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Keystone Genealogical Library, Jefferson County Public Library, Monticello, FL (2025)

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.

11/26/2025

As in the past, the Keystone Genealogical Library is closed tomorrow, Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving! See you next Wednesday!

11/12/2025

Jefferson County Watermelon History (continued)

In Monticello, William Girardeau’s watermelon seeding invention changed everything. Now melon producers were not only making money on the melons they produced, they were making even more money on the seed production.

By 1890, Girardeau employed about 100 field hands to gather watermelon seeds, after his choice melons had been shipped to market. The seeds came from the culls in his fields. Culls are melons that are overripe, damaged, or have blemishes that grocery store shoppers won’t buy. The cull’s seeds though have value.

By 1892, Girardeau sold about 75,000 pounds of seeds annually.

Early on Jefferson County became a national center, not just for the production of watermelons, but even more importantly, it was the national center for watermelon seeds. We would become the top watermelon seed supplier for the world. Seed producers sent our seeds all over to places like Egypt.

His Girardeau Seed Company was later run for 50 years by his son-in-law R. L. Eaton. William M Girardeau was the son of William Oglethorpe Girardeau, the principal of Jefferson Academy when the new school was built in 1852, before the civil war.

Next week, we’ll reach the 1920s, after which several two and three-story buildings were built to aide the shipping of watermelon seeds. One three-story building was built on the courthouse square.

10/29/2025

History of Jefferson County Watermelons (continued)

William Girardeau led the way when he invented a machine which separated the seeds from the melons. Before his machine, it was done by hand, and it had to be done for a following year’s harvest. The farmer would haul the melons for seeding, including the rotten ones, using a mule-drawn wagon. It was better to do this work in the shade, so the melons were hauled to a nearby shade tree near a stream.

At the tree, the contents of every melon was scraped into a barrel or later a steel drum. The seeds had to be washed by hand, and this was done at local springs. It has been said that at the bottom of every hill in Jefferson County is a spring though this is a slight exaggeration. If you ask some of the farmers, cattlemen, and outdoorsmen how many springs or creeks there are in this county, though, you will be surprised.

After the seeds were washed in a nearby stream, they were dried. The process had a terrible odor to it, especially because it had to be done in June in 100 degree weather.

Nothing assaults our olfactory glands like rotted watermelons. That smell is right up there with rotten eggs, pole cats, and an open sewer. Just picture this—a hot Florida field with temperatures hovering at a hundred degrees with no breeze, gnats, and those stinking melons.

Girardeau’s machine allowed the field workers to keep more distance from the rotted melons using a pitchfork to pitch the melons into the machine, which did the rest of the work. Plus, the process went faster.

Girardeau’s imvention became a game changer!

The two photos help describe the seeding operation.

10/22/2025

Monticello Woman’s Club

Initially, the Woman’s Club house was a residential home and erected soon after 1830 by Darius Williams, one of Jefferson County’s earliest settlers. Mr. Williams established and operated William’s Mercantile at the corner of North Jefferson and East Pearl, where Vintage Treasures is housed today.

Williams’ house was updated to a Queen Anne style between 1880 and 1885. It originally sat where the post office sits today at the southwest corner of Pearl and Jefferson Streets. The Queen Anne addition may have been added to an earlier two-room structure of either logs or planed wood. Later, it would have the first Venetian blinds and door bell in Monticello.

In 1919, after two other families made it their home, the Monticello Woman’s Club, which formed in 1918, made it their headquarters. They bought the house and property from the Partridge family for $2,500.

The newly-formed Monticello Woman’s Club had joined the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, which first met in January of 1895 in Green Cove Springs. By the federation’s twelfth year in 1906, it saw a need for public libraries in Florida’s rural towns and ran four traveling libraries containing 263 books. They sent them to various towns where club women assumed their care, housed them in their homes, and acted as librarians. By 1926, there were 26 libraries and over a thousand volumes throughout the state. Monticello’s Woman’s Club had joined this effort.

The local club completely remodeled the house transforming it into a community center, complete with a section for a library. This was Monticello’s only library for many years.

