Matthew+Filiault

= Sawyers, Cypress and Subsistence: Social Transformations and Technology in Geneva, FL =

By Matthew Filiault
The purpose of this project is to investigate the historic and modern lumber industries in the rural town of Geneva, Florida. The lumber industry and its technologies have had a unique impact on the social dynamics of labor and self-sufficiency in the region, and continue to do so today. Technological innovations and their implementation coincide with discrete social transformations, but also represent different ways of interacting with the natural world. In this project, I will explore these relationships in three primary historical phases: pioneer subsistence in the late 19th century, company towns in the early 20th century, and a modern Geneva sawyer in the 21st century. An introduction will provide the historical context, and the conclusion will discuss future directions. This research will be presented as a historical narrative centered on the history of the Geneva area, but will also draw analogies from the literature on the historical lumber industries in North and South Florida.
 * Abstract**

The only thing that remains of the town of Osceola is a decrepit brick vault, which lies on the outskirts of the town of Geneva in which I live. I have always wondered who its citizens were, why they decided to live there and why they left so abruptly, leaving nothing behind but this old vault. With this assignment, I saw the opportunity for me to formally address and potentially answer these questions. My original intention was to investigate the production technologies of the historic Osceola sawmill town, to assess its impact on the environment and contrast it with the modern sawmill. But after doing a little research I quickly found out that there was much more to the story of that transitory company town, which had only been around from 1916 to 1942 (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc 2012). Company towns and early industries in Florida had as much to do with social transformations as they did with the alteration of the environment. They were prefabricated towns, with a manufactured, company-centered culture. The commissary was often the only place for miles to acquire necessities, and many companies issued payment in credit for purchasing goods from these stores. The occupants of these towns became dependent on this infrastructure and the benefits of work, social life, entertainment, electricity and running water could be considered too far outweigh the independence and hardships of subsistence life ways. Company towns were not all idyllic, however. Peonage was common, and there are some dramatic accounts of mill owners forcing former employees back to work on the basis of ‘unpaid debts’ imagined or recorded after the fact in their account books. This leads me to ask: what was the town of Osceola // really // like? The only account of the town is given by Mary Henderson, who was born in the town in 1921 and left at the age of 15. Her father was the superintendent of the Osceola Cypress Mill, and her account paints a pretty picture of town life. Its docility is in stark contrast to several accounts of company towns during this time described in the literature, and the oppressive and beneficiary nature of these towns is contended among historians. Was there something missing from her account? This question has brought me to investigate the literature on other lumber towns in Florida, but also to put this narrative into context. What was life in the region like before company towns, and how does it compare with today?
 * Introduction**

The use of Florida timber can be traced back to the indigenous peoples of the region. A fine and extremely rare example of indigenous craftsmanship is the so-called Key Marco cat, which was found during excavations in the late 19th century at the site of Key Marco (Brown 1994, 27). Because standard archaeological methods were not developed at the time, dating the artifact has been problematic. It is likely that indigenous cultures in central Florida had rich woodworking traditions, but due to poor preservation limited evidence remains other than a few masks and dugout canoes. Indigenous peoples lived along Lake Harney and the St. John’s River, where Geneva stands today and where the town of Osceola was also based. I saw evidence of this first hand after participating in an archaeological dig that resulted in the uncovering of prehistoric ceramic material. I would infer that these native people were using trees to their advantage, but their impact was negligible and therefore sustainable.
 * Early History**

The exploits of the United States military are intertwined with the development of Florida and its lumber industry. The history of Seminole County, of which Geneva is an unincorporated area, begins in 1836 with the Second Seminole War and the establishment of Camp Monroe, in what is today known as Sanford. A year later, the camp was renamed Fort Mellon, after Captain Charles Mellon who was killed by indigenous people during an attack on the camp. The fort was strategically placed on Lake Monroe for the advantages of steamboat transportation afforded by the St. John’s River and its system of lakes. It’s abandonment as a military outpost occurred in 1842, and coincided with the founding of the town of Mellonville in its vicinity. Settlers began to trickle into the area and establish homesteads (Francke 1984, 8).

Among these settlers was a Count Vasilieff, a Russian aristocrat, who through his title would become the official leader to all Russians incoming from New York en route to Florida (Rehbinder 2001, 21). Michael Rehbinder and his wife Anna were two such immigrants, who arrived in 1877 and were soon to settle in the small town of Geneva.

The account of the Rehbinder family is given by Leo, the son of Michael Rehbinder, in an autobiography written for his children. It was published by the Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society with the permission of Leo’s daughter Leona. In flight from oppression in Russia, Michael Rehbinder and his wife were led to Florida by utopian dreams of freedom and bountiful harvests of lucrative citrus. In the early settlement of Geneva, everyone built their own houses, using wood from trees on their own property and from the woods that surrounded them. Michael’s first attempt at planting citrus was wasted after three years, when a fire set by local natives caught wind of his property. The local natives were raising livestock and would set fires once a year to enhance the soil for grass. Michael’s son Leo Rehbinder was born in 1882. Shortly afterward his father began a job at a sawmill 20 miles away, coming home Saturday nights and leaving again the following night. One of the Rehbinder’s Russian neighbors was the DeBogorys. Mr. DeBogory built a mill and made his living selling lumber. If this was the same man named Progar DeBogory, he also donated land for a cemetery, school and church in 1880 (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. 2012). This land is located at the end of Cemetary Road, and may hold clues as to the location of the DeBogory sawmill.
 * Subsistence and the Rehbinder Family**

