By Elizabeth Smith. Originally published in the November 1963 issue of the Magnolia Monthly.
Andrew Patterson Tully came to Wakulla County from the Carolinas in the early 1840’s, and originally from Ireland. He served as justice of the peace in Crawfordville in 1845. He is the forebearer of all the Tullys in Wakulla County and at one time owned all the land from Tully’s Garage in Crawfordville to a mile north at the upper end of the subdivision known as Hudson Heights. It included several hundred acres, and the original home is believed to be the one in which Jewell Hudson, county attorney, now lives though it has been moved from its previous location.
A.P. Tully owned 20 or 30 slaves and farmed his acreage. Even today old nails, harness buckles, and rusted door latches are found on the land which as since grown over in pine and oak. Andrew’s children included Albert, who died at the age of 15, William, George W., Jack, Drusilla, and Josie. When Albert died his father measured off land in Crawfordville for a cemetery between two roads, one leading by a roundabout way to Ivan, and the other going directly to his farm in Hudson Heights, which had the entrance marked by two large posts. The cemetery is still there and was recently deeded to the Crawfordville Methodist Church, but the road that once led to the farm is now the new Crawfordville highway to Tallahassee, while the other road to the east also goes to Tallahassee by way of Wakulla and Woodville.
Andrew’s farm was later enlarged by his son, George, to include a blacksmith shop, sawmill, and cotton gin. George did some farming but was more mechanically inclined. He was county surveyor for over 50 years. He died at the age of 81, only one day short of his 82nd birthday. He was 16 at the time of the Civil War and did his military training as Six Mile Point near Woodville. During the Battle of Natural Bridge (near Woodville) he was in Newport with other local boys who manned a small cannon shooting grapeshot. Half of the cannon was taken to Natural Bridge before the battle but of those left in Newport the northern forces never learned about.
George’s children were Ira, who died at the age of 24 and is buried in the cemetery given to the town by his grandfather, Carrie, George Maginnis, Eppie, Susie, Horace and Arthur Monroe the only surviving son who tells this story from his home in Medart and at the age of 81 is still alert and able to recount many incidents of his childhood.
He recalls that when timber ran short in Crawfordville his father moved his sawmill down to the wilds of Medart in 1892. His mother refused to go to such a primitive place and remained in Crawfordville. So his father and brothers camped out in a one-roomed house (later known as the McLaughlin place where rooms have been added since and Lawrence Rouden lives now) and went back to Crawfordville on weekends. Maginnis Tully kept the books for the sawmill and Arthur rode the horse down to the mill when his school was out.
Meanwhile the woods around Medart gave way to another settlement and the people wanted a post office because they still had to go to Crawfordville for their letters. They were told that the settlement needed a name first so Arthur’s sister Carrie named the village Medart for the name Medart Pulley Company which she fund in a catalog for sawmill equipment.
Arthur married Gertrude Rita Oder of Waukeenah in 1905 and built the house in Medart which is located north of Mac’s Store. South of the store is the present Tully home which Arthur’s brother Horace built in 1907 for his bride, but that year he was killed in a sawmill accident and the home was never completed, at least not at that time.
Arthur was still a boy when the old wooden courthouse in Crawfordville burned down in the early 1890’s. His father and another man from Apalachicola built the next courthouse but they had a quarrel and the other man left, so his father finished the courthouse in 1894. This high, two-story building is still standing in Crawfordville with enormous wooden beams that astonish visitors. But it has been moved half a block to accommodate the present concrete courthouse built in 1948-49.
Courthouse records show two bills of $1,175 each (or $2,350) which may be the total cost of this enormous edifice.
The courthouse in 1894 had just been completed, Arthur recalls, when a mass meeting was held there to pick a list of candidates for local offices. This was before the Democratic primary was installed and opposing factions couldn’t agree on their candidates. When they started drawing out their knives to enforce their choices, Arthur’s father told him to get under a table for protection. The next meeting of the Florida State Legislature introduced the primary and forestalled the high casualty rate in elections.
Not long after this the town of Panacea got its name from Arthur’s Uncle Billy Tully who said that the mineral springs there were a cure-all or panacea for ailing people.
Uncle Billy also helped to finance the building of the Panacea Springs Hotel along with W.W. Walker, but Arthur’s father contracted to build it. Still undaunted, in his 70’s his father opened a gunsmith shop.
Arthur, the 3rd generation Tully, sawmilled before and after his marriage. In 1905 he bought, he believes, the first automobile in the county, a second-hand Locomobile Steamer which was shipped by freight car from New York City. The $300 charges were as high as the cost of the car. But one thing led to another and in 1910 two men who ran a turpentine still in Woodville, Messrs. Russ and Rhodes, hired him. It seems that these two people had bought a Maxwell from the Nolan company in Jacksonville (still in business) and a chauffeur drove the car to Woodville and spent some days there showing them how to drive it. When he returned to Jacksonville, they still didn’t know how to drive and hired Mr. Tully to work their still and drive them too. He stayed with them for a year, then moved to Tallahassee and opened an auto repair shop in 1910. There was only one other in the capital, run by Proctor and Brown.
In 1916, the Tullys moved back to Medart. The sawmill was being run by Charlie McLaurin. The machinery had broken down and after Arthur repaired it he went into sawmilling for himself. He moved into the two-story house that had been built by his brother Horace. He said that his wife wanted to live in a two-story house because she had a girlfriend in Waukeenah who had lived in one. He recalls that times were hard before the United States entered World War I, but he continued sawmilling through that war and World War II when his sons took over completely.
All of his sons reflect their father’s mechanical aptitude. His oldest son, Buddy is a well digger, G.W. runs a garage in Crawfordville and Walter operates a sawmill. He has two other children, Hattie Louise Forbes of Crawfordville, and Jonnie Cornelia Gibson of Jasper.
The Wakulla County Historical Society Museum is in the Old Jail at 24 High Drive in Crawfordville. We are open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
