Tallahassee Day Four

Thursday, May 20th, busy day ahead...

Breakfast is on our own once more...it will be an early breakfast because our first conference meeting of the day starts at 8 AM. The main speaker will be John Franklin, Director of Partnerships and International Programs of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. He tells us about the Smithsonian's new museum that is up and coming, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. It will open in 2015 on The Mall, near the Washington Monument.

Our little museum and the other museums in the Florida African-American Heritage Preservation Network will be working with the Smithsonian. The materials and information we have in our museums will be passed along to the Smithsonian and be used to tell Florida's African-American history. The Colonel and I think it is exciting for our museum to be in a partnership with the Smithsonian.

May 20th is the day Florida celebrates Emancipation Day.

On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery, but it was not until May 20, 1865 that the word reached Florida and border states still in rebellion.

The Proclamation was read on the steps of the Knott House in Tallahassee on May 20, 1865 by Union General, Edward Moody McCook.

Our conference group will visit the Knott House and watch a reenactment of the reading later that day...but first we had other places to visit.

After our morning conference meeting with Mr. Franklin we all once again boarded the trolley to visit more sites and take part in the Emancipation Day celebrations.

Our first stop of the day was to the Old City Cemetery (1829) and the decoration of the Union Soldiers' graves. Many local school children participated in the event.

It was a beautiful ceremony and great to see all of the children participating.

Back on the trolley to visit the Gov. David S. Walker Library (1883). Gov. Walker donated the building and his own private library so that it could be used by the public (blacks excluded, remember the Carnegie library located at FAMU) and it was the only public library in Tallahassee from 1884-1955. It is a small building.

We then walked to the Knott House. It was basically across the street from the library.

We watched the reenactment of the 1865 reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

After the reading, drums were played. The beat was an African one. Drum beating like this took place after the 1865 reading too.

There was a free Bar-B-Que lunch for all in the park across the street.

When we finished our lunch our conference group got back on the trolley and made our way to the Riley House Museum to view their new exhibit entitled, Colored Soldiers on America's Battlefields. The Colonel supplied the Riley House Museum with material for the exhibit. The Riley House is part of the same network as our museum.

The house was built in 1890 by John G. Riley (1857-1954). He was born a slave and against the law, secretly learned to read and write. After slavery he became an educator and civic leader. He was the principal of the first black high school (Lincoln Academy) in Leon County, Florida.

After the museum experience the network group had a one hour discussion in the hotel's lobby, on expanding our cultural heritage experiences. Then we all caravaned to a "Cultural Feast Under the Stars".

We dined in Frenchtown, one of Tallahassee's oldest African-American neighborhoods. It is a small neighborhood that is being revitalized. A woman who lives there and is an artist, set up a tent in her art shop's back yard and served us delicious "soul food". We had bourbon chicken, collard greens, creamed corn (nothing like the canned version), sweet potatoes, peel and eat shrimp, raw oysters (The Colonel and I did not have any), peach cobbler, sweet tea and red or white wine from FAMU. Soul food is just another word for down home cooking like most of our grandma's cooked.

Here are some of the cute houses in Frenchtown.

What a delicious cultural dinner. Thanks to Annie Harris of ASH Gallery.

The Colonel and I went on an impromptu tour with a small handful of the network members. One member was originally from St. Maarten, one from The Bahamas, one a three-time mayor of a small Florida town (she as a hoot) and the last, the head of the Rosewood project.

We drove to the oldest bank building in Florida, the Union Bank.

The bank was built in 1841 and organized by white planters. The bank president was John Gamble of the Gamble Plantation fame. Due to failed crops and troubles with the Seminole Indians, the bank failed in 1843. In an ironic twist of fate, the defunct bank of white planters, became the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company in 1869. Since then it has been a church, shoe shop, bakery, feed store, newspaper office and a beauty parlor. It now houses the downtown branch of Florida A&M University (FAMU) Black Archives, Research Center and Museum. It was small inside, but beautiful. The wood floors and wood work on the walls was gorgeous.

Our St. Maarten driver took us on a little driving tour of some of Tallahassee's newer homes and neighborhoods. The houses were huge and looked very antebellum. We all wondered what these people did for a living.

It was getting dark and late, so back to the hotel to sleep and rest up for our last busy day in Tallahassee the next day.

Tallahassee Day Three

Wednesday, May 19th is day three of our trip to Tallahassee.

Breakfast on our own again and then an early conference meeting starting at 8 AM. This meeting concentrates heavily on historical tourism. A presentation is made on the Old Spanish Trail. It is the trail the Spanish used between St. Augustine, FL and San Diego, CA. The U.S. started paving the old trail in 1915 and ended in 1931. The 1920's were the heyday of the auto highway and today tourism departments all along the trail are revitalizing and preserving some of its businesses and historical sites.

After the meeting we all got on a trolley that would take us to visit some of Tallahassee's sites.

First stop...Site of Hernando De Soto's first Christmas in Florida (1539-1540).

This building is now on the De Soto site. The Gov. John Martin House called Apalachee (1865) and one time home of Gov. William Bloxham (1881-1885). It is now a museum about De Soto, the Apalachees and Gov. Bloxham.

When they were building this house they discovered the remnants of De Soto's camp which was built upon an Apalachee Indian village site. The Apalachees who had lived there were tired of being attacked by De Soto and his men, so they burnt their village and abandoned it. We learned that Tallahassee means "abandoned fields" in the Apalachee language.

Back onto the trolley and onto Florida A & M University (FAMU). FAMU was originally founded in 1887 by Gov. Bloxham as the State Normal and Ag College for Colored Students. It is still largely made up of African-American students, but non-black students attend too.

While at FAMU we visited the Meek/Eaton Black Museum and Archives that is housed in a Carnegie library built in 1908 (see below).