The 4-H clubs of Monticello used the house as a meeting space, as well as Jefferson County’s Home Demonstration Council. They outfitted the kitchen and added storage space.

The club grounds, under the care of Mrs. John Henry, had a small space in front , a sunken garden with a border of boxwoods and a birdbath. There were ornamental shrubs planted against the building. In the back were large live oak shade trees and a place for outdoor parties. The formal garden was designed and constructed under the personal supervision of Mr. & Mrs. D. A. Finlayson.

The Monticello Woman’s Club was one of the most attractive sites in Monticello. Remember, this house was still directly across Jefferson Street from the Wirick-Simmons Home.

The Library

In an undated document, the local Woman’s Club said that their greatest asset was their library. They hired a paid librarian to open the library several hours a day for four days a week. She originally was hired by the WPA library project, but the Woman’s Club continued her employment. The library had 1200 books.

Moved to Pearl Street

The house was moved from its original location on North Jefferson Street in three pieces to make way for Monticello’s new post office. The preparation mandatory for the move required much tree cutting and removal of power lines. They moved it to its current site on Pearl Street, had the house in place, and remodeled it by September, 1951 for a grand re-opening. There was a picture of the move in the Monticello News.

Over the years since, the clubhouse has been the site of many community events, including high school dances, Christmas parties, wedding and baby showers, wedding receptions, class reunions, and wedding anniversary events to name a few.

The pictures below were taken on Pearl Street.

10/15/2025

More History of Watermelons in Jefferson County, Florida

We talked about the harvest and loading of melons and the effect it had on the county. Now, let’s talk about the earlier history of melons in the county.

In 1882, only seventeen years after the Civil War, a newspaper article shows that William M. Girardeau of Monticello purchased $50 worth of watermelon seeds and planted 60 acres of watermelons. That June, he shipped his first crop. He would become the father of Jefferson County watermelons.

The following year the local paper reported that there were 300 acres of watermelons within sight of the courthouse and that local growers had shipped over 30 railroad carloads of the product.

A year later in 1884, they reported that in addition to shipping many more carloads of melons, local growers had produced more than 20,000 pounds of watermelon seeds and sold them at prices ranging from one to five dollars per pound.

Harvesting seeds was done by hand, but Girardeau would soon change that.

10/01/2025

Another Episode in the History of Jefferson County Watermelons

Loading melons was a story all its own. Most local boys worked in the watermelon fields every summer. Tractor-trailer trucks parked nearby, and the melons were loaded on to high-backed trucks in the fields. Because our number one crop was the Charleston Grey, an oblong melon weighing 28-35 pounds, it took a lot of muscle to toss one up to the side of those trucks, where a packer would place each one on a layer of straw.

The late Gene Brock, a local farmer, remembered loading as a teenager watermelon rail cars, 30,000 lbs to a car. Some days, he said he loaded with other boys five cars, though the regular carload was three per day.

Speaking of muscle, our watermelon fields became our weight rooms for our local football team. At one time Jefferson County High School’s football team won more state championships than any other team in the state of Florida.

Just look around the state at the rural football powerhouse teams, before the refrigerator varieties of watermelons came into play. These teams were from towns like Clewiston, Wildwood, Bonifay, and Chiefland—all watermelon producing counties.

09/24/2025

The Folsom Family

We received an email this week asking us for help finding a house. The descendants of Sallie Folsom, born 1901, made the request.

We began by confirming that Sallie Folsom did live here. In the 1910 US Census for Jefferson County, we found her. She is the older sister of two long-time residents—Tom Folsom and Jim (James) Folsom. So we got in touch with family members from both of those families to see if they knew where the family first lived. Here is what we found.

According to a daughter of Eleanor Folsom Revell, the deceased daughter of Jim Revell, the house at 425 North Mulberry Street was their family home. A photo is attached (from Google Earth.)

We’re not sure the Folsom family built this house, though. Also, Eleanor was probably born there in the 1920s or 1930s, about thirty years after Sallie Folsom was born. Eleanor’s daughter said that she was told by her deceased mother that the family came from Boston, Georgia.