In 1886, central Florida suffered a freeze and Michael Rehbinder’s orange trees were destroyed again. Considering that Mr. Rehbinder had been working hard at his citrus plants for 9 years, he was devastated. In an episode of helpless desperation, he attempted to drown himself in a local pond. His wife pulled him out, but he quickly ran for the next body of water. Apparently a neighbor, Mr. Hern brought him back to his senses, but this would mark the beginnings of lifelong despondency and listlessness in Leo’s father. His mother, however, took an initiative and acquired a meager income by teaching the local children. In 1891, Leo’s father began working at DeBogory’s Sawmill, exchanging labor for lumber in order to expand his house. He also cut down trees in the nearby wilderness to make shingles for the roof. The Rehbinder family was able to subsist on orange crops for a short while, but another freeze would bring ruin in 1895. The entire citrus industry of Florida, based in such familiar places as Gainseville, Ocala and Sanford, would move southward leaving these towns less than prosperous. //The 1886 freeze. Digitized from the Orange County Regional History Center, available from the University of Central Florida Library [|Digital Collections]//

Living in destitution with one pair of shoes and a wardrobe full of rags, young Leo helped his father with a newly created vegetable garden and started trapping the local wildlife for food. At the age of thirteen, Leo began fishing with a boy named Thad Geiger. His earnings for this work amounted to $1.50 a week. With this, he managed to save up enough to afford a new pair of trousers for 90 cents, and a year later a coat and pants for $4.50. Soon Leo began fishing solo, and rowed his haul twelve miles up the St. John’s to Sanford’s market. He recognizes this period of his life as idyllic, and being fully engaged with and dependent on the environment, his reverence for the natural world is evident. Leo got his first job as a teacher after receiving a ‘third grade certificate’ at the age of 15. He would teach intermittently throughout Florida until taking a job as a principal in Winter Park in 1905. After a few weeks, he recognized that he had made a personal indiscretion and was inspired to take a correspondence course in civil engineering. This began his career as a worker on the railroad extensions in Key West. In retrospect, he claims this period as the ‘most carefree’ of his whole life. But letters of misfortune arrived from home and he went back. Leo’s experience of return to the small town of Geneva is best expressed in his own words: // “To have ambitions and desires of better things and then be so held down in a small community where there was absolutely nothing that one could do except the most ordinary and menial work for a living…All this gave me a bitterness in life, that made living hard indeed from day to day.” //

Despite the misfortunes of his family, the year of 1911 would mark a turning point in Leo’s life when a train depot was built in the center of town. The depot served the East Coast Florida railway, and ran from New Smyrna, through Geneva to Belgrade near Lake Okeechobee. Leo came to an agreement with his neighbor Flynt, who wanted to move his store closer to the train depot. Together, they pooled their financial resources to construct the Flynt & Rehbinder Store, which was situated where the Geneva Feed & Grocery stands today. Leo would move on to have a successful career and start a family, but the railroad marked the beginning of another story. (//From the Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society [|website]//

The possibilities of transportation afforded by the railroad proved to be a great boon to the prosperity of Geneva, but it also empowered the ever-expanding lumber industry to exploit the resources of a new frontier. In 1916, the Osceola Cypress Company constructed a mill town where Lake Harney flows back into the St. Johns River. According to the GHGS website, the Osceola Cypress Company was a division of the Tidewater Cypress Company based in Lukens, Florida which was near Cedar Key. The new company town of Osceola was named after the fishing village which was in the same area. The camp was first described in Sidney Lanier’s //Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History// as “a quaint fishing village named Osceola where large cypress and oaks towered over the farms and little houses built on stilts and poles”. The name of the village in turn was inspired by the fact that Seminole Chief Osceola used to cmp out on the shores of Lake Harney during the Second Seminole War (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society 2012).
 * The Company Town of Osceola**

//A view of the Osceola Sawmill. From a photograph of an exhibit at the [|Museum of Geneva]//[|History]

The greatest and perhaps only account of what life was like in the town of Osceola was given by Mary (Riley) Henderson, whose father was John F. Riley, the superintendent of the mill. She was born and raised in the town and left at the age of 15, so her account is based on the memories of a young girl. The Osceola mill town was quite distinct from the neighboring town of Geneva at the time in that it provided all residents with municipal services such as electricity and plumbing. From Geneva, the railroad split at Osceola, with a bend going out into the river where logs were unloaded into a sectioned off pool where they were stored for cutting. The other route went across the river and continued to New Smyrna. The town was composed of an industrial park, a business area, the commissary and a residential area. The industrial park contained the sawmill, a planer mill, a yard for drying the lumber and a few maintenance shops. The business area consisted of an office complex and the bank. The commissary had everything the townspeople would ever need, and gave them little reason to travel elsewhere. Mrs. Henderson also mentions the Sears Roebuck Catalog, which would have expanded the townspeople’s consumption of commodities. Other amenities included the school, post office, doctor’s office and a barber shop. The residential area was segregated based on class and race. The ‘elite’ lived on a houseboat, and the white and blue collar workers lived each in separate dwellers. African-Americans lived in another division, with a separate school and church, and a place of entertainment called a ‘Juke joint’. The lives of the people in Osceola were completely dependent on the sawmill, and it too was completely dependent on them. Whistles and strict lighting schedules moderated people’s day to day activities, but there was still time for recreation and distraction. Osceola had its own baseball team, as was conventional of company towns of the day. Lumber companies would actually sponsor and endorse baseball teams in an attempt to cultivate a sense of ‘company culture’ within its workers (Drobney 1996, 123). From the perspective of a young girl, the town of Osceola seemed like an ideal place to live. The amenities, stable income and sense of community are favorable alternatives to the struggles of the Rehbinder family who lived in the neighboring town of Geneva. But at what cost did these conveniences arise? // The Riley Family, from the Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society [|website] //

