Florida Fallen Stories

Photo courtesy of Mark Krancer
Wiley Haralson Burford

Wiley Haralson Burford

Born in Ocala, Marion County, Florida, on October 31, 1893, Wiley Burford was the second of three sons among five children of Robert Allen Burford (1856-1938), a prominent attorney originally from Dixon Springs, Tennessee, and Ella Louise Murphree (1862-1945), of...

read more
Moses Leonard (Dick) Morgan

Moses Leonard (Dick) Morgan

Moses Waters was angry at Dick Morgan. Armed with a Winchester rifle, he sent word to Morgan to meet him at Crow Bridge, on Coldwater Creek, about 13 miles from Milton, Florida. After Morgan refused to retract what he had said about him, Waters fired at Morgan,...

read more
Lindley Haines (Diggie) DeGarmo

Lindley Haines (Diggie) DeGarmo

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1890, DeGarmo graduated in 1908 from Ridgewood (N.J.) High School, where he played basketball and was advertising manager of the first issue of the school yearbook, The Arrow. Nicknamed “Diggie,” he was the class vice...

read more
Harold Eugene Gould

Harold Eugene Gould

When reporting the death of Harold Gould on September 4, 1918, The DeLand News remarked that, although the 33-year-old had lived most of his life in DeLand, he was “of a roving disposition” and had traveled a great deal before dying in defense of his country. Born in...

read more
Frederick (Fred) Buford Stringfellow

Frederick (Fred) Buford Stringfellow

A descendant of one of the oldest colonial families of Virginia, Fred Stringfellow’s paternal grandfather, William Hall Stringfellow (1818-1869), was a physician and a large plantation slaveowner from Chester, South Carolina, who in the late-1850s traveled south with...

read more
Clara Summerlin Mendenhall

Clara Summerlin Mendenhall

Clara Summerlin was born in Fort Myers, Florida on December 5, 1880, daughter of Samuel Summerlin (1856-1944), a pioneer cattle rancher, and Katheryn (Kate) Deisher (1858-1901). In 1885, she lived in Key West, Florida. Fifteen years later, she resided in College Hill,...

read more
Charles Loomis

Charles Loomis

There are five members of the Y.M.C.A. whose names were included on the Memorial Scrolls, but Charles Loomis was not among them. A descendant of Joseph Loomis, who came from Braintree, England, and settled in Windsor, Connecticut in 1638, Charles Loomis was born in...

read more
Benjamin J. Bowie, Jr.

Benjamin J. Bowie, Jr.

Ben Bowie was born on December 27, 1887, in Monticello, Jefferson County, Florida. He was the son of Annie Sanders (1871-1932), a laundress, and Benjamin J. Bowie, Sr. (born 1861), a farm laborer from Florida. Ben had a younger sister, Nola Willie (1888-1955), a...

read more
Aston St. John Jensen

Aston St. John Jensen

When the Hendersonville Motorcycle Club held its first races in its history on Saturday, January 9, 1915, riders and their bikes came from nearby Asheville, North Carolina, on the early morning train. Despite the cold, hundreds of spectators lined the racetrack some...

read more
Arthur Ellis Hamm

Arthur Ellis Hamm

Captain Arthur Ellis Hamm was killed in action in the Lorraine front of France, on September 14, 1918, a few weeks after his 26th birthday. His name was not included on the Memorial Scroll, but it should have been. He lived in Florida as many as five years prior to...

read more
Edward Cantey De Saussure

Edward Cantey De Saussure

The vast majority (96%) of Florida’s Fallen were enlisted men, the most common rank being private or its naval equivalent of apprentice seaman. Edward Cantey De Saussure was among the relatively few officers from Florida who…

read more
Lee Brezel

Lee Brezel

Lee Brezel (pronounced “bre-zeal”) was born on May 25, 1890, in Gordon, Wilkinson County, Georgia, between Macon and Milledgeville. His father was Forrest Brezel (1868-1924) from Irwinton who married Mollie Brantley…

