Keystone Genealogical Library

03/18/2026

The Old Magnolia Road

I just spent time researching an old road that I had tried to find before I wrote the “Palmetto Pioneers” series. Wrongly in the book, I suggested that the old road may have passed Metcalf, Georgia, on its east side before it crossed into Florida.

A few weeks ago, I found a document buried in the Keystone Genealogical Library files in Monticello, Florida. Its author, unknown, suggested that this road runs west of Metcalf. So Chuck and I spent last Sunday afternoon trying to find it, using directions given in this document. We were successful.

We started our grand tour in Thomasville where Magnolia Street crosses South Hansel Street. Magnolia Street is the Old Magnolia Road. We followed it south out of Thomasville into the Red Hills.

For those who do not know, the Red Hills is a triangle south of Thomasville and north of Monticello and Tallahassee, FL. It is known for its red clay hills and its historical plantations.

The drive is beautiful and scenic, but it runs into the Metcalf Road not too far south of Thomasville. We took a left on the Metcalf Road, which I thought was built on top of the Old Magnolia Road. I was wrong. The old road proceeds into the woods on the other side and turns south to parallel the Metcalf Road.

Because the land it crosses into is privately owned, one cannot see the old road again until it crosses the Beachton Road west of Metcalf.

Do make the trip to see this crossing. It is about a little more than a mile west of Metcalf. You can see where it crosses the road.

I’ll pick up here next week and describe how the Old Magnolia Road intersects the Old Coffee Road. Both roads were built in the 1820s and they intersect just below the Florida state line. And both roads played a role in how the first European settlers came to the Florida territory.

03/11/2026

We had a recent donation to the library, and this time the family donation strikes close to my genealogy. My great grandmother‘s name is Hattie Augusta Lightsey Hamrick. She was born a Lightsey in Jefferson County somewhere near Elizabeth Baptist Church.

The donation was a drawing of the Lightsey home which still sits on Bassett’s Dairy Road. Here is why it is significant.

On the back of the drawing was a photograph of which I had seen before. we have another copy of that photograph here in the Genealogy library, but the people in it are unknown. On the back of the donated drawing this photograph lists who these people are.

In the photo are Clarence Lightsey and his wife Mary Ann Hampton Lightsey, plus their children Allen Lightsey, Laura Lightsey, and Mack Lightsey. Behind them is the house in the drawing. Clarence is my great uncle, my great grandmother Hattie’s brother.

Also significant is the land this house still sits upon. The photo says the house was built in 1906, and the photo taken in February or March of 1907. The land was bought from the US government by our Lightsey ancestor, George Lightsey, in the 1830s. It is still owned by a Lightsey today, a cousin who lives in south Florida.

Finally, a 97-year-old cousin in Vero Beach has a painting of the house, and I have been interviewing him for a new series I’m writing on the Hamrick’s and the Lightseys. I am thrilled to have this new information for my story which begins in this area in 1896.

03/04/2026

Sometimes our genealogy research takes us to different cities and different states. Mine recently took me to the Northern Neck of Virginia, a cradle for America’s independence.

Here is a post I wrote about what I found and how it ties to Monticello, FL. It also ties to our nation’s 250th birthday.

A Journey to Virginia’s Northern Neck — and a Walk Through Our Family’s History

The author reflects on a recent trip to the Northern Neck of Virginia, a historically rich and rural region known as the birthplace of prominent figures like George Washington. The journey also con…

02/18/2026

We have a request for information on the establishment of Roostertown, but there seems to be nothing written about it that I can find. Roostertown is an African American settlement on the southeast side of Monticello, Florida, south of US 90.

I remember going there with my father and asking how it got its name. He said it was self-named by its residents, probably because of all the roosters that crowed there in the early mornings. Several friends who grew up there said the same.

Judy Hall says that she heard the land was once owned by the owner of Jumpie Run plantation, but I know that the land underneath the Projects was bought and later sold before 1861 by William and Mary Andrews, my third great grandparents. They were certainly never prosperous enough to own Jumpie Run. Though William Andrews, we know, worked from time to time for Congressman Cabell who once owned Jumpie Run.

This is all I know about Roostertown. Does anyone else know more? Please share in the comments below. A family from Pennsylvania, whose ancestors once lived there, is seeking information.

02/11/2026

The library has quite a few books for sale.

Sometimes people give us books and when they do, we let them know that if it is a duplicate, that we sell the duplicates to raise money for the library.

We sell these duplicates for $10 each. They include local history books, old annuals, and much more. Come check us out!

We also have books for sale from local authors. They are priced differently, though.

02/05/2026

Ever since our beloved Dee Counts passed away, we have been going through boxes and boxes of what her family donated. Mary Frances has shouldered most of the work, and we are beginning to see a light at the end of what was a very long tunnel. With only one visitor today, a lot of filing got done.

I just released a new book about Jefferson County during Civil War and Reconstruction. Below is a blog post explaining more about its storyline.

The courthouse on its cover is the one built before the Civil War. It was torn down in 1904 to make way for our current courthouse.

Yankees in the Courthouse, the final installment of the Palmetto Pioneers series, explores Florida during the Civil War and Reconstruction. It highlights themes of resilience, forgiveness, and comm…

01/21/2026

Esther Haile Connolly

There are few of us in my generation who have lived in Monticello for many years that do not remember Ms. Esther. To put it mildly, she was a force.

Esther Haile Connolly was born in Monticello, Florida, on October 4, 1897, the daughter of William Edward Haile and Addie Lawrence Tatum Haile. Her maternal great-grandparents Andrew and Adaline Denham were married in Monticello in 1836.