However, because we found the family in Jefferson County, Florida in the 1910 census, we think Sallie Folsom may have been born here. We’re just not sure she was born in Monticello in this house, though, because listings say it was built in the 1920s. The Jim Folsom family says the house was built in 1914. It seems to be a dead end.

The 1910 census says the Folsom family lived in the Barnes precinct, which I thought was about three miles north of Monticello. Another Folsom family, the daughter-in-law of Thomas Folsom, a younger sibling of Sallie’s, says they can remember Thomas Folsom talking about walking to school seven miles every day to and from his home. This family’s lore could fit where I thought the Barnes community was located.

Next, the only house near what we thought was the Barnes Community, that is old enough, sits at 13 Barnes Road. It is difficult to see it from US 19 which it faces. They say this house was built in 1900, but we’ve never heard it called the Folsom house. However, it was a dead end, the house on Barnes Road was built by Mr. Barnes himself, who owned a mill nearby.

Then we found another house on the Old Boston Rd. nearby that was called the old Folsom house. It sits very near where Barnes Road ends on the Boston Road. We know that in the 1970s, a Braswell family lived there. They say it was built about 1900.

Next, we will try to get more information on it, to see if it is still standing. By the way, a Braswell family lived next door to the Folsoms in the 1910 census.

Anyone out there with more information, please share!

09/20/2025

Aucilla Reaearch Institute is having another First Floridians Conference!

09/17/2025

A Genealogy Tip for Dating an Ancestor’s Arrival in America

Marks and Brands

Using unique brands meant that cattle owned by multiple cattlemen could then graze freely together on Florida’s open pastures, woods, and swamps. These men could then separate the cattle at "roundup" for driving to market.

Brands became so numerous that it became necessary to record them in books in the courthouse. Laws were passed requiring the registration of brands. Penalties were imposed on those who failed to obtain a bill of sale with a list of brands on the animals purchased.

Marks were used for other livestock like swine.

Jefferson County maintained one of these books, and we have it here in the Keystone Genealogical Library. The first recorded in this book is dated January 27, 1827 for William Bailey’s mark and brand. His brand was a Roman B. This means this journal is almost 200 years old.

January 27th is only seven days after Jefferson County was established. That was the date it was separated from Leon County by order of Florida’s Territorial General Assembly. They passed a law on January 6, 1827 for this to be done.

William Bailey wasted no time in staking his claim for his marks and brand. He probably went to Robinson’s Trading Post to have it done, since there was no courthouse yet. Old timers say the trading post sat where Oh Happy Day Gifts is located today.

But Why Did He Go To Have It Done At Robinson’s

A post office named Robinson had already been established on May 10, 1826 at the trading post, and it predated the creation of the county. The name of this post office would not change to Monticello until December 26, 1827.

We know from later documents that courts were authorized to be held at Robinson’s place, which was not only his place of business snd a post office but also his home. So we can deduce that Bailey went to Robinson’s place to have his marks and brand recorded.

How Can We Use This Genealogical Purposes

This Marks and Brands Journal can be an important tool for identifying how early one’s ancestors arrived in the county. Usually, a genealogist uses census records.

For example, Jesse Walker, my fourth great grandfather was in Colleton County District, South Carolina in the 1820 Census. However, he is in Jefferson County’s 1830 census, so we can surmise that he came to this county between 1820 and 1830, but ten years is a long time.

Using this journal, though, I looked to see when he registered his mark and brand. I found him on page 9. He registered it on February 16, 1831.

We are fairly sure he arrived in the winter of 1829-1830. He would not have waited several years to register his brand, since he brought down a small foundation herd of cattle from South Carolina. By the way his brand was 99, but he later changed it to a stick W.

If he had registered his brand in 1827, like Bailey, we could deduce he arrived earlier in the decade.

However, by checking birthdates and birth places of Jesse’s children, we learned that his son William Allen Walker was born in 1829 in South Carolina. That means they were probably still in South Carolina for that growing season.

They probably left for Florida immediately after this harvest and arrived down here in time to begin planting by the following February, 1830.

Ain’t Genealogy Fun!

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