Dearly Departed Series: Hands Off The Body!
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You are seeking a uniquely disguised 35mm film canister outside
the cemetery. Please be careful to replace exactly as found. And
remember to be watchful for slithery things. BYOP
Julington Creek Cemetery aka Sloan's Landing: A historic
location... The War of Northern Aggression was still a vivid memory
when the horse-drawn carriage brought Wm McQuaig to his final
resting place. Coming several miles down a dusty track with family
and mourners on horseback or in buggies, the procession probably
came from a solitary cabin, maybe a simple farm near Fruit Cove,
Bayard or Durbin. They might have held a meager service in a
clapboard church somewhere across Durbin Creek, or made their way
down the Kings Road, making good time on the packed-earth pike. The
year was 1871. Federal troops were still posted to billets in
Jacksonville, overseeing the beginning of the Reconstruction. In
St. Augustine, it was illegal to fly the Confederate flag and
almost every citizen in town had been coerced into signing a
statement swearing allegiance to the restored United States
government. Those who didn't ran the risk of having their civil
rights, like suffrage, witheld. Worse, you could be considered an
enemy of the state, carrying the stigma of a criminal record. No
electricity or running water existed yet in the former territory of
East Florida, paved roads were rare and didn't extend past the
biggest cities. The golden age of rail had yet to dawn. A single
railroad line reached tenuously through the thick pine forests to
Gainesville; a short spur ran from St. Augustine to the St. Johns
River at Toccoi. Steamships- sternwheelers -moved everything in and
out of the interior of northeast Florida. This was the world Wm
McQuaig lived in. There may be earlier interments in Julington
Creek Cemetery, but if they sleep there, the names have been lost
to time. This humble burial ground itself is unknown to almost all
who live here now, yet lying under the sandy soil are the
pioneering families who helped tame a savage landscape. Almost all
are related in some way: Smiths, Altizers, Russells, Drakes,
Kinlaws, Stevens and Zeiglers....hardy individuals who have lived
in this area for nearly 150 years. Some died prematurely as
infants, children or young men. Valerie Sapp never made it to her
first birthday. Andrew Vinson almost did, surviving 11 months and 6
days, before surrendering to death the year I was born. Vinton
Shugart crossed over at the age of fifteen, while Jesse Whitley had
his life cut short at 32. In the fall of 1900, the mortal remains
of Effie McHale would retrace the journey the McQuaig family had
endured three decades earlier. She probably lived and died in a
frame house, hospitals being too far away to serve the Florida
frontier. Fifty-five years after becoming a state, Florida's
population was still sparse, 1 person to every 10 square miles.
Seventy percent of Floridians were living north of Gainesville; the
rest of the land between the coasts to the south held fewer than
150,000 homesteaders. Even so, she would have seen and heard the
approach of the twentieth century. She may have seen the first car
in the state when it came to Jacksonville, a Stanley No. 2
Locomobile. Maybe she had a chance to actually use a telephone
during the last decade of her life. She could have seen the first
building in Florida wired for electricity, the Ponce de Leon Hotel
in St. Augustine. People came from miles away to marvel at the
Edison electric lights when they were switched on at dusk. In 1888,
St. Augustine was a city of the future, the Epcot Center of its
day, with running (potable) water piped into every home and hotel,
bathrooms with running water connected to a sewage treatment system
and paved asphalt roads. No doubt she would have known about the
reputation of the county sheriff, "Long Joe Perry", a lawman who
was equally admired and feared. She also would have known veterans
of the Spanish-American War, who would have returned home as heroes
in the winter of ' 98. Other veterans, other heroes slumber
silently among the tombstones here. Alfred Ingram was a private
with the Alabama National Guard during World War I. Jack Vinson
also served as a private with the infantry in the second World War.
The last burial at Julington Creek was this spring, when Ed Zokus
was laid to rest. One hundred thirty-seven years after Wm McQuaig
closed his eyes in eternal sleep, the Zokus family made the long
ride out to the clearing in the forest. Carried by a sleek and
shining hearse, Edward J Zokus, Sr was lowered into a hand-dug
grave to spend eternity on the banks of Durbin Creek. He was
sixty-two. In those years, he had seen the coming of the interstate
highway system, the first American in outer space and the first
human to step foot on another planet. He would have watched the
advance of telephone equipment into computers and palm-sized
devices without wires. So many changes... Yet for all the
technological advancement, the human aspect remains fundamentally
unchanged. Each of these people had hopes, dreams and aspirations.
They loved and were loved. The fact that they were just like us
seems to erase the passage of time, as if they left just yesterday.
We have a tendency to view those who came long before us as actors
on a stage; they might have thought of us as shadows in a vision,
born of imagination. Yet they are us and we are them. Only the
flesh decays... or DOES it???????
http://tfdotr.net/2008_blog_archives/jul_crk_cem.html
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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