The tiny community of Lee is located in eastern Madison County,
between the towns of Madison to the west and Live Oak to the east. I’ve had a
hard time finding much information about the history of the small town, but
judging from the number of photographs I was able to find in the Florida
Archive, it was once much bigger than it is today. Here’s what I was able to
learn:
Settlement of Madison County began in the early 1800s,
initially led by cotton planters clustered around the city of
Madison. However, the area where the community of Lee sprang up began to coalesce into a community in the decades following the Civil War. As with many of the small communities
that emerged across north Florida in the late 1800s, the settlers of eastern
Madison County made their livings off of lumber mills, cotton, farming, and the
railroad. The first sawmill in what would later become known as Lee was
established in the 1890s, although the community itself wasn’t formally
incorporated until 1909. During the early decades of the twentieth century, Lee
had an active depot on the Seaboard Air Line Railway, a drug store, shoe store,
gas station, barber shop, bank, post office and grocery.
[source]
First sawmill in Lee, 1890s
[source]
J.E. Whitty and Son Drugstore,1918 (store built 1910)
[source]
Interior of shoe shop, early 1900s
[source]
Kinsey's Barber Shop (left); Emory Turlington's store (right), early 1900s
[source]
Farmers Bank, Early 1900s
[source]
Interior of Farmers Bank, early 1900s
[source]
Lee School, 1920s
[source]
JC Black Cotton Gin, 1934
[source]
Seaboard Air Line Railway Company Depot, 1938
When you arrive in the modern community of Lee, one of the
first things you will see is the town motto - Lee: Little but Proud. The town
is indeed little, with fewer than 400 residents. Not much remains of the businesses that once clustered along the railroad; however, signs of the town's former glory can still be seen.
I am not sure what kind of business is (was?) run by David Joseph, but it is nice to see the Farmer's Bank still stands. It also served as the location of the Lee Post Office for a time.
I wish I had been able to find an old photo of this structure because it was quite fun to photograph, and I'd love to see it in its former glory.
Sadly, there was no sign of many of the former businesses, such as the sawmill, drugstore, shoe store, or the railway depot.