31
New York and Key West
October 1846
The day before I was to leave New York, Abigail’s husband, Anton, arrived home at midday on his way back from the customs o?ce, where he’d been tracking a shipment of artwork.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Emily,” he said gravely. “There’s been a terrible hurricane out of the Caribbean, and Key West has taken a direct hit. My understanding is that there were about ?fty deaths in Key West alone, Cuba’s death toll was in the hundreds.”
I stood looking at him in shock. “When did this happen?”
“About a week ago. On October eleventh.”
“Are the ships sailing?” I asked.
“Yes, they’ve just resumed after almost a week. There’s been a great deal of devastation there, according to what I’ve been hearing, and a growing number of fatalities resulting from it.”
It was to a very different Key West to which I returned.
The Great Havana Hurricane of October 11, 1846, would go down in Key West history as the most destructive storm to hit the settlement in the nineteenth century. I was stunned when I saw the damage ashore from the deck of our ship as we approached the port. Even though almost a month had passed, about a dozen large, damaged vessels were still stranded on the reefs near Key West. Wreckers were hard at work trying to unload cargo and salvage ships, while trying to ?x their own homes, as well.
I looked around at the altered shoreline and the debris that had washed up. I could see Tom waiting for me at the recently rebuilt docks. As ill as I was from the trip, I was in a hurry to disembark and ?nd out if my family was all right.
In contrast to the sight of the spirited, lively crowd that Martin and I had watched onshore that ?rst day we arrived in Key West, the scene that awaited me was somber and grave. People trudging along the dock looked confused. What had been a vital, bustling port was now a jumble of fallen trees, disabled vessels, buildings without roofs, and inhabitants stricken with grief. Even the church was gone.
Tom’s face was grim. He supervised the loading of my baggage into his landau and helped me up. “I have some bad news, Emily,” he said when we were settled in the carriage. “Gran had a heart attack during the storm, and … we lost her. I’m sorry.”
In spite of our past differences, I dearly loved Gran, and now I buried my head in Tom’s shoulder, weeping. We were trying to make our way along a rutted, still-mucky road partly blocked by fallen trees, which befuddled his driver and the horses.
In the absence of the usual landmarks, I felt disoriented. “I don’t see the lighthouse,” I said as I looked over the vacant, wasted landscape toward Whitehead Point.
“No. It was washed away.”
“Oh no. Not … Barbara Mabrity!”
“No. Miss Barbara herself survived. But her ?ve children were drowned.”
This was almost more than I could bear. Gran’s death … the image of Barbara’s children … it was beyond belief. Tom offered me his handkerchief, put his arms around me, and let me cry. I felt a deep sense of shame. While this calamity had struck my home, and my family had all been suffering, I’d been enjoying New York, with not a thought of Key West. “And what of Wreckers’ Cay?” I asked.
“It’s gone, too. The lighthouse keepers both lost their lives. The island just washed away, along with all the buildings on it. I’m sorry, Emily. I know your heart was out there.”
I nodded. After a moment I said, “My heart is still out there.”
Pedro’s opulent house had been unroofed and virtually destroyed from ?ooding. I mourned the loss of my belongings and my memories there, for many of them had been good. To my amazement, Juanita had met a widower from Havana over the summer and had returned to Cuba to be married. Our driver had lost his life in the storm while trying—in vain, as it turned out—to save our horses and tropical birds. A couple of the other members of the staff had taken jobs with families desperate for help. Another servant had drowned, and our cook had died of asthma because of the stress. I heard each of these accounts with profound sadness.
But despite these horrors, and my sorrow at losing Gran, I was home at last. I moved into Gran’s beautiful Greek Revival mansion on Caroline, which had fared well in spite of some water damage. The elegant structure had remained intact, a tribute to the craftsmanship of Key West’s shipwrights. Her slaves, who were living in the servants’ cottage, were bewildered. Clearly, Gran’s estate needed to be sorted out as soon as possible.
In her will, Gran had left me her house, and Dorothy her investments. But with Gran’s house came her slaves: Dinah, Bess, Hagar, and her gardener, Cato, who was also her driver.
“But I don’t want slaves,” I protested crossly.
“Well, you could give them to me,” said Dorothy. “But of course, then they’d still be slaves.”
I sighed impatiently. “I’ll talk to them,” I said.
This, as it turned out, produced mixed results, largely determined by their ages. Cato, who was the eldest at sixty-eight, said he wanted to stay on as a slave. Dinah, who had worked as a lady’s maid for my grandmother, was in her late thirties and gratefully accepted my offer of manumission and a cash gift to see her back to Charleston, where she had been taken from her family years ago. Bess was forty-?ve. She said she’d be quite pleased to continue to work for me for a salary, her keep, and manumission papers, but she said she might move on to New Orleans later on. She had a sister there who was free, and a daughter who was still a slave.
That left Hagar, who was still only in her twenties. Gran had bought her in Key West from a widower who was returning to Kentucky and wanted to travel unencumbered. Hagar wanted manumission and a cash gift. She would ?nd other living quarters in Key West, and we agreed that she would continue to clean the house for a salary.
With that settled, my days back home became a ?urry of activity. I began to help with hurricane relief for the villagers who had lost everything—ladling soup, sorting through piles of donated clothing, and working as a volunteer at the hospital. It would be a long time before Key West recovered.