Taylor Rangers

"Local companies were raised from all the populated parts of Florida: ... the Taylor County Eagles, and many more."  [*1a]

"Increasing numbers of deserters and disaffected men had already been gathering in the prewar strong Union or Whig counties ... especially in Taylor county where the clear dark rivers moved among dense forests and cypress swamps to the Gulf."  [*1b]

"People had always lived as they chose in Taylor County in log cabins along such rivers as the Econfina and Rocky Creek. They hunted and fished, kept a few hogs and ticky cattle and garden patches. There was only one two-story frame house in the county, on Rocky Creek, four small revivalist churches and at least one school in Pisgah, now Perry, where most of the county people had learned to write and figure and 'make out words.' Some houses had books. Sometimes they got together for the old frontier fun of jigging and ballad singing at parties.

"Taylor County men had enlisted promptly, at secession, in the Taylor County Eagles, not in defense of slavery, since they had no slaves, but out of their natural fierce resentment of interference. Many families had sons still fighting with the Army while others dodged the draft or deserted. Many families 'went to the Yankees' at Cedar Keys.

"The leader of these disaffected men was William W. Strickland, a man who had fought well with his Confederate company until his commanding officer refused him leave to go home and take care of his sick wife and hungry children. ... Sometime in 1863 a group of these men joined Strickland in a company which took the oath of allegiance to the United States, organized as the 'Union Rangers of Taylor County,' ... expeditions against the enemy, cattle raids, looting of supplies. ... They were armed by Union vessels which they supplied with meat and information. They stole and freed slaves from plantations neighboring their swamps. ..."  [*1c]

"Taylor County was a major center for Confederate salt production during the Civil War. … The rugged terrain and sparse population of Taylor County made it a haven for Florida and Georgia Unionists and Confederate deserters who often joined together in armed bands and assisted Union forces in raiding the saltworks. ..." [*2]

"One Colonel H. D. Capers, looking for deserters, broke into the home of William Strickland, leader of the rangers of northwestern Taylor County, Florida – "The Royal Rangers" – where he found a membership list of 35 men and the constitution of the order. ..."  [*3]

" ... looting gangs of Taylor County, led by lanky, bitter William W. Strickland, …Lieutenant Colonel H. D. Capers with two battalions was sent to attack thtem through cypress swamps swollen with rain. He found only camps of deserted huts. He therefore burned all houses along both banks of the Econfina and Rocky Creek, had their cattle and hogs driven away, their women and children taken prisoner. ... The Taylor County women and children were taken to a log-cabin prison camp outside Tallahassee, ..." [*1c]

William Strickland and another man of the Taylor County Rangers, in Union uniform, ordered to burn the Aucilla River bridge, had been captured by a Confederate squad following them with bloodhounds. They were taken to Tallahassee, court-martialed as deserters despite their uniforms, and shot, to an extraordinary wave of indignation and protest from all over the state."  [*1d]

*1a - Extracted from Florida: The Long Frontier, page 173
*1b - Extracted from Florida: The Long Frontier, pages 185-186
*1c - Extracted from Florida: The Long Frontier, pages 190-191
*1d - Extracted from Florida: The Long Frontier, page 194
*2 - Extracted from Florida Civil War Heritage Trail, page 37
*3 - Extracted from The Confederacy Against Itself; War within a War, pages 69-70

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