Do You Remember? A Look at September

Rebekah Sheats
Contributor

The days of September are quickly passing, and autumn is upon us. It’s a perfect time to stop, smell the freshness in the air, and reminisce about some of the Septembers in our county’s history.
September has always been a busy month, but September of 1925 was a time of immense turmoil for Jefferson County. The county commissioners had called a meeting for the 25th of that month, at which time the county would vote on a proposed bond issue to cover the cost of improving the main roads in the county. (At this point, the county roads were unpaved and were made of either sand or clay.) Residents were split over the bond issue, with loud opinions voiced on both sides of the question.
W. J. Hatchett, a local farmer, was in favor of the measure. He declared, “I will vote for bonds. First, because we only have one real road in Jefferson County, and that [was] built by the state. The remainder are trails, and some mighty bad ones at that.”
Other voices expressed strong opposition to the proposal. The sand and clay roads of the county had been repaired before, it was noted, and another bond issue would only waste more money repairing roads that would become pot-holed and impassible again with time. E. H. Groom espoused this position and counseled his neighbors: “I have heard it said that when a man does a foolish thing one time he is simply a fool, but if he does the same thing a second time, he is a d— fool. That is what we will be if we vote to rebuild the same roads with the sand and clay that we built eight years ago.”
While men bickered over the bond issue, local grocer Homer Rainey took an astonishing step forward by investing in a state-of-the-art appliance for his store: a refrigerator. After he purchased the machine and had it installed in his grocery store on Dogwood Street, the Monticello News covered the story in a front-page article, noting that the refrigerator would “take better care of his meats and other goods needing cold storage.” Customers probably flocked in droves to see this fascinating invention.
Five years later, in September 1930, Jefferson County experienced “the strange case of the dying mules.” It all started when James Butler, a Thomasville contractor, began working a contract at Nutall Rise on the Aucilla River. Using mule power, the project began well, but complications quickly arose when Butler’s mules started dying from an unknown malady. Before long, more than forty mules had succumbed to the mysterious illness. “They all died suddenly, some of them while actually at work,” Butler observed. No certain diagnosis was obtained, but Butler took the precaution of having his living mules treated in an attempt to stop the strange epidemic.
Butler’s case of the dying mules was strange, but September 1939 brought perhaps even stranger news. Germany had just declared war on Poland, but this act of Nazi aggression was relegated to a second-place headline in the Monticello News while an unusual story received prime space in the local paper. At a station in Gainesville, poultry experts were experimenting with feeding shark liver oil to laying hens. A leghorn hen had exceeded all expectations by laying four eggs in a single day. The newspaper recorded, “[This shows] the remarkable potency of shark liver oil.” Would the discovery revolutionize chicken feed and egg production in the future? Only time would tell.
In September 1944, a smaller creature received wide publicity in the county. The publicity was caused by a statement issued by Senator Charles O. Andrews. Born in Ponce de Leon, Fla., Andrews was elected to Congress in 1936 and maintained his seat until his death ten years later. In 1944 he issued the provocative statement: “It has long been my conviction that the mosquito menace is the worst drawback not only to the development of Florida but to good health . . . [and] has retarded the progress of our people for the past century.”
Andrews’ powerful statement aroused new interest in the mosquito. The senator promised his full cooperation with the Mosquito Eradication Division of Daytona Beach and urged other counties to join in measures to limit the population of the nuisance insect. Would Andrews’ war on mosquitoes end in victory? Time would tell.
And here we are in the midst of another September almost eighty years later. How does the Florida of September 2022 compare with the Florida of way back when? Our chickens aren’t laying four eggs a day, but we are still enjoying the benefits of refrigeration. The Mosquito Eradication Division may have failed in its endeavors, but our veterinarians have a better chance now of successfully diagnosing Butler’s mysterious mule disease than they did then.
All in all, it seems that the Jefferson County of today still matches the definition given it early one September morning almost one hundred years ago: “Jefferson County has many talents. Nature has endowed us with a wonderful climate and soil with hundreds of beauteous landscapes that will be the delight of people.”
Oh, and by the way, the bond issue of 1925 passed with flying colors. The county got its first paved roads—and we’re still enjoying them today.