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PHOTO BY ELLIS AMBURN
Newberry resident and Park Services Specialist Sandra Cashes was on duty one recent November afternoon at Jonesville’s Dudley Farm Historic State Park, a fully functioning antebellum plantation, open to the public.
“Boil and skim the juice for about three hours,” Ms. Dudley wrote in a note quoted in Albert Isaac’s article “Take a Step Back in Time: Dudley Farm Historic Park.” “Dip it up and down until you know that it is done by letting some drip off the dipper and it forms a thread . . . There is a party, all the neighbors are invited and some syrup is cooked until it is candy.” The staff of this authentic working farm wears period clothing and performs daily chores, raises crops, and tends to heritage varieties of livestock. On a recent afternoon in November, a friendly, apricot-colored mule approached a fence and allowed itself to be petted, no doubt expecting an apple or carrot. In the distance a formidable bull looked less congenial, and was separated from visitors by the same fence against which the mule rubbed its neck. Later, over dinner at The Pickled
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Pelican in Jonesville, Hodges talked about the youngest of John Joseph Jones’s nine children, J.A. “Dixie” Jones, the sole member of the family to remain in Jonesville. A prosperous farmer, Dixie was also a humanitarian in an area where a mass lynching occurred during which an unborn baby was expelled from its mother’s body as she was hanged. “I heard the baby survived,” Hodges said. Despite the race crimes of the time, Dixie Jones was the only farmer who went out of his way to help African-Americans who wanted to get a start in agriculture. He was glad to show them the ropes or help with barn raising, flying in the face of widespread intolerance. He also shared his phone with neighbors, even placing one by the road, and his wife Quintine was instrumental in bringing electricity to Jonesville. Until fairly recent years the
community remained untouched by developers. “The new highway to Newberry made a difference,” Don Davis reflected in a telephone interview. “When I was managing the Barnett Newberry bank, I got interested in the neighborhood.” During a subsequent interview in the conference room of Capital City’s office in Gainesville, Davis described the stages of Jonesville’s growth from the 19th century to the present. In the beginning the Dudleys, Holts, Joneses, and a few other farming families constituted the town center at the present site of Dudley Farm. Each farmer had a specialty — a sideline to supplement farming income. “Griffith was the blacksmith,” Davis said. “The Holts had the sawmill, someone else the milling operation. I think someone had a cotton gin.” At the turn of the 19th century,