The Cattle Industry: 500 Years in Florida

    What did raising cattle in Nassau county entail? Well, a little bit of herding, tending and watching
out for rustlers. Recalling the brief history of Florida cattle in Part One of this story, the following
focuses on the effects of that history in Nassau County as experienced by former cattleman, E.P.
Davis, Jr.
    E.P. Davis, Jr. was born at Orange Bluff, Florida, in 1914. By then both sides of his family had
settled in the area and were making a living from its natural resources, pine trees and land. The
family's saw mills processed pine into lumber and naval stores and they further used the land on
which the pines grew to raise cattle.
    Mr. Davis claims kinship to an infamous cowman on his mother's side, Morgan Bonaparte Mizell,
more familiarly known as Bone Mizell. For those unfamiliar with this Florida legend, he was the
subject of a Frederic Remington painting (1895), the front page feature in a metropolitan New York
newspaper and even the subject of a ballad. Bone Mizell's legend is told in Florida Cow Hunter,
The Life and Times of Bone Mizell by Jim Bob Tinsley (University of Central Florida Press, 1990).
This book mentions the Mizell family living in Camden County, Georgia by the late 1700¹s. About a
century later, Mr. Davis' maternal grandfather, Billy Mizell, bought a sawmill with his brother, Jack
Mizell, and built another at King¹s Ferry.

Former cattleman E.P. Davis
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His paternal great-grandfather, Canellum Davis, owned a mill at Orange Bluff with his brothers. When Canellum's brothers died, E.P.'s grandfather, William C. Davis and great-uncles, Lewis Allen Davis and Charles J. Davis, took over the family firm and moved the sawmill to Crandall by 1895.
When L. A. Davis and Brothers established the saw mill at Crandall, they also fenced in about 10,000 acres and kept several hundred head of piney woods cows. Although Florida was still open range then, it was up to the owner to control his cows. So the Davises erected fencing decades before state law required it in 1950.

      Their cattle grazed in the woods and along the edges near the marsh. The marsh was so boggy,
cows nibbled only on the marsh grass near the edges. Experts of the time did not deem it healthy to
raise cattle on grass close to the marsh 12 months a year - they would get "salt sick." Mr. Davis
said they later found out "salt had nothing to do with it. It was a diet deficiency due to the poor
grazing along the coast." So when spring came the Davis boys split the herd into groups of 50 to
100 and moved them out to small farms toward Hilliard and Callahan for a few months of better
nutrition.
    These farms were not fenced. To keep the herd from wandering off without the expense of fencing a large area, only the calves were penned. The mama cows would stay nearby and the gregarious nature of cattle kept the others with the group.
    Relocating the cattle also benefited the mid-county farmers. The herd left behind fine natural
fertilizer for the fields. But before reaping that reward, farmers had some tending of their own to do.
Spring was the time to brand and earmark newborn calves and any unmarked cows. (If a rascal like
Bone Mizell found those unmarked cows first, he'd apply his brand to it.)
    E.P.'s grandfather's brand was simple:

This brand symbolized the partnership of the three Davis brothers. His father, E.P. Davis, Sr. had
used only a "D". E.P. remembers, "my father didn't like how the farmers branded them [his cattle].
They got the "D" turned around." Marks and brands were registered at the Nassau County
Courthouse and one owner could select a letter facing left and another, right ("d" vs. "b"). Unless the
"D" faced right, the mark legally was not E.P., Sr.'s brand, "So he changed it to an "O" so it didn't
matter how it was put on."

