Contributed by Allie Louis Cone, Jr.

Biography of Allie Louis Cone, Sr.

Every American's Fifteen Minutes of Fame

On March 3, 1888, at the height of the yellow fever/malaria epidemic in Hillsborough County, Florida, Alice V. Jones Cone gave birth to Louis Alley Cone, the fifth consecutive generation of Cones to bear the name Louis as a first name. His birth was approximately 20 years before the famed sanitation engineer, William Crawford Gorgas, clearly demonstrated during the building of the Panama Canal that these diseases were caused by mosquitoes and not by swamp gas. South Florida was placed under quarantine. Federal troops (may be read Yankees since the War Between the States had only been over 23 years and Reconstruction was just coming to an end in Florida) put a tight blockade around the Tampa area.

The baby's father, Louis Godfrey Cone was determined to save his infant son from the plague, but he could not save that of his wife. She died April 1, 1888 and was buried in Plant City's Shiloh Cemetery. Louis Godfrey recruited the services of his brother, William Medicus, to smuggle the infant north to the family home near Starke in Bradford Country. This was a trip of about 150 miles and had to be done by a single rider on horseback because the roads were so heavily guarded.

The story, as told by Uncle Billy, included traveling at night to avoid troupers who were turning back or arresting under martial law South Floridians who were trying to escape the plague. The baby rode in a basket lashed to the saddle, and was kept quiet with little muslin bags filled with sugar -- "sugar tits."

Upon arriving in Bradford County, Louis Alley was given over to the care of his mother's best friend, Elizabeth Bertha Sparkman who changed the order and spelling of his name to Allie Louis, the order and spelling used by his son and grandson. Allie, she felt, was closer to the spelling of Alice, his mother. With cooler weather, the plague subsided, and Louis Godfrey went to Starke to retrieve his son. The details are murky, but when he returned to Tampa, he brought with him his new wife, Elizabeth Sparkman Cone.

There is no evidence that the young Allie Louis was particularly precocious, the children of the affluent had the benefit of tutors and started higher education at much younger ages than today. In 1902, he enrolled in the East Florida Seminary (EFS) in Gainesville, a military school which was one of the predecessors of the University of Florida. There he played football and was commander of one of the artillery batteries. The cannon which were in use -- a picture exists of him beside his cannon -- seem to have been Confederate States of America surplus of the kind that were pulled into and out of battle by a team of horses, in short, a field piece. His claim to fame as an artilleryman was the result of a practical joke played by his cousin, Luther W. Holloway, and several other cadets.

As was the case in many Southern communities, Alachua County erected a Confederate Memorial on the northwest corner of the Court House lawn -- a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier standing on a tall granite base. The EFS cadets were to fire a cannon salute at the end of the dedication. Cadet Cone's cannon was the last one in the line. Luther Holloway and his cronies put a double (the story varies here: triple, quadruple) charge of powder in Allie's cannon unbeknownst to him. The cannons were fired in perfect synchrony: boom, boom, boom, boom, KA-BOOM! The final blast was so powerful that the cannon stood on its tail, and the windows on the west side of the courthouse were shattered. To the best of this writer's knowledge no one was punished for this classic practical joke.

Upon completing EFS -- the University of Florida was still a political football with Gainesville, Lake City, and perhaps some other places fighting for the right to have it -- he enrolled at the University of Illinois to study engineering. It must be noted that engineering in the first decade of this century was what computer science is to the current decade. With Teddy Roosevelt as President, the United States bought out the French and was well on the way to completing the Panama Canal, more railroads were built, skyscrapers were going up, great bridges were spanning rivers, and the Boston and New York subway systems were laid out and work begun.

His studies were aborted when he contracted rheumatic fever from which he almost died and which left him with a weakened heart. When the worst of the illness had past the university officials put him on a train to Tampa where he could catch a ship to Havana; the family had moved there in 1901. They telegraphed his father to be on the lookout for him. Other than the fact that he had to change trains many times along the way, the only thing that is known for certain is that the last leg of the railway journey was on the Tampa and Jacksonville Railroad, not too affectionately known then, and until about 1940, as the "Tug and Jerk."

Recuperation was slow, but it provided him with time to finish educating himself in civil engineering. This was encouraged further by the 1901 move to Cuba where Louis Godfrey had bought a sugar plantation, and Allie honed both his engineering and managerial skills. Today we forget how close Theodore Roosevelt came to turning Cuba into, if not a state, then at least a colony or a protectorate of the United States like the Canal Zone. It is not surprising that Louis Godfrey moved the family to Cuba a mere three years after the conclusion of the Spanish-American War.

