Tracy, the story goes, was a partner of outlaw John Ashley, a bank robber who escaped from a Raiford road gang in His ability to elude capture by slipping into the wilds of Florida's swamps made him a folk legend of the s. Some say those who lived in the backwoods tipped off Ashley whenever the law was nearby.
John Ashley (bandit) - Wikipedia
Ashley wore a black eye patch as a result of an accidental gunshot wound from a member of his gang during a robbery. He led a notorious band on sprees of train and bank robberies, shootouts with police, moonshining, rumrunning between Bimini and Florida and hijacking liquor shipments from other rummies. Some of those who knew Tracy from his days in St. Cloud or his work at the sawmill in Holopaw said he was an outgoing guy with a generous nature and a perpetual smile. Tracy's popularity may have helped him escape an indictment as the prime suspect in the murder of a Lokosee man who ran a turpentine business.
In Florida's Past, historian Gene M. Burnett describes Upthegrove as Ashley's ''bawdy mistress. Queen of the Everglades. However, throughout their infamous careers, they Upthegrove and Ashley were as devoted as a couple of newlyweds.
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She was wounded and captured by deputies when a posse tried to catch Ashley after a bank robbery. Ashley escaped, briefly, but Palm Beach Sheriff Bob Baker, whose cousin had been gunned down as Ashley fled, was determined to find the gang leader.
Laura Upthegrove
Possibly tipped off about Ashley's hideout, Baker arranged an ambush with St. Lucie County Sheriff J. Merritt on a bridge over the Sebastian River. Ashley and three others died in the gun battle in November Not long afterward, lawmen found the body of a taxi driver who had been robbed and left on a back road in east Orange County.
Someone fingered Tracy as the gunman. Their marriage would provide Upthegrove with a legal maneuver to avoid testifying and, maybe, would rescue Tracy from a death sentence. Tracy kept his wife off the witness stand, but he still wound up at the Florida State Prison near Starke, where he died in With the other Ashley gang members dead, in prison or hiding out, Upthegrove spent the next few years after Ashley's death and Tracy's trial in and out of jail on drunkenness charges.
Burnett writes that she killed herself in by drinking from a bottle of Lysol, ''foaming at the mouth in agony until she died 10 minutes later. A time for young lovers.
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Within a few years of Prohibition, the Ashley Gang was so feared by Florida bootleggers that many began deserting the area looking for safer routes far out of reach of the gang. As a result, the Ashleys' opportunities for liquor piracy dwindled and they eventually returned to bank robbery as their primary activity.
By this time, Ashley and Sheriff Baker were engaging in a personal feud.
The sheriff had received a tip from a local car salesman and had set a trap on the eve of the Bahamas raid. Suspecting that the law might be on to his plans, Ashley changed his route at the last minute and sailed through St. Lucie Inlet , narrowly avoiding capture. Baker spent months searching the Florida Everglades and came up empty-handed. This was in part the result of help from fellow Florida "crackers" and a " grapevine telegraph of the 'glades ".
In early , Baker finally got a lead on Ashley's location. Through his informants, Baker learned that Ashley was staying with family members in a moonshiner's cabin hidden in a swamp about 2 miles south of the Ashley family home. The short bushes and palmetto scrub made it very difficult, if not impossible, to approach the cabin, making it an ideal hideout. Baker was determined to capture Ashley and, with weapons from the Florida National Guard and deputized civilians, made plans to surround the cabin and starve him out.
On January 10, , he sent eight of his deputies to the house early in the morning; they were in position by dawn.
Just as the deputies were about to make their move, Ashley's dog began barking at the lawmen. The deputies fired at the dog, causing Ashley to return fire; he killed one of the deputies, the sheriff's cousin Fred Baker, in the resulting gunfight. His father, Joe Ashley, was killed [6] in his bunk while his partner, Albert Miller, and Laura were seriously wounded by buckshot from a deputy's shotgun.
Forced to leave his wife behind, Ashley escaped through a secret entrance; his wife's screaming caused the deputies to hold their fire, which helped enable the escape. Despite a manhunt involving men, during which the homes of both Joe Ashley and Hanford Mobley were burned as well as a small grocery owned by Miller , Ashley remained in the area where Laura was being held by police. He hoped to plan a jail break for her, as well as avenge the death of his father, but as more time passed he left for California to lie low.
Ashley returned to Florida and spent several months with his gang planning their revenge. He apparently developed a plot to kill Sheriff Baker at the Jacksonville courthouse following his election in November. On November 1, , Baker received a tip from an anonymous source, believed to be a gang member's girlfriend or a disgruntled brother-in-law , [1] that Ashley would be travelling up the coast on the Dixie Highway to rob a bank in Jacksonville.
That same day, Baker arranged an ambush at the bridge over the St.
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Sebastian River , at Roseland , blocking the road with a chain with a red lantern across the bridge. As the bridge was out of his jurisdiction, the actual operation was overseen by the sheriff of Indian River County , J. Merritt, along with three of Baker's deputies. An hour after the ambush was laid, Ashley's black touring car was spotted. Once it stopped at the bridge, the deputies approached the car from behind and ordered the gang out of the vehicle.
According to the official story, the deputies searched the car and found several guns while Ashley, Ray Lynn, Hanford Mobley, and Clarence Middleton were lined up outside the car. John Ashley then pulled out a concealed weapon, causing the deputies to open fire. Ashley and his three partners were killed in the shootout. There are two alternate versions, however. The first, according to two men who witnessed their arrest, claim they had also been stopped on the bridge and saw the officers approach Ashley's car behind them.
When police directed them to leave the scene, both men insisted that Ashley and the others were handcuffed. There were marks that could have been made by handcuffs, however police claimed the marks were the result of the coroner examining the bodies. This explanation was accepted by a coroner's jury. A third theory, one thought to be closer to the truth, was offered in the book Florida's Ashley Gang by historian Ada Coats Williams: He had told Williams this during the s on the promise that she not reveal this information until all the deputies had died.
After her husband's death, Laura Upthegrove lived under an assumed name in western Florida for a time. In the next two years, she was arrested on several occasions before eventually opening a gas station at Canal Point on Lake Okeechobee. She later moved in with her mother in Upthegrove Beach. On August 6, , she died during an argument with a man trying to buy moonshine from her. In the heat of the moment, she swallowed a bottle of disinfectant and died within minutes. It is unclear whether it was an accident, as some claim she mistook it for a bottle of gin, but it was widely reported that she had committed suicide.
She was 30 years old. A few members of the Ashley gang still remained, although they were eventually killed, captured, or fled the state within a few years. Ashley, Mobley, and Lynn Middleton was buried in Jacksonville were buried in a family cemetery , the Little Ashley Cemetery, outside Gomez , where the Ashley family home once stood. Six members of the Ashley clan were buried there, all having died a violent death with the exception of an infant grandchild. The cemetery eventually became part of an exclusive residential neighborhood , Mariner Sands, and it is rumored that some unrecovered loot is buried somewhere on this property.
A state historical marker was placed at Sebastian Inlet but disappeared when a new bridge was built over the river. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. John Ashley Police mugshot of John Ashley, c. People and Events That Shaped the State. Pineapple Press Inc, Sterling Publishing Company, The Palm and Treasure Coasts. The Folly of Jim Crow: Rethinking the Segregated South. The Best of "Post Time".
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