Meet the Singletary Family

CALVIN LEROY SINGLETARY - Civil War Vet

Born 1843 in NC

Died in 1882 in Jacksonville.

His headstone is near the flagpole.

He fought with the 51^st NC Infantry

In his 2nd year of service; he was wounded and became a POW.

He married Louise Burr of Florida and had 8 children (4 boys and 4 girls).

His oldest son was Luther Burr Singletary.  Family and friends called him Burr.

Burr was born in 1881 in SC - Died in 1929 in St. Nicholas, Jacksonville, FL

He married Mary Olivia Driggers and had three daughters, Minnie, Elizabeth and Norma.

Elizabeth Singletary Shepherd (2010)
With her Physician, Kay Ellen Gilmour, MD

From a letter written by his daughter Elizabeth, we know the following about the Singletary's in the early to mid 1920’s.

Her grandfather, Calvin Leroy Singletary, was about 5’8, medium build with a full head of light brown hair. His eyes were bright blue. He was outgoing and loved by the children.

Her father, Luther Burr Singletary, was of a slighter build with darker hair but he had those same Singletary blue eyes.

Luther was recognized as a master boat builder who built both working boats and pleasure boats. He also fished the river for the family’s needs as well as for commercial sale.

Her mother, Mary Olivia, was about 5’5”, a heavy-set pioneer woman with dark hair and dark brown eyes.  She was said to be part Egyptian and part Spanish. She raised some chickens and had a family garden and supplemented the family income by working at the crab plant towards town and the restaurant of the RR terminal.  

When fishing was good, she would take Elizabeth and they would row across the St John’s to the farmer’s market on the north bank to sell fish and produce from the garden.

The family attended the Swain Methodist Church where Burr played the organ.

Here follows a description of the family home that was situated within a block of the cemetery.  According to census data, the monthly rental of the house was $10. It was somewhere at the west end of Morier Street that was called River Street at the time.  Burr’s brother lived around the corner on Palmer Terrace.  They had Ashmeads on all sides of them.  Diane Ashmead’s husband’s father was one of them.

THE EXTERIOR

• The back yard sloped down to the river where Burr had a long dock with a boathouse at the end. His father, Calvin, suffered sudden death at the door to that boathouse – probably a heart attack. There was a long track to pull boats out of the river to dry dock.
• The river was very clear and you could see a white sandy bottom.
• The yard had no grass.  The dirt was swept daily with corn brooms.  There were many kinds of citrus trees on the property.
• There was a well for all the family’s water needs.  There was no indoor plumbing. The well was bricked all the way down with white sand at the bottom. Burr went down a ladder several times a year to scrub the walls.  The well had a wooden door at the top to keep debris and animals out and two posts that supported a cross beam for the bucket to draw the water.  There was no pump.

THE INTERIOR

• The house was a one story wooden, white building.  There was an open front porch with steps at either end.  All the windows had screens.
• The door off the front porch opened into the kitchen.
• There was an icebox in the kitchen.  When Mrs. Singletary could afford it, she would get a delivery of a block of ice.
• There was a wood-burning stove for cooking and baking with the covers on the top you removed with a detachable handle.
• The parent’s BR was to the left of the house and the girls 2 bedrooms were on the right.  A large parlor was at the back of the house opening onto a large porch that stretched across the back of the house. 
• In the parlor was a Singer sewing machine worked with a treadle , a wood burning stove used for heating (there was no other heating in the house),  a smudge pot for mosquitoes that could be moved from room to room, a large Victrola Music instrument that played records, and kerosene lamps used for lighting.  They were cleaned with moss.
• There was no electricity.  There were no phones.
• There was no indoors plumbing – rather just chamber pots under the beds for use at night.

Elizabeth and her sisters walked through the woods and the cemetery to get to Atlantic Blvd where they were picked up by the school bus - a covered wagon drawn by two stout horses.  They helped with chores around the house.  In the summer months, Elizabeth and other children in the neighborhood cleaned the grounds of this cemetery.  They formed the first St. Nicholas cemetery clean up crew.

Elizabeth’s father died in 1929 at age 48.  Her mother lived to be 93. Elizabeth died October 23, 2011 at the age of 97 and a half.