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I have always been a person interested in history and particularly my family history. When I first started doing research into my family a distant cousin who was also very interested in family history, told me that when I talked to the older people in the family to take a tape recorder and record what they had to say. When I was told this several decades ago, taking a tape recorder with me at the time would have been a little bit of a job. At the time tape recorders were about the size of a medium size suit case and were usually on a rolling...
This is a brief history of the Century High School. This history would not be appropriate without a short History of the Century grammar Schools as taken from the minutes of the Escambia County School Board Meetings. In 1901 an almost square building containing two rooms was built on the North side of Church Street at Mayo Street. It was built by the Alger-Sullivan Lumber Company (Hereinafter referred to as the Company) On September 23, 1901, the Board of Public Instruction (Hereinafter referred to as the Board) on motion voted that the New...
With this Covid 19 pandemic just about everything has changed. One thing that hasn't changed that much thanks to the internet is doing family research. I've been able to continue my research at about the same as before the pandemic came about due to the fact that now a lot of research can be done online and you don't have to visit actual libraries to do research. Even with the fact that a lot of research can be done online, I still encourage anyone serious about family research to visit local libraries because a lot of times you can find local...
Most of this story about dog days is from a few years ago, but with us at the beginning of the meteorological summer that runs from June 1 until August 31 unlike the astronomical summer that runs from June 20 until September 22, 2020. I thought that since the heat will be one of the main things on most of our minds for the next few months now would be a good time to repeat it since dog days was always a popular thing to talk about at most places I worked at over the years. Today is also the start of the 2020 hurricane season, which we have...
With these morning being a little cooler than what most of us expect for this time of the year it reminds me of what I heard my great-grandmother (1858-1964) talk about many years ago. She had mentioned on more than one occasion about hearing her grandmother talk about a year with no summer. Being a fifth or sixth grader at this time I really wasn't interested in it, but it was just one of those things that I always remembered for some reason. As I got older I begin to think about the year without a summer and come to learn that such a event...
With the passing of popular Mobile television and radio personality Rennie Brabner I lost a opportunity to tell him something that I thought he would have enjoyed knowing about. As much as I had intended to email him and tell him about all the chaos he cause on one of our camping trips I never got around to it, which I regret. In fact I didn't know that he had broke the story that caused all the chaos at the camp that night. It must had been the 40th anniversary of the event when I heard him talking about breaking the story back in October of 1...
With this Covid-19 the world is now changing faster than it ever has before. By the time this is over there is no telling what kind of world we will be living in. I will be glad when this is over and maybe we can get to what ever the new normal will be, it could be very different, or it could be business as usual. Listen to your state and local leaders for information, and there are several websites updated daily for those of you with access to the internet. I can tell you one thing, the criminals will be trying to take advantage of the...
Several years ago when I first took a DNA test to trace my ancestors only a few hundred people showed up on it that I had shared DNA with. When I checked again just a few days ago the number of people in the world that I had shared DNA with was just over one hundred thousand. According to my DNA I have almost three thousand five hundred fourth cousins or closer, and over ninety eight thousand fifth to eighth cousins in the world. As far as I can tell the test are pretty accurate, several of the ones on my list of relatives are people that I per...
I have written about family research several times but I'm always finding new information about not only my family but others in this area. I got interested in my ancestors at a early age. I remember talking to several family members about my family. I first started taking notes with a regular school notebook and pencil back in the 1970's, when I would talk to the older people in the family. One of the best sources of information back then was libraries, where you could look up old records. A older family member who was also very interested in...
As part of a group of ham radio operators that enjoys experimenting with high attitude weather balloons we are now getting ready to try a new adventure, this will involve using special balloons that have been known to stay up for as long as two years and circle the world several times. We have been successful with the high attitude balloons, such as the one we launched at the end of August last year, (2019). Our original intention was to send this balloon up to about 130,000 feet, but the computer models of the upper level wind currents at the...
With Christmas on us I think back to some of my first Christmas holidays, like most other kids the important thing to me was being out of school for a couple of weeks. Waking up on Christmas morning and coming into the living room and seeing all those presents was about the only thing better than being out of school for two weeks. Our parents always tried to rush us off to bed on Christmas Eve night because they would be lucky if one of us didn't wake up before four o'clock in the morning. Of course when we got up they got up, in fact I...
With the weather turning colder and football season coming to a close a lot of us begin to think about hunting and camping for the upcoming hunting season. One of the advantages of living in this area is the opportunities for hunting and fishing in this area. I've been on a several memorable camping trips but some are more memorable than others. One very memorable trip happen back in the early 1970's. This happen just a couple of weeks after what became known as the Pascagoula UFO abduction which at the time was all over the world news....
