By Starr Munro Riverbend News The Suwannee River has and continues to affect all communities that live off the river. It has affected everything from commerce and schooling to farming and ranching. It…
Category: History
Twin Rivers of the past
By Starr Munro Riverbend News There are times in history when certain things happen simply because it was at the right place at the right time. The rivers of the Withlacoochee and the…
Location of the Principal Indian Nations in Florida
By Starr Munro Riverbend News When America won independence in 1776, another battle was already brewing at home. Although the freshly born United States of America didn’t have the power of a centuries…
Remembering Suwannee: Sheriff Potsdamer was an ex-convict
Gus Potsdamer (Pottsdammer) was born in 1853 in Germany. He died on Friday, Jan. 4, 1918 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Florida Times Union obit, Saturday,…
Florida: home for the holidays
By Starr Munro Riverbend News Florida is a unique state in many ways. Perhaps its most glaring difference to the rest of the nation is the amount of people who live here seasonally,…
Hamilton and Madison: 197 years old this December
By Starr Munro Riverbend News Florida’s 14th and 15th counties were created the day after Christmas, in 1827, nearly 194 years ago. Madison County, named after James Madison, the fourth president of…
WWII WAR RATION BOOKS
President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Price Administration in August 1941. Its main responsibility was to place a ceiling on prices of most goods to prevent wartime price gouging and to…
Florida Home to the first Thanksgiving
By Starr Munro: Riverbend News The story of the first Thanksgiving has been taught to school children every year since the time of small school houses. It’s common knowledge that the Pilgrims…
Civil War era stories of Lafayette County
By Starr Munro: Riverbend News The following is history told from Sylvanus M. Hankins, Private Company D, Florida Reserve Regiment, of America’s Confederate soldiers. Initially written in longhand in an old account…
Florida Folk Festival
By Starr Munro Riverbend News The Florida Folk Festival is an annual event that takes place at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, in White Springs. But this year was the…
Ellaville: from boomtown to ghost town
By Starr Munro Riverbend News In the spirit of Halloween, here’s a ghost story for small towns everywhere along the Suwannee River’s banks to get spooked by. The history behind the birth…
The perilous cave exploration of Convict Springs
By Starr Munro Riverbend News On the South side of the Suwannee River, Northeast of Mayo in Lafayette County, lies Jim Hollis’s Suwannee River Rendezvous. Inside that resort/campground lies Convict Springs, a…
The Big Shoals of the past
By Starr Munro Riverbend News America has led the way for a lot of new ideas, but one pioneering action from this country was how ahead of the times it was when…
Florida pines and the old timber industry
By Cole Davis Riverbend News Hamilton and its surrounding counties have long been recognized for their natural beauty and this is in no small part due to the Florida pine. With that…
The duel that got Hamilton County’s namesake killed
By Cole Davis Riverbend News On a July morning in 1804, two giants of American political life walked out onto the field in Weehawken, N.J. to have a duel and only one…
Remembering Suwannee
The Steamboat “Madison” on the Suwannee The deep throated whistle of the paddle wheelers created the most vivid of the legends which surround the Suwannee River. For 75 years the steamboat was…