Bluff Springs used to be a thriving town during the days of the timber boon in north Escambia County. Began in 1888 as an incorporated municipality, there were sawmills, brickyards, and turpentine plants aplenty. Accompanying such activities came churches, schools, and public utilities to support the working folk and their families. But with numerous industries came the darker side of the rough and rowdy timbermen. There were four taverns that attracted men such as Joshua Robert "Brown" Bowen, the brother-in-law of the famous gunfighter John Wesley Hardin. There was also Morris Slater, aka Railroad Bill, the famous black gunfighter that ambushed and killed Brewton's Sheriff E. S. McMillan. Eventually, Brown met his fate at the end of a rope in 1878 while Railroad Bill was gunned down in the Ward General Store in Atmore in 1896.
Back in Bluff Springs, the residents of the bustling town needed supplies of every kind to make a go of it. And the one store that had it all was George Riley Stanton's General Store. Contained inside was also the Bluff Springs Post Office of which George was the postmaster as of 1904. George was born on July 4, 1870 in Pollard, Alabama, the son of Confederate Veteran Samuel Frederick Stanton and Mary Jane Burrows (Both buried in Flomaton). Samuel supported his family as a laborer where his son George followed in his footsteps. But by 1900, George had left Pollard to make his own way as a grocer in the fledgling town of Bluff Springs. He met and married Ula Irene McDavid, of the widespread McDavid family, in 1896 and together they operated the Stanton General Store as George ventured into the lumber manufacturing business where his entrepreneurial pursuits made them wealthy.
But sadly and for whatever reason, Ula took an overdose of laudanum at their home in Pine Barren on the night of August 4, 1907. The drug was taken twelve hours prior to her death and there was nothing they could do before she passed away at the age of 31-years old. Her body was carried to Santa Rosa County and buried with her family in Coon Hill Cemetery. George never remarried. By 1930, he had officially retired to his home in Bluff Springs where he passed away himself on June 13, 1941 and was buried in the Crary Cemetery. The sawmill whistles are silent now and the old steam locomotives have rusted away. The old outlaws were hunted down and killed, and the mill workers died off or moved on to more fertile fields. But if you look hard enough, you can still find the old foundations of some of the sawmills and stores that were scattered along the once bustling town of Bluff Springs on Escambia River. (Reference "A Pictorial History by Jerry Fischer and Neal Collier)
The George Riley Stanton General Store, Bluff Springs, Florida 1904
George Riley Stanton, Buried in Crary Cemetery, Bluff Springs
Morris Slater, AKA Railroad Bill after being
shot and killed in 1896. Buried St. John's
Cemetery, Pensacola, FL
Marriage Announcement in the Milton Journal
December 25, 1896