Ancestors

Terrell Elmer Fielder

Terrell Elmer Fielder was born in 1865 at Quitman, Georgia, the seat of Brooks County. The day was probably 9 January. He was named for his father, Terrell Milton Fielder, who had served as a private in the 1st Georgia Reserves in the Confederate army. His mother was Mary Rosina Barnes, born in South Carolina in 1833. His death certificate of 1934 names his father as Terrell M. Fielder, born in Newton County, Georgia, and gives his mother's maiden name as Barnes, of South Carolina. His brother Len's obituary of 1905 names him as one of the Fielders of Lake City, Florida, where his mother is buried.

His father was a carpenter at Quitman, known in town as "Uncle Terrible" Fielder. His brothers and sisters were probably Lucius, James Marcus, Milton, Ella Mae, Mary Elizabeth and Maggie M. Fielder, born between 1854 and 1871, and there was most probably an older half-brother, Thomas, from his father's first marriage. By about 1876 his parents had parted. His mother took most of the children to Lake City, Florida, and called herself a widow. His father went to Gadsden County, Florida, with a much younger wife, Margaret. In June 1880 Terrell, fifteen, was living with his father at Sycamore, in Gadsden County, with Margaret and two small half-brothers, Jimmie and Alfano. His father died on 6 April 1887 and was buried at Sneads, in Jackson County. His mother died on 8 February 1897 and was buried at Lake City, under a stone that calls her "Wife of T.M. Fielder."

By 1889 a Terrell Fielder was living at Lake City, where his mother and brothers were. In September of that year he helped the city marshal arrest a man wanted for murder in Georgia, and the officers covered the man with their pistols before he could draw his own. He was most probably the future sheriff, then twenty-four. When or why he came south into the Florida cattle country is not known. DeSoto County had been created in 1887 out of Manatee County, with its seat at Arcadia. It was enormous. In 1921 four new counties were cut from it: Hardee, Charlotte, Glades and Highlands. The sheriff was the county's chief law officer. He kept the jail at the county seat, served the court's writs and carried out its sentences.

Terrell became sheriff of DeSoto County in May 1900. The office was vacant, and the Governor commissioned him on 12 May 1900 to fill it until an election. He then won the office for a full four-year term and was commissioned again on 8 January 1901. The state's directory of county officers records both commissions. Beside the second it notes: "Resigned Nov. 28 1904." His gravestone gives the term as it was set, beside a five-pointed star: "SHERIFF OF DESOTO COUNTY, 1901-1905." The sheriff's office's own roll of past sheriffs lists him as "L. E. Fielder," almost certainly a misreading of the initials T. E.

The papers show what the work was. In 1902 he went to Miami to fetch two horse thieves who had been run down in a sawgrass marsh near Delray. A man who cut another's throat with a razor at Nocatee, over sixty cents, gave himself up to him. Four prisoners dug out through the brick wall of the Arcadia jail, and he went after them. When the county commissioners refused to pay his bill for a servant and horse hire, he sued the county.

The great case of his term began with an arrest he made himself. On the night of 29 January 1903 John H. Bowman, the town marshal of Punta Gorda, was shot dead through his own window. In February Sheriff Fielder arrested Isaiah E. Cooper at Punta Gorda and lodged him in the jail at Arcadia. Cooper was convicted that spring and sentenced to hang, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the verdict in January 1904. The sheriff read Cooper his death warrant in his cell, issued tickets of admission to the hanging and had the gallows built. On 5 August 1904, the morning of the execution, he telegraphed the Governor Cooper's oath that he was innocent. The Governor revoked the death warrant two hours before Cooper was to die. Cooper stayed in the Arcadia jail for about five years. His sentence was commuted to life in 1909, and on 2 September 1913 he walked away from a convict camp near DeLand and was not recaptured.

In 1904 Terrell stood for re-election. The first Democratic primary in May left him in a second contest with A. C. Freeman. On 7 June Freeman carried the county by 651 votes to 616. Terrell resigned on 28 November 1904, and Freeman was commissioned sheriff the same day.

He married Rhoda Ellen Hendry, who was seventeen years younger. She was a daughter of Capt. Robert Calvin Hendry, called Cab, one of the leading stockmen of the county. Cab Hendry died at Atlanta on 3 April 1904, while Terrell was sheriff. Seven weeks later, on the afternoon of Tuesday, 24 May 1904, Terrell and Rhoda were married at her mother's house on Joshua Creek, near Arcadia. Because of her father's death it was a quiet wedding. Their first child, James Arthur, was born in 1905. In November 1905 a country column in the DeSoto County News reported that his brother Jim Fielder and Willis Perry of Lake City were visiting him, and that Mrs. T. E. Fielder had gone to see her mother on Joshua Creek.

Out of office, he farmed at Gardner, in the north of the county. In March 1906 the DeSoto County News called the ex-sheriff "fast becoming one of DeSoto's largest and most successful farmers." He had an orange grove and fifty acres in beans, cucumbers, watermelons and Irish potatoes, and he worked them with machines rather than the hoe. By 1908 he employed ten or twelve men. The local papers called him Captain Fielder, and once Colonel. In 1915 he called a meeting of the county's citrus growers to order at the courthouse in Arcadia.

They had eight children in all: James Arthur, Robert Elmer, William, Lily Marie, Rosena Mae, Jesse Willard, Ruth Hendry, and last Mayme Alice, born in 1923 when her father was fifty-eight. Mayme later took the name Julie Alice. The family lived at Gardner in 1910 and again in 1930. When DeSoto was divided in 1921, Gardner fell into the new Hardee County.

Terrell Elmer Fielder died at Arcadia on 15 June 1934, aged sixty-nine. He was buried on 17 June at Joshua Creek Cemetery in Arcadia, where his father-in-law had lain since 1904. His granite stone reads "TERRELL ELMER FIELDER, 1865-1934" beside the star and the words "SHERIFF OF DESOTO COUNTY, 1901-1905." Rhoda outlived him by almost twenty-nine years and was buried in the same cemetery in 1963.

If Terrell Elmer Fielder is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Terrell Elmer Fielder (1865-1934)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/terrell-elmer-fielder-1865-1934-518df2.