Otis and Mattie (Crews) Canady

Otis Canady, born south of Moniac on March 21, 1917, was the only child of Aaron and Rosa Mae (Rhoden) Canady. He fell in love with Mattie, the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Thrift) Crews, when he was 6 years old and she was 3, and on September 12, 1937, they eloped and were married by Baker County Judge Frank Dowling. Their family included four children: Wayne, Marvin, Sandra C. Mikell, and Bruce. Otis was a master carpenter who built many local homes and businesses in the county, but he remained a farmer at heart and cultivated the land all his life. For many years he peddled vegetables grown on his 40 acre farm north of Macclenny. In a 1993 interview, he recalled that his first job besides plowing a mule was cutting green oak wood for 75 cents a cord and walking 2 miles carrying an axe, his lunch bucket, and a water jug. In the same interview, Mattie recalled her hard upbringing, including warming water in a number 2 wash tub for bathing, using one pair of shoes a year for school and an older pair for field work, making clothes from flour, sugar, or chicken feed sacks, bleaching white sacks for slips and underwear, getting jewelry from a Cracker-Jack Box, and living without indoor plumbing while using a chamber pot at night and emptying it at the outhouse each morning.

Macclenny, Florida · United States