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FRANK SOWERSBY GRAY
(Florida)
Mr. Gray was interviewed at his home,
34 West Fourth Street. The house of the southern Colonial style of
Architecture, built in 1890, its massive fluted white pillars ascending to
the roof in front, the wide entrance door, the deep porches, the large
building itself centering the hundred foot frontage on Fourth Street,
identified it as a mansion fifty years ago.
Mr. Gray himself answered the door, and I was ushered thru the front hall
to his private library on the east, the door of which giving entrance from
a side porch stood open.
"Now, here's three chairs, you can take the one you like, but I am going
to park here," he said, seating himself in a well worn arm chair, the
upholstering considerably worn, the library table with its metal reading
lamp to the left, and the bookcase containing his chosen volumes within
easy reach of his right hand. I sat opposite in an old fashioned "platform
rocker," which was probably among the original furnishings of the house.
"Want to look over my books? I've got some good ones - in fact, I never
buy a book unless it's good. Classics - "The Rise and Fall of the Roman
Empire," Jefferson Davis' History of the Confederacy, Lindbergh's "We."
Here's Frederick Davis's "History of Jacksonville." Do you like that? It's
not worth a hoot! Everything in it copied from some other book - not even
the wording changed. If you refer to the original book from which the
reference is taken, you'll find it is just the same. I gave him lots of
information when he was getting up the material for his history, but I
sure don't see any of it in here.
"So you want the story of my life? Well, I've always tried to keep out of
print, and I do not understand how anything about me personally could
possibly interest anybody. I was born at Marcus Hook, Delaware County,
Pennsylvania, May 31, 1863. My father was Ezra Gray and my mother was Ann
Elizabeth (Sowersby) Gray. My people were of English descent. My
great-grandfather started Gray's Ferry just north of his property on the
river from Wilmington to Chester, Pennsylvania.
"My father, Ezra Gray, was employed by the Baldwin Locomotive works, and
came to Fernandina in 1870 with a load of locomotives -- the old
wood-burning type - for the Florida Railway and Navigation Company, of
which David Yulee was President. The road ran from Jacksonville to Cedar
Keys on the Gulf of Mexico. They were not new locomotives, and the load
which was shipped by schooner - we did not have steamboats or freight
steamers in those days - landing finally at Fernandina where the repair
shops for the road were established, and the machinery "reconditioned," as
we say now.
"Mother and I came along on the trip, but the job lengthened out, and
since my father considered it would take over a year to put those
locomotives in good shape, mother and I returned to Pennsylvania after a
few months, leaving father here. His assistant was a man named Mosely.
"As the road grew in importance and prosperity, the work and force at the
shops increased and my father was made superintendent, or master mechanic.
"Here is a picture of the old Yulee Railroad Shops - the road was more
often referred to as 'Yulee' than by its rightful title. It was taken in
1872. The cross indicates my father, and he is surrounded by his helpers.
"No! I won't let you have that picture, or any others, and I've got lots
of them -- it's too hard to get them back, once they leave your
possession.
"The Florida Times-Union issued a special historical edition July 21,
1936, and I let them have some of my pictures to illustrate some Bay
Street history on the promise they would be returned. I waited three weeks
and no signs of them, then I went down to the office, and they could not
find any trace of the pictures. I went again in a few days, becoming
insistent that the proper ones locate my pictures, which were finally dug
up from somewhere in the plant, but I thought I would have to kill
somebody before I got them back. No, sir! Never again! If anyone wants to
see these pictures, I'll be glad to show them, or they can copy them here,
but take them away?-- not on you life!
"Well, to get back to my story. My mother's health was not very good when
we lived in the north, so we came back to Fernandina in the early part of
1872, the next year the shops of the Florida Railway and Navigation
Company were moved to Jacksonville, and we came here, locating in LaVilla.
"While in Fernandina we became friends with the old families there -
Fairbanks, Kings, Thackeras, Kellys. Where the Episcopal Church in
Fernandina is located, there was in the early days a mound - looked like
all Indian mound. I dug down into it and got out a lot of Indian relics,
beads, wampum, and earthenware dishes and pots.
"Mr. Thackera was my Sundayschool teacher. Then there was John Lee
Williams, a surveyor, who went all over Florida surveying property, and
old land grants, and wrote about them - most interesting history. His son,
Arthur T. Williams, was my boyhood chum and friend - a grand man.
"Mr. George R. Fairbanks was a very fine gentleman. Here in his 'History
of Florida,' and under this photograph here he has autographed this story
for me - that is his very own hand-writing - a lovely, lovely man.
"All these families were old Confederate people - rather hidebound. If a
newcomer came to Fernandina, there was great quizzing around to get his
pedigree, and ascertain what 'designs' he might have on the town. If he
wished to buy property, the price on the plot desired was immediately
raised sky-high, and the discouraged would-be purchaser went elsewhere.
