Elisha Greene arrived in Baker County on Christmas Day in 1830 leading the first wagon train of pioneer settlers, with William and Mose Barber acting as advance scouts, and the train also including the Westers, Wilkersons, Barber, and other families. Elisha and his family settled on the south prong of the St. Mary’s River, first building a palmetto hut until a log farmhouse could be constructed. A farmer who also served as county coroner and county surveyor, he educated his slaves as well as his children, attended church with them, and paid them a modest salary to spend as they wished; after the Civil War, most remained on the farm to live and work. Born in 1790 to the son of an Irish immigrant, he was an adventurous frontiersman who explored the Florida wilderness when it was primarily Indian territory, fought in the Indian wars and uprisings and in the War of 1812, fathered 19 children, and died at age 85, after which he was buried in South Prong Cemetery, once known as Greene’s Creek. One of the people he had purchased in 1853, Samuel Spearing, was encouraged by Elisha to leave for Jacksonville, where his intelligence and political ability brought him prominence: in 1867 he convened a meeting of 1200 blacks, served as a justice of the peace in Duval County and as both councilman and treasurer for La Villa, served in the Florida Senate in 1874, opened a respectable grocery business on Bay Street in Jacksonville, and on January 20, 1884, was elected an officer of the Grand Lodge of Florida. When Elisha died in 1873, Samuel was notified by telegraph, returned to Sanderson by train to help dig his grave, and wrote his obituary, which led Columbus Drew to write and publish “The Burial of the Master.”