St. Marys

St. Marys is definitely one of those places that, to me, hasn’t lost its small town appeal. The truth is that over the past 30 years it’s grown in leaps and starts, but somehow still maintains its cozy small town feel. It’s my home anchor because a large contingency of my grandkids live here and within close proximity.

St. Marys is known as the second oldest city in the U.S. with St. Augustine being the oldest. Allegedly as the Spanish were exploring the area around St. Augustine, an encampment was established here also with almost direct access to the ocean. Some other sources say the city was established as a result of lands confiscated after the American Revolution (we even have a tree stump left from the live oak tree that was planted in honor of George Washington at the time of his death). And then there is evidence that the town was actually built on an abandoned Native American village. Their shell mounds still remain undisturbed by time in Crooked River State Park. Why Native Americans would abandon such a lovely place is anybody’s guess but I’m thinking they may have been run off by bloodthirsty sand gnats. There is also information that would indicate that French-speaking Acadians or Cajuns settled in the area after fleeing the Caribbean where they’d been deported to from Canada. Since returning from the Caribbean yesterday, I wonder if today, they’d be scratching their heads wondering, what was I thinking? (Like I am this morning!)

Yet St. Marys has withstood the test of time – captured by the British, shelled by the Union Army during the Civil War, an Army Ammunition repository during WWII, and now home to Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base (captured by the Navy?) and home to many families some transplants and some with roots that go all the way back to colonial times. 

Sometimes we live in a place and don’t take the time to appreciate its real value and history.  In our fast paced society with internet and social media we stay too busy looking at what our friends are doing to think about where we are and what we’ve got. The irony there is that those same tools can be used to discover all kinds of interesting things about the history of the places we live. We make more every day. St. Marys has a rich and colorful past filled with tales of ghosts and horses in the church steeple, and an ever changing present that makes this sleepy little town more than just the place I live. It makes it more like home. Hence today’s to do list: Give thanks, refill pills, pay bills, pat the pooch, make bunny hats…