Cross Creek Before Marjorie, by Jay Whitworth

More than half a century before Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings made her home in the remote hamlet of Cross Creek in southeastern Alachua County, Joseph B. Blake became the first known white settler to live there. Joseph was the older brother of Dempsey Blake, Jay Whitworth’s great-great-grandfather.

Whitworth began tracing his Cross Creek roots after his mother, Hilda Avant Whitworth, died in 1994. While preparing his mother’s house for sale, Whitworth searched through an old cedar chest where his mother kept family photos.

“It turned into an archaeological dig the further I went down,” Whitworth recalled. “I found items I did not know or forgot existed. In the lower level of the chest were the photos and stereograph cards of our ancestors from the Creek and Gainesville, along with various scenes of the area.”

Gainesville Magazine December 12, 2020