GROWING UP ASHLEY

John Ashley’s great niece shares memories of her infamous family

BY GREGORY ENNS

Sandra Provence learned a thing or two from her grandmother, the sister of outlaw John Ashley, about how to comport herself as a descendant of Florida’s most notorious crime family.

For starters, you didn’t talk to strangers, and you didn’t share information about the family. 

“Growing up my grandmother always told me you can’t trust people,” Sandra said. “Don’t trust anyone, and don’t talk to anyone about your family. Your family business stays in your circle.”

Sandra’s grandmother, Lola Ashley, was one of John Ashley’s eight siblings. She was born blind and didn’t begin attending school until the age of 12, when she entered the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine. She graduated in 1918 at the age of 24. “She’d take the train back and forth to school every semester and her sisters would always take her there and pick her up,” Sandra said.

Lola married George Mario, also known as Carlo, in 1922. The couple lived in a home near Lola’s parents, Joe and Lugenia Ashley, in Fruita, then a remote community in the sandy Florida scrub in what is now southern Martin County. They had their only child, Carlo, Sandra’s father, in 1925.

CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY

The family compound was also used as a base of communication and resupply for John Ashley for many of the years he was on the run during his 12-year public crime spree. On the occasions when John fled out of state, he would always return to Fruita, homesick for his close-knit family.

Also living in the Fruita compound were Ashley sister Mary Mobley and her husband, George, and their three children, including Hanford, who would become a member of the Ashley Gang. Sandra said the family performed chores such as clothes washing, gardening or making jellies as one group. Dogs were always on the grounds to alert the family to visitors.

Relaying stories told to her by her grandmother, Sandra said the Ashleys were close to the nearby African-American community, who helped Joe Ashley work at his moonshine stills. Joe had built a rooming house in Fruita for the African American still workers and had helped fund construction of the African American church in nearby New Monrovia.

The Ashleys also provided a sort of safety net from George Baker, the county’s sheriff and a Ku Klux Klan leader, and his deputies, some of whom were also known Klan members.

STANDING BY JOHN

As for John Ashley, Sandra said her grandmother and the family, including her, believed that John in 1911 had killed DeSoto Tiger, the event that set off his run against the law, in self-defense in a fight over liquor. Dealing with a corrupt law enforcement and legal system in early Florida, he walked on his own side of the law. 

Lola didn’t talk much about John, but Sandra remembered her grandmother telling her that he had given away much of his ill-gotten money from bank robberies to the needy. Though Lola and the other Ashley women were loyal to John, they also knew he was responsible for bringing great trouble to the family. 

Sandra said her grandmother suffered a still birth in 1923 and was traumatized by other events such as the Jan. 9, 1924, shootout at the moonshine still that took the life of Joe Ashley and the subsequent burning of the Ashley, Mobley and Mario homes by deputies. In addition, deputies rounded up all Ashley relatives, mostly women and children, and kept them in jail for more than a week. 

Then there was the ambush by deputies at the Sebastian River bridge on Nov. 1, 1924 — exactly 100 years ago come Friday — that left John, Lola’s nephew Hanford Mobley and two others dead. The deaths were ruled justifiable homicide, but the family maintained that the four were executed, a position supported by statements made decades later by two of the officers at the shooting scene.

ANOTHER DEATH

Eight years after the bridge shooting, Lola’s husband, George, was found dead on the South Fork of the St. Lucie River while in a small boat with Bill Ashley, the last of the Ashley men. Authorities ruled the death a drowning, but some family members and friends said Bill had confessed that he killed George as revenge for George tipping off law authorities that John and the gang were heading up to Jacksonville the night of Nov. 1, 1924. 

George was angered that John had taken his new Ford touring car for his escape, especially since his wife was pregnant again and they needed the car out of medical necessity. The tip enabled St. Lucie County Sheriff J.R. Merritt to set a trap that ended in their deaths.

Sandra, 64, believes Bill waited until young Carlo Mario, 7 at the time of his father’s death, was old enough to take care of himself and not be a burden to his blind mother. Sandra said she did not know whether her grandmother suspected Bill in the death of her husband. After George’s death, Lola and Carlo lived with Bill for several years in the 1930s, according to city directories.  “Bill Ashley was his surrogate dad,’’ Sandra said. “He taught him how to do everything. Uncle Bill was his teacher.”

MOVE AWAY FROM FRUITA

Over the years the Ashley families moved away from Fruita, many of them to West Palm Beach. In 1958, Sandra’s father built sort of a compound in West Gate in West Palm Beach that included a house next door for his mother, Lola. Today, Sandra and her husband live in her grandmother’s house. Eva and Lugenia also lived together in West Palm Beach. 

