John Simpson Rose was my Great Uncle, the third oldest child born to Samuel and Elmira Rose. He was sort of a Huckleberry Finn looking fellow. His family described him as a small man, quiet and reserved. His early adulthood would be a life of travel, instigated at first by the urgency to distance himself and his young family from revenue officers who wanted a cut of the proceeds he obtained from making and selling wildcat whiskey without paying the government its due. When the revenue officers came looking for him, he packed up his whiskey, his belongings, and his family and moved first to Arkabutla, Mississippi. That was November 1895 and his second child, Elmira Eugenie Elizabeth "Jennie" was a year and five months old. He had married Vivian Moore in Athens, AL on 24 December 1891. In 1902 Simp went further westward to Texas and in 1904 he moved on to Indian Territory which would become the state of Oklahoma. The 1910 census showed him there. In that year he harnessed his mules, loaded his family and headed for Old Mexico. Simp also had a younger brother Tom Rose that was in Mexico around the same time periods, but it is not known whether they were ever there together. Simp was there until the Mexican revolution started and President Wilson sent trains to evacuate all his fellow Americans. Coming out of Mexico, Simp and his family migrated on up to Anadarko, OK and finally settling in Ft Towson. In between his yougest child, Susie Jane was born in Corenne, Pushmataha County, Oklahoma 20 Feb. 1911. In all he and Vivian would have 10 children. The family said they lived on "Canney Mountain" near Ft Towson. They were in Chactaw County when the 1920 census was taken.

Around 1925 Simp made his last move - and it was a major one - at age 54 he, Vivian, and some of his younger children got into their wagon and journed all the way to Candler in Marion County Florida, south of Ocala, where Simp purchased a citrus grove. There he stayed, dying at age 85 in 1956 - the son of a former Confederate soldier living into the middle of the twentieth century, he lived a hard life but a relatively long one. Vivian would live on to age 93, dying in 1965.

Here are Charles Jones, Grandson of Simp and son of his youngest child Susie Jane, words on the starting of the orange trees in Citrus Grove.
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Grandpa planted that orange grove with sour stock and budded sweet oranges onto the sour root stock for hardiness. For several years now that grove has been suffering from a hard freeze that took almost every tree back to it's sour stock. Only a handful of trees bear sweet oranges.
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That original grove now will be over 75 years old.