While doing family tree research I was working on my mother's side of the family and specifically a grand uncle. I remember him telling me that he was chased by a Hoop snake when he was young. Apparently the Hoop snake was quite common a hundred years ago, even if it's existence is highly questioned today. Now if you don't know what a hoop snake is I will tell you. According to legend it is probably one of the most venomous creatures to ever live, and it would grab it's tail with it's mouth and make a hoop so it could roll after it's prey. It d...
One of the things I remember from years ago being from Century was Blackcat football. For years after we got out of high school, Friday night during the fall always meant following those Century Blackcats to places near and far for some great football action. Sometimes the trips to or from the games had their own version of excitement. I was the one that usually did the driving to and from the games. One of the high points of our trips was to stop and enjoy a good meal at some restaurant along the way, either before or after the game. We had...
On August 31, 2019, a group of ham radio operators sent a weather balloon up from the Brewton Area YMCA. Our balloon adventure was a huge success. The payload package contain several instruments, including a repeater that was used to talk to each other through. We weren't able to use some of the instruments we wanted to due to FAA weight restrictions. After reaching approximately 113,000 feet the payload package parachuted down on Grist Mill road in Excel. It was found by a local resident in Excel and he called one of the numbers attached to...
While watching the local news one morning before going to work I heard one of the anchors use a word that I haven't heard anyone use for years, in fact about forty years. A friend that lived in Monroeville used the “made up word” one night while we were going to Bonifay to a Century Blackcat football game. Our plan was to go to Bonifay in my Mercury Montego, but the water pump was leaking on it so we decided to go in a friends Ford Maverick. T his was sometime during the mid to late 1970's because I had a ham radio walkie talkie with me and I w...
It sure is hot! It's hot! I'm betting that most of you have heard something similar to this if not these exact words during the past several weeks. I've heard people talk about dog days recently, that's a interesting subject. There are several different ways of thinking on dog days. According to most people they start somewhere between July 3, and July 15 and last anywhere from 30 days to 61 days. But I definitely remember my grandparents talk about dog days running from July 25, until September 2, forty days. I'm not saying either one is...
Like millions of other people, fifty years ago this past weekend, July 20, 1969, I was watching world history being made on the television. The United States became the first country to put men on the moon. Like most teenagers of the time this got my interest in space to going at full speed. As time went by I more or less decided that watching the moon landing was about as close as I would get to any kind of activity to do with outer space. But twenty six years later I would get a little more closer and personal with outer space, in fact our...
I have written several times about family history. Back in the 1980's when I was just getting started in family research it was trips to libraries other places where records were kept. Some time during the mid 1990's there was these things called computers and the internet coming into play. Some smart people saw a way to use the computers and internet to do family research making everything much easier for us. This made finding your relative from all over the world somewhat easier. Then several years later a thing called DNA research came...
When I was growing up it was just about a sure thing that during the summer we would take a family vacation. Most of our vacations were to the eastern United States, normally around Tennessee or North Carolina. Many of the memories I have of these vacations are more or less regular vacation memories and some are more of a once in a life time memory. One the of the first was when my dad came to Century Elementary School one Thursday morning and checked me out of what I think was the second grade. He didn't tell me why, but it wasn't long before...
I have been doing family research to some degree for about forty five years or so, some people have said it's similar to detective work and I guess there is some truth to that being you are investigating not only people from the past, but also here in the present as well. For the first several years it was all done with pencil and paper and going to various places checking on what ever records were available. By the mid 1990's computers were coming into play with just about everything including tracking your ancestors. I was on a job in south...
This past weekend we had the Blackcat Reunion at Lake Stone. I got to see several old friends that I haven't seen in many years, and some that I see almost daily. This is a great opportunity to see some friends you went to school with that you may not have seen in several years. I've been to a few of the reunions now and it seems that almost that each year I get to see different friends that for some reason wasn't able to make it the previous year or years. If you like good food that is another reason to come to the reunion, there is always...
With spring turkey season going at full speed right now and fishing and camping starting to get on the minds of many people it reminds me of a couple of camping trips that I went on several years ago. One of them was during the opening of Lake Stone, even though most of us lived just a few minutes walk away from the lake we decided we would camp in the campground at the lake for the opening day. The lake opened in the late 1960's so we were teenagers at the time. With the opening of the lake a couple of days away we pretty much had the...
We have ancestors that some of us are interested in past. Knowing where they came from and how they lived can sometimes help us understand how we got to where we are. When you start researching your ancestors you may find some that you will be proud of and then you may find some that you rather not know a lot about. When I first got interested in where my family came from you had to do a lot of leg work and traveling to various cities and towns checking local libraries for records of your family that may have lived in the town at one time. I...
This week I'm going to be telling a little personal history as well as community history that very few people know about. The main event of this story happen back in the early nineties, 1991 I believe, and I will touch on another event that we did in 1995. Both events were accomplished by local ham radio operators from the southwest Alabama and northwest Florida area. The first event was launching a weather balloon that went to attitude of approximately 120,000 feet. The balloon had a payload...
