"My Very Early Years"

            My father Edgar Rives Taylor (Sr.) was the son of Frank Oran and Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) May Nooney Taylor. I was told that he was named “Edgar” for Edgar Player, a good friend and a relative by marriage of his mother. The Players had one son who had died during the First World War at Camp Foster. Camp Foster was where the Naval Air Station now is located in Orange Park, south of Ortega. I have an old stamp album that belonged to their son.   

         Frank Oran Taylor was the father of my father. 

He was actually baptized as Francis Joseph Taylor in the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic church in Jacksonville, but in his youth he adopted as his middle name, Oran for his uncle Oran Rives. Oran or Oren (Oroondates) is an old given Alston family name of the North Carolina relatives.

            Frank was born near Little Rock, Arkansas, and his mother died shortly after his birth. His father, Charles Downing Taylor, then took Frank and his older brother, Robert Rives Taylor, to Jacksonville, where they were raised by Charles’ second wife, Annie Sullivan. At one time Charles became the Customs Officer at the mouth of the St. Johns River, and the Taylors lived at Pilot Town in the old Broward house on the north side of the river. My grandfather and his brother hunted Swamp Ponies in the swamps which surround the house. During the time the family lived in "Pilot Town" the first of the sons of Charles and Anna were born. Their step - mother was very strict, making them do menial chores, so when they could, both Robert Rives and Frank left home to fend for themselves. Frank roomed in Jacksonville for a time with his aunt,  Elizabeth C. Taylor Ochus. There he got a job with the Thomas Nooney produce company and eventually married the younger Nooney daughter, Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Nooney. “Lizzie” was born in New York state. They would join the Nooneys and take the Clyde Boat Line to New York City for the races at Saratoga, and from time to time go to Chatham, New York, where the Nooneys still had their farm and visit the Nooney and Sweet relatives.       

          Confined by his stepmother, Frank had little or no formal education while Brother Robert broke away, spent two years at Vanderbilt University supported by his uncle Oren Rives, and studied law under Judge Jaudon in Kissimmee, Florida, and married the judge’s daughter. Robert had fought amateur boxing in his young years and had a somewhat flattened nose to show for it. I would imagine being a lawyer suited his fighting temperament.

          My mother was Eleanor Louise Williams, named for her grandmother Ellen Chapman and her aunt Louise Williams. She was born in Augusta, Georgia, on March 18, 1909.  The William’s house was up on a hill in Augusta, and she told the story of a ball of lightning coming down the chimney and out of the fire place where the children were playing, rolling out the open door. Her family, of two brother, Frederick E. Williams, Jr. and Ernest Joseph Williams, her mother and father, came to Jacksonville after the First World War when she was still a small girl, and they moved into a house in Springfield.  My grandmother lived in that house until she passed away. The curtains were always closed in the house to keep it cool, but also dark and dusty smelling.

          Around one side of the front porch - which extended across the front and partly around one side - there were honey suckle vines. I liked to pull off the flowers and suck out the nectar.

            There was a small fish pond from which the water was long gone. My grandmother said one day she found a neighbor’s little girl hitting the water with a stick. “I took a tick to your dole fish.”

            There was a garage apartment in the back on the alley in which son Fred Williams and his first wife Allene Thames first took up house keeping. In the garage was my grandmother’s black, high top sedan. At one time there had been side lights up on the interior walls. My grandmother often picked up my mother and me to go shopping. One time we came across a scene where a little black boy had fallen off his bicycle and hit his head on the curb. He was lying in the gutter crying, but white men around him were laughing. My grandmother stopped the car, put the boy and his bicycle in the car to take him to his home, and then ”lit” into the men giving them “royal heck”.

          My mother’s room was in the back corner on the second floor of the house in Springfield. She had some peculiar experiences in that room. She told the story of lying in bed in the darkened room and seeing a little white light in the ceiling which appeared to suck out her breath. She learned later that a little girl had died of diphtheria in that room some years before. Before I learned of this, whenever I went into that room I experienced a very cold sensation, which no one else seemed to notice.

            The Williams built or had built what my mother called a shack at one of the beaches, and they would spend the summers there to escape the heat of Jacksonville. She said they had a German who worked on this beach house who she suspected had been a prisoner in the First World War. She became a very good swimmer, and often swam way out past the breakers into deep water. But one time she looked down and below her was a very large body underneath her. She later decided this was a large shark. She never swam that far out again.

            When I was very young, we went to Kingsley Lake to picnic and swim.  In those days there were few if any others who used the area. It did not make an impression on me, but we all “skinny dipped”. I suspect the she and her brothers also swam naked at the beach when they were all very young.

