The Historic Perkins House Dedication, Dudley Farm. May 4, 2024

Footage of the moving of the Perkins house opens this video for the first three minutes. The original house was moved April 17, 2024. The preservation of the Perkins Home and relocation to Dudley State Farm is an ongoing project, funded and manned by donations and volunteer hours, including the gift of the house itself by our neighbors, Helen and Philip Saltzgiver. Archaeological and architectural studies are underway, part of continued research into the roles of the African-American laborers - enslaved, freedmen, and tenants, who were valued and essential work­ers in the Jonesville farming community. This project will allow us to learn more about the lives of these faith­ful people and their home.
Built in 1906, the Perkins House was home to James and Rebecca English Perkins, neighbors and laborers at Dudley who were instrumental in creating the Farm as we know it today. Both James and Rebecca were born enslaved laborers in Camden, South Carolina - James in 1834, and Rebecca in 184 7. After Emancipation in Florida, in May of 1865, they moved to North Florida, and eventually homesteaded a forty-acre farm just east of present-day Dudley farm. James was a farmer, and his wife Rebecca "Becky" Perkins a nurse and midwife for the larger Jonesville Community. Myrtle Dudley credits "Aunt Becky" as saving her- life when she was born three months premature in 1901.
James was a trustee for the Freedman School in Jonesville, where he and Rebecca raised and educated their
seven children, along with many other orphaned children from the larger community. The Perkins family built
their four-room home directly east of Dudley Farm on a limestone foundation, from local yellow pine. James
Perkins lived there till he died in 1909. In the mid-1930's, Rebecca Perkins moved to the Pleasant Street and Arredondo areas in Gainesville to live with a daughter. Rebecca ( d.1934) and James are both buried in the
Pleasant Plain United Methodist Church Cemetery in Jonesville. The Perkins House arid property was bought by the Womack family and later acquired by the Dudley family, who used it as tenant housing till the 1970's.
Welcome Statement-Mayor Jordan Marlowe
Poetry from .E Stanley Richardson
History of the Perkins Home-
Dr. Sherry Dupree speaking on
behalf of the work done by Garlenda Green-Grant and Patti Bartlet
Truth & Reconcilation in Alachua County-Commissioner Chuck Chestnut
Moving the home. Ashley Oelrich Barnes
Acceptance comments-Florida
State Parks District Manager Cliff Maxwell
Future Plans for the Perkins Home
Exhibit-Dudley State Park Manager Dennis Parson
CLOSING
Closing Statement-Mayor Jordan Marlowe
Produced by the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program University of Florida
352 392-7168 oral.history.uf...
241 Pugh Hall University of Florida
Cat. No.AAHP 964 Perkins House Dedication 5-4-2024