As Allie's strength returned so did his desire for new horizons and engineering challenges. He first went to Mexico where he was instrumental in building a dam in the State of Pueblo. He then shipped out to New York City where he promptly joined an engineering firm that was expanding the NYC subway system by tunneling under the East River. The war in Europe had already begun, and the United States was pulled into it on April 6, 1917. He enlisted on May 9, 1917 as a private rather than wait for a commission in what became the 11th Regiment of Railway Engineers, the first volunteer to enlist in that unit. His immediate supervisor accepted his volunteering as a private and turned over to him along with three officers and assorted medical personnel the task of recruiting the regiment from among the engineers and sandhogs on the subway job. At the recruiting office at 106 Sixth Avenue in New York City, they put up a sign: FIRST IN FRANCE. JOIN THE ENGINEERS. The regiment filled up and work on the subway stopped. In fact, they were able to be highly selective; only one out of every six applicants was accepted. The new regiment was send to Ft. Totten, New York for outfitting and a month of basic training, while he remained in NYC to tie up loose ends recruiting and to push his own application for a commission. As the Carpathia (yes, the ship that picked up the survivors of the Titanic in 1912) was loading the regiment, his orders came though. The official regimental history contains a cartoon showing him running down the dock to catch the boat waving his commission. In fact, it was not quite that close. He got his commission on July 13; the Carpathia sailed on July 14.

It is, however, a historical fact that the 11th Engineers, presumably a non-combatant unit and unarmed except for officers who were permitted to carry side arms, saw action before any infantry units of the American Expeditionary Force. Cone and his platoon were sent forward in support of a British unit at the Battle of Cambria, on November 30, 1917. Their task was to evaluate the condition of rail lines at Gouzeaucourt which had been evacuated by the Germans. They were caught in a counter attack that was begun by a heavy artillery barrage. Twelve of his platoon were wounded, and a piece of shrapnel that entered through the left side of his helmet exited on the right side -- it went right through, nipping a little groove of skull on its way. As a result of this wound he became the first American officer wounded in World War I. This was the first American combat activity in WWI, and there was not the kind of day-to-day media coverage that is now so common. His wounding made the front pages of newspapers from New York, to Baltimore, to Washington, D.C., to Jacksonville, Tampa, and Havana. Later the March 17, 1918 "New York Times" carried an article which quoted extensively from a letter from a member of the regiment. He quoted Lt. Cone: "Get that hat; I want to keep it." (It is still in the family.) And went on to say that if Lt. Cone had been a quarter inch taller he'd have been finished. Instead, he led his 12 men to safety. Up and down the line that day the engineers fought the Germans with whatever they had, mostly shovels and pickaxes, but by that time Lt. Cone and his group were in the rear though not without further mishap. The ambulance -- a horse drawn double decker -- was strafed by a German airplane and Lt. Cone's Sergeant who was in the upper berth picked up his sixth wound of the day. Still, Lt. Cone was considered to be the American hero of the day, and was promoted from Second to First Lieutenant "for bravery" on order from General "Black Jack" Pershing.

His recuperation in England was spent adjacent to a British Tank Corps training site, and the engineer couldn't stay away from the metal monsters. He wrote a letter to his father in Cuba proclaiming the advantages which such technology gave the Allies, citing German captives who described their fear of the British tanks. Extracts of this letter were published in both the English and Spanish language newspapers in Havana. By the time he was ambulatory he was a regular in both the Brit's training program and at their officer's mess. Promoted to Captain, he was transferred to the virtually non-existent American Tank Corps, and loaned to the British Tank Corps. He saw action as a tank commander at the Battle of Amiens in 1918, but without further recorded heroics.

Upon his discharge he returned immediately to Cuba. There he owned a hardware and engineering company in Havana, and after becoming a York Rite Mason, was Grand Commander of the Havana Masonic Lodge.

In 1924, he returned to Gainesville where he eventually married Katherin Rice Wise on December 26, 1926. When he was 45, his only child, his namesake, was born in 1933. On Christmas Eve in 1936 he suffered the first of a series of heart attacks which left him a semi-invalid for the next twenty years. He died of complications from a stroke on December 3, 1955.

Sources

Broughton, V.T. (1926). _History of the Eleventh Engineers: United States Army_.

"New York Times" March 17, 1918.

Homecoming Football Program, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 1952.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Family Bibles, Photo Albums and Personal Recollections.

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