Claude Earnest Woodruff Jr. was born on January 6, 1927, in one of the oldest houses in the black community of Bartow, Florida. He was the son of Claude Earnest and Lula Mae Coles Woodruff. He attended Union Academy High School in Bartow, which had been built in 1897 and was the same school his grandmother and mother attended. Upon finishing 10thgrade at the age […]
Ann Whitewolf was named for her great-grandmother Cynthia Ann Parker and had reason to be proud of her Native American ancestry. Ann was the granddaughter of Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches.
Prior to being one of the early settlers of St. Cloud, Florida, Levi Shambow was also a pioneer in the cities of Aurora, Illinois, Portland and Eugene, Oregon, Seattle, Washington and Butte, Montana. Levi was born in Montreal, Canada on December 4, 1843. Enlisting at the age of 17, he mustered into Company A, Illinois 52ndInfantry in October 1861, served as a Private and was discharged […]
This photo was found on Ancestry.com, It shows Isaac Lanier with his third wife, Mary Lula Walker Lanier and an unidentified child. The Lanier family, like many others, migrated from another state to the wild frontier of Florida. The patriarch, John Lanier, came from Georgia where he was born in 1805. The exact date when John came to Florida is unknown. However, we do know that it […]