          Her father, Frederick Eugene Williams, came from a large family with an invalid father. He was born when the family were living near Chattanooga, Tenn. It was said that his father had gone there to get medical treatment by his brother, a physician, as had been their father. His sons would push him about in his wheel chair, pursuing the girls, so my grandmother said.

            Fred was a self - made man, starting out in life with little education and was what might be called today an “entrepreneur” with a lot of “drive”. (I have seen this same spirit in my Uncle Fred and my cousin Jack Williams.) In fact his future father -in - law, George Washington Chapman, was so taken with him that he encouraged his daughter Mary Belle Chapman to “go after that young man”. During the First World War, while the Williams family lived in Augusta, he would buy up newspapers and magazines and sell them to the soldiers on the trains passing through Augusta and to the citizens of Augusta. By thrift, he acquired enough money to rent a basement room in a hotel in Augusta where he had papers and magazines for men to read and to buy while they relaxed in conformable arm chairs with their cigars. With time he started a book store, but one of the numerous Augusta floods wiped him out. Then he took his growing family and moved to Macon, Georgia, to start another book store. For some reason this did not become a prosperous venture, so again they moved to Jacksonville where he worked for the Drew Co., again selling books. Through his association with books, my mother was given a lot of fine books, including the Wizard of Oz books, one or two of which my son Rives now has. I still have one or two more of the books he gave my mother.

          When I was still very young he left Jacksonville to live in Washington, DC, where he managed a company for his brother, Carlos, setting up and maintaining “gum ball” dispensers and pin ball machines. For one of my birthdays he sent a pin ball machine to Jacksonville, which was put out in a hen house in our back yard in Ortega and finally went to pieces. Another time he sent me an expensive xylophone, which was placed in the back of the garage but disappeared.

            He loved Washington, and we visited him there several times before he died there. We would drive up stopping at either now-called “bed and breakfast” places or in the early motels, me often sleeping the lowest drawer of a chest of drawers. One time I met his brother Carlos Williams there. One Fourth of July we sat on the ground looking toward the Washington Monument to watch the fireworks. I still remember the last time in Washington when he was dying. I recall a large open room with a number of beds with him in one. I was too young to realize what was happening. My mother took me to walk with her, and she said she could feel his presence; she was very close to her father.

            I recall another time while he lived in Jacksonville that he took my cousin Dottie Jean Williams and me to the fair. He collapsed while there, but shortly recovered but scared both of us kids greatly. However, Dottie was quite composed and took charge of me, trying to reduce my concern. I suspect he had a bad heart, which my mother inherited.

          In her teens, my mother, Eleanor, was nicknamed “Bertie”, possibly a name given to her by Milton Caniff, later to gain fame as the cartoonist of the famous comic strip “Terry and the Pirates”. She dated Milton in Miami while staying with her aunt Blanche [or Georgia] Chapman Shepard. This was early in Milton’s career and he too was a young man but working as an intern for a newspaper there [or attending Miami University]. My mother must have been about 16 or 17 at the time. This was during the “Flappers” times of the American society, and my mother was definitely one of the “Flapper” girls. I have a picture of her, posing with a ukulele. In the attic of our home in Ortega there was a closet full of her beautiful “flapper” dresses, which, unfortunately,  went with the house when it was sold by my father.

            (An aside: when I went off to Cornell my mother apparently wrote Caniff - they may have been corresponding through the years, but, if so, most all the letters were probably destroyed by my mother. One of the first fraternities that “rushed” me was Sigma Xi, Caniff’s fraternity, I think at Miami University. There are many of his cartoons displayed at the Boy Scouts building in downtown Pittsburgh and I have a few of his "Terry and the Pirates". For years once we were living in Ortega I collected all I could out of the Sunday papers. But these were kept in the tin garage with a dirt floor in back of the house, and eventually were thrown away.)

            Following this escapade (my mother wanted to marry Milton), her mother placed her in St. Joseph’s Convent School in St. Augustine. It was a “prison” and she hated it. But she did learn how to paint and beautifully to play the piano. Both of these gave her great solace, but one of the two paintings from the convent she kept in our home in Ortega reflected her sadness. The one I particularly remember was a dark, somber picture looking toward a long dark pool surrounded by dark trees. Unfortunately, this picture and the one that hung in our dining room of a display of fruit got away from me when my cousin’s husband, David Fisher, cleaned out the storage I had rented to keep the furniture from our Ortega home.

