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History of Florida

HON. CARY AUGUSTUS HARDEE, who was inaugurated Governor in Florida in 1922, has proved in his career as a lawyer, business man and citizen a possessor of all the substantial qualities and abilities needed by the chief executive of a great commonwealth.

Governor Hardee has come up from the ranks. A native of Florida, he was born on a farm in Taylor County near Perry, November 13, 1876, son of James B. and Amanda Katharine (Johnson) Hardee. His father is still living a retired resident of Madison. Both parents were born in Quitman, Georgia, where the grandfather Thomas E. Hardee was a planter and slave owner. James B. Hardee spent his boyhood in Georgia and as a young man moved to Taylor County, Florida. În 1863 he enlisted in Company B of the First Special Brigade, a Florida regiment of Infantry and served two years. After the war he located on his farm in Taylor County and was active in its management until he retired several years ago. For many years he was tax collector, and has been a leader in the Missionary Baptist Church. His wife died at Madison in 1912.

Governor Hardee, fourth in a large family of ten children, spent his boyhood on the farm, and had only a public school education. His early ambition was for the law, and in conjunction with his early successes in that profession he set for himself the high ideals of public service, all of which have been splendidly realized. He began making his own way at the age of seventeen. He had an experience as teacher in rural schools, and while so engaged took up the study of law with books borrowed from his brother C. J. Hardee also an attorney. He read in the night hours, on holidays and vacations, and at the age of twenty-two was admitted to the bar and began practice at Live Oak, the town still honored by his legal residence. Governor Hardee continued to practice law until 1914, and gained a place among the State's leading attorneys. From 1905 to 1913 he was state's attorney of the Third Judicial District. In 1915 he was elected to represent Suwanee County in the Legislature, was chosen speaker of the House, and was again speaker in the session of 1917. Since 1914 his business energies have been largely directed to banking. He was one of the organizers in 1902 of the First National Bank of Live Oak and has been its president since 1907. He is also president of the Branford State Bank at Branford in Suwanee County, and is owner and one of the organizers of the Mayo State Bank at Mayo in Lafayette County. He was for over twenty years a Deacon in the Baptist Church of Live Oak and active in its Sunday school. During the World war Mr. Hardee acted as chair

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man of Liberty Loan committee in Suwanee County during all the five campaigns for the sale of Government bonds. He is one of the trustees of the Florida Historical Society, and his private library indicates his strong inclination for historical reading and research. Governor Hardee is affiliated with the Royal Arch Chapter and Knight Templar Commandery of the Masonic Order at Live Oak, and Morocco Temple of the Shrine at Jacksonville. He is a Past Chancellor Commander of Live Oak Lodge Knights of Pythias and a member of the Elks at Tallahassee. His favorite outdoor recreation is fishing. In his public career, and since he entered the Governor's mansion at Tallahassee, Mr. Hardee has represented the very essence of democracy, and shows not a trace of personal egotism. He has the sympathies of a man who has achieved success by rugged effort and exertion. Among other qualities he is a brilliant

orator.

February 7, 1900, at Madison, he married Miss Maude Randle of that town, daughter of Theodore and Moseley (Harriman) Randle, both natives of Florida and representing old time families of the state. His grandfather Capt. Vance Randle was a soldier in the Civil war. Theodore Randle was a planter, served as state senator and was an active democrat and Baptist. During the World war, Mrs. Hardee was a leader in her home community at Live Oak in war auxiliary movements. They have daughter Moseley, wife of Louis J. Day, a lumber merchant at Live Oak. Mr. and Mrs. Day have a daughter Mary Virginia.

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ARTHUR F. PERRY. The financiers who have left the impress of their ability on the financial history of Florida have been, in a majority of cases, men of affairs, with little instruction in science. They have stepped from the counter or office to the counting-room, demonstrating their fitness to be leaders by soundness of judgment and skill in management. Such a man the generation of business men now passing from the scenes of active business recognized in Arthur F. Perry at a time when he had just passed his majority at Jacksonville, to which city he had come in 1884, as a youth of eighteen years. During the following years he developed a capacity for financial management, including those opposite qualities of boldness and caution, enterprise and prudence, which stamped him as a born engineer of finance, eventually leading to his present position of president of the Florida National Bank of Jacksonville. He is distinguished as well as a public-spirited citizen, an influential public man and a promoter of public institutions.

