The Haddocks of Wiregrass

Kings Ferry Becomes a Thriving Lumber Town

One map of Kings Ferry prepared about 1849 shows the Albertie steam saw mill, the commissary, and just to the south, the community church.

Kings Ferry, Florida: Then and Now  Click here to take a video tour of historic Kings Ferry, Florida, a vanished Florida lumber town on the south bank of the St. Marys River in northeast Florida. The video tour includes historic photographs combined with contemporary video that help tell the story of this once thriving little inland port that shipped lumber around the world.  Views include the St. Marys River, Center Street circa 1910, the Daniel J. Connors home, Kings Ferry School, the river packet Hildegarde, Kings Ferry Cemetery, Haddock Cemetery and Brickyard Cemetery.

An interesting postal assignment was made in August, 1848. William Haddock was named to the position of postmaster of Haddock, Nassau County, Florida. Most likely, Haddock, Florida was that area within the limits of Section 43, two miles south of the Ferry. The postmaster position was reassigned to James A. Braddock in 1850. Postal services were discontinued all together in 1851, and Haddock, Florida disappears from the maps forever.

Kings Ferry, though not yet having a major lumber industry in the 1840’s, took on the unique distinction of the “ship building capital” of the St. Mary’s River.

A northern gentleman, A. Dunbar, brought with him “a gang of ship carpenters and built two or three brigs.” The first was christened “A. Dunbar,” and was launched in May 1849. Although not actually in the lumber milling business himself, Dunbar used the ships he built there in his business of buying and shipping timber.

A second big mill was constructed on the Flordia side of the St. Mary’s at Orange Bluff in 1853 by two brothers, Canellum and Lewis Davis. They built fine homes at the river’s edge and opened a commissary that sold, for the time, an incredible variety of goods and materials. The mill was built at the edge of a swamp at the south end of the landing. Its piers were often lined with the masts of barques and schooners loading their hulls to the limit with lumber and naval stores for shipment around the world.

A tram-road was built some four miles out into the stand of long leaf yellow pine. The bluff became a community of more than 300 laborers and mill workers. A great many homes were built along the road from Kings Ferry to Boulogne which passed a few hundred yards to the south of the mill.

With the passing of Canellum and Lewis, responsibility for the mill operation was assumed by three of their sons who formed the firm of L.A. Davis and Bros. in the 1880’s.

By 1896, much of the timber around the bluff was gone and so new lands were purchased and the brothers moved on to establish a much larger mill downstream at Crandall.

Meanwhile, Kings Ferry was growing into a thriving community of mills, stores, churches and a narrow gauge railroad that ran to Hilliard, where it connected with the main line of the Savannah, Florida and Western Railroad.

It began in about 1854 when a small lumber mill was built by Gilbert I. and Franklin Germond who had come from Charlton County, Georgia to build their dream. They built their mill on a tract of land just east of the ferry crossing. Franklin died in 1854 but his brother carried on in the milling business until about 1870, before selling out to Zach Jones.

The following year the old Germond mill and 50 acres were purchased by J. Mizell & Brothers and the prosperous and colorful years of Kings Ferry began.

With the construction of another large mill by J. Mizell & Brother Company in 1880 on the 50 acre site, the old Germond Mill became known as the “Little Mill.”

The second set of brothers “operated under the name of J. Mizell & Brother. These two energetic and hard-working men began where the Germonds left off and built probably the county’s largest milling operation of the nineteenth century....The Mizells erected a much larger mill, homes for its operators, a commissary for supplies, and docking facilities for the ‘barks’ which would carry the finished products off to all part of the world.” [Source: Jan H. Johannes, Sr. Yesterday’s Reflections: Nassau County, Florida (Callahan, 1976), p. 85.]

The Mizell family was well off by comparison with other families in Kings Ferry.

Inez VanZant once told her cousin, Lucille Connors about how happy she and her husband were when in the early days of their marriage, they were able to scape together enough money to buy their very first radio.

"We thought we were as rich as Billy Mizell," Inez recalled.

