Worm Gruntin' and Family Roots - Searching for Emily in Sopchoppy, Florida
If you know where Sopchoppy, Wakulla County, Florida, is... well, you must either live there or live nearby, since it is not a very big place or known for having many famous people from the area. However, there is one thing that it is famous for, charming worms [Yes, you heard that right!] out of the ground during its annual American Worm Gruntin' Festival. It sounds like fishing must be really popular around there, eh? However, for me, Sopchoppy is famous as the place where my 2nd Great-grandmother, Emily (Winburn) Perkins, was born on the 16th of November 1849.[1][2] We know she ended up in Louisiana after living in Texas for a while, but I wanted to know why her family left Florida. So visiting and learning about Sopchoppy was a must on my genealogy to-do list!
We had planned to stay in Sopchoppy for five days, so I could visit the courthouse and the library. But due to a longer-than-expected stay for repairs on our RV, we had only one afternoon to check it out before traveling to another commitment. Still, it gave us time to take in the town, the landscape, and the surrounding area, which is fairly close to the coast. The area was beautiful in the spring, and the town of Sopchoppy had the "Old Florida" small-town charm! It borders the Apalachicola National Forest and is surrounded by many tall pines. Now I am sure the summer is different when the heat and humidity soars, but it did give me a better "picture" of where my 2nd Great-grandmother was born!
Learning the history of Sopchoppy before it was established in 1853 was not easy. In fact, strictly speaking, Emily was born in 1849 in an area that would not officially become Sopchoppy for four years. The only thing I could find that even mentioned Sopchoppy before this was in a newspaper article about a military notice during the Creek Indian War. So. I looked into Port Leon, which was only a few miles south of Sopchoppy. Port Leon was briefly the county seat of Wakulla County and a major shipping hub for cotton plantations. However, in 1843, it was wiped out by a hurricane and finally abandoned.
The bigger question for me is why the Winburn family stopped here at all, and then why they left. We don't know either answer for certain. Maybe they intended to stay, since Emily's uncle and his family did. Or maybe, for her parents, John B. Winburn and Martha (Jackson) Winburn, Texas simply offered a better life. Thousands of Georgians moved to Texas after it achieved statehood in 1845, and the Winburns had roots there: Emily's grandparents, uncles, and aunts were originally from Pulaski County, Georgia. By the time the family was on the move in 1857, her grandfather, William Winburn, had died, and her grandmother, Nancy (Truluck) Winburn, would follow; perhaps loosening whatever held them in Florida. Emily and her parents eventually settled in Owensville, Robertson County, Texas, after a quick stop near Sugartown, Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana — a place that would play a major role in the rest of her life!
So Sopchoppy, Florida, will continue to be on my radar to answer questions I have about this family. I just need to find more pieces of this mystery to better understand what their life was like and what drove them to keep going. We will be returning not only to check out the county courthouse and local libraries, but also to explore this beautiful area, especially to bike and hike its wonderful trails!
- Louisiana, Vital Records - State Archives, Certificate of Death no. 1027 (1934), Calcasieu Parish, Mrs. John H. Perkins (Winburn), died 8 Nov 1934; issued 9 February 2000 to Kim Stracener Zapalac, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] Austin, Texas.↩︎
- Samuel L. Harrison, "Clan Perkins of Sugartown, Louisiana," typed family history document (xerox copy) for "Perkins Reunion," 1964, page 6; Perkins Family Files, privately held by Kim Stracener Zapalac, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE], Austin, Texas, 2026. A copy of this document was given to me by Nancy Iles, a 2nd great-granddaughter of Emily (Winburn) Perkins, in 1981.↩︎
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