Mr. Perry was born at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia,

May 13, 1866, and left public school at the age of fifteen years to enter a mercantile concern. He was eighteen years of age when he came to Jacksonville, and four years later, in 1888, was appointed secretary and treasurer of the Citizens Gas and Electric Company. He occupied this post until 1893, when he was appointed secretary and treasurer of the Southern Savings and Trust Company, which name was later changed to the Mercantile Exchange Bank, of which he became cashier. At the time of the organization of the Florida Bank and Trust Company, January 5, 1905, he became vice president, and retained this position when the bank was nationalized, in September, 1906, as the Florida National Bank of Jacksonville. He succeeded to the presidency in January, 1913. Mr. Perry's ability and judgment have been recognized on numerous occasions and in various ways. He is the director from Florida of the Federal International Banking Company, the $7,000,000 Edge Law Bank for financing southern commodities; during the World war period was state treasurer of the United War Work Campaign, and later has been state treasurer of the Roosevelt Memorial Association. From 1897 until 1901 he was a member of the Jacksonville City Council; from 1903 to 1911 was a member of the Board of Bond Trustees, during four years of which time he served as secretary of that body; has been secretary of the Jacksonville Public Library since its organization; and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Jacksonville Board of Trade from 1900 to 1902 and a vice president of that organization in 1903. His social connections are numerous and include membership in the Seminole Club, the Florida Country Club and the Timuquana Country Club. Mr. Perry's success has been the result of his own exertions, guided, no doubt, by a natural endowment as admirable as it is rare. He has attained success in business, high social position, and, what is the highest tribute to his many estimable qualities, the affection of his friends and the esteem of the best members of society.

On October 7, 1890, Mr. Perry married Miss Isabelle C. Strawn, and they have two sons: Arthur F., Jr., born in 1894, and Henry S., born in 1897, both of whom served during the World war, having been commissioned lieutenants in the Coast Artillery Corps.

WILLIAM BOSTWICK SHEPPARD, United States Judge of the Northern District of Florida, has earned some of the best distinctions associated with the Federal judiciary. He has been at all times in intimate touch with the life and affairs of his time, and yet his decisions have indicated that detachment which is perhaps the first essential of wise and well considered judgment.

Judge Sheppard was born at Bristol, Florida, October 5th, 1861, son of Joseph and Cynthia (McAliley) Sheppard. He was educated in public schools, and during 1881-82 was a student in the University of North Carolina. He was admitted to the bar in 1891, and practiced law at Apalachicola, until 1903; he became interested in public affairs before qualifying as a lawyer. He was candidate for state senator in 1888. In 1896, he was the nominee of his party for state-attorney general. He was collector of customs at the port of Apalachicola, from 1889 to 1894, and again from 1897 to 1901, and mayor of Apalachicola in 1894-95.

In 1903, President Roosevelt appointed him United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida and he held that post of duty until

he was appointed United States judge for the same district on September 5, 1907. Judge Sheppard has presided in many important cases. He enjoys the distinction of having held court in more different states than any judge living. He has sat in every district, except one, in the Fifth Judicial Circuit comprising Georgia and the five gulf states, including a term in the principal cities of the Fifth Circuit from Savannah, Georgia, to El Paso, Texas. A phrase, now of generally current usage in newspaper and other editorials, was originated by Judge Sheppard in the notable American Naval Stores case tried at Savannah in April, 1908, when he declared "guilt to be personal," and was the first Judge to imprison offenders under the Sherman AntiTrust Law. Judge Sheppard is also famous for the promptness with which he dispatches the business of the court where he presides. In 1911, for more than a year he held the terms and transacted the business simultaneously of the Southern District of Georgia and the Northern and Southern districts of Florida. Since 1914, by invitation he sits in New York City, the Southern District of New York, in aid of the resident judges two months every summer.

Judge Sheppard was a republican in politics, is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and Elks, and is a member of the Country Club in his home city of Pensacola. At Bristol, Florida, May 10, 1890, he married Mary Emily Gibson, daughter of Rev. J. C. Gibson, who was a Unitarian minister. Judge and Mrs. Sheppard have the following children: Pearl Fleming, wife of Harold Wakefield Scofield of Morenci, Michigan; Claire Sheppard; Elizabeth, wife of Lieut. Fred M. Byers of the United States Navy, now stationed at the canal zone; Christine, who married Herman E. Holland, a lieutenant in the navy at San Diego, California; and William B., Jr., now fourteen years of age.

MOSES OSCAR OVERSTREET, one of the foremost of the progressive business men of Orlando, judicial center of Orange County, and present (1922) representative of the 19th district in the Florida senate, was born at Kirkland, Georgia, October 10, 1869, and is a son of James W. and Susan Ann (Solomon) Overstreet, who were born and reared in that state, where the father passed his entire life and where the widowed mother still resides, at the venerable age of eighty-seven years. James W. Overstreet became a successful exponent of agricultural and livestock industry in his native state, was a loyal and substantial citizen and commanded unqualified popular confidence and esteem, he having been seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death. Of the fine family of fifteen children all but one attained to years of maturity.

Moses O. Overstreet was reared on the old home farm, and his early education was acquired under the preceptorship of private tutors employed by his father to instruct the children of the household. Mr. Overstreet continued to be associated with the activities of the home farm until he had attained to his legal majority, and he then initiated his independent career, in which he has mustered his fine powers in such a way as to win large and substantial success, the while he has so ordered his course in all of the relations of life as to merit and receive the unequivocal respect and esteem of his fellow men. His first independent enterprise was initiated when he entered into a contract to build railroad crossings and water-drains. He soon com

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