The nature of Southern rural life has always been about neighbor sharing with neighbor. From Virginia to Texas and from Tennessee to South Florida, it's a unique thing to be a Southerner and particularly a rural Southerner. Yet sharing sometimes has its limits.
In the early 1900s near present day Baker, Florida lived Oscar and Lola (Kilcrease) Richards and family. Mr. Richards was a Holiness preacher who travelled a circuit of churches in the back woods of Northwest Florida.
The Richards had moved to Baker from Red Level, Alabama. Farm families moved frequently in those days in that cheap, cut over timber land was a prime mover.
Three brothers from the Richards family married three sisters of the Kilcrease clan. After arriving in the area, Oscar and Lola moved to what is now Elzie Road. Oscar brought his mule from Red Level. In those days a mule was equal in value to a modern farm tractor because work on the farm was at a stand-still without one.
Soon Oscar and his brothers were all living in close proximity to one another. The brothers borrowed the mule on a regular basis for their farming needs as well. It could be said the mule was a "community mule." Eventually, Oscar and Lola purchased land 5 miles north of Baker on Vinson Ray Road; some say Oscar moved to the new land to save the life of his overworked mule.
The entire Richards family went on to establish deep roots in the Baker area. Oscar and Lola Richards had the following children: Ella, Evie Lee, Eunive, Bertie Dee., Bessie Ree and Chester.
The oldest child of Oscar and Lola was Ella Fare, she died in child birth. They used some of their land to establish Shadowy Grove Church of God where the young lady is buried on Elzie Road. Oscar died in 1943. His old home place was sold and later burned.
One of the Richards girls, Bertie Dee, married Ulysses Head and among their children was Loetta Head who remembers growing up in the woods around Baker.
"The town of Baker seemed bigger than Crestview in those days. The train didn't come through town but it was a thriving community with a hotel. I was born in 1936, there are so many things to remember about those times," she said.
Farming and the timber industry was big in those days and most people had some connection to these industries. Loetta remembers the old home place.
"My daddy, Ulysses Head, had the trees cut on our land and they were sawed into lumber and a house was built. The house I was born in still stands on Faulk Ferry Road. My daddy farmed corn, cotton and soybeans," she said.
Her other grandfather, William Thomas Head, was a veteran of the Spanish American War and lived in the area as well. He drew a veterans pension during the Great Depression. His son Cecil was born in 1902 and lived to the age of 103.
Loetta remembers her Uncle Cecil, "I attended school in a two room school house called the Bon Terra School, my Uncle Cecil taught there. In the late 1940s they closed the school and moved it to Baker," she said.
"Uncle Cecil was good at many things," she said. "He lived on Lighthouse Church Road, he was a preacher, did upholstery work and taught school," remembered Loetta.
Loetta Head would later become Loetta Barrow and today runs the antique store at Wawbeek, it's a very unique place with many different items.
There are a million stories to tell in the South, whether its farm families moving from their ancestral homes in search of a better life, or soldiers in the War Between the States suffering adversity and numerous challenges, preserving the memories and traditions of our past is an important part of who we are.
