Page 166 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote and Some Stuff I Didn't (2011) H. Morris Williams

It was not long until he was sent to Florida to fight the Seminole Indians, and
he barely escaped death.

In Sumpter County, near Dade City, there was an army fort, of which Joseph
Dicks was a part of the garrison. Two days after his discharge, it had been told

that he and a fellow soldier who was discharged with him encountered an

extremely large Indian war party headed south toward the fort, while he and his
buddy were headed back up into northern Florida.

The Indian attack is now known as the Dade Massacre, and every single soldier
at the fort was killed.

Joseph and his friend hid in the woods until the Indians were out of sight.

All of the Dicks family needs to be very thankftd that Joseph Dicks was
discharged at the time he was, or he would have had no descendants.

Joseph Dicks later married Sarah Taylor and after a short stay in South
Georgia, they moved back to the Columbia County area where Joseph Dicks

did extensive farming and operated a sawmill.

Lumber was much in demand at the time, and apparently he was a successftd
lumberman in addition to his farming operations.

This writer’s father, the Rev. John Dicks, who was born in 1888, has told me
that when he was a small boy, eight or nine years old, that he would go with his

granddaddy Joseph Dicks in a two-horse wagon, and they would peddle
grapefruit up and down the streets in Lake City, which they picked from

Joseph Dicks' own grapefruit orchard.

It was not too long after that that the extreme cold wiped out all of the citrus
industry from some point north of Gainesville, but it is said that prior to that

there was a lot of citrus grown in the Columbia County area.

My great-grandfather was opposed to slavery, although it was very common
during his day.

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