Ancestors

George Benjamin Price

George Benjamin Price was born on 25 March 1888 at Barberville, in Volusia County, Florida. Barberville is a crossroads settlement in the pine and lake country of west Volusia, a few miles north of Pierson. His father was J. M. Price, James M. Price, a Florida-born man of the generation that fought the Civil War. His mother's maiden name was written on his death certificate as Susie E. World, born in South Carolina. Among his older brothers and sisters were Josephine (1869 to 1928), later Mrs. Graham; Charles Worrell Price (1872 to 1930); and Susie Belle (1877 to 1929), later Mrs. Mims. His father died in Orange County, Florida, in November 1910.

He married Alice May Minshew, who was born at Pierson in June 1889. Their first son, Harry F. Price, was born on 3 February 1910, when George was 21 and Alice 20. James followed on 4 January 1912 and Mildred Gertrude on 6 January 1913.

When the census taker came in January 1920, the family was living at Bayard, in southern Duval County, below Jacksonville. George, 31, was the head of the house. With him were his wife May, 30, the sons Harry, 9, and James, 8, Mildred, 7, and a baby girl two months old, Lila May. George gave his own birthplace as Florida, his father's as Florida and his mother's as Virginia.

By then he was foreman for the Pablo Cypress Company at Oak Landing, in the northeast corner of St. Johns County. Cypress was cut from the swamps of that country and sold as lumber. Pablo was the name then of the beach town now called Jacksonville Beach.

On Friday, 30 April 1920, George Price was shot at Oak Landing. His death certificate gives the cause as a "gun shot wound of brain," with shock and hemorrhage, and records an autopsy signed from the county hospital. He was 32. A week later the Bradford County Telegraph of Starke carried the news in two sentences: "George Price, foreman of the Pablo Cypress Company at Oak landing, was shot and killed Friday." The paper added that a Black man named Copeland had been charged with the murder. The outcome of the case is not known.

The certificate was filed on 1 May 1920. It names his wife as Mary Price and his usual home as Bayard. The informant was his brother C. W. Price, Charles Worrell Price, of Palm Valley, a cypress settlement close to Oak Landing. George was buried on 2 May 1920 in Gravely Hill Cemetery, at Jacksonville, by the undertakers Marcus Conant Company.

Alice was left a widow at 30 with four children, the youngest a baby. By 1930 she had gone back to Pierson, where she had been born, and was raising Mildred and Lila May there. Harry F. Price died in 1962 and is buried at Switzerland, St. Johns County. James Price died in 1964 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Mildred married Jake Raulerson of Pierson in 1934.

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Cite: Heirology, "George Benjamin Price (1888-1920)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-benjamin-price-1888-1920-333b0a.