ride in the book and you know in the buggy

with the bones so they put them back so when I pieced together all these little tiny pieces of information I can almost stand before you come from us today and say that that is where the Gopher in the tiger family settled in the Midtown and of that family Aiden Tyler had just been born the year was 1862 when they made that move she was a lover of a better job okay Betty jumper was a half breed her father was a French Trader her brother and her both were half breeds and her father I mean her uncle who was I don't know if y'all know this about Seminoles but the uncles raised the children for some

reason there who teach them all the the things in the tribe all the information so gopher was raised and he had Betty and he had a brother Howard Ellis they just took one of the names I wanted in fact in my research that was the most difficult thing I had to actually make these big long lines and give all their names so that I can figure out which person I was talking about because they just took the internet they liked you and they just took your name and so the Seminoles explained to me when they came that actually were given a name at Birth then you're given a name at the green corn bats another

name and then as you do things that are that have Merit you're given other names in your lifetime so you have to kind of pour out all them up together to find out who you're talking about so they put the phones back we went on a bike what I know is this they came to Mr chief governor he was of what they call a Bag Man a medicine man but he got saved and so he gave up the Witchcraft and the medicine so he was kind of an outcast and he took these two children and they came to kill her because they were halfways and what they would do is they would stuff their mouths

full of mud and suffocate them he keeps it keeps the tribe pure so he came and killed him and he said you're not taking these babies but I don't believe that anymore we're not doing that anymore so they were still gunfire and some argument and and it says two of it Betty and her brother and in them until they were able to gather in their face and move to the reservation so the reason they lose the reservation is because they were still killing babies at that time they were the last Indians to leave Indian Town in the Indian agents report they said that they were not willing to go so they cut their provisions until

they start them out Betty tells me that when they came to get them they were fairly wealthy she was of course her her brother was killed by the Ashland game okay one of her brothers was killed one of the bathroom she was the last living here she had about 300 head of cattle and several hundred head of cops and so when they had to go to reservation she saw what she could and turned the resolution she bought a Model A and Eddie said in my mom's living room and she was real quiet she said we were hungry and the reservation she said we were never hungry in any account he said there was so much

gain you could catch him as sufficient but you wouldn't shoot a bunch of squirrels but when we got the reservation we were hungry hungry and she said my mother would take her Model A and drive to Indian town and killed a coward hog and bring it back to the reservation and Feed Us and then she found a smiled to herself she said until we learned how to slip into the Everglades and then we were never hungry together so she was an awesome lady she was a wise like when she took over as cheap she told me that they had the her bank balance said she had 62 dollars she actually had 34. is all the

money that I've had when Betty jumper left they had over a million dollars when I went to her funeral she died my mother and I went and chief Billy and then spoke about it he said we were so poor he said you can't imagine how to pull over but he said we would all maybe it was the true officer for the school and he said we hated to go to school we never had any shoes and they made fun of us and he said and we would see her old Cadillac coming across the couch a hundred miles an hour she would run us down and she'd say why are we not in school he'd say

I'm having a shoe she said get in the car and he said they would go to her house to eat and she would fry chicken legs he said they have every chicken leg I mean like the foot I took his foot he said you could eat a mound this high and still be started and so she would fry bologna but he said she raised all of us Betty raised all of us and she tells the story of when they were they were trying to go to Washington to get recognized as a nation they had no and she said they would hitchhike and they would go down to the wharfs that they could sing in miccosuki

and they would throw in coins and she said they were just poverty struck them and they would get on buses and get and go to Washington and you know and Lobby to be made a nation it did not come easily to them nothing good comes easily my mother said to Betty one time she said Betty why don't you move up here with me my husband is dead your husband's dead and we could live together and he said that for a long time and she said we could build a chicken in the yard and we could go in the house at night now but she never did but her mom likes to tell the story that

every now that her phone went around then the middle of night mom was always doing history always piecing and she had asked many of these questions and she said why would I gopher have why were there two marries you know who are they how could he have two wives and both of their names being married she said I think about it so she waited for a long time and Mom said was not a phone ring about 11 o'clock she answered it she said this voice said he married two sisters so vote for him married two sisters and both of them named Mary but we were we were good friends for a time and my aunt