An investigation of the literature on the lumber industries in early 20th century Florida tells a very different story. But in order to understand the other dimension of these towns, it is necessary to identify the political and economic climate during the time. In particular, an article entitled ‘Forced Labor in the Florida Forests 1880-1950’ by Jerrell Shofner provides the historical context and a valuable critique of lumber camps and company towns of this era. After Reconstruction, the United States government loosened its hold on the South, and newly freed men suddenly found themselves not so free. Jim Crow, convict leasing and debt peonage laws all served to keep African-Americans in virtual enslavement. Whites of low socio-economic status were also subject to indentured work, many of them being immigrants from New York. Convict leasing kept prison costs down and helped fill the labor gap by allowing private companies to bid on laborers once every two years (Shofner 1981, 14).
 * Indentured Slavery in Florida's Forests**

With memories of life before the American Civil War, whites naturally looked to the African-American population as a source of labor, and often treated them the same as they had before—with an unjustifiable use of force. In 1891 a law was created to legitimize the common and unconstitutional practice of debt-peonage in the South. It declared that anyone who accepted cash or something else of value in exchange for work, in refusing to comply with the agreement they would be charged with fraud – this is in direct contradiction to an 1867 United States statute (Shofner 1981, 15). Vagrancy laws were also tools of virtual enslavement, and the Georgia-Florida Sawmill Association had an active hand in making these laws ‘more effective’. With their support, the vagrancy laws were extended in 1907 to generalize vagrants as any “persons who neglect their calling or employment…and all able bodied males over 18 without means of support and who remain in idleness” (Shofner 1981, 16). Self-employment and subsistence strategies were incompatible with these laws, which gave law enforcement the right to abuse the unemployed and put them ‘back to work’.

Numerous attempts, particularly by Northerners and the national government, were made to rectify these abuses. However, State leaders in the political and economic realms allied themselves with lumber companies against the national government. Further attempts by African-American labor activist organizations such as the Division of Negro Economics attempted to improve working conditions in the South or at least to encourage blacks to move to better conditions up North. This infuriated Brooks-Scanlon, a lumber company based in Minnesota with a vested interest in Florida’s virgin timber stands and in the cheap labor force required to cut them down. M.J. Scanlon himself went to Washington D.C. and managed to convince the government to withdraw their operations—they complied on the grounds that the sustained presence of the Division of Negro Economics could invite violent resistance (Shofner 1981, 20). To make matters worse, the Georgia-Florida Sawmill Association trimmed their wage scales in 1920.

In tandem with forced labor and low-wages, commissaries were another front for monopolizing exploitation. They often had highly inflated prices, and with nowhere else to go workers were forced to purchase their goods. Buying from the commissary was also enforced through the use of credit as payment for work. Though it was variable throughout the industry, some companies would give a choice of cash or commissary credit. The credit was often worth more than the cash at the local commissary, and this obliged laborers to choose the credit over cash. This ultimately decreased their chances of paying off their debts. Arthur E. Holder made a report on the lumber industry in Florida to the Conciliation Service of the Labor Department in 1932. He found the wages, hours and conditions deplorable, concluding that, // “Surely slavery days never were more hopeless than a short unhappy life in a modern mad house of a Florida Saw Mill” //(Softner 1981, 22)//. //

Sofner found something interesting in an affidavit which may tie this grim narrative to the town of Osceola. It details the experience of Fred Black, who once worked at a camp owned by the ‘Osceola Log Company’ when it was logging at Osteen in the 1930s. After finding a better job elsewhere, Fred Black was denied permission to leave the camp. He and a companion managed to flee one morning in 1934 and traveled many miles to freedom in Daytona Beach. The report goes into detail about the specific practices of this company. Employment was initiated on the promise of 4 dollars a day, but recruiters failed to mention the inflated prices of the commissary and the fact that room and board would be deducted from wages. It mentions that a man who escaped recalled that a workers net payment after two weeks would amount to a mere eight cents. Company foreman were armed and acted as guards, and the gates were locked at night and on the Sabbath. The ‘Osceola Log Company’ is not the exact name of the ‘Osceola Cypress Company’ that founded Osceola. However, the town of Osteen is adjacent to Geneva and would be the next stop on a trip up the St. John’s River. It is likely that the lumber camp that Fred Black worked in was a separate, smaller camp up the river which may have floated logs down the river to the mill. Although Mary Riley’s account doesn’t mention a Fred Black specifically, the timeframe coincides with the existence of mill operations at Osceola.

In the end, it was not good-nature that brought about the end of indentured slavery in the lumber camps of Florida, but technological developments which negated the necessity of a large and ‘affordable’ labor force (Sofner 1981, 25). After depleting the viable cypress in the area, the Osceola mill town disassembled and traveled further south towards Lake Okeechobee to the remaining timber stands in 1942. Most lumber operations would cease completely within a decade, leaving independent sawyers and lumbermen to eke out their existence among the soaring pines.