This spirit was a detriment to the city's progress, and is the reason the
development dropped behind. We came to Jacksonville, a progressive and
forward-moving community, and lots of others did the same. If among the
early settlers, the former residents of Fernandina and their descendants
sent back to Nassau County, there would not be anybody left in
Jacksonville.
"My mother was a very religious woman, and when I was a small boy, it was
decided I would study for the church. However, our coming to Florida,
which happened in the period of Reconstruction after the war between the
States when there was small chance of higher education, broke that all up.
"LaVilla was separate from Jacksonville city government. We had our own
set-up of city officials.
"Here," he said, going to an office safe in the corner of the room from
which he extracted a number of papers and records," is a copy of the
LaVilla Advertiser - just one sheet - dated February 1, 1873.
"Now, here is a relic - the first paper published in the city of
Philadelphia - the Philadelphia Public Ledger - Vol. I, Number I - dated
March 25, 1836.
"In this envelope is a copy of the Jacksonville Press - forerunner of the
present Florida Times-Union - dated March 6, 1877. See the newsdealer's
stamp in purple ink up there in the right hand corner - Telfair Stockton?
His descendants are now among our most distinguished citizens.
"This one - this is precious - the Ulster County Gazette of January 4,
1800, the pages enclosed in stripes of wide black, mourning the death of
George Washington.
"And in this little box with the paper is some Continental money, with
which Washington paid off his troops during the winter encampment at
Valley Forge - this small paper of half-dollar value, this one two
dollars, and this, three.
"Here is a pencil sketch of Carpenter's Hall I made as a youngster in
1875, as I sat in the park nearby.
"I liked to draw when I was a child, and wherever I went I took paper and
pencil and if a thing struck me as interesting I just sat down and drew my
idea of it.
"Here is a sketch of the ruins of 'Dungeness' - the old Carnegie home on
Amelia Island, off Fernandina.
"This is my version of the airplane - a mode of future travel - I drew
from imagination in 1872. See the wheels to run on tracks, the floats for
water travel, and the bird-like wings for lifting it in the air? See the
two men up in front - the pilot and his assistant - and the propellers in
the rear? In shape, size and design, not much different from modern craft,
is it? And here is a crayon sketch of my father, said to be very
life-like. "Birds - blackbirds on the wing, redbirds in color, the bluejay
and the mockingbird - all sketched from life. A dog, my beloved companion
in boyhood days, a horse jumping a rail fence, an old store on the
waterfront of Jacksonville, a farm house on the Lem Turner Road.
"Here is a deed signed by Oscar Hart, son of I. D. Hart, the founder of
Jacksonville, dated July 16, 1873, as "Clerk of Circuit Court, Clerk of
Board of County Commissioners of Duval County." It covers a plot of land
known as the Sibbald Grant of Spanish days. It was originally five miles
square and contained seven thousand acres. The abstract dates back to
1802.
"I still own a great part of this property on Lem Turner Road, which I
myself laid off years ago, and for thirty-five years have had a large farm
there on Moncrief Creek near Dinsmore.
"As a little tyke I went to school to a
Miss Shepherd, who had a private school at Jackson and Commercial Streets,
the latter now Riverside Avenue. She was a very fine teacher. I later went
to the Jacksonville public schools, being one of the early graduates of
Duval High.
"After delivering papers for the Florida Times-Union and working for a
while helping my father in the shops of the Florida Railway and Navigation
Company, which later became the Jacksonville, Tampa and W., being the
beginning of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in a later merger, I
obtained a position with the S. B. Hubbard Hardware Company as an office
boy on June 1, 1878. I was in the employ of this firm for fifty-five
years, becoming President of the company upon the death of Mr. Hubbard in
1903.
"Come over here and read this testimonial, given to me by the employees of
the store when I retired in 1936," he said, lighting a table lamp so that
the careful lettering could be more easily discerned.
The testimonial in a frame 18 by 24 inches, reads:
June 1, 1878. August 31, 1936.
Manager, 1884. President since June, 1903.
"We, the undersigned, wish to express our esteem for our association with
you those many years, and it is with grateful appreciation for the fine
spirit which you created that we pledge ourselves to continue, and wish
you the best of health and many years of happiness."
(Below are pen signatures of all employes).
"God bless them! I hired every one of them, and not a college man among
them. You know colleges have ruined more men than they have made great.
"Do you know how I judge people? By their eyes. They are the greatest
index to a person's character. I hired those men, some of them when they
were boys, now they are middle-aged men - my two sons along with the
others - because they had honest eyes, and they have never failed me, nor
will they fail the firm for which they work.
"I was married in Jacksonville on December 13, 1883, to Miss Jessie
Eugenia Grierson, daughter of John Walton Grierson, a pharmacist who was
also located in LaVilla. By the way, the boundary of LaVilla was Clay
Street.