and Eddie went where the settlement had been when they left as a very young girl and she found a pair of scissors and a thimble and a basket and she saved them her entire life and when Betty came to see us before she died she gave them to her and she put them in the museum so it's been a long history of with us we still have an enormous respect for the Seminole tribe they play a huge part in the history of Indian Town they left in 1929 interestingly enough they were given 2 000 Acres which is where Florida power line was in 1911. we took it back in 1930. now we don't know why

and we gave them some of that land you can't live on down there in the swamps and we took it back I have it's pretty close you really can't find out who bought it but I guarantee it was some sort of deal where somebody wanted the land and so we we threw them out so that's the story of Indiantown and US my family has Ranch there we still Ranch there my mother at 87 runs about 300 pound of grown cattle 1266 acres in one place or 400 in another so about 1600 acre she lives cat on and we run a small part of my husband and I went on a small heart about his way

he had in the farm we grow their new tomatoes in Indian Town and uh so good chickens and all and all of that so six generations of us there we believe in the South that storytellers are born that every family has a keeper of History a Storyteller and lucky for me I've sat at my mom's knee until I've become a Storyteller and I think Trends probably the one behind me she's the only one that cares anything about it spends any time thinking about it okay so I believe that's all I have to tell you I would be glad to entertain any questions that I can answer for you yes ma'am Betty jumper somehow this whole

story The Savages from Palm City were mixed up in that who were Mrs Savage had something to do with Betty jumper well she delivered Mrs Savage yes repeat the question yes she the question was what about the Savages from City what did they have to do with Betty jumper and I said that is who a delivered her as well as my mother sis Savage okay and that is who hid them when they came to kill them so yes they have a lot to do with each other I read that book it's fantastic to have a lot better she was an amazing woman yes you ever thought about writing a book yes if I could ever

slowed down enough as a matter of fact I've been trying very hard to write a different a couple you know there was a new book published a couple years ago about my mother called Irish Ball cracker cowgirl we have it at the museum by a second grade teacher in Indian Town wrote it and my mother right after my father died wrote a series of stories called Cracker Tales we sell them at the end and I said are you planning to die like she said no but I realized I'm the last living person that knows this story if I don't write it down it will be lost well I have 365 interviews on tape of my

mother for you and so I have a goal to write a real story of the lady we call it we kind of we say she's the Gorilla Glue of our family you know she is as a grown woman if I have a bad day I go to my mother she lives in the same house she's lived in since I was 16. and I am going to be 64 next week and so if you go there any time of the day you can actually go see Mom almost every day she'll either be study or Sunday school lesson or reading a book or sitting on the couch and I'll come in I said to somebody she never

tells you any what to do she just listens and by the faces she makes the call of her like you leave knowing what to do and I am so thankful for that many times my husband makes fun of me he's a Canadian and he his father was a doc he ran big big inlets and so he moved his whole life and so he says to me it's not fair that you you could live anywhere I could move in a tent and make a home because my home is where my mother lives and it's been there my entire life and he said you know you have that security that when I'm at sailing for two years

and I came home my mother was sitting in her living room you know she never leaves and he said I didn't have that we were always moving new houses we were all and he said that's why you can go anywhere you want to go and I so appreciate that you have to get grown to realize sacrifices that people make to do what they do you know my mother made huge sacrifices to take care of us to raise us you know I'm sure she must have got really tired of us and our friends because everybody was in my house everybody came in my house but it was a good way to grow up any other questions

yes sir uh the woman in the mail I'm assuming that was the Duchess of Windsor that came there yes I believe it was that was my grandmother used to speak of her often she was yeah but she would talk about it when we were children we didn't know what one she was talking about well you know we're losing that my generation what kind of kind of Jill knows the story but millenniums have no idea of what the greatest showman you know look look at what they're dealing with now she could talk over going to the Seminole man but that kind of myself yeah but yes spoke often about back in the day she died at

the age of 93. well in Jupiter at the and that was 83 84. yeah see she got in 86. but great stories over the years people have come to see me her attorney someone that worked for her attorney in New York came and he said you know here's the question did she really love it but if you just told me Queen oh really isn't that really the question did she just want a king for a husband or did she love him she says that he adored her that when they come in the the account you know the attorney's office he would run around and get her a stool for her feet and give her something

