Minnie Carlson is the mother of H.O. Estes (Lawrence Estes' father). These are letters about her family and a bit of history.
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Minnie Allen Riley was born February 27, 1866 to Martha Evelyn O’Neal Riley and O.D.A. Riley. Martha and O.D.A. were married before the Civil War in Barnwell County which is now Allendale County, South Carolina. Martha was O.D.A.’s second wife.
O.D.A. and his first wife, [“…a Miss Johnson…”], had five children:
Zenobia Y. Riley who married a Rice and died at the age of 60 at Green Cove Springs, J.W. Ogilvia Riley who died in Atlanta at the age of 73 leaving one daughter – Emily Booth of Atlanta, Winifred Hunter who died in Miccanopy, Florida, Miles Riley who died in Tampa, Florida at the age of 50 – perhaps more – leaving a large family of girls who were all doing well in Tampa, and Catherine Riley who died at the age of 5 years in Florida.
O.D.A. and Martha had three children:
Martha Evelyn, born September 21, 1860 she died on June 7, 1930 and lived in Tampa after marrying a Mr. Groves, Carrie Ann who died November 11, 1881 of Typhoid Fever at the age of 18 close to the same time her Mother died, and Minnie Allen.
O.D.A. Riley brought them all here to Florida in covered wagons after the War. He left everything he had in South Carolina. He had eight horses and a couple of mules with him. Minnie Riley took her first steps while the family was camped on the banks of St. Mary’s River in Florida.
O.D.A. homesteaded land and put out an orange grove near Citra, Florida. The horses died and all the family came near death with chills and fever. Catherine did die. The boys left and Oglivia went to North Carolina and Miles to Texas. The girls married. Minnie’s mother, Martha, taught school. She was a college graduate.
O.D.A. took Martha and their three daughters back to South Carolina. Martha collected together her furniture she had left with her people in South Carolina. What O.D.A. had left with his brother, Colonel Wilson Riley, he never got back; like some do, he used it up or something. Martha died with Typhoid Fever at the age of 47 on August 11, 1881.
O.D.A and Minnie Allen came back to Florida when she was nearly fifteen. She met and married W.W. Estes on March 26, 1885. He died May 6, 1890. His age is on his stone in Woodlawn Cemetery in Tampa, Florida. It was the second grave made in that cemetery.
Minnie Riley Estes Spitler wrote that Judith Estes, wife of Verner Estes, (the son of Minnie Allen and Dr. W.W. Estes), was a Colonial Dame and she traced the Estes family back to “the Queen”. It was an Italian name and all came from Italy. Eleanor Estes Miller, the daughter of Verner W. Estes, married to Thomas W. Miller, lived at the Cloisters, Apt. 219, 106 Interlachen Avenue, Winter Park, Florida 32789. The phone number was 1-305-644-4863.
Dr. W.W. Estes mother was a Matthews. Minnie Riley said she was raised there … on a big grain and stock farm. Dr. Estes father and his brother lived in a mile of each other but were not friends at all for years. Their people, (the Estes), all went to Tennessee from North Carolina.
Dr. Estes father was a well off farmer and married into a good prosperous family. Grandpa Estes however, took to drinking in his late forties and would go straight for three months and then grab the best mule on the farm, sell it and drink it up. However, he was a dear good hearted man when sober, but a curse to the whole family on his long sprees.
Dr. Wilson Warnell Estes was born on July 4, 1857 and died at the age of 32 on May 6, 1890 of “…slow paralysis…” He married Minnie Allen Riley on March 26, 1885. They had 3 children:
Verner Wilson born March 7, 1886, Halcot Osgood Estes born in 1887, and Lillian Estes born in 1890.
Minnie Allen Estes purchased Mrs. White’s Millinery Store in 1890 two weeks before Dr. Estes died. She had the first concrete sidewalk in Tampa. She went to Baltimore and employed on trimmer and eventually had 5 from there. At that time, the Tampa Bay Hotel was operating and tourists wee coming. The Estes were in Tampa at the time of the laying of the Tampa Bay Hotel foundation. Minnie was commissioned to make the bridal hats for Mrs. Peter O. Knight. When the bride to be came for her hats, Lillian, as a baby, came crawling out of the workshop area pulling one of the hats by the streamers. Her store was next door to the marble bank building. The airport on Davis Islands is named Peter O. Knight Airport.
Minnie Estes came to Tampa November 27, 1889 from Tennessee. They went up to Tennessee from Palatka when Halcot was ten months old. They were running from yellow fever. Eva, Minnie’s sister and family had yellow fever in Tampa. They were in Palatka, then had to run as all did out of Palatka as there were several cases of yellow fever.
When they ran from Palatka, Dr. Estes set up an office in Jackson, Tennessee, but he was so sick he could not attend to business. He drank a lot of whiskey to try to keep going he said. In eighteen months he went down and he weighed only one hundred and thirteen pounds when he took to his bed. He was never any to complain. He could not talk to his wife or tell her anything. In November they went traveled back to Tampa and on May 6, Dr. Estes died. He was a Presbyterian and he had taken an interest in the church and the coming plans for this YMCA. There were four or five men very good and thoughtful of him in Tampa. He practiced a little when he first came in old Dr. Cowants office.
