Press release

In Their Own Words - The History of Key West

The Key West Art and Historical Society is using oral histories to bring history to life in a brand new exhibition at the Custom House called, In Their Own Words: The History of Key West.
This project is financed in part with Historical Museums Grants-in-Aid Program assistance provided by the Bureau of Historical Museums, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State, Secretary of State.
A six-foot-by-three-foot scaled model in the exhibit will offer a birds-eye view of Key West as it was in the 1850s and a walk through three galleries will present visitors with real-life stories from the lives of Key West residents through the early 1940s.
“The collection of artifacts is amazing,” said the society’s CEO and Executive Director Claudia Pennington. “From Tom Hambright, Monroe County historian, to currant and past residents, we have accumulated invaluable documentation of life in Key West.”
Letters, diaries, military, government and business documents along with photos are all used in showing what daily life was like in Key West from its infancy to its coming of age prior to the Second World War. In addition, it is presented in the original works of the people who lived it.
Fifth-generation Conch L. Ben Roberts, 65, recently brought a wealth of documents and photos about life in Key West during the late 1800s and through the 1900s to the society.
“When my grandmother died she had a couple of boxes of personal items I kept at home,” Ben recalled recently while visiting the Custom House. “She saved everything.”
In the early 1960s, Ben began going through boxes and found that his curiosity about where his family came from and where it went was piqued. For more than forty years, Ben has tracked down his family history, one small piece at a time. Today, his son Jeff, 44, has joined in the pursuit.
Ben’s quest is an excellent example of the local history that will speak for itself at the society’s exhibit. Driven to find out his own family’s history, Ben has unearthed a treasure-trove of documentation on more than one hundred years of his family’s life in Key West.
“I knew the family was in Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas,” Roberts, said, “and came to Key West in the 1840s, But, are we Irish or Scottish? I am working with an Irish Museum to see if any Roberts were aboard a ship that left Kinsail, Ireland, and shipwrecked off Point Royal in 1669.
Abram Roberts, Ben’s grandfather, was born in 1855 and died in 1931.
“I have Abram’s 1918 Waterfront Pass,” he showed it safely placed in a notebook. “The pass lists Abram’s address as 818 Frances Street and states he worked on the waterfront.”
Today, that address is part of the Key West Cemetery, but according to documents Ben has collected, at one time homes lined both sides of Frances Street.
From his grandmother’s aged fruitcake tin, Robert gently pulled out a stack of long forgotten papers. He spread them out on a table.
“Look at this,” he pointed at a yellowing piece of paper dated 1934, “ninety gallons of fuel for the boat cost $20.” He laughed softly. “Twenty bucks, look at today’s gas prices!”
Other aged receipts showed the cost of weather gear for the fishermen, how many thousands of pounds of fish they caught, what it was sold for and what pay they received from the boat captain.
Ben showed an old black-and-white photo of a family on a porch. “That’s the Red Door building on Caroline Street,” he said. “This is from the 1890s and my family lived above it for years. I grew up living there.”
When I come to Key West to fish with my buddies,” Jeff said, “I get a kick out of showing them places that involved my family. I’ve learned a lot about the family and its Key West roots from my father.”
“I found information about my great-grandfather in the 1860s Census report,” Ben said and opened a notebook filled with old Photostats of U.S. Census reports beginning in 1910. “There’s a lot of information in these reports.”
Another source he found that contained a wealth of information were death certificates.
Ben opened another notebook that contained pages of death certificate copies.
“Dates, of course, and cause of death were recorded, but also full names and occupation, information on father and mother of the deceased as well as who reported the information was recorded,” Ben explained.
A more current death certificate gave the name of a still existing mortuary and when contacted by Ben the mortuary photocopied information of the deceased relative, and the newspaper obituary, and mailed it to him.
“It’s been a challenge following the family from their arrival in Key west,” Ben said with a smile, “But it has also been a learning process and never boring,”
Ben had been able to connect the Roberts family to the Key West Curry, Bethel and Saunders’ families.
“I wonder sometimes if anyone in my family knew Ernest Hemingway,” Ben said and opened a notebook filled with old photos. “This is a photo of relatives at Sloppy Joe’s, I think it was 1939. My father was about 30, a little younger than Hemingway would have been. You can still recognize the bar.”
Ben has found the tombs of many relatives in the Key West Cemetery, but he hasn’t been able to find his grandparents John and Rose Curry.
“It has been like putting a puzzle together,” Ben explained, “but instead of finishing with what you think is the last piece, you find out it branches off and there’s more family to search out.”
Ben offered to share his family history with the society because he hopes other Roberts, Currys, Bethels, and Saunders will seek him out and he can expand his family tree even more.
“When Ben called he wasn’t sure we would be interested,” Pennington recalled with a smile. “He has brought us some magnificent documents and photographs.”
Pennington said the response from Key West residents has been increasing steadily since rumor of the proposed exhibit began circulating.
“Alex Vega, from the fire department, brought in a group of tapes from interviews with residents who talk about their memories of the Great White Street Fires in the early 1920s.
“The challenge is to continue to add these stories to our exhibit,” she said. “Museums need to link their artifacts and photographs back to the experience of individuals. Oral histories can help us use the human voice to tell the history of Key West.”

If you are a member of the media and would like to receive more information and/or pictures, please contact: communications@kwahs.org