Russell Family—Key West Originals

 

My great grandparents met in Key West, Florida. He was an enlisted man from Ohio and she was a native of Key West. 

Born on June 16, 1882, in Van Wert County, Ohio, William Lampson Semer was the youngest of the five children born to William Semer and Emiline Keirns. He enlisted in the Army in April of 1902, and prior to that, he worked as a farm hand on a farm owned by George and Margaret Curtis a few miles north of his childhood home. He was medium height, about 5’8 ½" with dark hair and a dark complexion. With the onset of the Spanish–American War in 1898, and the proximity of the Florida Keys to Cuba, Key West experienced a significant increase in its military presence at Fort Zachary Taylor and all along its coast. William courted Nettie Russell, and they were married on Christmas Eve in 1902. They had three children before relocating to New York City, where William was assigned to Fort Schuyler in The Bronx and Fort Totten in Queens.

Nettie Blanche Russell was born February 20, 1878, in Key West, Florida. She was the daughter of John T. Russell, Jr. and Sarah Thompson, one of eight children. Her grandfather was John Thomas Russell, Sr., who relocated with his family to Key West from the Bahamas in the 1830’s. They were one of the original keys families who migrated from The Bahamas, “Conchs,” as they came to be known, named after the mollusk that became a staple of their diet. In 1885, the Florida State Census listed John and Sarah, residing on Fleming Street in Key West. In addition to Nettie, the other children in this household were Richard, born about 1864; Mary, born about 1866; Louisa, born about 1870; Rosa, born about 1872; Sarah, born about 1873; Irene, born about 1879; and Robert, born about 1882. John Russell listed his occupation as “seaman” and his son Richard was a “cigar maker.”

I located Nettie's birth record at the Key West library

Through our participation in a DNA project, I was able to collaborate with correspondents who descended from two of Nettie’s sisters, Mary and Louisa. Most of our research matches, but some is inconsistent—more mysteries to be solved. But I found our photograph swapping to be most insightful.

Wilma, projected by DNA analysis to be my dad’s third cousin, writes:

“My great grandmother was Mary Albertina Russell, born in Key West, Florida. Her father was Albert Russell whom she was supposed to be named after. I have a picture of him with my mother and her sisters. I don't know if he was born in Key West or not…

“My mother lived in KW until her death in 2006, so she told me lots about family. BUT I was told my great grandfather (have a picture) was Albert Russell from Bahamas... He married, and had my great grandmother Mary A. Russell who married a Taylor...

Mary had a sister Irene who married a Cruz, twin daughters named Ethel who married Knowles (son bobby lived Hunts Lane) Evangalina married Jaycocks, 2 sons l daughter. Mary had another sister named Sally who married a Roberts. She had about 5 sons....Eugene, Archie, Roscoe, Joseph, Kermit?? and 2 daughters, Ottalee and Katherine. I knew Eugene, Archie and Joe good as well as kids.”

After comparing Wilma’s remarks with my research and findings, I determined that her great grandmother, Mary Russell, is indeed Nettie’s sister. She correctly identifies sisters Irene, who married Sylvester Cruz, and Sallie, who married Joseph Roberts. I believe she received bad information somewhere along the line regarding the name of the father of these sisters. We know from census records that his name was John T. Russell, Jr. He died in Key West on October 4, 1922 at the age of 86.

The DNA project connected me to a Christine, another third cousin in California, who is the great granddaughter of Nettie’s sister, Louisa Russell Barza.

“My great grandmother, Louisa Barza (Barca), raised my mother, Verlie Louise, and her half sister, Rose Sawyer, after my grandmother, Rose, died during childbirth. My mother didn't really talk too much about her family.

