Battle of Bowlegs Creek: Fort Meade, Florida, April 7, 1864

On April 7, 1864, a deadly skirmish occurred at Bowlegs Creek near Fort Meade, Florida when the Union Army, lead by Captain Green, raided the Confederate Cow Calvary. As the union soldiers marched up the Peace River, they burned homes and confiscated cattle, firearms, horses, and contraband. In this article, we will discuss the causes that lead to these events, including the occupation and burning of Fort Meade on May 19, 1864 by its own citizens.

In 1863, Confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered some 20,000 men at Vicksburg, Mississippi to Ulysses S. Grant, which cut off the supply of beef from Louisiana and Texas. The Confederate Army now needed its supplies to come from the east. The largest remaining supply of cattle was in the interior of Central Florida. Pleasant W. White divided the state into commissary districts and appointed Captain James McKay as the commissary agent. McKay, formally a blockade runner at the beginning of the war along with F.A. Hendry, Louis Lanier and Jacob Summerlin, would drive off cattle from Fort Meade to Bartow, Brooksville and Gainesville, finally reaching the railroad at Baldwin, Florida. By 1864, McKay was supplying beef to about three-quarters of the Confederate Army.

Many of the citizens of the Peace River Valley lived far away from the influence of the war, and many wanted nothing to do with the war itself. However, a good portion of the people living in modern day Polk, Hardee and Desoto Counties were Union loyalists. To make matters worse, many of the families that were divided on the Confederate-Union issues, including the question of slavery, had to choose sides, thus leading to political disagreements amongst neighbors and families. In fact, very few residents in and around the Fort Meade area owned slaves. As per the Polk County tax roll in 1861, only eleven men had slaveholdings with a total value of just $81,000.

Another issue facing the residents of the area was the elimination of the draft exemption for cattleman, by the Confederate Congress. In his book Fort Meade, Florida, Canter Brown explains that “on February 17, 1864, the Confederate Congress drastically revised its conscription law, eliminating the draft exemptions for cattleman” who were supplying food to the area. Furthermore, “The change unleashed squads of conscription agents determined to force all suddenly eligible ‘cow hunters’ into confederate service, and many individuals were forced to choose sides.” Consequently, many chose to join the Union Army.

As conscription agents began to hunt down nonexempt cattlemen for the Confederate Army, many the residents of the area began to seek refuge in Union-occupied Fort Myers. These new recruits would later form Captain Henry A. Crane’s (Union Army) Second Florida Calvary. The Union presence in Southwest Florida would soon reach Confederate Captain James McKay, who would find out about Crane’s intentions to destroy the Confederacy’s cattle supply efforts with help from Confederate traitors and Union sympathizers escaping the Confederate draft.

On February 10th 1864, a planned attack on Fort Myers was organized at Fort Meade, but it would be halted due to a Union attempt to seize Tallahassee. All Confederate troops were called to obstruct the Union march from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. On February 20th of 1864, the two armies would clash at the Battle of Olustee near Lake City. This would be one of the bloodiest battles in Florida history with close to 3,000 casualties and a Confederate victory. Though, the Confederate Army defeated the Union troops, most of the Peace River Valley was left unprotected and vulnerable to Union attack.

On February 22 1864, Fort Meade residents William McCullough, William McClenithan, and State House representative James D Green arrived at Fort Myers. The men informed Union officer Captain Henry A. Crane of the Confederate’s “great loss of provisions” and their desperate need of cattle and supplies at Fort Meade. Henry A. Crane was so satisfied with this intelligence that he appointed William McCullough and James Green as lieutenants for this splendid information and on March 13, 1864, Captain Henry A. Crane dispatched thirty troops under Green to seize the Confederate supplies and gather recruits at Fort Meade. By March 20th, Green’s detachment had increased to about fifty men (mostly Confederate deserters) and marched for Willoughby Tillis’ homestead south of Fort Meade, confiscating, horses, mules, and slaves. Consequently, Green’s detachment moved on to Confederate Thomas Underhill’s home killing him with two gunfire shots. Green’s troops seized corn, meat, contraband (slaves), and firearms before returning to Fort Myers.