Minnie was left with three babies – a baby herself – she wrote. “…I gathered them in my left arm and fought the wolf from the door with my right. No man or woman gave me anything except Benton […Dr. Estes…] brother, who sent forty dollars to help pay expenses of the funeral. I went in where he lay in his casket and swept all the room and under his casket – so blinded with tears I could hardly see. I arranged the chairs and a few flowers. I paid a man one silver dollar to stay in the room with the corpse that night. I don’t know who he was. He had on a red woolen shirt and every time I looked in he was leaning against the wall with arms folded. I had a white girl working for me and lived in the house. It must have been some of her kin. I don’t remember.
“Later in June I took the three children to Tennessee – went by boat to Mobile then took the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to Wilson. The folks met me there. I left you (Halcot) and Verner there for nine months. You (Halcot) did not want me to leave you. Verner was having a big time. It near broke my heart to do it. I got my store going good. I left Lillian here (Tampa), and I ran up for you boys – so happy – then you did not want to leave your grandma so there it was again. But soon it was alright. Then I got a negro to keep all three at home here and she was good too. I was always afraid I would die and you boys would have no one to come for you.”
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Our Beautiful South Land
By Minnie A. Estes Spitler
(This was written and read by Minnie A. Estes Spitler for the Daughters of the Confederacy).
Our beautiful South Land so torn and bleeding in body and heart lay dormant a long time after the struggle in the sixties almost stunned and dormant but was only waiting for kind good nature to heal body and mind and today 1910 sees her in all her glory coming in her very own as God in his great goodness has intended all things to do. It’s like the mist that rises from the waves returns to the little brook that hastens with a happy murmer to help with swelling the river and hurries on to the great ocean and here comes the mist in the form of the rain again to the brook, so it is to us poor suppressed southerners. Of the sixties, I must say, I only wish I could write the suffering of this people from real experience, but alas will now only be doing what my poor mother asked to do at one time to write down what she told me of the men. Now, after 25 years, I am trying to do it.
My mother was truly a daughter of the confederacy born in dear old South Carolina in Barnwell County. She was a frail woman never weighing one hundred pounds in her life and yet a strong woman in will and courage. As I would sit and listen to her tell of the march of Sherman’s to the sea, it seemed my very blood would turn cold within me. At one time with husband and brothers all gone off to war, and with only her little children left, even her trusted blacks all scattered, she heard the boom of the cannon and knew there was a terrible battle raging very near. She saw a woman in a large wagon alone with it full of helpless children – 8 in all, their father had been killed, house burned and this helpless mother who was raised with plenty was in the road alone no husband and no home, surrounded by blue coats and glittering steel who promptly demanded her team for their use which of course she surrendered to them promptly.
My Mother, was at that time barricaded with her children in the house, saw the condition of this poor creature of circumstances, laid all fear aside and with her own babies holding on to her skirts begging her not to open the door, she coaxed loose form them and went her way along the road this cold dreary day having in many places to push herself among these ugly warriors of the north and at last reached this woman and her children and managed to get them in her yard and in this one room where she and crowded also hams and peas between beds and mattresses and kept a child on the bed playing sick so as to try to appeal to these men who were by looking at the place.
She put a trunk of silver in the bottom of a well. They soon drew it dry and took out the trunk. She put a box of finery such as the south all likes as well as the north in a deep hole and buried it and burned trash over the spot in the yard to hide it, but they found it. They also shot her faithful watch dog, killed all her geese and chickens. They cut open beds in the parlor and poured molasses over the feathers. My precious mother said, with this poor widow and 8 children moaning and crying and her own little ones clinging to her skirts begging for bread, it was almost more than her brain could stand.
The blue coats were not only thick in the road and yard, but would push in this one room looking for food and money, also jewels. As she stood one night near the close of the 8 days march of Sherman – a mental and physical wreck begging her God for guidance to help – this one room sacred to herself and family, her prayers and entreaties for the soldiers to keep out which they would not heed but rudely push pass and rummage that room full of poor helpless women and children. She was worn with pleadings and fear – she said she took all her faith and guidance from her great God and went alone without hat or shawl about one mile to a cross road. She heard that n Irish soldier was captain there and she had an Irish name so she thought she might appeal to him in her Irish name for protection to get them at least out of this one room. He was a Yankee but had a true Irish heart. He sent her back with a guard and he stood there and drove them all out of even the yard and gave special protection for the rest of that dreadful march of Sherman’s to the sea.
We cannot but be glad that the Negroes have been freed. It will be a curse on the south for several generations buying and selling these blacks, yet we as southerners love our dear old black mama’s and our polite little black maid and they never tire of doing for us now if they are of good southern raising.
We daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of the Confederacy could never go on the Negro as we have been raised among them and know their worth.
The north has the money, we have the climate and a few brains left but can hardly see how there could be any left as the strain on our generals and humanity for lack of money and food and seeing all their worldly goods being destroyed and their wives and children being insulted by these people who dare to say they have whipped the south.
I was born in 66 and I imagine I would have been better able to love my northern brothers and sisters and give them a warm clasp of the hand if I had been born in later years.
When they creep down here from those frozen hills and valleys to bathe in our warm sunshine and sit under our orange trees to hear our birds sing. Oh yes, we are coming back to the good old times. We may have some more Abraham Lincoln’s out of old Kentucky yet who will stir us up. I guess Abe knew what was good for us and I will take my hat off to him as a great man and benefactor. Just think with such backing what would General Lee have done for them and Davis and others. Think under what conditions they worked. It seems to me like whipping a fellow already down, when they say they whipped the south.
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