History of the Cabin's Origin
William John Howard, March 13, 2896-December 30, 1991
My father, William John Howard had a great love for Baldwin County that he instilled in his four children. When he was a young boy, his father, William Bostwick Howard, bought property on Perdido Bay and built a summer home there for his family of 8 children and another house in the back that housed the servants brought down from Montgomery. He remembered those carefree summer days when he lived in shorts or a bathing suit and never had to take a bath or change his clothes very much. He, with his brothers and sisters, spent his days in the bay swimming, fishing or boating.
It was such a wonderful memory to him that when he married, Fannie Lee Dameron on December 20, 1921, and started a family, he used every vacation time that he could to bring his family down to Baldwin County. Bill and Fannie Lee had four children, two boys, William John, Jr., 1923 and Neal Dameron, 1925, and two girls, Nellie Frances, 1928 and Fannie Lee 1930. The Howard family no longer owned the house in Perdido, but Bill had a good masonic brother, Emil Hugger, who invited him and his family to come down and spend a week with him each summer in his house on County Road 8. My father always either had a boat or a motor which would go on a boat, and we would pack up and make the 7 hour drive from Montgomery to spend a glorious week playing in the Bon Secour River and driving to Gulf Shores across the floating bridge. There might have been more romantic places to go, but for us it was beyond compare.
In 1945 his son, Neal, was killed in Germany in World War II. Feeling remorse for the family, Maude Hugger Taylor offered to sell my father a lot around the bend on Boggy Branch. Emil Hugger suggested he would help my father build a cabin on his new property. By this time Mr. Hugger was in his 80's and offered wonderful advice, but was not able to do much heavy work. Between the two of them they planned to buy two surplus arm barracks from one of the army bases close by, put them together, and add a big screen porch as a connector. And that is what they did. Thus our vacation home was created, and a permanent connection to Baldwin County was developed.
In addition to wishing to own a place on the water, my father always dreamed of owning a boat large enough to sleep and to travel on. And so he ordered plans from a boat company for a boat that he would be able to build in his backyard in the evenings after he completed his work in his business. We studied the plans on the living room floor and dreamed with him about how we would build the boat and get it down to Boggy Branch. Step by Step the plans emerged. In 1946 my father ordered the materials and began to build the boat. All of us helped when we could, and slowly the dream became a reality. And so in 1948 a large truck arrived in our back yard in Montgomery, loaded up the boat after having removed electrical wires to get in our yard, and transported the boat to the Alabama River in downtown Montgomery.
And so the 34-foot Nellee made its way down the Alabama River through the Mobile Bay up the BonSecour River into Boggy Branch. And for the next 38 years Bill Howard spent his spare time remodeling and completing his dreamboat, while his children and grandchildren continued to vacation and enjoy times on the Nellee. In 1985 lightening struck the boat and it burned to the water thus ending a lifelong dream. By then my father was 89 years old and unable to keep the Nellee in repairs. The love of Baldwin County lives on in his grandchildren and great grandchildren as they return each summer to spend wonderful days on Boggy Branch.
Nellie Frances Howard Tiller
