Trolling the Colonel

Sometimes you find really strange stuff about your family in the newspapers.

Captain Carl William Bahrt was a distant relative by marriage. His son Carl William Jr. married Luddie Garner in 1903. She was the sister of my great grandmother, Sallie Adams Fulford.

Manatee River Journal November 21, 1889

Capt. Bahrt has an unusual story that I still haven't figured out. I've been doing research on him, assisting his grandson and great granddaughter, trying to sort out some of the family stories to determine which ones are true.

I came across this newspaper clipping from the Manatee River Journal dated November 21, 1889 and was again amazed at the things you find over a hundred years later. I'm sure no living relative had ever seen it or heard of his chicken raising exploits.

It tells that he had a chicken with four wings. It was actually published two months after Capt. Bahrt died, which tells you something about the competency of the newspaper editors.

At the time they wrote they story, he was living in Manatee County Florida in a community called Fogartyville, that is now only a historic marker. He had retired as the Captain of a two masted Sloop, based in Fogartyville, he used to carry cargo and passengers across the Gulf of Mexico and as far as New York City.

In 1895 he was appointed the Lighthouse Keeper at Mullet Key in Tampa Bay with an annual salary of $550. He was also the Federal Quarantine Officer for the area,which was actually a pretty important job, inspecting ships as they came into port to make sure the passengers and crew did not have any disease. Yellow Fever was a regular visitor to the area, usually brought in via a ship.

So when I googled four winged chickens to find out how rare this was I discovered there is a story circulating that Colonel Sanders and his folks have been trying to create mutated chickens with not only four wings but four legs.

Something about the popularity and high prices of the football viewing staple of hot wings.