"We had five children: John Clarence, Frank Clarence, Myra, Edith (wife of
Leonard Griffith Wallis) and Sam Hubbard Gray.
"Edith is the only one of my children interested in my old papers,
pictures, and historical records. She came down here last year and tried
to sort them over and started to list them, but she had mixed them up so I
can't lay my hands on anything now.
"Did you ever see anything like this - a book written on sheepskin, with a
sheepskin cover? It is a book my mother brought over from England,
containing the records of a little church where her family the Sowersbys
originated at Holingston, near Hull, England. Paper was so precious and so
expensive, that only one page was allowed for a year's records - you see
the birth s, marriages, and other records entered - the earliest date
1664, and still very legible. My grandfather's name, my
great-grandfather's and others - they go back three or four generations.
"Here is a little Sundayschool paper, The Carrier Dove, published April
11, 1870, which my mother very carefully preserved because it contained a
little poem of mine offering my young heart and services to God.
"I have written hundreds of poems, a great many of them on the back of my
business cards. Can you imagine a hardware executive getting out of bed in
the middle of the night or early morning hours just to jot down a poem
that came to his mind? Here is a sample:
'A successful man is one who gathers a
fortune he don't need
To leave to people who do not deserve it.'
"Here is another of personal sentiment to my wife on the occasion of our
fiftieth wedding anniversary on December 13, 1933, which I presented to
her with a fifty dollar gold piece, made out of gold from the State of
California.
"By the way, I have quite a collection of gold coins, both from America
and European countries.
"This poem I wrote on retiring from active business in 1936:
'He put aside his work regretfully, with hands
that lingered, yearning, while the thoughts
Still surging through his teeming brain now
throbbed for freedom.
He had toiled for years - yet deemed
Each piece to be a smaller part of some far greater
plan that he must shape, and mold, until it
reached perfection.
Then he rose, to slowly mount the stairs in
search of rest.
The moonlight and the stars, with silver sheen,
Kept watch above a fervid world, where men still
dreamed of fame, or fought for place and power,
As step by step he neared his room above,
He grew less weary; saw with clearer sight.
His footsteps hastened and his hands, with strength
renewed, were eager to respond and thus became
attuned with heart and mind and soul.
He walked as one to whom has been revealed, as in a
vision, God's eternal ways.
The consciousness of Christ brought life anew, and
knowledge, too, that endless time was his in
which to finish all he had begun."
"Do you like that one? It's the way I expressed my sentiments when I
retired for active service at the store, which I saw grow from a modest
retail hardware establishment to a wholesale house with a territory
covering several adjoining states and a swarm of hustling employes. But I
have not retired altogether; I am still on the board of directors.
"Here is a comical poem - words and music - printed envelope size,
entitled 'Creditor Query,' -- the air 'Comin' Through the Rye':
"If a body trust a body
And fail to get prompt pay.
May a body ask a body,
Please remit today."
This was signed with the firm name - S. B. Hubbard Hardware Company,
Jacksonville, Florida, and mailed to delinquent customers.
"Here is a poem in Latin I composed and sent to one of our beloved rectors
of St. Stephens Church." He chuckled reminiscently as he said: "I was
expelled once from old Duval High School because I would not study my
Latin lessons. But I went back and mastered it.
"Mind if I smoke?" he querried, extracting a small briarwood pipe from his
coat pocket. "Isn't it a beauty? Italian briar. I have never learned to
smoke cigars or cigarettes. Every morning I ride down town in a taxi - I
never owned an automobile, and what's more, never will - generally with
three or four young lady occupants; they light up and I get out my old
pipe - self defense!
"When my family located in LaVilla, they started the Episcopal parish
church, known as St. Stephens, in 1873. Rev. C. D. Barber was the first
rector. He buried my father who sacrificed his life in the yellow fever
epidemic of 1888. Only six men attended the funeral, and every one of them
died later with the fever, including Mr. Barber. I had it, but only in a
light form and never even went to bed. My mother and sister also
contracted it, but recovered.
"Rev. Brooke G. White then was sent to the parish, but he was not much of
a preacher - more of a horse trader - used to send to Texas and get
carloads of broncos and sell or trade them off.
"Here is one of the old record books of St. Stephens, showing a list of
fifty members in 1883. On this page is Rev. White's collections for
Sunday, March 31, 1889. Rev. J. H. Bicknell was superintendent of the
Sundayschool. Another rector died of tuberculosis. The original church
property consisted of an entire block of ground, but it has been whittled
down by one means or another until it is now a small plot. The building
still stands.
