Francis Harper

In May of 1912 at the age of 25, Francis Harper was a junior member of a Cornell University biological team that entered the Okefenokee Swamp. There, the naturalist found all the biological treasures he expected, and something he came to treasure maybe just a little bit more. Harper met the swampers of the Okefenokee and began a career, which spanned more than five decades, capturing the "Cracker" culture. In the years to come, local groups, like the Waycross Okefinokee (as Harper and others insisted on spelling it) Society, rallied around a core group of scientists and naturalists. While they were not initially successful in persuading the state or federal government to protect the land, they fought against threats to the swamp including continuing pressures to log the Okefenokee. In 1929 a small group of naturalists, most of them from Atlanta, organized the Georgia Society of Naturalists which remained vigilant and played an important role in efforts to save the swamp. They lobbied on the state and national level, published articles in newspapers, and enlisted support from other conservation groups and individuals, including Daniel Hebard and his son Frederick V. Hebard who owned most of the Okefenokee. In the meantime, Francis Harper continued visiting the swamp as often as his professional obligations allowed. He was paid to go south, visit the swamp, and collect specimens to take back north. But he also collected folklore - anecdotes, stories, songs, ballads - and shared those with people around the world. He kept detailed field notebooks, where he recorded not only what the swampers did and said, but how they said it, and how they lived. He became an insider, moving his family to a camp on Chesser Island in the Okefenokee in 1935-1936 while he built a cabin there. As more people became interested in the Okefenokee, so many different preservation proposals were presented that it was difficult to build a political consensus on anything. The Georgia Society of Naturalists remained focused in their efforts to have the federal government purchase the property as a wildlife preserve. And in 1931, the society persuaded the U.S. Senate Committee investigating sites for wildlife refuges to visit the swamp. Although the visit was successful, the committee was looking for a refuge for waterfowl, and did not think the Okefenokee was valuable as a migratory bird refuge - others would argue against the basis of this decision later. In 1933, the swamp was seriously threatened by a proposal to build an Atlantic-Gulf Canal across it. The construction effort promised to bring hundreds, maybe thousands, of jobs to the area - a prospect that was especially attractive in the midst of the Great Depression. Afraid for the life of the swamp, Francis Harper and his wife Jean decided to appeal to one of the nation's leading conservationists and a personal friend, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After graduating from Vassar College, Jean Harper had worked as a tutor for the president's children. Mrs. Harper wrote to the president in November of 1933, asking him to stop the canal project and to "spend the money in the purchase of the swamp for a reservation, where beauty and scientific interest may be preserved for all time." President Roosevelt responded, saying he would hate to see the Okefenokee destroyed, but did not yet take the matter into his own hands. After a feasibility study was conducted on the canal project, plans were abandoned. It wasn't long before a different development scheme threatened the Okefenokee. By this time it was 1934 and there were plans to build a scenic highway through the swamp for tourists. The Georgia Society of Naturalists and the Harpers intensified their preservation efforts, and fortunately state highway funds were seized by Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge and the project was placed indefinitely on hold. Something else important had happened in the preservation effort. Mrs. Harper's letters to the