Everyone was in a cheerful mood as the blue outline of Key West peeped over the horizon, and all come on deck to catch a glimpse of their new home.  Suddenly dismay clutched at every heart as a Federal man-of-war swung out of the harbor and steamed out to meet them.  The long-feared crisis had come.  They ware prisoners of war.

Pinckney and his neighbors were marched into Fort Taylor.  Their wives, children and slaves were allowed to settle in the city and care for themselves as best they could.

Pinckney’s slaves consisted of one family, David Taylor and wife, with their family of ten pickaninnies.  Colonel Montgomery, Federal recruiting officer, took advantage of the helplessness of the slave owners to sow discord among the blacks, and before many days big Dave, father of the subject of this sketch, had “jined de Yankees” as color sergeant and had been sent north, where he was killed in the attack on Fort Sumter.

His determined and energetic 260-pound wife served Mrs. Pinckney faithfully through the war and long afterward.  Young Dave, or “Buddy,” son of big Dave, although only in his early teens, was her chief aid.  When the war was over and Mr. Pinckney walked out of Fort Taylor a free man, the portly Hannah “pooh-poohed” the announcement that she was a free citizen.  “Y’all done brung me heah,” she blustered with emphasis, “an’ heah I’se gwine t’ stay.”

Some years after the war Pierre Pinckney died.  When his good wife became ill, frantic dismay pervaded the servants’ quarters.  As her last moments drew near, Mrs. Pinckney called the weeping Hannah to her bedside and laid a bag of money in her hand.

“To get you and the children back to old Virginia,” she whispered with her last breath.

When the beloved “Missus” was laid to rest by the side of her husband in the Catholic cemetery, the bewildered Hannah took the money to a white man, an old friend of the family, and asked him to buy the tickets back to Virginia.  He advised against it; said that the old home would not be there to comfort them.  Houses had been burned, trees cut down and old landmarks destroyed.  He suggested that they take the hundred dollars in gold and buy a little home in Key West, which they did.

Reconstruction days were as trying to Key Westers as to others all over the devastated land of Dixie.  Slave owners, stripped of their possessions, taxed with an immense war debt and with no money or equipment to begin the slow climb back to normalcy were pathetic figures as they blistered their hands at toil that they had never known before.  Many of the slaves were more than willing to stay with their former masters, but with no income, the problem of feeding themselves was the main issue with the whites, so it was out of the question to try to fill other mouths, and ex-slaves often had to shift for themselves, a hopeless task for a race that had never been called upon to exert initiative.