Today, there is a family operated sawmill in Geneva which serves a diverse clientele within the local community. It began as a hobby for Bob Hughes, but soon developed into a passion. After retiring from a career with the Florida Power Company, Mr. Hughes devoted all his time to creating a complete and self-sufficient operation. Although he didn’t earn his living in this way, his son Tim has become proficient in making it his occupation. Much of the wood they cut is considered recycled, and would otherwise be burned or lay rotting in someone’s yard. During an interview I had with him he was in the process of cutting some pine logs brought to him by a local woman. She had the trees cut down at the advice of an exterminator in safeguarding her house against termites, but regretted the decision and hoped to find some form of redemption. Mr. Hughes consulted with her and they concluded that the wood could be used to create wood-flooring for her house. Not only was this a creative and functional form of recycling, it also creates a personal narrative—a story between the person and the trees. Such narratives are absent from the commercial lumber bought in stores, which are produced by corporations like Weyerhauser who cultivate entire forests of fast-growth timber specifically for the industry.
 * A Modern Sawyer in the Village of Geneva**

There is another narrative told through timber, which ties this modern sawyer to the local mills of the past. Although early lumber mills thrived with the expansion of the railroad, the St. Johns River was also a great way of transporting heavy logs. Along the way, some of the logs inevitably sank to the bottom of the river (The Ole General Store, 2012). Bob Hughes and several other experts have collaborated in a project to recover these logs. Environmental regulations typically forbid anyone from recovering trees from the bottom of rivers, provided their deposition was the result of windfall. But since the displacement of these logs was initially the result of human activity, it is possible to get a permit to recover them, provided you also have the training and equipment to do so. Today, the wood cut from these logs serve as mantle pieces, table tops and works of art, each harboring the narrative of those who came before us.

It is these narratives that help remind us of the not-so-distant past, and can aid people in appreciating the relationship between ourselves and the environment. Bob Hughes sawmill is self-sufficient and sustainable within its scale of operation, hearkening back to the ethic of the early pioneers in the area. The fundamental difference, I would argue, is in technology. Technological developments have afforded the town of Geneva with the basic municipal services that were at one point in history an exclusive benefit of the company town. Furthermore, Mr. Hughes sawmill is able to cut trees regardless of size (within reason), overcoming the limitations of the old saws with maximal efficiency. And perhaps most importantly, in the light of the social history of the region: his labor is now his own.

//Bob Hughes// preparing to cut a pine log using a modern sawmill at his home in Geneva, FL.


 * Conclusion**

The trees, with no voice, were a silent witness to the transformation of the environment and society wrought by new developments of technology. They provided the early pioneers with the materials to construct their abodes, and passively permitted the expansion of the industrial American empire. When the forests provided all that they could, the empire left. Fortunately, technological and social limitations prevented clear-cutting from ever being economically viable. So while the old growth trees are gone, their descendants remain and hopefully will continue to for generations to come. Today, a local sawyer in Geneva provides for the lumber needs of the community, allowing homemakers to transform indiscretions into works of art, and furnishing artisans with materials that harbor a historical narrative. I believe that these narratives can engender an appreciation for the products we develop from the resources taken from the environment. Abstracted and commodified, many people do not understand the stories of the lumber they purchase from home improvement stores, and in fact they may not tell much of a story at all. Narratives provide a connection between ourselves and the environment, reminding us of our dependence on nature, and have the potential for inviting a sense of responsibility within us.

Between the early pioneers of Geneva and the Osceola mill town workers, a spirit of self-sufficiency was lost, and with it the knowledge and means to produce for oneself and the immediate community. Advancements in technology would initiate a transformation of the traditional labor practices of the South, at least for the lumber industry. But even today the shadow of slavery still persists in Florida, namely among itinerate Hispanic and Latino agricultural workers. While organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers fight for improved wages and labor conditions (Drainville 2009, 357), each person that consumes the products of their labor is participating in a network that depends on the exploitation of other human beings. Whether conscious of it or not, the participant is in some way responsible for the exploitation of others. Through localizing production and using technology to improve labor efficiency, it may be possible to gradually deconstruct this complex infrastructure of dependency and exploitation that we have created. Within this lies the possibility for a silent revolution, where individuals take control of the means of production, revive the self-sufficient ethic of the old Republic and decrease their dependence on the infrastructure of the military-petroleum complex of the contemporary State.

**References**

Brown, Robin C. 1994. //Florida’s First People//. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, Inc.

Drainville, Andr é. 2008. “Present in the World Economy: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (1996-2007)” // Globalizations // 5:3: 357-377

Drobney, Jeffrey A. 1996. “Company Towns and Social Tranformation in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1880-1930” // The Florida Historical Quarterly // 75:2: 121-145.

Francke, Arthur E. 1984. // Early Days of Seminole County, Florida. //Seminole County Historical Commission.

Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society Inc. “Extinct Towns in the Geneva Area” [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Geneva’s Cemetaries” [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Historic Timeline of the Geneva Area” [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Memories of Osceola” [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

Rehbinder, Leo M. 2001. // Russian Immigrants in Geneva, Florida: An Autobiography. //Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society//, Inc. //

Shofner, Jerrell H. 1981. “Forced Labor in the Florida Forests 1880-1950”, // Journal of Forest History // 25:1: 14-25.

