15. Roberts Cemetery

Highway 71

Headstone of Poley McDaniel and wife, Roberts Cemetery, 2006

This cemetery was officially founded about 1900 on land donated by Jeremiah B. Roberts although many of the graves date back to the 1870s. The Roberts still own land in the area.

Members of many prominent Wewahitchka families are buried here including the Roberts, the Whitfields, the Laniers, and the McDaniels.

Headstone of the McDaniels' son

The graves of the colorful Poley McDaniel, his wife, and young son are found here. Poley began working on the river at the age of 12 but was not allowed a pilot’s license until he was 21. Captain McDaniel piloted the Callahan, the largest and most luxurious of the riverboats plying the Apalachicola, as well as the Chipola, the Eufala, the Ruth, and the Flint. For over 100 years nothing was more exciting in the communities along the river than the arrival of a riverboat, for it was by boat that everything came—mail, visitors, clothes from New York, London, or Paris, glass for windows, or fruit trees for planting.

The riverboat Callahan

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