          Piano playing would continue to give her much pleasure through her life, and my father and I spent many hours singing with her accompaniment around her piano. (When my son Rives and I cleaned out the Ortega house, as Mother had requested I gave the piano to a young daughter of a neighbor. This girl had spent much time keeping company with my mother playing the piano, and sharing her young life experiences. All my mother's sheet music I gave to my granddaughter Wendy Taylor.)  Later my mother’s expertise in playing the piano would lead to an enjoyable job in the music department in Cohen Brothers’ store in downtown Jacksonville. The department was located on the balcony above the first floor of the store. People could hear her playing all over the store. Many came and bought the sheet music she played. But when they tried to play the music it would not sound as good as when she played it. She made up her own left hand arrangements, which were not necessarily in the written music.

            My father and mother were both very good dancers and danced well together. They probably met at one of the several dances the young people enjoyed in the 1920s and were first attracted through their dancing. People would stop to watch them dance.

            According to my mother, in April 1928 my mother and father eloped to St. Augustine. They were both about or just under 18 or 19 years of age and would have needed their parents consent to marry. But they were very much in love. They were married there by a Justice of the Peace on 21 April 1928, according to a family note of my grandmother "Lizzie" Nooney Taylor. I recall a record in St. Johns Co., Fla., for a marriage of “Ed Taylor” and “Bertie Williams”, but at the time I saw it I did not recognize it and think to get a copy of it.

          When my mother was discovered to be pregnant with me (by her kind - hearted and understanding father when she had “morning sickness”), my grandmother “Manana” Williams insisted that she and my father be married again. So, in late 1928 they were married by a “young” priest, who my father said was “paid off.”.\ The marriage license was kept by “Manana”, according to my father, and what happened to it is not known.

            A word about my name, “Manana”, for my grandmother, Mary Belle Chapman Williams. My cousins, Dottie Jean and Jack Williams called her “Mamuda”, but my young mouth could not pronounce this but ended up saying “Manana”. And so it stuck through the years with me and my family.

            My mother told of going to the old St. Vincent’s Hospital for my birth. A number of her “friends” worked there and teased her and otherwise gave her a “hard time.” I was born in the afternoon of March 14, 1929, according to my father. (Just in time for “cocktails”,  no doubt.) I must have nursed for a long time - “Neeny-shums”-  for a long time I could recall the feelings.

            My mother said I had a cawl over my face (probably the afterbirth), which according to superstitions is supposed to signify something about second sense or sight. I cannot say I have this to any great degree if at all, but my mother claimed - and she proved once or twice - that she HAD “ESP”. But that is another story for a later chapter.

            According to an article in the Jacksonville Journal on Friday, December 18, 1981, (taken from “The Book of Charms” by Elizabeth Villers): “There is an ancient belief that any child born with a caul, "a detachable hood-like skin covering the head and face at birth, will be most fortunate through life, and that a caul is the most powerful luck - bringer in the world.” Certainly I have had a lot of “good” - sometimes pure dumb luck - though my life, avoiding a lot of things - dangerous and otherwise. (Marrying Guion and having two wonderful sons, for one.)

            Being essentially “disowned” by her mother (and her father bowing to her wishes as he always did until he left to live in Washington), my mother and I came to live with my Taylor grandparents at 430 East Adams St. in downtown Jacksonville, east of the city center. (My Williams grandmother years later said she regretted the way she had behaved to my mother and had become more understanding. I think she felt closer to me than to Fred's two children, Dottie Jean and Jack.) When my Grandfather Taylor (“Pop” to his son) first saw me, he is reported to have said “Oh God”, as I was most wrinkled and looked like a little old man. (But he is reported to have commented also how “ugly”, in his eyes, was my Aunt Marian Delph Taylor when he first saw her after her marriage to his son, Frank Oran Taylor, Jr.)

            I have a memory of that house: there was a stairway on the right side as one entered the house from a wide verandah (porch) across the front. Half way up the stairs turned left and at the landing at that point was a stained glass window. The house was torn down to build highway Alternate US I-90, so the stained glass probably went elsewhere, if it escaped the wrecking ball.

            I was told years later by my mother that she again become pregnant, but she lost all the other children she attempted to have. She was finally told she should not have any more children, so I ended up being their only child.

            I had developed impetigo, or “Florida sores”, on my “behind” in the hospital after I was born. My mother reported that Grandmother Taylor (“Mom” to her son and family) bathed and nursed me until the infection was gone. Later while living in Avondale I developed a spot at the base of my right thumb that left a small scar, which is now gone, also probably from the same thing.

            I was born also with a small birthmark on my left side, which was in the form of a flying squirrel. I used that as an identification mark in making out such forms for the US Army. It has disappeared now as I write this.