Kings Ferry, Florida in a postcard view taken about the turn of the century. In the foreground, various Haddock loggers attend to their teams of oxen as they leave the town docks. In the left background, the Daniel Connors home and grape arbor. As the town Justice of the Peace, Connors used the house as his office. It was also the office for Dr. Hawkins. The garden at right was planted and tended by Dan's wife, Julia Victoria Haddock Connors (left). The road was Kings Ferry's "Main Street," and ended at the river and a town dock on the St. Marys River. Chris Connors mailed the card from Fernandina on October 23 at 4 p.m. (No date). It was addressed to Miss Ethel Higgenbotham in Yulee, Florida. "Hello, I received your card yesterday. I would have liked to have been at the party, but could not. Have been in Fernandina most all day, but haven’t seen any of the (illegible). I came down here expecting to get a letter from you but of course was disappointed. Sincerely, Chris.” Ethel and Chris would eventually marry.

As Mizell explained, “back from the private dock, up the hill, was the two-story general store of J. Mizell and Brother. Here was sold everything from needles to spikes, shoes, boots, clothing, hats, dry-goods, furniture, etc., including celluloid cuffs and collars, snuff and tobacco and all kinds of patent medicines guaranteed to cure all ailments, real or imaginary.”

There were groceries “to fill every need, including salt-pickled beef in large wooden barrels; Saratoga Chips in large boxes and lemon crackers and ginger snaps in big barrels. Also, salt curred codfish, dried herrings and white bacon; three pounds for a quarter. Fresh beef was always available on Friday as it was butchered on Thursday to be sold the next morning. Chickens, eggs, beeswax, tallow, cow hides, and syrup in barrels were taken in trade in exchange for goods.” [Source: Mizell, William Jr., The Vanished Town of Kings Ferry Florida (Folkston, Georgia: 1965), p. 5]

In the late 1870’s, the Hilliard and Bailey Lumber Company took a twelve-year lease on thousands of acres stretching from Kings Ferry to Jonesville, today known as Hilliard. Included in the agreement was the partially completed tram road from a landing at Kings Ferry to Hilliard. Hilliard and Bailey then built additional docks at Kings Ferry.

“The dock in front of the Russel house was built by Hilliard and Bailey,” Mizell remembered, “who operated a tram road from Hilliard to Kings Ferry for the purpose of hauling logs to the river where they were rolled from the docks into the river to be rafted to the mills; and where lumber was loaded on vessels from their mill at Hilliard, Florida. [Source: Mizell, William Jr., The Vanished Town of Kings Ferry Florida (Folkston, Georgia: 1965), p. 7]

In 1881, the firm began construction of a large mill on a ridge just east of the Savannah, Florida and Western Railroad, built a thriving community there, and called it Hilliard after the company’s senior partner, Cyler Walter Hilliard. About the same time, it completed a “narrow gauge lumberman’s railroad” to carry lumber to the Kings Ferry H&B docks. The single engine was named Florida, but it was dubbed “Runaway” in the mid-1880’s following an incident in which “one of the engineers left a head of steam in its boiler at quitting time, causing it to slowly chug down the tracks toward Hilliard later that evening, alone.” [Source: Johannes, Jan H., Sr. Yesterday’s Reflections: Nassau County, Florida (Callahan, 1976), p. 85.]

The Florida Mirror was reporting in 1881 “there are more signs of life and improvement at this point that at any place on the river. New buildings are going up, the wharfs are covered with lumber and naval stores, the arrival and departure of the trains of Hilliard and Bailey’s lumber railroad, and the buzzing of the saws of the mills of Mizell Brothers, all combine to make up a scene of activity very pleasing and gratifying...Baker, Jones & Co. have extensive naval store farms and distilleries three miles from the river. They keep several sailing vessels chartered by the year to transport their resin and spirits of turpentine to New York. There are quite a number of stores at Kings Ferry, all doing a flourishing business.” [Source: Florida Mirror (Jacksonville, February, 1881) quoted in Jan H. Johannes, Sr. Yesterday’s Reflections: Nassau County, Florida (Callahan, 1976), p. 92.]

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