Union Officer Captain Henry A. Crane was so pleased with Green’s results, that on April 2nd he order the men back to Fort Meade to capture (or kill if necessary) Confederates Willoughby Tillis, James Lanier, Francis A. Hendry, Jacob Summerlin, F.C.M. Boggess, John R. Durrance, Henry Seward, Streaty Parker, and to secure supplies, horses and contraband.

The Second Florida Calvary (Union) made it just fifteen miles from Fort Meade, when they were spotted by Confederate pickets. Confederate James McKay Jr., (Capt. James McKay’s son) was in charge of the battalion at Fort Meade, retrieved his forces and halted Union advancement at Bowlegs Creek. On April 7th 1864, Union and Confederates met in battle near present day Mt. Pisgah Road and Dishong Road, just two miles south of where US 98 crosses the Peace River. It was a brief skirmish that left Confederate James Lanier (a Fort Meade resident) dead and wounding Henry A. Prine (of Sucrum) in the foot. The Confederate Army retreated back to Fort Meade; however, the Union Army would lay siege to the Tillis’ homestead. Union soldiers then burnt the Tillis home and destroyed all of the Tillis’ family possessions. (See previous article, “The Battle of Peace River.”)

The Union troops failed to control Confederate-occupied Fort Meade but would return later with reinforcement including the Second Regiment-- United States Colored Troops (USCT). On May 6, 1864, Union forces briefly occupied Tampa, while James McKay Jr.’s confederate forces were preparing for the first cattle drive of the year. McKay quickly gathered up his Tampa Confederate troops and marched towards Tampa, but the Union Army had already reached their goal of confiscating supplies, ammunition and dismantling a canon at Fort Brooke. When McKay reached Tampa, the Union Army had already withdrawn from the scene.

On May 13, 1864 five officers along with one hundred of the Second Florida Calvary and 107 black troops from the United States Colored Troops, headed for Fort Meade. Their mission was to relieve Union family members who had been captured at Fort Meade and to acquire the remaining confederate beef cattle. Union forces captured two Confederate pickets who informed them (the Union forces) of the planned ambush on the road to Fort Meade; therefore, the Union forces would instead cross Pease Creek below the mouth of Bowlegs Creek taking possession of Fort Meade without any resistance. Confederate troops drew a skirmish line with some sixty troops but retreated.

On May 19, 1864, Union forces (comprised of many of Fort Meade’s own citizens) burned Fort Meade destroying all buildings, except a log officer’s quarters, which would later be occupied by Captain Francis A. Hendry after the war. In the 1890s, it would be dismantled.

Photographs courtesy of Spessard Stone.
Fort Meade map courtesy of Canter Brown, Jr.

Edgar J. Watson’s Island Graveyard of Horror – Chokoloskee, Florida

The small isolated island of Chokoloskee, Florida is a quant fishing town that is part of the Ten Thousand Islands, which in the late 19th Century was a haven for fugitives, criminals and murders. The area comprising the Ten Thousand Islands is a remote area of swamps, shell mounds and mangroves. It is also the location for where one of the grizzliest acts imaginable took place on an Indian shell mound just 90 miles south of Fort Myers, Florida.

The notorious blue-eyed and red-haired Edgar J. Watson of Scottish descent was born on November, 11, 1855 in Edgefield County, SC. Watson’s father, Lige Watson, was a penitentiary warden and a very violent man. He got into many knife fights, one which incidentally inflicted a knife wound around his own right eye. Subsequently, he became known as ‘Ring Eye.’ E.J Watson’s mother fled her malicious husband with Edgar and his sister Minnie, relocating to Fort White, Florida to live with relatives.

When Watson was a young man, he married his first of three wives and rented a farm but lost it after a tavern fight which resulted in an injury to his kneecap. Watson later left with his first wife for Arkansas when he was suspected of killing Belle Starr, a notorious female outlaw in 1889. Watson’s motive for the killing was his fear that Belle Starr would turn him into the authorities for a murder he committed in Lake City, Florida. In fact, he was even put on trial, however nothing came of it and he was acquitted. In 1891, he returned to Florida and killed a man in Arcadia, allegedly in self-defense.

