While there were inhabitants within the boundaries of present-day Okeechobee County from the early 1870s on, those settlements were in the areas around Basinger and Fort Drum, in the northwestern and northern parts of present-day Okeechobee County.

In the southern part of the county, along the shoreline of Lake Okeechobee, and along the banks of Taylor Creek, only small bands of Seminole Indians had inhabited the area, until 1896.

The family of Noel Rabun Raulerson had migrated to the Basinger area in the 1870s, and several of his married sons and their families made the migration as well.

Eventually, one son, peter, decided he needed more room on which to graze his cattle, so he packed up his family, his possessions and his herd and it was moving day, pioneer style, They arrived on the banks of Taylor Creek in the fall of 1896.

Marie Clements Box, a granddaughter of those early founders, recalled a few years ago some of the stories that her grandmother, Louisiana Chandler Raulerson related to her about those early days.

"My grandfather and grandmother came her in 1896 and there was absolutely nothing her but woods and Indians scattered her and there. My grandfather made friends with the Indians. I can remember, as a child, they would come to my grandparents’ home and sit around on the floor and eat clabber. It was kink of like cottage cheese and we always had plenty of milk and butter and such. They would sit in a circle on the floor and eat this clabber. They would even sleep on the porch if they wanted to at night, and they were caught away from their camp," she said.