"I was one of the founders in 1885 of the American Trust Company, later
taken over by the Atlantic National Bank. I am still on the board of
directors, also for another local bank, and have been one of the bond
trustees of Duval County since 1890, including the St. Johns River bridge
- too much responsibility for one of my age, I'll have to pass some of it
to younger shoulders. And just look at this stack of unanswered letters!
Six inches high. I have three secretaries at the store, but do not like to
trouble them with my personal mail.
"This house, where I have lived for fifty years, is in need of a new roof
and other repairs, and the man who has attended to my property upkeep for
fifteen years is sick. He might as well be dead, because he'll never get
up again. Present day mechanics are unreliable -- nothing but kykes and
negroes - just grab what money they can and take little interest in their
work. I have three houses on the farm, too, that need going over. Things
like that are beginning to worry me - afraid I'm getting old."
Still going through the bundle of old papers he brought up a faded
photograph of the old Freedman's Bank building of the early 1870's. "This
was on the corner where the Furchgott store now is," he said.
"In 1877 Mr. Barnett came from Kansas and started his bank on the opposite
corner. He afterwards built a larger building at Laura and Forsyth
Streets, and in 1925 erected the magnificent 16-story bank and office
building running through the block to Adams Street - a magnificent
achievement for a magnificent business man. I met Bion Barnett this
morning, a splendid gentleman. He is a little older than I am.
"One of the earliest settlers of Duval County was William Barrs, the
father of all these Barrs boys in Jacksonville. He was log surveyor for
the county. The logs would be rafted down the St. John River and dumped on
the levee in front of the Everett Hotel. This was in the 1860's, and
nearby was Bradbury's Sawmill, which turned the logs into lumber.
"Here is a picture of the old Shoemaker Bank, of which young Bryan
Taliafero was cashier.
"And this is a bundle of photographs taken after the big fire in 1901. I
was living right here with my family, but we were out of the fire zone,
and that night our back yard was filled with refugees.
"Pictures and photographs are a hobby with me. This bundle consists of
camera shots taken in Havana, Cuba, four months after the conclusion of
the Spanish-American war. This one is the outside of Moror Castle, and
this from the inside. Here is one of the Maine - wrecked in the harbor.
This is one of J. [?.] T. Bowden, and young Sturdivant, who were with me
on the trip, taken in the cemetery adjoining the castle. A high wall
enclosed this forbidden space, but I scaled it first and pulled the others
after me. The skeletons are the poor relics whose relatives did not pay
the rent on their graves in the cemetery. The bones were dug up and
pitched in here and the graves re-sold to other purchasers.
"By the way, I have a real skeleton in my closet," he laughed. "Sure
enough! One day in the early 1880's I was at Pablo Beach and back in the
woods saw a rather large mound with a big hickory tree growing in the
center. It looked rather interesting, so I dug into it, and after hard
work, brought up three skeletons intact, with a quantity of wampum, beads
and other Indian paraphernalia. The mound was between Pablo and Diego, or
what is now know as Palm Valley. I gave two of the skeletons and the three
heads to some doctors here in Jacksonville, but one skeleton I kept
myself.
"I have collected other things, too -- butterflies, birds' eggs and
snakes. One time the Smithsonian Institution sent me a barrel of alcohol
and I put the snakes in alive and shipped them.
"But of all my activities, I like farming best. I have been a farmer all
my life, and I like to hunt and fish. You must see my garden, too, before
you leave."
We passed from the library through a side room off the kitchen to the back
porch extending across the entire southern part of the house. "Here's
where I really live," said Mr. Gray. We went down the steps into the
garden covering a half block to the south of the house.
"My favorites are zinnias. This is a new variety called the 'Will Rogers.'
These are from Mexico, and this bed of deep red is of an African variety.
There are yellow daisies, African daisies, cherries from Jerusalem, gold
and silver sunflowers, orange tomatoes - yellow ones, the size of oranges
- Bermuda onions, this bed of duplicators here are onions from the Island
of Teneriffe. Running up this tree is a chiota vine - a kind of Central
American squash. Over in this corner is a bed of Four o'clocks from
Alaska, white flowers six inches long with deep crimson centers. There by
the house is an Irish potato which will put out runners fifty feet long
covering the lattice work at the end of the porch, with small potatoes
hanging from stems in the air. This is a yellow Cape Jesamine, and here
are shrimp growing on a tree," he laughed as he pointed to a small bush
three feet high, literally covered with a light colored pink shrimp-shaped
flower from Africa.
"In the back there is my vegetable garden - special varieties of corn,
cucumbers, lettuce, beans, garlic - a new species which produces small
cloves on long stems in the air.
"Work? I love it. I have worked hard all my life. I have been through many
discouraging situations and in tight places, but I always came through
with flying colors, because I worked hard."
April 28, 1939.
Frank S. Gray (75)
(Retired Hardware
Executive,
34 West 4th-st.,
Jacksonville,
Florida.
Rose Shepherd, Writer
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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