The museum was full of FAMU and African-American memorabilia. When Andrew Carnegie wanted to build one of his libraries in Tallahassee he said it must be open to all people no matter what color they were. The white people (remember it was 1908 and in the Deep South) said absolutely not. So he built it on the campus of FAMU. Later the whites built their own library in town.

The town I grew up in had a Carnegie library too, built in 1913. It is now a restaurant and I ate there with my sister when I visited back in September of 2009.

From FAMU we trollied to the campus of FSU. We stopped at bronze statues of FSU's first black undergraduate, Maxwell Courtney (1962-1965 B.A.), first black Homecoming Princess, Doby Lee Flowers (1970), and first black to wear an FSU athletic uniform (baseball), Doby's brother, Fred H. Flowers (1965-1969 B.A., 1975 M.S.).

We left FSU and headed for Mission San Luis. It was a 17th century community of Apalachee Indians and Spaniards and the western capital of Spanish Florida (1656-1704). It was a religious, military and economic center.

On the grounds were replicas of the buildings that were there during the 17th century.

The Apalachee Council House exterior. It was huge (you can barely see someone standing in the doorway).

The interior.

There was an enormous smoke hole in the top of the Council House, so I felt like I was inside a volcano. The guide told us that when it would rain, it never got wet inside, as a fire was always burning and the rain would evaporate before it hit the ground inside.

The chapel and the padre.

The church.

After the tour we had lunch in the Mission's museum building. We had to eat quickly because we had more stops coming up on the trolley tour. Our next stop was a Goodwood Museum and Gardens.

The Goodwood plantation house was built by slave labor in 1830. We were given a very abbreviated tour of the house. Very beautiful. I wish we could have seen the gardens as well but we did not have time.

Our next stop was the Museum of Florida History. The Colonel and I hit the gift shop/bookstore and did not tour the museum as our time was very limited there too. When time is short we always opt for the bookstores of museums.

Our last trolley stop of the day was still upcoming...The Old Capitol (the one we could see from our hotel room window).

The building now houses a museum of Florida's political history. The Capitol is as beautiful inside as it is outside. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but again we were on a tight schedule.

In 1824 Tallahassee was chosen as the site for Florida's Territorial Capital because it was the halfway point between the two region capitals, St. Augustine in the east and Pensacola in the west (The British, when Florida was under their rule, 1763-1783, had divided Florida into two separate regions). Four hundred miles separated the two capitals and moving the capital to Tallahassee made it easier to do government business between the regions. Eventually Spain wrestled back Florida only to finally give the entire Florida Territory to the U.S. in 1821. Florida became the 27th state in March of 1845.

We once again boarded the trolley and headed for the hotel. We would have a couple of hours until our next conference meeting at 6:30 PM. It would be a two hour meeting, then off to bed to rest up for a busy day four.

Tallahassee on Dwellable

Tallahassee Day Two

Day two of the trip starts out with breakfast and lunch on our own and the first meeting of the conference does not start until noon, so The Colonel and I get back into the VW and drive around downtown Tallahassee.

We eat at the McDonald's across the street from Florida State University (FSU). After our McMuffins are eaten we take a little driving tour of FSU. It is a pretty campus nestled in the hills of Tallahassee. We also take a little driving tour of Florida A & M University (FAMU), it is very close to FSU.

The Colonel and I cannot get over how hilly Tallahassee is (I would not like to drive a stick-shift in this town). It is beautiful with its hills and many ancient, Spanish moss covered, live oak trees and magnolias in bloom. It has a southern, small town charm despite its size and being the state's capital.

We have driven until lunch time and find a small shop to eat at that is only a block or so from our hotel (we will eat breakfast there too during our stay).

Lunch over, we head for our first conference meeting in one of the hotel's many meeting rooms. This meeting will concentrate on best tourism practices and the role of history in tourist destinations.

The Colonel has met most of the Network members during past conferences. This is my first conference, so all are new to me. I am surprised by Oprah's doppelganger.

The meeting lasts three hours. The next conference function will be an opening reception starting at 6 PM. The Colonel and I decide to use the free time by driving 22 miles north to Thomasville, Georgia to visit Pebble Hill Plantation.

A Thomas Jefferson Johnson first acquired the acreage of Pebble Hill Plantation in 1825. The house you see here was built in 1850. Pebble Hill was always a working farm until the late 1880's when wealthy northerners purchased the property for a winter vacation home.

The Colonel and I only had enough time to wander the beautiful grounds before we had to head back to Tallahassee. Here are some of the things we saw.

The dairy barn (lucky cows).

The school house built for the vacationing children of the family.

The arched tool shed...

...that lead into this garden.

The stables.

The pump house designed by President Garfield's son.

Our time was running short and we needed to head back south. A whirlwind tour, but very pretty and memorable.

Back at the hotel and dressed for the opening reception, The Colonel and I make our way to the ballroom, select a table, and go through the heavy finger foods line. The Mayor of Tallahassee speaks as do other town officials. Governor Charlie Crist is supposed to show, but does not. After all of the speeches are delivered we have some entertainment.

The Tallahassee Irish Step Dancers...Impressive and their dancing made me want to jump up and join them (must have been my Irish ancestry coming through).

Next was the Tallahassee Boys' Choir. They were very, very good. Voices like angels. They have sung for the White House, the Vatican and all over the world. They sang patriotic songs, negro spirituals and songs in Latin. I nearly cried at times, so beautiful. This was only a few of the choir. There are over 80 boys that make up the choir. This group was comprised of some of the best singers.

A local folk singer and his flute playing partner were also part of the evening's entertainment (I cannot remember his name because The Colonel and I left during his performance; we were tired from our full day and wanted to go back to our room to be rested for day three of Tallahassee).