Some towns are made by the
military, some by shipping, others by oil. Hilliard was
made by lumber and the great steel horse which carried it
on twin metal rails which shine in the daylight like tracks
of fire. Lumber built Hilliard, and without it, the town
never would have existed, the spot continuing as a mere
plot of land in a marshy, rural area of Florida.
Civil War Captain Guyler Walter Hilliard did much to
advance south Georgia's industries and opportunities, as he
did Hilliard's. After harvesting a large percentage of the
virgin timber available near the Watersboro mill, which was
in the Waycross area, he found that he was running rather
low on wood. As a result, he looked south, to the yet
unadulterated area south of the St. Mary's. However, he
first had to wait until the Savannah, Florida, and Western
Railroad was completed, so he moved the milling operation
to King's Ferry until this ocurred.
Once this had taken place, in October of 1881, he moved the
mill near the S.,F.& W. Railroad, which was where he
and his son-in-law and business partner, James S. Bailey,
established the town of Hilliard. The Hilliard Methodist
Church was built on the west corner of what is now US 301
and SR 108, and a two-room public school house was built in
the early 1880's.
After over 100 years, it is
still standing. At this time, school, like everything, was
segregated by race. J.O. Frey was the principal of the
white school, and Mrs. L. Blair was head of the black one.
By 1884, Hilliard's population had grown to 150. To this
day, it is not certain where Guyler Walter Hilliard spent
the last days of his life with his wife. It was either
Dinsmore (a town in Duval County, which has since been
consolidated into Jacksonville), or Waycross, GA. In any
case, he died on April 12, 1903, and is buried in Kettle
Creek, west of Waycross. After depleting the lumber supply,
Hilliard and Bailey moved their operation to the south of
Callahan, near present-day Jacksonville.
In 1909 came F.W. Cornwall, a
Floridian land dealer, who bought 33,000 acres of land,
most of which was bush, west of the railroad, naming it the
N. Florida Fruit and Truck Farms. After pumping large
amounts of money into the local economy and strategically
advertising, Cornwall drew land buyers from Ohio, Illinois,
New York, and even from overseas. Because of all the new
development, in 1910, the "ol' two roomer" schoolhouse was
replaced with a two-story building near the Hilliard Inn.
However, in October, a tropical storm demolished the
schoolhouse, but was rebuilt in 1912, and in spring of that
year, classes were finally held. Unfortunately, upon the
first day of school, there was a severe excess of students,
so much that the teacher, Bertie Haddock, cancelled school
until a second teacher could be gotten. This two-room
structure remains in place today as the core of Hilliard
Middle-Senior High School.