The tree Mary Agnes saved

By Angie Conway

March 27, 2018 8:35 a.m.

In the years before she died at age 92 in 2016, my cousin, Mary Agnes Wolff White, related an interesting story about preserving the truly magnificent oak tree located in the parking lot adjacent to Buy Go on the corner of Ash and Eighth Streets.

Before it was Buy Go it was Fred’s and before that, it was a Winn-Dixie grocery store. Mary Agnes valued the natural beauty of this island all her life. In 1950, she and fifteen other ladies were charter members of the Magnolia Garden Club. That club is still active in saving trees and in planting new ones, especially oaks.

The Magnolia Club was just one of the Fernandina Garden Clubs that voiced opposition to tree removal.  Pictured in their “Flower Hats.  Back Row; Suzanne Davis Hardee, Violet Hickie Poole, Eloise Bowers, Noonie “Florence” Partin, Second Row; Betty Stone Davis, Mary Agnes White, Gloria Pikula, Mildred Courlin Whiteside, Yetta Ewing, Front Row; Joyce Enzminger, Joan Lasserre, Carol Hardee Anderson, Harriet Waas, Carolyn Miller, Elizabeth Bowers.[/caption]

Mary Agnes learned from a contractor that Winn Dixie planned to destroy the oak tree in the parking lot. She immediately put in motion a plan to mobilize the community in opposing Winn-Dixie. She told me she started by alerting the garden clubs, city and county officials and other community organizations to express their outrage to Winn-Dixie for its planned destruction of that irreplaceable treasure. According to M. A., Winn-Dixie was swamped with calls and letters and angry store customers.

She didn’t go so far as to sit in the parking lot of Winn-Dixie with a shotgun, but she would have been well aware of the story surrounding the preservation of the oak tree in the center of Ash Street by the courageous actions of Kate Baily. It is said that Miss Kate sat on her front porch with a shotgun and dared city workers to demolish the tree. And, indeed, that tree stands in all its majesty in the center of Ash right off Eighth. Today, and rightfully so, the tree is known as Kate’s Tree.

The campaign to preserve the oak in the Winn-Dixie parking lot was a success. Mary Agnes received a call from whomever was representing Winn-Dixie locally at the time to “call off her troops, Winn-Dixie would leave the tree alone.”

If it were not for Mary Agnes, we would not have that oak tree in existence today. It would have been long gone and us the lesser for it.

Angie Conway returned to her roots when she retired to Fernandina in 2013 from Washington, D.C. She enjoyed a career as a lawyer/lobbyist in Washington working in both the private and public sectors to promote retirement security issues. Her Mother, Florence Wolff Jones, was raised in Fernandina and was first cousin to Mary Agnes Wolff White. The Wolffs have been in Fernandina since the 1880s. The Wolff family home is at Ash and Sixth and was bought and renovated by another cousin, Drusie Davis.