Mrs. Connolly attended private and public schools in Jefferson County, graduating in 1914 from the Jefferson Collegiate Institute in 1915. She entered Florida State College for Women (now Florida State University) graduating in 1919 with a LI degree from the normal school and a BA from the college.

After teaching English and history several years in Monticello and Quincy, Mrs. Connolly moved to Washington, DC in 1922 where she served as a teacher and assistant librarian in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Walter Reed Army Hospital. In 1926 she married Frederick Connolly, and after his death in 1947 carried on his insurance business in Washington until she retired. Mr. Connolly was raised in Gainesville, Florida.

During Mrs. Connolly‘s years in Washington, she was an active member of the Garden Club of Chevy Chase, Maryland, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Georgetown Citizens Association, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the District of Columbia, the Board of the Washington City Orphan Asylum (later called Hillcrest children’s village), and the women’s board of the Washington Symphony Orchestra

Mrs. Connolly’s hobbies over the years were history, old houses, historic preservation, gardening, and travel. She was a member of the Monticello Presbyterian Church.

When she returned to Monticello in 1963, she had been active in many local civic organizations. She was a charter member of the Jefferson County Historical Association and had been its president over a period of 10 years. She was active in helping produce the annual tour of homes. She also assisted in the survey of Jefferson County resulting in the establishment of a historic district in Monticello and the listing of many buildings in the national register. She obtained funds to repair graves in the Old Monticello Cemetery, the Palmer family cemetery and the old Bailey/Bellamy cemetery.

As a member of the Monticello Woman’s Club Civic Committee, Mrs. Connolly headed the drive to secure a regional library for Jefferson County. As a member of the Monticello Garden Club, she was active in the planning and preservation of trees on our city streets. —Info from a Watermelon Festival program dated before 1994

I have a personal memory of her—one handed down by my father. In the early 1970s, while I was away at college and Dad was trimming trees to help keep me there, he ran into Mrs. Connolly one afternoon. She stopped to ask who had given him permission to take down a particular tree. Dad explained that it was diseased and had been dropping limbs onto Mrs. Winans’s house.

Mrs. Connolly ordered him to stop at once and come down. Moments later, Mrs. Winans came out of her house, and the two women launched into a heated argument beneath the oak tree on West Washington Street.

Dad recounted the incident to Mom later that day, and I remember her asking where he had been during the dispute. “I stayed in the tree,” he said. “There was no way I was getting between those two headstrong women.”

Ms. Esther died in 1994 at the age of 97, and she is buried next to her husband in Arlington National Cemetery.

01/14/2026

We run across many pictures of Monticello and Jefferson County citizens from long ago, and thought we should share a couple today.

12/24/2025

Merry Christmas!

Don’t forget! We are closed for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve!

12/17/2025

The Keystone Genealogical Library will be closed next Wednesday on Christmas Eve!

12/10/2025

This is the last post on the history of watermelon production in the Jefferson County, Florida

Watermelons are cucurbits, members of the same plant class as cucumbers, pumpkins, cantaloupes, honeydew, melons, citron, squashes, and gourds. Cucurbits are easily identified by their prostrate, sprawling vines. Usually with tendrils and leaves shaped like a palm leaf. The botanical name for the watermelon fruit is a pepo.

Florida has maintained its number one status for shipping melons in the United States for decades. Jefferson County was part of that statistics until the 1990s when refrigerator varieties began to rule the watermelon market. Also known as ice box melons, the refrigerator varieties weigh 5-15 pounds, bred to fit in one’s refrigerator.

My mother’s cousin, who lived in Vero Beach, recently sent me a newspaper clipping dated 1952. It was an article about Monticello’s watermelon festival along with photos. My mother was the watermelon queen that year. In one photo, she held a small watermelon, a brand new USDA variety, called an ice box melon.

By the 1960s there was no longer a market for watermelon seeds. These refrigerator varieties are seedless, a propagated variety done through asexual reproduction.

As refrigerator varieties dominated, Jefferson County, because of its location, missed the market window for shipping melons north. Plus growing refrigerator varieties required irrigation, whereas Jefferson counties earlier varieties required no irrigation.

Farmers down south always had to irrigate and built their infrastructures for irrigation when it was still cheap to do so. By the time our farmers realized their need for irrigation, the market had changed. The irrigation infrastructure costs (including permitting, wells, and pivots) were too expensive. It meant our watermelon growers could never recoup their costs.

It used to be that when everyone around here, who didn’t grow melons, was downtown having fun at the festival, our farmers were up to ten miles away in a field loading melons. Today, all of us celebrate the watermelon festival to commemorate the economic impact watermelons, their seeds, and our farming community had on this county. Many of our beautiful buildings and homes, including our courthouse, were built using money made through their industry.

Captions: Johnelle Hamrick, 1952 Jefferson County Watermelon Queen and her daughter Cindy Roe Littlejohn, 1982 Watermelon Festival Chairman

12/03/2025

Jefferson County’s Watermelon History (continued)

By the 1900s, a big name in watermelon seed production was Gilbert. By 1909, D.H. Gilbert built a two-story brick building across the street from the Presbyterian church to house his Gilbert Seed Company. Simpson’s Nursery shipped many train loads from the county, using the railroad spur that went south to Drifton to connect with the main line.

Another seed company Bloomfield Nursery & Seed Company owned by William Haile built a three-story building on the courthouse square where the newspaper office sits today.

In a 1937 a newspaper article entitled “Large Shipments to Distant Lands” Gilbert reported that he was sending vast-quantity shipments to Egypt, in boatloads. This is ironic, because watermelons are not native to the Americas, and Egyptian hieroglyphs show that the Egyptians ate watermelons.

The article reported that Jefferson County supplied 75% of the world’s watermelon seeds by the 1930s.