Axie Lang: Cook, Midwife and Red Cross Volunteer at Eldora, Florida

Could this be Axie Lang? A caretaker walking through the Eldora community. NPS photo.

Eldora, a historic town now within Canaveral National Seashore, was held together by its caretakers, grove workers, housekeepers and cooks. One of them was Axie Lang, cook and maid to the Warnock family, whose hard work over more than 20 years made their life run smoothly. She was also said to be New Smyrna's best midwife; census records list her as a cook or a nurse, depending on the decade.

Photographs from the early 1900s in the national seashore's files show local families at leisure with their caretakers nearby, who made up most of Eldora's African American population then. Axie cooked for the Warnocks and their guests, and probably for the De Graw family too: in January 1914 she was recorded as beginning her twenty-first season at Eldora. On March 1, 1916, an anonymous guest was moved to write her a tribute in verse:

To Axie, the clever, the real Southern cook, needs never to get her skill from a book. But bread, pies, and cakes She most surely bakes When placed on the table Sharp eyes are unable to find any scraps left by most ravenous guests.

In 1918 Axie served on the committee raising money for the Red Cross war fund, for soldiers sent overseas in World War I. Her son Hilton Lang was one of them: drafted on February 15, 1918, he sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 10, 1918, with Company C of the 367th Infantry, 92nd Division.

The remains of Eldora can be explored at Canaveral National Seashore, Apollo Beach, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Sources

• National Park Service, Canaveral National Seashore, "Axie Lang." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/axie-lang.htm
• Its sources include the Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study (National Park Service, 2008), the 1910 U.S. census, National Archives records and the New Smyrna Daily News.