The Ole General Store. “River Recovered Lmber”. [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

 ** Title **  Sawyers, Cypress and Subsistence: Social Transformations and Technology in Geneva, FL  ** Abstract **  The purpose of this project is to investigate the historic and modern lumber industries in the rural town of Geneva, Florida. The lumber industry and its technologies have had a unique impact on the social dynamics of labor and self-sufficiency in the region, and continue to do so today. Technological innovations and their implementation coincide with discrete social transformations, but also represent different ways of interacting with the natural world. In this project, I will explore these relationships in three primary historical phases: pioneer subsistence in the late 19th century, company towns in the early 20th century, and a modern Geneva sawyer in the 21st century. An introduction will provide the historical context, and the conclusion will discuss future directions. This research will be presented as a historical narrative centered on the history of the Geneva area, but will also draw analogies from the literature on the historical lumber industries in North and South Florida.  ** Introduction **  The only thing that remains of the town of Osceola is a decrepit brick vault, which lies on the outskirts of the town of Geneva in which I live. I have always wondered who its citizens were, why they decided to live there and why they left so abruptly, leaving nothing behind but this old vault. With this assignment, I saw the opportunity for me to formally address and potentially answer these questions. My original intention was to investigate the production technologies of the historic Osceola sawmill town, to assess its impact on the environment and contrast it with the modern sawmill. But after doing a little research I quickly found out that there was much more to the story of that transitory company town, which had only been around from 1916 to 1942 (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc 2012). Company towns and early industries in Florida had as much to do with social transformations as they did with the alteration of the environment. They were prefabricated towns, with a manufactured, company-centered culture. The commissary was often the only place for miles to acquire necessities, and many companies issued payment in credit for purchasing goods from these stores. The occupants of these towns became dependent on this infrastructure and the benefits of work, social life, entertainment, electricity and running water could be considered too far outweigh the independence and hardships of subsistence life ways. Company towns were not all idyllic, however. Peonage was common, and there are some dramatic accounts of mill owners forcing former employees back to work on the basis of ‘unpaid debts’ imagined or recorded after the fact in their account books. This leads me to ask: what was the town of Osceola // really // like? The only account of the town is given by Mary Henderson, who was born in the town in 1921 and left at the age of 15. Her father was the superintendent of the Osceola Cypress Mill, and her account paints a pretty picture of town life. Its docility is in stark contrast to several accounts of company towns during this time described in the literature, and the oppressive and beneficiary nature of these towns is contended among historians. Was there something missing from her account? This question has brought me to investigate the literature on other lumber towns in Florida, but also to put this narrative into context. What was life in the region like before company towns, and how does it compare with today?  ** Early History **  The use of Florida timber can be traced back to the indigenous peoples of the region. A fine and extremely rare example of indigenous craftsmanship is the so-called Key Marco cat, which was found during excavations in the late 19th century at the site of Key Marco (Brown 1994, 27). Because standard archaeological methods were not developed at the time, dating the artifact has been problematic. It is likely that indigenous cultures in central Florida had rich woodworking traditions, but due to poor preservation limited evidence remains other than a few masks and dugout canoes. Indigenous peoples lived along Lake Harney and the St. John’s River, where Geneva stands today and where the town of Osceola was also based. I saw evidence of this first hand after participating in an archaeological dig that resulted in the uncovering of prehistoric ceramic material. I would infer that these native people were using trees to their advantage, but their impact was negligible and therefore sustainable.  The exploits of the United States military are intertwined with the development of Florida and its lumber industry. The history of Seminole County, of which Geneva is an unincorporated area, begins in 1836 with the Second Seminole War and the establishment of Camp Monroe, in what is today known as Sanford. A year later, the camp was renamed Fort Mellon, after Captain Charles Mellon who was killed by indigenous people during an attack on the camp. The fort was strategically placed on Lake Monroe for the advantages of steamboat transportation afforded by the St. John’s River and its system of lakes. It’s abandonment as a military outpost occurred in 1842, and coincided with the founding of the town of Mellonville in its vicinity. Settlers began to trickle into the area and establish homesteads (Francke 1984, 8).  Among these settlers was a Count Vasilieff, a Russian aristocrat, who through his title would become the official leader to all Russians incoming from New York en route to Florida (Rehbinder 2001, 21). Michael Rehbinder and his wife Anna were two such immigrants, who arrived in 1877 and were soon to settle in the small town of Geneva.  ** Subsistence & the Rehbinder Family **  The account of the Rehbinder family is given by Leo, the son of Michael Rehbinder, in an autobiography written for his children. It was published by the Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society with the permission of Leo’s daughter Leona. In flight from oppression in Russia, Michael Rehbinder and his wife were led to Florida by utopian dreams of freedom and bountiful harvests of lucrative citrus. In the early settlement of Geneva, everyone built their own houses, using wood from trees on their own property and from the woods that surrounded them. Michael’s first attempt at planting citrus was wasted after three years, when a fire set by local natives caught wind of his property. The local natives were raising livestock and would set fires once a year to enhance the soil for grass. Michael’s son Leo Rehbinder was born in 1882. Shortly afterward his father began a job at a sawmill 20 miles away, coming home Saturday nights and leaving again the following night. One of the Rehbinder’s Russian neighbors was the DeBogorys. Mr. DeBogory built a mill and made his living selling lumber. If this was the same man named Progar DeBogory, he also donated land for a cemetery, school and church in 1880 (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. 