Growing up, Sandra never disclosed to friends that she was a descendant of the Ashley Gang.

“I wasn’t allowed to talk about it,” she said of a directive given to her by her father. “With the Ashleys, not everything is as it seems. I didn’t have many questions because I didn’t know all about that. All I know is what my father said, that John was like a modern-day Robin Hood. He stole from the wealthy and gave to the poor.”

Sandra said she has broken her grandmother’s and father’s rule about not speaking about the family because she thinks it’s important to share the story of the Ashleys with her two sons and grandchildren.

FOND MEMORIES

Growing up next to her grandmother, Sandra remembers the get-togethers the family would have at her parents’ home. Though Bill Ashley died in 1940, the family stayed close to his son, Walter. Other frequent visitors were Mary Mobley [Kajander] and Eva Smith, along with Albert Miller, who was severely injured in the shootout at the still. 

“They would all come over to our house,” Sandra said. “Albert Miller would do pigs, Zeb did chickens, my aunts did farming [and had vegetables]. Every single person in my family had something to do, and we would all do it together.” 

Sandra was especially close to her great aunts, several of whom had multiple marriages. She bristles at reports published over the years that Ashley descendants changed their surnames out of embarrassment.

“In fact, that wasn’t true. The only Ashleys left were women and of course their names were going to change. They got married.”

She said her grandmother and aunts were generous to all with whom they came in contact. “She never met a stranger, nor did any of my aunts. They were just the sweetest people. That’s all my memory of them.”

DESCENDANTS

Of the Ashley men, Bill Ashley, who died in 1940 at the age of 56, had one son, Walter Ashley. Frank Ashley, who died at age 20 when he was lost at sea in 1921, had a son, Hugh Ashley, father of the late Albert Ashley of Fort Pierce. Ed Ashley, also lost at sea in 1921, at the age of 31, had a daughter, Marjorie Ashley.  Bob Ashley, who died in 1915 at the age of 20 in a shootout with police, also had a son, whom Sandra identified as Harold Cavor.

Of the Ashley women, Mary Mobley [Kajander], who died in 1979 at the age of 93, had three children, Hanford, Luby and a daughter, Laeto [Haesel] of West Palm Beach. Eva Ashley [Smith], who died in 1987 at the age of 89, had two sons and three daughters who survived her: J. Marshall Smith of Stuart, Philip C. Smith of Jacksonville, and Lugenia Crews and Joan Dilman, both of West Palm Beach. Lola, who died in 1986 at the age of 89, was survived by Carlo of West Palm Beach. 

Sandra said sometimes her father would take her and her five siblings to the old home place and visit the family cemetery in Fruita, which had been looted over the years by robbers thinking treasure would be found. She said her father would often bring a shovel to return bones to the graves. Lugenia Ashley, who died in 1946, was the last of the Ashleys buried at the cemetery.

The descendants of Joe and Lugenia in 1978 sold the Fruita property to the company that would develop the Mariner Sands residential subdivision. The sale contained a proviso that the new owners replace headstones and maintain the cemetery for perpetuity, Sandra said. 

LIKE DAISY

Sandra said she was told as a child that she looked like her Aunt Daisy, the youngest of Joe and Lugenia’s children. “Daisy was way ahead of her time,” she said. “She wore dresses but preferred pants and a hat. She always had a gun. She was a tomboy of sorts.”

Daisy died of an apparent suicide in 1928. A newspaper article said she had mistakenly taken bromide mercury tablets, thinking they were a medication. According to family lore, her husband Otis Kirkland had decided to leave Daisy and return to his first wife, Ruby. 

IMPORTANT LESSONS

Living next to Lola growing up, Sandra said she was amazed at how her grandmother negotiated life without sight. Her grandmother could cook, bake, knit and weave rugs.

“My grandmother taught me how to tie my shoes. She taught me my nouns, my verbs, my adjectives, my adverbs. She taught me my primary colors. There was not anything my grandmother did not teach me.”

She said her grandmother often listened to books on tape and played checkers on a set made for the blind.  She would also coach young blind children how to negotiate being blind. She got  around her by memorizing how many steps to take from destination to destination.

Despite the loving nature of her grandmother and aunts, Sandra acknowledged that a vengeful streak ran on the male side of the family. Joe Ashley had been involved in a feud that originated with the killing of his brother, also named John Ashley, in 1881. Sandra said the streak ended with Bill’s death in 1940.

“Is that still a factor today? No,” she said. “After they were all gone, there was nothing but kindness and community and compassion.”