The Arcadian News Paper:
Annie Ford, life-long resident and mother of 15 children whom are still liv ing. Mrs. Ford’s grandchildren and in all, and somehow finds the time and attention for each and every one of them. Mrs. Ford was born July 25, 1884 about three miles north of Arcadia. She was the former Annie Rowan, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dick Rowan. Her father homesteaded here just after the Civil War. He was an orphan from Orange County and was “adopted” by Tom Williams, a distant relative.
“Miss Annie”, as friends call her, eloped with Mr. W.L. Ford, a resident of DeSoto County since he was 12, year’s old and who was born at Starke, Florida, when she was 16 years old. She left home to go into town on Saturday afternoon with Mr. Ford and his mother, presumably on a shopping trip, and the young couple married quietly at the County Courthouse. Mr. Ford died in 1945 just one day before their 45th wedding anniversary.
Children of the couple are Mrs. Lucille Grant, Bill Ford, Mrs. Clyde Simms, Mrs. Betty Deluca, Mrs. Mary Godfrey, Mrs. Florence Albritton, Mrs. Jimmie Albritton, all of Arcadia; Mrs. Minnie Carter, Brownsville, L.E. Ford, Brownsville; Mrs. Catherine Duncan, Bradenton, and Fred Ford, Jupiter, Florida.
Mrs. Ford recalls that rearing 15 children was not a financially easy job and she went to work in the local canning plant to help out her farmer-cattleman husband. She worked at the same plant for 22 years.
“My life has been full of hard work, happiness and sometimes heartbreak, but I think I’m a lucky woman,” she says. “ It’s wonderful to get my big family around me. We have so many things to talk about its hard to get a word in sometimes…but its fun”.
Mrs. Ford will be 80 years old next june.