to drink that he just adored her now if you have any real interest you should watch The King and I could call you right you can get it off of Amazon they actually star in that video and I think they look like people that loved each other this is the interesting thing you know why they really did not let her be Queen does anybody know that of course she was divorced I mean that's what they said not because she was American I read every piece of literature ever published about her of cause she and the Duke were very involved with Hitler it was sweeping across through Afghanistan he was so Smitten by her that he

sent her two dozen white roses for an entire year after he met her and so she had so much influence over David that they felt like that they would sweep and into the Nazis he knew they were all in America like the Germans part of the household and all that so the real story was is they was they were afraid of her influence and the pregnancy beliefs that they both have now they did that they didn't want to tell us that you know it's one of those things that you know the weak leaks weren't around they couldn't land it out then but um it's an amazing story I think you know to suspend your life

in Exxon you know why does anybody know why they could let him go back to England David was the most beloved Monarch that had ever ruled the reason being is that you could not touch there was not a monarch alive that you could touch until they if I touched you I was put to death now why because that's how you kill people so strange are you poisoned them so David so much a king of the people that when he was brought in you realize that their keys blowing up King but they served for an entire year before the coronation at least a year and so he traveled at that time they owned 20 of the

world was owned by England and he traveled that entire year he shook so many people's hands that they had to cast his arm so that people loved David and they were afraid that if he came back to England that they would take us home that the people would overrule the monarchy so they never allowed him he was until he came home dead to the area he's having right back into England so I'm supposed to tell you about party Barber I did and I'm sorry I didn't tell you that that's where the Seminoles live I also know that when they dug the reservoir they dug up several mittens that were seminal grapes they asked the Seminoles

what they wanted done with them and they told them to put them at the bottom of the reservoir that they didn't like to mess with their dead people like white people they don't need them they don't want to examine them they don't want to know what killed them they just want them to rest in peace so those remains were put at the bottom of the bottle of swamp okay so Marty Barber I would like to encourage you to go see it it's a beautiful old stand Florida song now that you know all these stories you can hear of whisper as you walk down the boardwalks you can listen to the cypress trees as they call

your name and you can remember the Indians that lived there all those years ago about their lives however it was a little difficult to get reservations you do not make them through the Seminole and the Seminole Wind no longer runs the glory of our swamp they closed in 2011 when we had the terrorist attacks because they thought they were coming on the power plant and so it was closed for about six years until who my mother calls the hippies came out there and tied themselves to the trees and showed that you could just walk in from anywhere and blow up for our time out if you want to so that however they gave it to

treasured lands Adam Stewart and it is run by that organization now he's now it's not one person so unfortunately we cannot make reservations for you nor can we take the tours you have to get on their website and try to make a reservation or call them and hope that they call you back we are working on that you have a new Historical Society in Union County we're trying very hard to request that we turn over to us as a town that we feel like it's one of our greatest assets and that we should be able to manage it and take care of it and provide access to it because we have a deep love of

it so hopefully that might happen but right now I think they're doing some tours on Friday Saturday right so check the website and it's a great tour I used to love it I took the tours for almost three years of my eyesight too you know I'm having us some Panthers right down the road with me but I got to go early in the morning and late at night and all all kinds of times so if you have the opportunity please come and visit Roanoke and come to the Seminole Inn and even our Famous Fried Chicken if somebody asked me if I bring any chicken with me before she said he was an Old Trapper that

lived out of the swamp and he had a squad for a wife and they had a frog requires a problem so he had a big party with a bunch of moonshine and a Seminole showed up they were partying and the Seminole kept I his wife now I'm not sure what that means either I guess you give him the eye so he kept eye and his wife well after a while he got mad and she under killed him the Seminole so he's dead in the middle of the party so he goes all right um in it and he goes to Stuart and he gets the constable and he comes back and rules of self-defense however he's

living there with a squaw and the message starts telling that they're coming to kill him that his brothers come and come and do away with him so one day while he Robert packs his stuff leaves his wife his pigs his chicken and everything else and takes home and that was the last we know thank you