            While I vaguely recall having a (white) nurse (“Mamie”, Betsy Smith), who the Nooneys had brought from New York off their farm (apparently as a very young girl) to be a nurse maid to the Nooneys’ children and grandchildren. When my father went to New York for a Masonic Shriners’ parade, he took a train up to Chatham or Kinderhook to where she lived with her husband. I have a letter from her somewhere talking about the Sweet and Nooney families. She probably had been my father’s nurse when he was little. As a small child he was quite handsome, and the story goes that one of the film production companies, then in Jacksonville, wanted to put him into the new “fad” of the time, motion pictures. But my grandmother would not hear of it. I have a picture of him as a very young child, and he was indeed what would be called today “a beautiful child”. I still recall seeing the area in South Jacksonville where motion pictures were produced.

            My first remembrance is of a dense bamboo growth in the back yard of 430 East Adams.  In my eyes this was a jungle, which I wanted in the worst way to explore and see what was there. Remember that I was only 2 or 3. I have said that I could feel my brain paths forming in my early years. In my teens I made the remark that I liked to think. Unfortunately, I now seem to have lost some of that feeling.

            I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Jacksonville - my Grandmother Williams’ and my mother’s church, and that of my great great grandmother, Catherine Taylor and great aunt Carroll Hedrick, the same one where my Grandfather Taylor had been baptized. I have an newspaper article about that church, which is annotated by mother, telling as a young girl of her being called up in front of everyone to the altar by the Priest, as she was being confirmed, to recite the Catechism.

            My Godmother was Catherine Hedrick, the granddaughter of my great great grandfather, Cornelius Taylor. She was a very devout Catholic, as were many of her family. It was said that she had been “jilted” in marriage and determined never to marry. I have a picture of her in her somber black dress.  I cannot recall for sure who my Godfathers were. One was probably my mother’s brother, Ernest, who was called “Buddy”, the nickname by which I was also called - all too often as “Buddy Dammit!”  I can vaguely remember attending a Sunday nursery there. I suspect I was too much to handle. I am certain my grandmother Williams insisted that my mother and I go to that church.

            My father was an Episcopalian all his church-going younger days. As a young man he attended activities for young men and had come under the influence of Rev. Douglas Leatherberry, who was then the priest at the downtown St. John's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville. Rev. Douglas became the Rector of St. Marks in Ortega, and my father and I attended St. Marks after we moved there. My father was on the Vestry of St. Marks. I read the lessons from time to time and was an acolyte for a period. I disappointed Rev. Leatherberry because he told everyone that I was going to become an Episcopal priest also. I  belonged to the Boy Scout troop associated with this church. “Jake” Ostner was the Scout Master and my father for a time was one of the Assistant Scout Master, but I am getting ahead of my story.

            My Grandmother Taylor, and whoever of her family were church - going,  were Methodists and sang in the choir of the Snyder Memorial Church on Main Street, Jacksonville. She is said to have had a beautiful singing voice but I cannot ever recall her singing, perhaps a result of how sad her life became in later years. 

          We moved in about 1932 or 1933 to 3678 Hershel St. in Avondale into a small white bungalow which my father rented. By then, through the influence of my Grandfather Williams, he had received a drafting job working in the City Water Dept., of the City of Jacksonville Utilities Dept. It was shortly following our move to Hershel St., while visiting my Grandmother Williams in Springfield (a northern section of the city) that I saw on the steps of her house, fell in love with, and acquired my first cat, a little kitten which had become separated from her mother. I just had to have that kitten! Later the cat grew and disappeared for a time. But then one day as I was playing in the back yard of the Hershel St. home, here comes the now grown cat out through a crawl hole in the foundation of the side porch, shortly followed by one kitten, then another, then another, then another ---  I do not recall how many kittens finally came out from under that porch! That was the beginning of a long line of generations of cats, some there and many more when we moved to Ortega. Many of them are buried by my father in Boone Park, which lay at the end of the alley behind our house.

          Speaking of pets, my father’s cousin, Charlie Taylor (Charles Downing Taylor, Jr.- named for his grandfather) had a large beautiful German shepherd which he found he could not keep while he was in the Navy. The dog become “wild” when he heard a siren. So we were given the dog while Charlie was away. It was kept in a large wire-fenced pen in the back yard. My mother loved that dog, but they found they could not keep it. It was much bigger than I was, but seemed always to be friendly to me and everyone. (The only dog that ever bite me was a Chow while we lived in Ortega, and I have avoided dogs when I can.)

            I remember Charlie Taylor’s broad grin, which he seemed always to be wearing when I saw him. It was Charlie who took us to Mayport to show us where the old Pablo House had been that supposedly had been the Dewees house, but surely that of Cornelius’ family where Charles Downing Taylor and his sisters had been born. Although I never had an opportunity to talk to him about the Taylor family’s history, remembering him was the one of the things that “stoked the fire” of my interest in the history and in Mayport. 

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