Miss Evelyn Young was an early teacher in Panama City and other communities such as San Blas on the East Peninsula where she and other teachers had their own homesteads.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last of a two-part article on mules, the animal that built the South.
Miss Evelyn Young was an early teacher in Panama City and other communities such as San Blas on the East Peninsula where she and other teachers had their own homesteads. In class one day, Young told her students to draw a mule and wagon. When she made the rounds, she found one boy was carefully drawing the mule but no wagon. When she inquired why Charles had not drawn a wagon, he replied, “I thought the mule could draw the wagon.”
Working at they did, mules sometimes were killed by lightning or motor vehicles when they began appearing on the roads.
A TALKING MULE
In “Mules and Men,” noted Florida author Zora Neale Hurston wrote a short story about a talking mule. In it, the owner sent his son to catch this mule, the father’s usual task. The boy grabbed a bridle and called out “come round Bill.” The mule looked around and rolled his eyes at the boy. He told the mule that it was no use stalling and to stick his head in the bridle.
The mule suddenly began talking and said “every morning it’s the same thing. ‘Come round, Bill.’ Don’t hardly get any sleep.”
When he heard the mule speak, the frightened boy ran to his father and told him what had happened. His father went to his wife and told her about the boy’s lying. The father then went to the mule, and the mule spoke to him with the same message: “Come round, Bill.” When he heard the mule, the man took off running and was still running when Hurston wrote the story.
A BIG LEAP
The Lynn Haven Free Press carried an article on Dec. 8, 1934 about the day before the automobile when a preacher prepared for a Sunday trip to fill an appointment at a distant country church. After putting on his best Sunday suit, the preacher gathered his bridle and saddle.
Everything being ready, he walked out to his transportation machine and threw the bridle over the mule’s head. Then he put one foot in the stirrup, and one hand on each end of the saddle intent on springing into the driver’s seat. But in place of landing on the saddle, he bumped over the mule’s back and landed in the dusty ground on the other side.
The preacher ended by saying that the next time he was more careful and landed safely in the driver’s seat since “it is a very fine art for anyone to be able to land in the driver’s seat.”
MULES & RAILROADS
When Florida’s first railroad was built a century ago into old St. Joseph the locomotive whistle was heard by the Saints (as the residents were called). It was the signal for hitching up a score of mules and for getting cable lines ready to pull the locomotive and a train of cars through the city to the depot and warehouses on the bayshore.
This was not because of any desire of the Saints to oppose the “demon,” which came roaring up to the portals of the city emitting smoke and sparks. The Saints wanted to avoid any possibility of the demon setting fire to buildings in the corporate limits of the city.
This practice was necessary by a city ordinance, which provided that “no locomotive engine shall pass (by steam) into any post of the corporate limits to this city west of Cherry St.” Fears of the residents that the locomotive would set fire to the city caused the passage of this law.
The cattle trick was the big killer of cows, mules and horses in the 1920s. On Aug. 24, 1924, Jacksonville reported four dynamited dipping vats within a week and many complaints of officers dipping horses and mules in vats so narrow that large animals were injured in the dipping process.
40 ACRES & A MULE
Most followers of the Civil War are familiar with the expression “40 acres and a mule.” But many do not know why or where this happened.
On Nov. 9, 1864 when both sides were worn down from years of fighting, Union Major General Tecumseh Sherman received instructions to live off the land as he and his army marched through Georgia. But he was warned not to violate private property recklessly. Sherman’s march became a legend of Northern terror tactics in the South.
As Sherman made his scorched earth drive through the South and across Georgia, thousands of freed slaves left their plantations and followed Sherman’s army in his March to the Sea. After discovering the mass of refugees walking behind his army, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 on Jan. 16, 1865, for the freed slaves. In this order, Sherman set in place a policy that allocated 40 acres of tillable land south from Charleston along the coast. He appointed Brig. Gen. R. Saxton as inspector of settlements. The army also issued some families a number of its unneeded mules to be used for plowing.
A TEMPORARY ORDER
But Sherman’s order was a temporary policy never intended to represent a permanent policy of the U.S. government. Some taking advantage of this policy mistakenly believed they had a stake in the land they had worked as slaves.
The young able-bodied men wishing to take advantage of this policy were encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the U.S. to contribute their share toward freedom in this country.
After Pres. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president. He revoked Sherman’s order, and authorized all land under Federal control returned to the previous owners. The former slaves living on this land could either sign a labor contract with the property owners or be evicted from the land.