CLAY COUNTY – As Florida politics moved into the late 1800s and early 1900s, elections and sessions in Tallahassee continued to be wild and wooly. Most candidates and voters were grateful to get through elections and legislative sessions with no gunplay. Frequent shouting matches, fistfights and the occasional horse whipping were a given.

May Mann Jennings, who for a good part of her life was unable to vote much less hold public office, was among the most skilled politicians of the times. Clay County has long laid claim to this woman and her family.

May Mann’s political training began young when at 9, in 1882, her mother died and her father became Senator Austin Mann from Hernando County near the Crystal River area. May and her older sister were dispatched to St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Augustine for a stiff academic curriculum and traditional southern finishing school training in refined deportment.

Vacations were spent in Tallahassee when the legislature was in session. Natural curiosity inspired her to explore and learn all the ins and outs of the capital city. By the time she was twelve she had made knew people at all levels of life in the state capital.

Her father introduced her to his peers and her accomplished curtsey and nun-instilled demeanor made her an immediate success. But --- she sought out the regular people and charmed them as well. She listened and remembered everything.

Austin Mann’s political enemies conspired in late 1880s to gerrymander him out of office. He ran in newly formed Citrus County but was defeated when his opponent charged that he was an aristocrat because he slept in a nightshirt. It was of course a vicious lie.

Mann relocated to Brooksville and in 1890 was soon back in the fray running for a seat in the House of Representatives. May, recently graduated valedictorian of her class, proved an able campaigner. She was equally comfortable pouring tea and punch in fancy drawing rooms or out in the woods rubbing elbows with working people where the candidates climbed on the nearest available stump and commenced speechifying.

Austin Mann was elected and May met her future husband then Judge William Sherman Jennings a young up and comer in the Democratic Party.

Their courtship continued when they both traveled to the capital where May assumed responsibility for her father’s appointments, correspondence and hostess duties. Sometimes she was the only woman in the capital corridors and offices full of suspender snapping back slapping politicos and their fawning hangers on.

On May 12, 1891, May Mann and William Sherman Jennings married and were escorted down the aisle by the entire membership of the Florida legislature.

Jennings’ ascent in the Democratic Party was one of the most rapid in history and many credit May’s intimate knowledge of state politics and politicians combined with her vast network of women friends from her tireless efforts for the Florida Federation of Woman’s Clubs. Women could not vote but were significant influencers.

On November 6, 1900 the voters of Florida elected William Sherman Jennings the eighteenth governor of the state. After serving one term Gov. Jennings, May and 12-year-old son, Sherman Bryan, settled in Jacksonville. The family also spent time at their extensive farm property near Middleburg in Clay County. May reveled in again having a hen house and riding horses as in her childhood.

May Mann Jennings was a natural at negotiating the minefield of politics in turn of the century Florida. She did it with intellect and charm, in corsets, bustles and immaculate white gloves never mussing a hair of her signature Gibson Girl hair style.

She did all this without ever resorting to guns or a horsewhip.