Swampy’s Florida Postcard: Turpenstine Still, St. John’s River.
on July 25, 2022
at 6:00 am
This undated postcard is of a turpentine operation somewhere along the St. Johns River. Most camps were no where near this fancy. This is really more a loading and unloading area to ship the sap collected. Note the dugout canoe.
The turpentine industry was a huge business in Florida as the sap from the pine tree was collected to turn into printer’s inks, varnishes, fluxes, sealing wax, etc. It’s still used today.
However, the process of collecting it has greatly changed. 100 years ago the resin was collected by cutting into a pine tree (what’s called a “cat face”) and inserting a metal piece into the tree to draw out the resin to let it drip in, typically, a clay pot hanging from a nail underneath the metal piece. If you wander little touched pine woods in our state, you may still find pieces or whole clay pots once used for turpentining.
Here’s a report Zora Neale Hurston wrote about her time with folks pulling sap:
https://www.floridamemory.com/onlineclassroom/zora_hurston/documents/essay/
Hurston was part of a massive national government project to employ people for the “arts”. Hurston travelled however she could all over Florida writing and recording and getting photographs of life styles we would Never otherwise know or understand. She recorded a number of those turpentining in other parts of our state.
This postcard is part of the Swampy’s Florida collection.
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