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Sunday, February 1, 2004
Freed slave settles in Oak Hill
News-Journal Staff Report
OAK HILL — Nancy V. Cummings will be 101 on Feb. 15 and she lives in the same Oak Hill house she moved into in the 1920s, the same house where she once ran a school for black children.
Restoring the past |
Several years ago, when Toreatha Wood was serving as the first woman and first black mayor of Oak Hill, she described Cummings as a “whole community” unto herself.
“She taught my mother, myself and some of my children,” Wood said. “She is an amazing person.”
Cummings is just one of many local black residents with deep roots in Southeast Volusia. And while much has been written about early efforts of white Europeans, such as Andrew Turnbull, to colonize the area, very few written records exist today that precisely chronicle the earliest contributions of black Americans.
Some evidence exists to support the presence of black slaves as early as during Turnbull’s doomed effort to colonize New Smyrna from 1767 to 1776.
It is mentioned in writing by Florida Gov. James Grant on Jan. 10, 1767, who noted that Turnbull had purchased slaves.
During the second Spanish occupation of the area, from 1783 to 1821, Ambrose Hull is believed to have owned slaves who helped to build and maintain a home for him atop the ruins of what is now Old Fort Park in downtown New Smyrna Beach. When he died in 1825, Hull’s written will gave freedom to those he named.
Little is known about those slaves or their descendants but, in the 1860s, Esther Hawks, wife of the founder of Edgewater, John Hawks, lived in Port Orange and made weekly trips to the New Smyrna Beach area to teach black children.
According to Edgewater historian JoAnne Sikes, author of “The Story of Two Hawks,” Esther’s diary entries indicate she often sailed a one-mast schooner down the Halifax to New Smyrna on Saturdays where she came to teach about 40 “colored” children.
“Where did they come from? History hasn’t told us,” Sikes said.
Early settlers
About three years after Esther’s sailing excursions to New Smyrna Beach, a freed slave named William “Bill” Williams settled in the Oak Hill area. In 1863, just a few months after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Williams put in a claim for acreage east of what is now U.S. 1. Bill’s Hill is named for him.
The landmark figures prominently, not only in Oak Hill’s history but with Canaveral National Seashore, which owns about 1,000 acres, and the Florida Inland Navigation District, which has claimed Bill’s Hill Road property as a dredging spoil site.
Williams is believed to have built a home on or near a mound of what now is called Bill’s Hill. He started an orange grove near his home and later was credited with donating land to build the Florida East Coast Railway that went through Oak Hill in 1892-93 and which brought many black workers to the area.
According to Sikes, Williams married a Native American woman named Flora who was believed to have worked for the Bouchelle family in New Smyrna Beach. They had a son, John, and a daughter, Mary, who later married Isaac Wilson.
Williams also donated land for two cemeteries that later became known as the Saints and Sinners — one for church-going people and the other for everyone else. Both are east of U.S. 1, down a winding sugar sand road. It is in the Saints Cemetery, now completely covered with scrub oaks, briars and brambles, where Williams and his family are buried.
About 12 graves have been documented in the Saints Cemetery in addition to those of the Williams family. Other graves are believed to be there but no longer marked. The earliest grave in the Sinners Cemetery is 1918. The last burial in the “Saints” was in 1983 for a minister, Daniel A. Maynor.
Both are registered with the state as historical cemeteries.
Early educators
Nancy Cummings began her long career as an educator in 1928 at a school known then as Oak Hill Negro School No. 111. She worked there not only to educate her pupils but also to improve their lives.
Cummings later taught at Chisholm School in New Smyrna Beach and, after her retirement in 1964, she was asked to come back and teach for two more years at Turie T. Small Elementary School in Daytona Beach.
She also taught several adult extension education courses and has remained active in church and community activities.
Julie Wood, a daughter of Toreatha and Mathew Wood, recalls going to School No. 111. It was on Cummings Street, where Nancy Cummings Park now stands in her honor.
“The actual school was about where the playground equipment is now,” said Julie, who attended the first through fifth grades there from 1963 to 1967.
After integration, Julie and the other School 111 students were shifted to the previously all-white elementary school in Oak Hill. The old school in the playground later was torn down.
Today, Cummings vividly recalls her beginnings in Andalusia, Ala., where she said her father was the first person in his family to have his own farm. His parents had been slaves.
And she quietly relates that, while her father attended only one day of school in his entire life, he was determined Nancy would be educated. Through his efforts and hers, she not only earned an education but later, offered one to hundreds of others.
Bethune Beach
In the 1940s, segregation kept black people off Florida beaches but another educator became a driving force for change.
Mary McLeod Bethune helped establish a beach for blacks in a remote area that had not been claimed by whites. Along with C.D. Rogers, Lawrence Silas and George Engram, Bethune bought property in the south beach area that still carries her name — Bethune Beach.
Engram, an electrician, also bought oceanfront properties there and built a motel and adjoining club with a bar and a dance floor.
Engram’s widow, Joyce, told The News-Journal in a 2003 interview that the concept for the beach came out of several incidents in the early 1940s when Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College, tried to take some of her black students onto Daytona Beach. White citizens and police officers quickly ordered them off.
“That didn’t set very well with Mrs. Bethune,” Engram said.
Bethune Beach was the only historically black beach in Volusia County and is believed to be one of only three in the state, the others being American Beach at Amelia Island and Butler Beach near St. Augustine. Bethune Beach is listed on the Florida Black Heritage Trail.
The recreational sites thrived, especially on weekends and holidays, when black residents flocked to Bethune. Many bought property in the area, building homes or holding it as an investment. Bethune began to thrive as a black community.
The organizers created a centralized beach gathering place and bought property along the river for the park that remains today. A civic center, named for Bethune, still stands on the property.
The demise of Bethune as a beach for blacks came with integration, as white residents began buying property. With escalating property values, taxes began to climb, contributing to the old landowners’ interest in selling their homes. By the mid-1980s, few blacks remained in the community.
The motel, bar and dance hall are long gone. Bethune now is an integrated community of high-priced homes and condominiums where part-time residents join those who call Bethune home year-round.
The oceanfront and riverfront parks that were a part of Bethune’s original purchases were deeded to the county. Both are widely used today.
More recently
In May 1997, the state approved a local request to name the State Road 44 overpass for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This was a result of work by a committee made up of members of the community — both black and white — to find a way to honor the slain civil rights leader.
Local school students created colorful drawings of sea life that were transferred to the pillars supporting the overpass by area artists.
Community efforts also were involved in establishing a Black Heritage Museum that contains a furnished shotgun house.
The museum is at the corner of Duss and Jefferson streets and is a cornerstone for the upcoming 13th annual Black Heritage Festival Feb. 6-8 at Pettis Park.
The event was started in 1992 by New Smyrna Beach resident Mary Harrell. Harrell sponsored the first festival as a four-hour event to showcase the contributions of blacks to the community. It has since blossomed into a three-day festival that draws people from all walks of life throughout surrounding communities.
Correspondent Linda Walton contributed to this report.
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