LIVING HISTORY
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Shamy Tommie, left, walks his year-old colt, Chupco, out of
the barn at Chupco Youth Ranch. Below, Shamy with
younger brother Marty in front of the cabin at Chupco Youth
Ranch. Both grew up in chickees. Above, Shamy at a Fort
Pierce parade in 2003.
She said the Seminoles lived on high ground
before Cow Creek, a swamp of cypress trees that
rose and fell with the rains. Sloan said the
Seminole women sometimes worked as day
laborers for her grandfather, Cyrus Franklin
Raulerson.
Sloan said Seminoles had been living at Cow
Creek at least since her grandfather bought the
land in the early 1900s. “I remember my grandfather
talking about it. I’m pretty sure he just
accepted them. If you lived there, it’s fine.’’
Cow Creek was one of the lands that
Seminoles requested be deeded over to them
during a meeting in Palm Beach County in 1935
with federal officials, according to Covington’s
“Seminoles of Florida.’’ The Seminole petition
specifically cited “lands in Martin and St. Lucie
counties known as the Cow Creek Country and
the Blue Fields section.’’
MIDWAY ROAD
Sloan said the Seminoles moved off the ranch
sometime in the 1940s or ‘50s. It was also at that
time that the Tommies were moving to the camp
on Midway Road.
“The story that I heard was that the family
worked for a rancher named Ben Leeper,” Shamy
said. “He had some property and turned 10 acres
over to the Tommie family. All those years we
lived there and didn’t have a deed and they took
it back from us when the property was sold to
someone else. The land was used as long as
Grandma was living. Because we didn’t have a
deed, when she died we lost it. I learned in
school that anybody who homesteaded land over
50 years kept it. But I didn’t know how to go
about claiming it.”
Sallie and Jack Tommie made a living wherever
they could find work. They toiled as migrant
workers, following the seasonal stream of vegetable
pickers north or south depending on the
season. After following the crops north, the
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