Palmetto Pioneers

The Emigrants

By: Cindy Littlejohn

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 11 hrs

Publisher's summary

America’s attorney general in 1829 said, “no man would immigrate to Florida--no, not from hell itself!” But the Walker families came anyway, and people keep coming. Today, at almost a thousand a day!

“Palmetto Pioneers,” tells the story of Mary Adeline Walker, an ordinary daughter of a South Carolina low-country cattleman. She moved to frontier Florida only eight years after it was formed as a territory. Within seven years, the family’s homestead would be in the middle of guerrilla warfare resulting from the costliest Indian war in the history of the United States, the Second Seminole Indian War.

Floridians, and not just native Floridians, wax on about “Old Florida”. To many, “Old Florida” signifies what we have lost, but when I wrote this book I realized that we Floridians have been losing it all along, including the indigenous people who lived here before us. I tried to capture this in “Palmetto Pioneers,” especially for these first European settlers who came here when Florida was still a frontier.

The story begins with a pretty 7-year-old girl with dark brunette hair and dark eyes. She is the oldest of her family of eleven children and bears all of what that brings.

She came to Florida from South Carolina in 1829. The book describes the roads and trails down and how Monticello looked when they arrived. It was a village of log cabins and stores. The description comes from diaries and journals kept by people who either came to stay, moved on, or passed through. The story is true and written in narrative.

The story follows her and ends when she marries within a year after the end of this 7-year war. She marries a man from Washington, DC. She cannot read or write, but he can and makes his living from this skill-set. Mary finds herself in “his” political world.

The book is not footnoted but there is an extensive bibliography in the back. The e-version can be used for indexing. Any word can be searched there. The soft cover version has full color pages, but the hard cover one does not.

This book is the first of a series. Book 2 was published March 15, 2024. Book 3 is written but needs editing. All three books follow Mary’s life within Florida’s history, and at times, she, through her husband, has a front row seat.