SUNDRY and sustained attachments bound William A. Whitehead early to the nation’s commercial capital. They were established just after the Revolutionary War and well before his birth, upon his father’s arrival as a young immigrant from the Caribbean. A furniture-maker’s apprentice turned promising craftsman, then cashier in Wall Street’s most enduring financial institution, the elder … More Barrow Street
CITY fathers in 1876 planned a Fourth of July more memorable than any Key West had yet seen. They would not only mark the centennial of American independence, but use the occasion to dedicate a new city hall. Walter C. Maloney was commissioned to deliver an address on Key West’s history, but with scant forethought … More Together apart
DISPLACED to Key West from the home of his boyhood, far from the old centers of culture, power, learning and earning, William A. Whitehead soon found that his new locale itself possessed a particular magnetism. An ideal site for scientific exploration both on its own and adjacent shores, the island attracted an array of “naturalists … More The collectors (part 2)
JOHN James Audubon, always lavish in his prose, bestowed on the fabled sunsets of the Florida Keys a description as rapturous as any ever written.1 After he’d beheld such a spectacle from the deck of the revenue cutter Marion, now resting at anchor in “the beautiful harbour of Key West,” the tireless naturalist briefly savored … More The collectors (part 1)
SEA DRIFT, Blakely, Majestic, Pizarro, lost. Gil Blas, Mary Ann, Miami, also lost. Hero, Noble, La Fayette, all lost. The fishing vessels Felix and Eden, not heard from. The roll call was numbing. The Pizarro’s crew were at work on the wreck of the Sea Drift, when the storm surge swept both onto land. The … More No enemy but winter and rough weather
AS the Evan T. Ellicott, beating the final agonizing mile of its course against a sharp northerly wind, headed for the harbor of Key West, William A. Whitehead would have been forgiven for thinking the reception more than a little discourteous. But the auspices on this voyage had never been good. The Ellicott set out … More Fishermen’s friend
A course of solid reading was pursued to advantage, and whatever works of a lighter character were indulged in, they were always read critically, their errors noticed, and their beauties and moral teachings marked. My library was not yet of much account, but … the works of reference I possessed were constantly referred to, so … More White gold
GIRLS and young women peopled William Whitehead’s childhood, connections kept up when his family moved to Perth Amboy in 1823. The youngest child of his parents, William was the only son to relocate with them. Following the sudden death of a half-sister, a nomination to West Point secured for him was forfeited, and the promise … More The parting hour
FROM the age of twenty-one, William Whitehead found his responsibilities lay some distance from Perth Amboy, yet return visits still breathed into him a kind of twofold vitality. As he mused upon the stories and sites making up this once proud city’s past, he also roamed through the gardens and groves where some of his … More Pleasures, plants and palaces
EAST New Jersey’s seat of government was, in the earliest records, referred to as the Town of Perth, New Perth, Perth Town or Perth tout court before it acquired the surname Ambo or Amboy, from an indigenous word for the locality.1 The first element of the combination linked the settlement to Scotland, a country then … More Renaissance man