read more
Laura Anna Baird

Laura Anna Baird

Laura Baird was born in Hague, Florida, a small community located between Gainesville and Alachua, on March 12, 1886, to Emmet Joseph Baird (1857-1925) and Mary Ann Eshelman (1860-1948). She had two older brothers…

read more
Florida’s Fallen at Camp Wheeler

Florida’s Fallen at Camp Wheeler

At many as 108 of Florida’s Fallen died at Camp Wheeler, some 165 miles from the Florida-Georgia state line. Camp Wheeler was established in 1917 as one of 16 Army National Guard Mobilization and Training Camps…

read more
Florida’s Fallen at Camp Devens

Florida’s Fallen at Camp Devens

More of Florida’s Fallen died at Camp Devens than at any other place in the United States.  Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the 124 known deaths occurred during the…

read more
John Clarence Cheshire

John Clarence Cheshire

So, who made the metal box that contained the Scrolls until they were unearthed by the members of the Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department in November 2018? The only clue is the mark on the box with the initials…

read more
Esley W. Washington

Esley W. Washington

Washington was born in Aiken County, South Carolina on August 6, 1890. In the 1900 Census, he is listed as a 10-year-old farm laborer in Windsor Township, Aiken County, with his mother, Sarah, age 45, as head of household…

read more
Benjamin (Ben) Lee II

Benjamin (Ben) Lee II

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 4, 1894, Benjamin Lee II was the third son of Leighton Lee (1866-1898) and Mary Cooke Justice (1867-1949). Lee’s paternal grandfather, Benjamin M. Lee, was a practicing physician…

read more
Luther Wade Pilcher

Luther Wade Pilcher

Scroll 2 # 730     Born in Dothan, Alabama, on January 1, 1898, Wade was the son of Richard (Dick) Lafayette Pilcher, Jr. (1871-1941), who, with his eight siblings and parents, had moved from rural Dale County to Dothan in 1882. They lived at the corner of...

read more
Peter (Pete) Giles

Peter (Pete) Giles

Peter Giles was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on January 13, 1892. By 1900, he had moved to Tampa, Florida, where his father, John Manson Giles (1856-1948), was a citrus grower. He was the youngest of seven…

read more
John Lawton Moon

John Lawton Moon

Moon was born in Cartersville, Georgia on November 21, 1879. He graduated from Emory College (now University) with highest honors in 1903. Serving as a missionary in Cuba for six months…

read more
Carl Oscar Anderson

Carl Oscar Anderson

Carl Oscar Anderson was born on March 3, 1892, in Orange County, Florida. Anderson’s parents, Axel Teodor Anderson (1858-1937) and Anna Augusta Wilhelmina Elisabet Nilsson (1864-1903), were Swedish immigrants…

read more
Albert Anderson

Albert Anderson

Anderson was born in Pinewood, Florida, on April 15, 1890, son of John and Lucinda Anderson, farm laborers, who in 1900 lived in Milton, Santa Rosa County, along with their four other children…

read more
Elizabeth (Bessie) Gale

Elizabeth (Bessie) Gale

Elizabeth (Bessie) Gale was born in New Marlborough, Massachusetts on April 24, 1872. Her father was Sullivan French Gale (1842-1909), former 1st Sergeant, Co C, 13th Vermont Infantry and a veteran of Gettysburg…

read more
Elbert Clive Trafford

Elbert Clive Trafford

Trafford was born in Sanford, Florida on March 14, 1878. He appears in the 1880 Census for Orange County, Florida, with his father, Edward Robert Trafford, a civil engineer…

read more
USCGC Tampa

USCGC Tampa

U.S. Revenue Cutter Miami, before it was renamed the Tampa.   In the summer of 1917, the Tampa was one of six United States Coast Guard cutters sent overseas on convoy duty. Only the Tampa did not return. The German submarine UB-91 torpedoed and sank the Tampa...

read more
Charles Emmitt Galvin

Charles Emmitt Galvin

Master at arms. Born in Brandon, Hillsborough County, Florida, March 12, 1894. Lived in Tampa and attended Sacred Heart Academy. Enlisted in U.S. Coast Guard at Key West…

read more