Watson built a respectable two-story framed vernacular home around 1892 on his 40 acre parcel at Chatham Bend, about seventeen miles south of Chokoloskee, Florida. He had a farm and grew sugarcane, papayas, horse bananas, beans and sold his goods in Fort Myers and Key West. He was a successful farmer and to some, he was even a kind and pleasant man. He would occasionally travel to Marco Island, Fort Myers and even Tampa searching for vagabonds, migrants and wayfarer types that he would bring back to his plantation near the Chatham River in order to give them work. Locals believed his success was due to his ‘cheap’ labor as he never intended on paying them their wages in the first place. One thing is clear: none of these people ever seemed to leave Chatham Bend alive.

While in Key West, Watson had reluctantly got into a heated argument with an early Collier County pioneer named Adolphus Santini who he had met at an auction house. Watson cut the man’s throat. Santini survived, but barely. The incident would cost Watson just $900, a small price for almost taking a man’s life. In Monroe County, Watson purchased a parcel of land on ‘Lost Man’s River.’ However, a squatter by the name of Tucker and his nephew who refused to leave, would later be found dead at their campsite. When fingers began to point at Watson for the murders, he left for Fort White, Florida. There, he was nearly hung after a saloon fight which left two more men dead.

Watson had several fugitives living on his property including a man named Dutchy Melvin who was said to have killed a police man and took a liking to torching buildings. While Watson and Melvin were in Chokoloskee, another man by the name of Lesley Cox, the groundskeeper of Watson’s property, and an unknown person known only as ‘the nigger,’ were said to have murdered Hannah Smith and a man named Walker. When Watson and Melvin returned to Watson’s house near Chatham Bend, Cox and the man known as ‘the nigger’ would also end up murdering Melvin. Hannah Smith’s body was found floating in the Chatham Bend River near Watson’s property. She had been gutted so that her body would sink to the bottom of the river.

A black man who fled the island where Watson lived had arrived in Chokoloskee and began to speak about tales of murder at Chatham Bend. In her book The Everglades - The River of Grass, Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote that, “the story the Negro told was that he worked for Watson a long time and seen him shoot a couple of men. The Negro said he’d buried a lot of people on his place, or knocked them overboard when they asked him for their money. Watson was away, the Negro said. His overseer, named Cox, killed another man and the old woman [Hannah Smith] and forced the Negro to help cut them open and throw them in the river.”

After the rumors began to circulate about Watson’s murders, a group of men embarked for Watson’s sugar cane plantation and found the grizzly remains of human skulls. More than 50 skeletons would later be found near and around his island home. Cox managed to escape and was never seen or heard from again. On October 17, 1910, a hurricane swept through Collier County while Watson fled to Fort Myers for shelter. Watson then contacted Sheriff Frank Tippens to arrest Cox for all of the dead bodies found on his remote property; however, the Lee County Sheriff would not get past Marco Island before turning back due to the bad weather.

Watson then purchased some shot-gun shells from C.S. Smallwood’s general store and headed for Chatham Bend to kill Cox himself. He returned on October 24, 1910 to the general store and was confronted by an armed posse comprised of fisherman, farmers and merchants. Watson claimed to have gunned down and drowned Cox in the swamp, showing his hat as evidence. Apparently, Smallwood had sold Watson wet shot-gun shells that were rendered useless so the crowd didn’t believe him. Old man McKinney asked Watson to drop his gun but Watson refused and attempted to fire at the men. The group fired back, riddling his lifeless body with bullets, then proceeded to drag his bloody corpse behind a boat at Rabbit Key and buried him in a shallow grave near a mud bank. However, before meeting his final resting place, the rope used to drag his body behind the boat was then tied to a mangrove tree and Watson’s body was left there for days until it was finally reburied at the Fort Myers Cemetery.

Watson’s home on the Chatham River would remain unharmed for many years. In fact, a woman who lived there was said to have gone crazy, burning every tree on the property. She had burned them all except an extremely robust Poinciana with snake like roots, which still remains on the property today. The property is now part of Everglades National Park and is only assessable by boat. The house no longer stands (it burned in the 1940’s), but the cement cistern, a sugarcane syrup cauldron and some farm machinery remain.