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Probably the only jncture in existence of the historic Couevas homestead on Cat Island, built in 1812. All that remains new is the site and its view of the mainland.
Whether he used it as an excuse was really scared the medicine man l the sickness was the anger of the Spirits for leaving their homeland. They refused to go to Oklahoma. The best the contractor could do was get them to go back to Florida where they disappeared in the impenetrable Everglades, their descendents being there still.
TURPENTINING AND LUMBER DAYS
Just a half century ago, in 11)11, Cat Island came into the possession of the Boddie family for the first time, marking the beginning of the island’s modern era. That was when Nathan V. Boddie (the grandfather of Nathan V. Boddie of Gulfport and his sister, Mrs. Herbert Buffington Jr., of Canton, Georgia, who now own it) shocked the aplomb of his Gulfport banker by asking for $10,000 on an open note to buy Cat Island, every grain of sand of it, from B. M. Harrod and others. The banker considered it a foolish investment, so expressed himself and refused the loan. Whereupon Mr. Boddie received the loan from a Jackson bank by phone. The local banker remarked they ought to appoint a guardian for this old man paying $10,000 for Cat Island.
However, his conservatism suffered an even greater jolt a few days later when Mr. Boddie walked in and paid off the note with a check for $10,500 for the turpentine rights he had just leased to Pace and Morgan, a clean profit of $500 and he still owned the island.
To give you an idea of the timber wealth on Cat Island then, the turpentine operation boxed 85,000 pine trees
and by 1913 there were 35 people living on the island working either for the turpentine outfit or fishing. In 1917 W. B. Lundy leased the timber cutting rights and came in to cut the virgin pine of the island, many of them 60 feet tall, with 25 men and a sawmill with a 1200 feet capacity a day.
Then there occurred the succession of sales during which the island passed out of and back into the Boddie hands twice. First the island was sold to Senator Money who planned a biological laboratory and actually started raising Belgian Hares, neither project of which was successful, and the property reverted back to the Boddies again.
The only trace of the Money period are the huge rabbits frequently flushed
on Cat Island, descendants of the Senator’s get-rich-quick scheme.
Then the island was sold again to Governor Lee M. Russell of Mississippi who agreed to a purchase price of $25,-000 in yearly payments of $3,000, of which he completed three and then allowed the island to default again to the Boddies.
The astonishing feature of the Russell era was that the Governor refused an offer of a million dollars for Cat Island from a man named Fisher, a promoter who later, as second choice, developed Miami Beach.
There are still many sportsmen on the Coast who will remember the Goose Point Tarpon Club on Cat Island that (Continued on Page 20)
Sathan Boddie and writer Ray Thompson inspect material which Mr. Boddie is convinced <cas from the foundations of a Spanish settlement antedating the landing of d'Iberville in 1099.
The never ceasing artesiaii well which was originally drilled for the Goose Point Tarpon Club, which burned in 1931. It. now supplies the Cat Island cattle with a continuous water supply.
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In this Cat Island pond can be seen the disturbance of two alligators and a huge both still present in the frequent fresh ponds that punctuate the island lan o
Owner Nathan Boddie, standing on the three mile long beautiful expansive white sat of Cat Island points out Ship Island and Fort Massachusetts in the distance five mile east. Barely visible on horizon is Gulfport and Mississippi Gulf Coast seven miles to tl,