A vivid return to Carlton Country

Posted Jan 23, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jan 23, 2010 at 06:19 PM

Recommending special reading for my audience is not an everyday occurrence.  It is today. 

This coffee table book/history is titled “This Nearly Was Mine, A Journey Through Carlton Country.”  It is coauthored by Dr. Barbara Castleberry Carlton with historian, Barbara Oehlbeck.  Barbara Carlton is almost a native Floridian, who still lives and directs vast cattle and citrus operations in Hardee County to our southeast in Florida.  Wauchula is the county seat and home to so many of the Carlton/McEwen clans.  Dr. Carlton still resides on her ranch east of Wauchula in the Vandola area. She also has holdings in North Carolina and is a brilliant business lady and rancher.  She will mark and brand them with the best, doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty and is as good of a sportsman’s shot with a shotgunas there is.  She will let you miss them then she will get them, always within the limits of the law.

Barbara is the widow of the late Albert Carlton, my cousin who lived with my family for a time in Wauchula, but took over much of the vast Carlton ranching and citrus operations before he died years ago. Barbara and their four family children, Will, Pat, Julie and Charlie, now oversee the Carlton holdings.

“A Journey Through Carlton Country.”  is filled with history and subtitles. It traces the history of the Carlton family spread of cattle lands and citrus in Hardee and surrounding counties.  Barbara Oehlbeck lives in Glades County, and she and Barbara did the heavy lifting that produced this book, including the great rise of the Carlton Empire and spreads, including those of the other Carlton family members such as the late Florida governor, Doyle E. Carlton, whose properties were in the same area. Doyle Carlton’s record was spotless as the governor and later as a landholder.  He was Florida’s excellent governor during the 1920’s depression and took no salary for this.  His positions were always as clear as the clean waters of Troublesome Creek that flowed through his Hardee County land. The Carltons and the McEwens were related from their earlier move to Florida from the Carolinas during the 1800’s.  The wiser Carltons got the land and made the most of it as ranchers and citrus people.

This new book, “This Nearly Was Mine A Journey Through Carlton Country,” is a must for those who love Florida history or those who grew up as part of it.  I did the foreword at Barbara’s request, because we are all cousins and my father, the late John Cross McEwen, rode the range with the Carltons and they later helped elect him three times as Hardee County Tax Assessor.  He had a third grade education and walked miles to school in Wauchula, but, “I could add and I could subtract.” Later, he was the manager of the Florida Farmers Market in Wauchula and Plant City for years. 

Barbara Carlton, in the presentation of her book, wrote of her “leaving priceless information not only about her nine generational family, their families and their friends, but often about the daily challenges for bare living necessities. Their lives were often fraught with life threatening adversities, yet they were steadfast pioneers who moved forward without complaint from one generation to another. Despite wars, disease, tragedy, death, and searing heat, this book covers more than a century of their lives told by some who lived well nigh more than a century.”

Carlton’s undying love and deep devotion to the land and the creatures that call “the land” home are an integral part of the fabric of “This Nearly Was Mine, A Journey Through Carlton Country.” 

Those who know her know of her love of the land.

Even the cover of this book, a cowboy in saddle, riding home embracing a child, tells of this wonderful look at the land, the land, the land, the land. The book is worth your coffee table.