Cassette 4: Capt. Eddie Baker, 1987 October 12

This collections contains audio cassette tapes and accompanying transcriptions of oral histories Helen Cooper Floyd conducted with Mayport residents in the 1970s and 1980s. Notable people mentioned in the transcripts include Cooper Floyd’s husband Hilton Floyd, a commercial fisherman who earned a Purple Heart during the Normandy landings and served as a Fishery Adviser for the U.S. government in South Vietnam; Captain Leon Canova, a shrimper who Cooper Floyd described as one of the “Paul Bunyans of the trawler fleet;” ‘French Louie’ Thomas, a French immigrant who left his mark in the language and fishing practices of Mayport, and Rebecca ‘Aunt Beck’ Tillotson, a descendant of Minorcan immigrants and who was known and beloved throughout Mayport. Common themes include the shrimping industry in Mayport, family recollections and histories of prominent Mayport families (such as the Singletons, Coopers, and Sallases), stories of various immigrant groups that moved to Mayport (such as Norwegians, Minorcans and Portuguese), and the local culture and folklore of Mayport. Though some of the persons interviewed in the transcripts and tapes were later included in one or more of Floyd’s books, much of the material is new and not found in her published works on Mayport. However, she may have alluded to this unpublished material in the introduction to Mayport Remembered, saying “These families who were our neighbors whose names here are unmentioned – and they are legion – have stories yet to be told … These are not forgotten. They are filed away for future reference.”