History of Key West The Old and the New Jefferson Browne

IF THE memory of the name of Browne, transplanted fromVirginia to Key West by my great-uncle, Fielding A. Browne, is kept alive by this work, I want the credit to be given to my Father and Mother, to whom in love and gratitude I dedicate this History. Whatever of gentleness of character and intellectual culture I possess, I owe to my Father; to my Mother I owe the will to execute, and the desire to serve mankind. They now rest side by side, after journeying together for near a half century, and I paraphrase, in humble reverence to them, the inscription which I placed on my Father's monument twenty-three years ago.

"Those best of parents, how shall I repay

The debt of love and gratitude I owe thee?"
"By laying up our counsels in your heart."

As I lay down my pen, whatever pleasure the accomplishment of my task affords, it is saddened by the thought that their eyes will never behold the work which they inspired.

Jefferson Beale Browne.

PREFACE

I HAVE written this history of Key West, believing that it would be interesting to the younger generation, and to those who are to come after us, to know something of the people and events which filled the years that have gone. My first intention was to copy Colonel Maloney's history, published in 1876, and bring it down to the present time.

In collecting the data, however, I found that there were a great many interesting events connected with the early history of Key West which Colonel Maloney had omitted, and concluded that if my work was to be as complete as was possible with available data, I would have to write it anew. This I have done, using, however, such data as his history contains, and at times preserving even his phraseology.

The brevity of Colonel Maloney's history is no reflection on his effort. He states that it was prepared on a few week's notice and was delivered as an address on the dedication of our city hall on July 4, 1876. It was impossible for him to have gotten together in that time the data which my work contains, in compiling which I have spent more than a year.

I have obtained information from the State, War, Navy and Judiciary Departments of the government at Washington, and from the Secretary of State's office at Tallahassee, Florida; from the New York, Boston and Congressional Libraries, and miscellaneous old publications. Information, embodied in a few lines may have been procured only by searching numerous records, and carrying on a voluminous correspondence. The historian who writes of Key West thirty or forty years from now, will have no occasion to cover the same ground.

I believe that this work contains all the available information on any subject connected with Key West, which is of interest to anyone. Where some trivial matters are mentioned, it is because they throw light on the habits and customs of the times, and may, perchance, brighten what may prove but a prosaic record of events.

With this explanation, I leave to posterity this compilation, as a tribute to the ancient order of things, and to the noble band of citizens who made this their home in the days of the Old Key West.