📖📖📖The Captains Home (Stand Alone)

 THE CAPTAINS HOME

 This story comes from Hernando County, Florida. This area is now a boat ramp, fishing pier and park. This story is about a former Civil War Captain and his family. Unlike most stories where everyone lives happily ever after, this story tells of the Captains end.

The Captain had been given a plot of land on the Gulf of Mexico as a reward for his war efforts. This reward came with one stipulation. The Captain had to remain in service and help communicate with the local Indian tribes and to keep the peace. The reward was accepted and the Captain built his home amoung the swampy marsh. As the years went by, the Captainmaintained peace with the local Indian tribes and maintained good relations with them. Some of the locals said the Captains land was cursed, however the Captain squashed those rumors and said he and his family were blessed to live in such a beautiful area.

Locals started the rumors again, when one day during a meeting with a local chief, one of his farm workers interupted thier meeting with word that the Captains wife was in labor and she was having complications. The Chief sent a group of the older woman of the tribe to assist in the birth, as the Captain sent the farm hand to the local Doctors home to come assist. The farm hand later arrived stating that the Doctor was not available and the Indian woman did all they could to save his wife. Later after the birth his wife passed from the complications. The Doctor did arrive before she had passed and stated that the woman of the tribe did a miraculous job and he would not have been able to do any better.

Although he had grieved for his wife, the Captain knew that there was nothing to be done and held no ill will for the Doctor or the woman who had tried to help with the delivery. He praised the woman who helped with the birth and thanked them for saving his newborn child. The local tribe also attended her funeral as a mark of respect they had for the Captain.

 

 

Years passed as the Captain raised his children and continued his obligation to help communicate with the local Indians. One morning a garrison showed up at the Captain's home because there had been a report of growing tension with one of the local tribes. The leader requested the Captains' help. The Captain had gone to meet up with the leaders for what he had thought would be a peaceful meeting. However, during the meeting, another Captain from the area killed a local tribal leader and many others. The Captain tried to stop the fighting and bring about a peaceful resolution. During the fight, he was stabbed in the leg by an Indian brave. The garrison soldiers had taken the Captain home and left him alone with his freed slaves and children. Doing this would be a fatal mistake.

 

In the early morning hours, three days after the failed peace meeting, the Indians declared war. Even though the Captain had not caused any death and had tried to gain peace, the tribe had decided he was an enemy, and a war party descended upon the property to exact revenge. The children in the barn with field hands were whisked away to safety and hid in the swamps. The eldest daughter, upstairs with a maid, hid in a hideaway passage while the Indians searched the home. However, the Captain, the nanny, and his two youngest children were not so lucky. The children played in the hallway with the nanny when the war party rode horses into the home and trampled them. Then the war party dismounted the horses, walked into the sick room, and killed the Captain while in his bed. As the legend says, the Captain's last sight was of his two youngest children dead in the hallway.

 

After the attack, the eldest daughter's fiance, who was in the military, asked why no soldiers were left to help protect the Captain and his family after the meeting that happened. Why were they left alone? A high-ranking Commander in charge of the inquest stated that there was no meeting planned and that he did not know about the meeting. He had discovered that this meeting was never authorized. Later information showed that the other Captain in attendance caused the bloodshed in retaliation for his livestock hunted by an Indian hunting party further south. The eldest daughter lived in the home with her siblings and servants until her wedding. When she married her husband, they took all the remaining siblings and staff and moved to Saint Augustine, where her husband lived. Before leaving the property with her family, the daughter burned the home and farm to the ground, leaving nothing behind but smoke and ash.

 

As many times as I've heard the story, we never were given an exact location, however, there is a rumor has it there are a few driveways on the right side before you get to the Bayport pier and boat launch, and one of them is a way to get to the land. (However, this may now be private property, so first ask for permission if you try to find it.) If you're brave enough to trample along the water near the picnic tables by the canoe launch, there used to be a rumored path to get to the location. However, you don't need to do any of that because during a warm spring or summer morning, if you time it just right and the air has that spark, if you sit at the tables and listen. You might hear the Indian war party start and the sound of horses running, then the screams of children. I searched for the location once and experienced the sounds of the war party, and I never wanted to risk meeting them.