2012). This land is located at the end of Cemetary Road, and may hold clues as to the location of the DeBogory sawmill.  In 1886, central Florida suffered a freeze and Michael Rehbinder’s orange trees were destroyed again. Considering that Mr. Rehbinder had been working hard at his citrus plants for 9 years, he was devastated. In an episode of helpless desperation, he attempted to drown himself in a local pond. His wife pulled him out, but he quickly ran for the next body of water. Apparently a neighbor, Mr. Hern brought him back to his senses, but this would mark the beginnings of lifelong despondency and listlessness in Leo’s father. His mother, however, took an initiative and acquired a meager income by teaching the local children. In 1891, Leo’s father began working at DeBogory’s Sawmill, exchanging labor for lumber in order to expand his house. He also cut down trees in the nearby wilderness to make shingles for the roof. The Rehbinder family was able to subsist on orange crops for a short while, but another freeze would bring ruin in 1895. The entire citrus industry of Florida, based in such familiar places as Gainseville, Ocala and Sanford, would move southward leaving these towns less than prosperous.  Living in destitution with one pair of shoes and a wardrobe full of rags, young Leo helped his father with a newly created vegetable garden and started trapping the local wildlife for food. At the age of thirteen, Leo began fishing with a boy named Thad Geiger. His earnings for this work amounted to $1.50 a week. With this, he managed to save up enough to afford a new pair of trousers for 90 cents, and a year later a coat and pants for $4.50. Soon Leo began fishing solo, and rowed his haul twelve miles up the St. John’s to Sanford’s market. He recognizes this period of his life as idyllic, and being fully engaged with and dependent on the environment, his reverence for the natural world is evident. Leo got his first job as a teacher after receiving a ‘third grade certifate’ at the age of 15. He would teach intermittently throughout Florida until taking a job as a principal in Winter Park in 1905. After a few weeks, he recognized that he had made a personal indiscretion and was inspired to take a correspondence course in civil engineering. This began his career as a worker on the railroad extensions in Key West. In retrospect, he claims this period as the ‘most carefree’ of his whole life. But letters of misfortune arrived from home and he went back. Leo’s experience of return to the small town of Geneva is best expressed in his own words: // “To have ambitions and desires of better things and then be so held down in a small community where there was absolutely nothing that one could do except the most ordinary and menial work for a living…All this gave me a bitterness in life, that made living hard indeed from day to day.” //  Despite the misfortunates of his family, the year of 1911 would mark a turning point in Leo’s life when a train depot was built in the center of town. The depot served the East Coast Florida railway, and ran from New Smyrna, through Geneva to Belgrade near Lake Okeechobee. Leo came to an agreement with his neighbor Flynt, who wanted to move his store closer to the train depot. Together, they pooled their financial resources to construct the Flynt & Rehbinder Store, which was situated where the Geneva Feed & Grocery stands today. Leo would move on to have a successful career and start a family, but the railroad marked the beginning of another story.  ** The Company Town of Osceola ** <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> The possibilities of transportation afforded by the railroad proved to be a great boon to the prosperity of Geneva, but it also empowered the ever-expanding lumber industry to exploit the resources of a new frontier. In 1916, the Osceola Cypress Company constructed a mill town where Lake Harney flows back into the St. Johns River. According to the GHGS website, the Osceola Cypress Company was a division of the Tidewater Cypress Company based in Lukens, Florida which was near Cedar Key. The new company town of Osceola was named after the fishing village which was in the same area. The camp was first described in Sidney Lanier’s // Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History // as “a quaint fishing village named Osceola where large cypress and oaks towered over the farms and little houses built on stilts and poles”. The name of the village in turn was inspired by the fact that Seminole Chief Osceola used to camp out on the shores of Lake Harney during the Second Seminole War (Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society 2012) <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> The greatest and perhaps only account of what life was like in the town of Osceola was given by Mary (Riley) Henderson, whose father was John F. Riley, the superintendent of the mill. She was born and raised in the town and left at the age of 15, so her account is based on the memories of a young girl. The Osceola mill town was quite distinct from the neighboring town of Geneva at the time in that it provided all residents with municipal services such as electricity and plumbing. From Geneva, the railroad split at Osceola, with a bend going out into the river where logs were unloaded into a sectioned off pool where they were stored for cutting. The other route went across the river and continued to New Smyrna. The town was composed of an industrial park, a business area, the commissary and a residential area. The industrial park contained the sawmill, a planer mill, a yard for drying the lumber and a few maintenance shops. The business area consisted of an office complex and the bank. The commissary had everything the townspeople would ever need, and gave them little reason to travel elsewhere. Mrs. Henderson also mentions the Sears Roebuck Catalog, which would have expanded the townspeople’s consumption of commodities. Other amenities included the school, post office, doctor’s office and a barber shop. The residential area was segregated based on class and race. The ‘elite’ lived on a houseboat, and the white and blue collar workers lived each in separate dwellers. African-Americans lived in another division, with a separate school and church, and a place of entertainment called a ‘Juke joint’. The lives of the people in Osceola were completely dependent on the sawmill, and it too was completely dependent on them. Whistles and strict lighting schedules moderated people’s day to day activities, but there was still time for recreation and distraction. Osceola had its own baseball team, as was conventional of company towns of the day. Lumber companies would actually sponsor and endorse baseball teams in an attempt to cultivate a sense of ‘company culture’ within its workers (Drobney 1996, 123). From the perspective of a young girl, the town of Osceola seemed like an ideal place to live. The amenities, stable income and sense of community are favorable alternatives to the struggles of the Rehbinder family who lived in the neighboring town of Geneva. But at what cost did these conveniences arise? <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> ** Indentured Slavery in Florida’s Forests ** <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> An investigation of the literature on the lumber industries in early 20th century Florida tells a very different story. But in order to understand the other dimension of these towns, it is necessary to identify the political and economic climate during the time. In particular, an article entitled ‘Forced Labor in the Florida Forests 1880-1950’ by Jerrell Shofner provides the historical context and a valuable critique of lumber camps and company towns of this era. After Reconstruction, the United States government loosened its hold on the South, and newly freed men suddenly found themselves not so free. Jim Crow, convict leasing and debt peonage laws all served to keep African-Americans in virtual enslavement. Whites of low socio-economic status were also subject to indentured work, many of them being immigrants from New York. Convict leasing kept prison costs down and helped fill the labor gap by allowing private companies to bid on laborers once every two years (Shofner 1981, 14). <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> With memories of life before the American Civil War, whites naturally looked to the African-American population as a source of labor, and often treated them the same as they had before—with an unjustifiable use of force. In 1891 a law was created to legitimize the common and unconstitutional practice of debt-peonage in the South. It declared that anyone who accepted cash or something else of value in exchange for work, in refusing to comply with the agreement they would be charged with fraud – this is in direct contradiction to an 1867 United States statute (Shofner 1981, 15). Vagrancy laws were also tools of virtual enslavement, and the Georgia-Florida Sawmill Association had an active hand in making these laws ‘more effective’. With their support, the vagrancy laws were extended in 1907 to generalize vagrants as any “persons who neglect their calling or employment…and all able bodied males over 18 without means of support and who remain in idleness” (Shofner 1981, 16). Self-employment and subsistence strategies were incompatible with these laws, which gave law enforcement the right to abuse the unemployed and put them ‘back to work’. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Numerous attempts, particularly by Northerners and the national government, were made to rectify these abuses. However, State leaders in the political and economic realms allied themselves with lumber companies against the national government. Further attempts by African-American labor activist organizations such as the Division of Negro Economics attempted to improve working conditions in the South or at least to encourage blacks to move to better conditions up North. This infuriated Brooks-Scanlon, a lumber company based in Minnesota with a vested interest in Florida’s virgin timber stands and in the cheap labor force required to cut them down. M.J. Scanlon himself went to Washington D.C. and managed to convince the government to withdraw their operations—they complied on the grounds that the sustained presence of the Division of Negro Economics could invite violent resistance (Shofner 1981, 20). To make matters worse, the Georgia-Florida Sawmill Association trimmed their wage scales in 1920. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> In tandem with forced labor and low-wages, commissaries were another front for monopolizing exploitation. They often had highly inflated prices, and with nowhere else to go workers were forced to purchase their goods. Buying from the commissary was also enforced through the use of credit as payment for work. Though it was variable throughout the industry, some companies would give a choice of cash or commissary credit. The credit was often worth more than the cash at the local commissary, and this obliged laborers to choose the credit over cash. This ultimately decreased their chances of paying off their debts. Arthur E. Holder made a report on the lumber industry in Florida to the Conciliation Service of the Labor Department in 1932. He found the wages, hours and conditions deplorable, concluding that, // “Surely slavery days never were more hopeless than a short unhappy life in a modern mad house of a Florida Saw Mill” //(Softner 1981, 22)//. // <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Sofner found something interesting in an affidavit which may tie this grim narrative to the town of Osceola. It details the experience of Fred Black, who once worked at a camp owned by the ‘Osceola Log Company’ when it was logging at Osteen in the 1930s. After finding a better job elsewhere, Fred Black was denied permission to leave the camp. He and a companion managed to flee one morning in 1934 and traveled many miles to freedom in Daytona Beach. The report goes into detail about the specific practices of this company. Employment was initiated on the promise of 4 dollars a day, but recruiters failed to mention the inflated prices of the commissary and the fact that room and board would be deducted from wages. It mentions that a man who escaped recalled that a workers net payment after two weeks would amount to a mere eight cents. Company foreman were armed and acted as guards, and the gates were locked at night and on the Sabbath. The ‘Osceola Log Company’ is not the exact name of the ‘Osceola Cypress Company’ that founded Osceola. However, the town of Osteen is adjacent to Geneva and would be the next stop on a trip up the St. John’s River. It is likely that the lumber camp that Fred Black worked in was a separate, smaller camp up the river which may have floated logs down the river to the mill. Although Mary Riley’s account doesn’t mention a Fred Black specifically, the timeframe coincides with the existence of mill operations at Osceola. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> In the end, it was not good-nature that brought about the end of indentured slavery in the lumber camps of Florida, but technological developments which negated the necessity of a large and ‘affordable’ labor force (Sofner 1981, 25). After depleting the viable cypress in the area, the Osceola mill town disassembled and traveled further south towards Lake Okeechobee to the remaining timber stands in 1942. Most lumber operations would cease completely within a decade, leaving independent sawyers and lumbermen to eke out their existence among the soaring pines. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> ** A Modern Sawyer in the Village of Geneva ** <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Today, there is a family operated sawmill in Geneva which serves a diverse clientele within the local community. It began as a hobby for Bob Hughes, but soon developed into a passion. After retiring from a career with the Florida Power Company, Mr. Hughes devoted all his time to creating a complete and self-sufficient operation. Although he didn’t earn his living in this way, his son Tim has become proficient in making it his occupation. Much of the wood they cut is considered recycled, and would otherwise be burned or lay rotting in someone’s yard. During an interview I had with him he was in the process of cutting some pine logs brought to him by a local woman. She had the trees cut down at the advice of an exterminator in safeguarding her house against termites, but regretted the decision and hoped to find some form of redemption. Mr. Hughes consulted with her and they concluded that the wood could be used to create wood-flooring for her house. Not only was this a creative and functional form of recycling, it also creates a personal narrative—a story between the person and the trees. Such narratives are absent from the commercial lumber bought in stores, which are produced by corporations like Weyerhauser who cultivate entire forests of fast-growth timber specifically for the industry. