Taylor County
FLGenWeb

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Taylor County FLGenWeb is a free genealogical site about the history of the county. We hope you find helpful clues for your research of Taylor county ancestors.

Are you familiar with the area? Do you have a family tree connection to the area? Volunteers are always needed! Please consider contributing your pieces of Taylor County family history. Corrections, updates, and additions to this site are always welcome.

County Coordinator: Norma Hass normahass01@gmail.com

COUNTY FORMATION

Taylor County became the 34th county in Florida on 23 Dec 1856. It was named in honor of President Zachary Taylor. The county was carved out of Madison County. Perry is the county seat. (Perry was originally called Rosehead.)

Area, 1,080 square miles or 691,200 acres. Population in 1860, 1,384; in 1870, 1,453; in 1880, 2,279. Number of public schools, 7; school lands unsold, 20,591 acres; children of school age, 687; white, 656; colored, 31; school attendance, 317; improved land, 4,289 acres. Horses and mules, 305; cattle, 9,887; sheep, 535; hogs, 4,593. Assessed value of property
in 1881, $148,165.

The following paper was prepared and forwarded by Dr. S. A. Wilcox:

Taylor county is fortunately situated. It borders the Gulf of Mexico on its south for the distance of about forty miles. This gives it easy access to the ocean and furnishes to it a number of excellent fisheries.

At about three miles from the Gulf the surface rises to the elevation of about twenty feet and then continues for the most part level. The soil is suitable for growing long cotton, corn, and the various crops and fruits of Florida. The principal timber growth on the elevated lands is pine, which seems almost inexhaustible. The hammock lands have white-oak, hickory, live-oak, cypress and other hard woods of hammock growth in Florida.

As to water-power, there are five streams running generally in a south-westerly direction and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, at a distance from each other of about six miles. These streams have sufficient fall to furnish water-power for turning machinery and suitable sites for necessary buildings. These advantages exist here to an extent almost inexhaustible.

Partly from want of railroad facilities to market, there have as yet been no turpentine farms in this county, with all the abundance of pine forests, and for the same reason but little of the pine has been converted into lumber.

As to the useful minerals of our soil, there has been no effort to ascertain their number or the quantity they may offer for use to the public. We need some move in that direction. We have some fine mineral springs, chalybeate and white-sulphur, and their healing waters are in rich abundance, inviting invalids to test their curative powers.

In regard to schools and churches, the county has for a long while been in a frontier condition, and is still largely so. But there is some improvement in these respects — several churches have been erected in the last few years, and the system of common schools provided by the State is furnishing some knowledge of books to quite a number who would otherwise be unable to procure such knowledge.

As encouragement to immigration, we can say our people are kind, clever, hospitable and desirous to offer a cordial welcome to immigrants; and there are thousands of acres of good lands, pine forests and hammocks which are awaiting their arrival and their tillage.

That this county is the land that flows with milk and honey, we offer the assurance that we have plenty of both. With the railroad facilities now in prospect, no better home need be sought or desired. Give us the road already surveyed, and then our soil for tillage, our forests for lumber and turpentine, and our water-power for turning machinery will render our locality a garden spot in Florida.

Excerpt from Florida: A Pamphlet Descriptive of Its History, Topography, Climate, Soil, Resources and Natural Advantages, by A. A. Robinson, published in 1882, pages 151-152


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This page was last updated 06/25/2024