Arranged by Spesard Stone
Courtesy of Teresa McGowin
The following obituary of Jimmie Jockey Whidden was published in The Sunland Tribune of December 4, 1879:
Man killed in Manatee Co.
We learn from Mr. T. P. Kennedy who returned from Ft. Ogden last Saturday, that a Mr. Whidden was killed by his horse in the neighborhood of Pine Level week before last. Mr. W., who was familiarly known as Jimmie Jockey Whidden in Manatee Co., went out cow-hunting, and his horse returning without rider or saddle, a search was instituted the next day when Mr. W's. body was found badly bruised and mangled. It is supposed that the horse threw him and that his foot hung in the stirrup and then the horse dragged and kicked him to death.
Note: According to historian Kyle VanLandingham, William J. "Jockey Bill" Whidden, “The William Whidden who appears on the 1850 census of Hillsborough Co., FL, age 35, with wife Matilda, age 30, and children James, William, and Lina, and later appears on the 1860 Manatee Co., FL census as William Whidden, age 50 with children James, William, Mary, and Richard is William J. "Jockey Bill" Whidden...The son James J. Whidden married Mary Morgan, daughter of Ephraim and Mary (Parker) Morgan.”
March 12, 2001 & August 8, 2004