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> There is another narrative told through timber, which ties this modern sawyer to the local mills of the past. Although early lumber mills thrived with the expansion of the railroad, the St. Johns River was also a great way of transporting heavy logs. Along the way, some of the logs inevitably sank to the bottom of the river (The Ole General Store, 2012). Bob Hughes and several other experts have collaborated in a project to recover these logs. Environmental regulations typically forbid anyone from recovering trees from the bottom of rivers, provided their deposition was the result of windfall. But since the displacement of these logs was initially the result of human activity, it is possible to get a permit to recover them, provided you also have the training and equipment to do so. Today, the wood cut from these logs serve as mantle pieces, table tops and works of art, each harboring the narrative of those who came before us. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> It is these narratives that help remind us of the not-so-distant past, and can aid people in appreciating the relationship between ourselves and the environment. Bob Hughes sawmill is self-sufficient and sustainable within its scale of operation, hearkening back to the ethic of the early pioneers in the area. The fundamental difference, I would argue, is in technology. Technological developments have afforded the town of Geneva with the basic municipal services that were at one point in history an exclusive benefit of the company town. Furthermore, Mr. Hughes sawmill is able to cut trees regardless of size (within reason), overcoming the limitations of the old saws with maximal efficiency. And perhaps most importantly, in the light of the social history of the region: his labor is now his own. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> ** Conclusion ** <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> The trees, with no voice, were a silent witness to the transformation of the environment and society wrought by new developments of technology. They provided the early pioneers with the materials to construct their abodes, and passively permitted the expansion of the industrial American empire. When the forests provided all that they could, the empire left. Fortunately, technological and social limitations prevented clear-cutting from ever being economically viable. So while the old growth trees are gone, their descendants remain and hopefully will continue to for generations to come. Today, a local sawyer in Geneva provides for the lumber needs of the community, allowing homemakers to transform indiscretions into works of art, and furnishing artisans with materials that harbor a historical narrative. I believe that these narratives can engender an appreciation for the products we develop from the resources taken from the environment. Abstracted and commodified, many people do not understand the stories of the lumber they purchase from home improvement stores, and in fact they may not tell much of a story at all. Narratives provide a connection between ourselves and the environment, reminding us of our dependence on nature, and have the potential for inviting a sense of responsibility within us. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Between the early pioneers of Geneva and the Osceola mill town workers, a spirit of self-sufficiency was lost, and with it the knowledge and means to produce for oneself and the immediate community. Advancements in technology would initiate a transformation of the traditional labor practices of the South, at least for the lumber industry. But even today the shadow of slavery still persists in Florida, namely among itinerate Hispanic and Latino agricultural workers. While organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers fight for improved wages and labor conditions (Drainville 2009, 357), each person that consumes the products of their labor is participating in a network that depends on the exploitation of other human beings. Whether conscious of it or not, the participant is in some way responsible for the exploitation of others. Through localizing production and using technology to improve labor efficiency, it may be possible to gradually deconstruct this complex infrastructure of dependency and exploitation that we have created. Within this lies the possibility for a silent revolution, where individuals take control of the means of production, revive the self-sufficient ethic of the old Republic and decrease their dependence on the infrastructure of the military-petroleum complex of the contemporary State. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> ** References ** <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Brown, Robin C. 1994. //Florida’s First People//. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, Inc. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Drainville, Andr é. 2008. “Present in the World Economy: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (1996-2007)” // Globalizations // 5:3: 357-377 <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Drobney, Jeffrey A. 1996. “Company Towns and Social Tranformation in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1880-1930” // The Florida Historical Quarterly // 75:2: 121-145. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Francke, Arthur E. 1984. // Early Days of Seminole County, Florida. //Seminole County Historical Commission. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society Inc. “Extinct Towns in the Geneva Area” [] (accessed April 29, 2012) <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Geneva’s Cemetaries” [] (accessed April 29, 2012) <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Historic Timeline of the Geneva Area” [] (accessed April 29, 2012) <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. “Memories of Osceola” [] (accessed April 29, 2012) <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Rehbinder, Leo M. 2001. // Russian Immigrants in Geneva, Florida: An Autobiography. //Geneva Historical & Genealogical Society//, Inc. // <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> Shofner, Jerrell H. 1981. “Forced Labor in the Florida Forests 1880-1950”, // Journal of Forest History // 25:1: 14-25. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1102.5px; width: 1px;"> The Ole General Store. “River Recovered Lumber”. [] (accessed April 29, 2012)

<span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 6098.5px; width: 1px;"> **A Modern Sawyer in the Village of Geneva**