Replies

A good study of cracker style architecture is the Marjorie Kenning Rawlins house at Cross Creek, Florida. Essentially that's four hallways connected as a square, with rooms off the outward side, and an open space in the middle -- sort of a country dirt floor courtyard. The kitchen is built off one corner, to keep heat away from the rest of the house. Yes, tin roofs are the norm.

No, 'cracker' isn't racist. The term derivates from the crack of the whips the natives used to drive cattle through the palmetto brush on the way to market. Jacksonville, Florida, used to be known as Cowford (you can actually ford cattle on the St. Johns River there); Gainesville was known as Hogtown.

Always thought the Jacksonville Jaguars football team should have been named the Florida Crackers. Used to be a Negro League baseball team called the Atlanta Black Crackers, BTW.

As for race in Florida, the 'natives' in the 1800's were a mix of poor Scots, leftover Spaniards from the 1500's - 1700's, Creeks and Seminoles, free blacks that escaped from former British states of Georgia and Carolinas prior to Spain losing la presido Florida, and some black slaves from the post Spanish era. Florida was a melting-pot for poor people -- prior to air conditioning and mosquito control. Now it's just a suburb of the Northern tier states.

I'm a fifth generation Floridian, and still consider my 'po white trash' and Creek background to be an asset to handling life's little problems.

Class dismissed for today.

When I saw this thread, I immediately thought of Marjorie Rawlings. Do you know the movie "Cross Creek"? It shows Miz Rawlings buying a shack and turning it into a real home. I've always wanted to visit the real Cross Creek. Wonderful book, too.

I was born and raised in the same county (Walton) in which Seaside is located. I am at least a 10th generation Floridian which is not that unusual here.

That was also the place they filmed the movie with Jim Carey, (for some reason I can't recall the title) in which he was the subject of a tv show spying on his life.

The area you grew up in might have had that ethnic mix but this area was nearly totally settled by pure Scots, not even Scotch-Irish. I was recently on the Island of Colonsay website, checking an old census, (This island is in the outer Hebrides) and it sounds like the residents of that place were simply transferred to NW Florida as the names are exactly the same. I suppose there was a little bit of Spanish and French but not much.

I know what you mean about the soothing sound of rain on a tin roof, It will literally lull you to sleep.

A good study of cracker style architecture is the Marjorie Kenning Rawlins house at Cross Creek, Florida. Essentially that's four hallways connected as a square, with rooms off the outward side, and an open space in the middle -- sort of a country dirt floor courtyard. The kitchen is built off one corner, to keep heat away from the rest of the house. Yes, tin roofs are the norm.

I'm just down the road from the Rawling's house. I love the height of the ceilings...great air circulation and the fact the the bedrooms opened onto their own porches...which should be but aren't all screened; but I don't remember an inner courtyard. I believe the house was built in stages and there's four fireplaces for heat.