Pictured above is a record of a Nassau County cattle brand from 1844. The record shown at the right was registered almost 100 years later.
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     Other cattlemen moved their herds to mid-county farms. Mr. Davis recalls a free roaming herd
on the island, owned by the late L.L. Owens. The cattle grazed on marsh grass over an area
between the Fernandina Beach Municipal Airport and Franklintown. Of course today¹s
developments weren't in existence in the early part of the century when those cows enjoyed the real
estate. Like the Davis brothers, Mr. Owens drove his herd out to the mid part of the county to
farmland to supplement their marsh grass diet. Mr. Owens labored less on the cows' return trip to
the island, for most of the herd returned on their own accord, come summer. A few had to be
driven back, but the majority followed an innate homing sense east across the bridge to Amelia
Island.
    Not all herds, or cattlemen, had the luxury of a bridge on drives. E.P. Davis took part in a cattle
drive across the St. Mary's River. In the early 1930's, a friend of E.P. Davis, Sr.¹s, Chester Lewis,
had about 100 head of cattle he wanted to move from the Georgia side of the river to the Florida
side, near King's Ferry. E.P., Sr. purchased the cattle in an agreement that Lewis would tend them
and any calves produced would be shared equally between the two. According to E.P., "Lewis
brought the cows to the river and just drove them overboard on the Georgia side - got them started.
They swam across the St. Mary's. It wasn't very wide there anyway."
    The Lewis story leads to one of Bone Mizell's specialties, cattle rustling. E.P. continued, "Those
cows hung out by the river. Their home range was just across the water. [Recall the island cows
who returned home in the summer on their own.] Along the river, good grass grew all the way down
to Woodstock. A family of rogues across the river [Georgia side] would catch a cow close to the
river on the Florida side, shoot it, pull it across the river on a boat and butcher it on the Georgia
side. Got so bad, Dad got rid of the cows up there."
    Cattle stealing is as old as the industry itself, going back to when Spain owned Florida. "Folk
made a living stealing cows," Davis notes. "Georgia crackers stole from Indians and Spanish. The
Indians had a lot of cattle. Payne's Prairie [Gainesville, FL area] was a big Indian town. Those
Georgia rogues would go that far during Spanish rule."
    Tending the cattle kept Mr. Davis and his family busy. Along with his fellow Florida cattlemen he
battled the Texas fever tick, prevalent in the late 1920's and early 1930's. The state built and
maintained hundreds of dipping vats all over Florida. It did not cost the cattleman additional money
to dip the entire herd once a month. But, if a state range rider found a cow (easily identified by
brand or earmark) without the right color paint mark indicating a current dip, the state dipped the
cow and charged the owner.
    Mr. Davis remembers a double fence built along the Florida-Georgia border to help deter
interstate ranging of the cattle. Apparently the states did not have the same tick regulations, so the
fence was built to prevent infestations across the line. Though ticks don't generally respond to
fencing, the vigilant dipping program eradicated the pest in about five or six years. Then came the
screw worm.
    The screw worm kept E.P, Jr. and his brothers in the saddle and on the range. He remembers
riding daily or at least weekly to get a look at each individual cow for a period of about three to five
years. Their herd was scattered over acreage from Yulee to Interstate 95. So, the boys would pack
their saddlebags for the day with their battle gear - a bottle of benzene, a syringe, coal tar and a
brush - and set to cow hunting. (Florida cowmen or cow hunters were never referred to as
"cowboys.") "Cattle tend to stay in groups, so you knew about where you would find the cows.
Those [infected] with the screw worms were driven into holding pens, then roped and pulled up to a
post." Then benzene was squirted on the infected area with a syringe.
    Since the exposed flesh attracted the flies that caused the screw worm, the boys brushed coal tar
on the wounds to repel flies. Wounds from earmarking and branding also attracted flies so these
practices were discontinued during the screw worm years. Then the state's experiment with
releasing sterilized flies won the screw worm war.
    The beef that the Davises raised was bought by butchers from Jacksonville and Waycross. Mr.
Davis would also sell fresh beef at his commissary near the saw mill. This is before refrigeration so
the beef would be butchered on a payday when all the meat would more likely be sold. In addition,
some of the cattle were shipped out west to be fattened on grain and sold elsewhere.
    In the middle 1930's, the Davises sold their land with the pines to Rayonier. The cattle were sold
to a man in Callahan for $12.50 apiece. Fencing laws would soon be enacted that further depleted
the need for cowhunting talents held by the likes of Bone Mizell and his relatives. E.P. Davis, Jr.
would go on to a career involving that natural resource that brought prosperity to his ancestors, pine
trees. He also served his country in both the European and Pacific theatres of World War II.
    There is one final recollection of E.P. Davis of Bone Mizell-type legend. Like his fellow Florida
cowhunters, E.P. was adept at cracking a whip to move cows. Although he learned this cracker
talent from his father, he aspired to the whip cracking ability of the mule teamsters that moved the
goods to and from his family's saw mills. "Big horse flies would land on the lead mule's head. Those
teamsters could pop that horsefly without touching the mule." Hurricanes? Gators? Seminoles? How
about those Florida Crackers?!