LIKE BIRDS?
The whistle blew as the train approached the Archer Station.
It had been a long ride for the Pearson family from Indiana. The Civil War was still a recent memory and Florida was a wild and foreign land for a Quaker Family lured to Florida to be a part of the Orange Rush. There were fortunes to be made in growing citrus and they hoped for a new life. Other Quakers were on their way to this land of opportunity to plant orange groves and be a part of the new south.
T. Gilbert Pearson was a youngster then. He had watched through the window as the countryside slipped by; the plains had turned into mountains as the train crossed the Appalachians. It then slowly rolled south across Georgia and into Florida. There had been many stops and train changes; it had been a very long trip.
The 1870’s and the post Civil War years had been a rough time.
After the Presidential Election of 1876 which was decided by the stuffed Archer, Florida ballot box, Reconstruction in the South ended. Federal troops were withdrawn and a new normal descended.
It was a turbulent time, but for T. Gilbert Pearson these were years of exploration and adventure in the woods and swamps around Archer.
He would come home stinky dirty; his room smelled weird and his sister was not impressed with his hobbies.
It is said that the Bauknight Carriage House was the one-room school house. T. Gilbert was much more interested in the birds in the trees than the ABC’s. He would spend nights in the woods hearing the sounds of the dark. Owls hooted and the mosquitoes swarmed; it was where he belonged.
Birding, feathers and even whole bids were part of high fashion during the Victorian years of the 1880's and 1890's. Bird feathers adorned hats and fashionable apparel. It was the rage. At that time vast flocks of birds would darken the skies as they flew over during migrations.
The forests and swamps of Florida were alive with wild life, especially birds. Bird trappers and hunters eager to provide feathers for the fashion industry were merciless with their slaughter.
During the Victorian years, bird eggs were collectibles. While the Russian Czars were giving jeweled eggs as gifts, in America the art of blowing out wild bird eggs to preserve their shells was part of collecting bird egg shells. A tree climber at home in the woods, T. Gilbert knew bird sounds. He was a Florida Tom Sawyer out tramping in the woods and wading in the swamps.
He collected wild bird eggs of all shapes, sizes and colors, blew out the raw egg contents, and amassed a large collection. It was such a large notable collection he traded it for tuition at Guilford College in North Carolina.
The on-going brutal slaughter of birds stimulated passion in T. Gilbert Pearson.
After becoming a professor he championed conservation and preservation, and was vital to founding the Audubon Society. He was an early environmentalist.
The Archer that T. Gilbert knew had deep roots in the Antebellum South, becoming a bustling town in the 1880’s. Stately homes
Ann Green is in front of the Skinner House, once home of a state representative.
The haunted house in Archer.
Historic Churches
the old dry goods store and general store are downtown.
This was the telephone office and around the corner was the reading society’s building. A little poker too, perhaps?
Perhaps the Pearson Family stayed at this old railroad hotel when they arrived? Not far from this one-time railroad inn is the cemetery where many former slaves were buried. This was a gospel center.
When the Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal Church had a meeting the whole town swayed to gospel music.
Just over the hill and down a deep seated dim road is Laurel Hill Cemetery and the Pearson Family’s graves. In 2020 it seems fitting to notice that both of T. Gilbert Pearson’s parents died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic just days apart.
Fly away to another day; we will see you there; we are on our way.
