BOOE, Zeb - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

Zeb E. Booe, who died at his home in Bunnell, Florida, March 22, aged 88 years had an evenful life, begun in a log cabin near the Scott’s Prairie neighborhood of Fountain County and ended in his retirement home in Bunnell after about a year of failing sight and health.  His funeral and burial took place there.  He was a brother of Mrs. Margaret Booe May who is making her home with her son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dice.  He had written an autobiography from which were taken the facts that follow.  

Zeb became a school teacher at the age of 17 and taught 20 years in the Kingman community more or less continuously except for 10 years he was engaged in real estate and insurance business in Veedersburg with Austin V. Hitch as a partner before moving to Florida. And when Flagler county was formed he became the chairman of the first county board of education; served as county superintendent of public instruction from 1928-1936 and thereafter kept such close association with the schools that in 1947 he was honored as a man who had devoted most of 67 years to the schools.

He was born in the cabin on the farm of his parents, James Moffett Booe and Maria (Spinning) Booe, east of Steam Corner on Dec 16, 1862.  He attended local schools worked on the farm and also in his father’s tile factory on the farm until he was 17.  In that year he became a member of the Scott’s Prairie Christian Church and also started his teaching career.  He was married on Jan 13, 1885 to Ida May Coffing at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Brazier Coffing in Covington.  She survives as do two sons, Fred S. and Willie Booe, both of Bunnell; two granddaughters, Mrs. Claude Dean of Bunnell and Miss Betty Jean Booe and two grandsons, James Jr a bandmaster and Richard Booe of NY City.  James Jr’s father, James also was a bandmaster and was lost in the destruction of the Battleship Oklahoma in the Pearl Habor tragedy of 1941.  (Note: there seems to be info missing here) Richard is the son of the late Warben and Myrtle (Purnell) Booe, both deceased.  Mr. Booe’s second son, Harry died in 1949 in Daytona Beach, Fla.  Mrs. Frances Dice, daughter of Mrs. May is  a niece and her daughter, Mrs. Margaret Ann Strawser is a great niece.  

Mr. Booe after teaching for a time, attended Eureka College, enrolling as a sophomore by reason of summer schooling and doing reading circle work and was rewarded with an exemption teacher’s certificate which required no further examination as long as he taught.  For one summer he taught in the Covington teacher’s training school.

For 10 years he was one of the most active Veedersburg business men in the real estate and insurance business with Mr. Hitch from 1903-1913 during which they conducted an emigration business to Texas, selling gulf state lands. For a time he had been a mail clerk on mail trains between Richmond Ind and St. Louis.  In 1913 they dissolved the firm, Mr. Hitch going to Texas and Mr. Booe purchased $5000 of the bonds of the Dupont Railroad and Land Company and moved his family to Dupont, Fla.

Charles W. Miller, US District Attorney at Indianapolis; and Will R. Wood of Lafayette afterward a congressman were among others interested in the development and a cousin, Marley Booe had been a securities salesman interested in financing the company.  A group of owners pooled their holdings of 1,975 acres and organized Haw Creek Farms Co of which Mr. Booe became general manager.  They shipped from Veedersburg by freight car a pair of mules, two sows and a milk cow in one end of the car and their furniture in the other.  

They rented a two-story house by the Halifax river and Mr. Booe’s parents spent the winter with them, returning the next fall but the elder Booe passed away and the following winter the widow died at Veedersburg.  Zeb arrived before his mother died and her last words to him were, “Zeb be good.”

Harry, Warben and Willie Booe and their uncle, Will Brown lived the first winter in a box car on a narrow guage side-track about 1 ½ miles from a clearing on the Haw Creek Farms.  A house was built that first year, however.

Mr. Booe threw his energies into the farms development and the boys fenced 360 acres as an experimental farm, producing large crops of Irish potatoes, one crop which sold for $29,800; sweet potatoes, cabbage, corn, hay and cotton, peanuts and other experimental crops. They built the first silo, the first dipping vat for livestock to combat Texas fever and the first compost vat in Flagler County a new county formed by act of the legislature, when Mr. Booe was appointed by Gov. Catts to the first county school board.

Mr. Booe became bookkeeper, cashier and letter writer for the Bunnell Development company for four years, and later manager.  He sold many lots and tracts but a former manager had mismanaged the company so that it took him 7 or 8 years to liquidate it and when it was ended, the company still owed Mr. Booe $800 salary.  However, he had established his personal affairs soundly and remained active until a year ago when he retired as secretary of a drainage organization. – kbz