My mother Verlie Louise's parents were divorced when she was 3 years old in 1926. Her mother, Rose, remarried, and married John Sawyer. They had my Aunt Rose, and then she got pregnant, again, against doctor's orders, and died in childbirth in I believe 1932. The child I was told was a boy who also died. My mother didn't know until she was about 14 that John Sawyer wasn't her father. She didn't remember her biological father. Someone, in a mean way, told her that John wasn't her father, and that her father lived in the Bahamas. She went home to ask her grandmother, Nettie's sister, and she finally told her the truth. She was very hurt!!! John Sawyer never legally adopted her. He remarried, and married a woman, named Mary, who had a daughter of her own. Louisa ended up raising my mother and Aunt Rose. John's wife followed him around Key West so that he wouldn't try to see his daughters. I met her when I was 6 yrs. old. My parents divorced when I was a year old, and my brother was 5. When I was 6, we moved from California to Key West for only about 6 months. My mother couldn't get a job there, so John let us live in an apartment property he owned, but his wife gave him a hard time, and we had to move. I can still see Mary follow behind him down the street as we were yelling, "Hi Grandpa", from the apartment window. She wanted to make sure he didn't stop to see us. He had told my mom that he had left her a property on Eaton St., and left Aunt Rose another property on another street that he owned (he was a carpenter), but on his deathbed, Mary had him sign everything over to her, and her daughter. My mother didn't mind that she didn't inherit that property, but she felt badly for her sister who was his only child.

My mother had corresponded with her biological father, off and on, throughout the years, but she didn't meet him until she was 45 years old, in 1969.” – Christine Duffy

It seems that every inquiry I ever had with my elders about our Semer ancestry involved a discussion on our “Cuban heritage.” The 1894 marriage of Nettie's sister Louisa Russell to a Cuban cigar maker, Adofo Barza, is likely the source of this misinformation, coupled with the fact that many of us were indeed born with dark hair, eyes, and complexion. But our specific Russell lineage is almost certainly of pure British stock.

John T. Russell, Jr. was born in 1836 in Key West to Bahamian parents, while Sarah E. Thompson was born about 1840 in the Bahamas to Bahamian parents. Florida historical records illustrate how the Russells and a half dozen or so other families relocated from the Bahamas during the 1830’s, first settling around Key Vaca, and later, at Indian Key and Upper Matecumbe Key, near the present-day town of Islamorada, Florida.

John Thomas Russell, Jr. (1836–1921)
my great-great grandfather

The Russells had first arrived in the Bahamas two generations earlier in time. During the 1780’s, following the American Revolution, thousands of U.S. families loyal to the British Crown fled to British territories—mainly to Eastern Canada and the British West Indies. Our Russell line seems to trace back to John Daniel Russell, a ship builder from Edisto Island, South Carolina—he sought refuge in The Bahamas and raised a family there before spending his final years in Amelia Island, Florida. To support this theory, a distant DNA match traces to him as our common ancestor. In 1821, Spanish Florida became a territory of the United States. Over the next two decades, many Bahamian families—Pinder, Albury, Russell and others—resettled in the Florida Keys. They were involved in wrecking (ship salvage), fishing, sponging, turtling, and farming–mainly limes.

From Florida State Genealogical Society: Florida Pioneer Biographies

John Russell was born in South Carolina at the time it was a possession of the British Crown.  During the American Revolution.  The South Carolinian Loyalist sought sanctuary in the Bahama Islands and was granted acreage on at least three islands by King George III in 1789.

John Russell was active in shipping and shipbuilding.  He and his wife Mary raised their five children on San Salvador.  He decided to experience life as a planter in Spanish East Florida, and in 1811, appeared before the Spanish Government in St. Augustine.  The Spanish Government being in need of a shallow draft schooner but low on cash struck a deal with John Russell.  A 4000-acre tract between the Matanzas and Tomoca Rivers was exchanged for Russell’s 62-ton mahogany schooner, Perseverance; 675 acres west of the Halifax River were added as head rights for John Russell, his wife, five children, and 18 slaves.

On 10 July 1812, John Russell was declared absolute proprietor of these lands.  John Russell established his plantation, “Good Retreat” along the river on his land.  During the summer of 1814, he died while visiting his daughter in Fernandina, Florida. —Submitted by Descendant:  Joyce Louise Russell BEVEL, March 31, 2023

By 1900, John and Sarah Russell were residing at 718 Southard Street and had been married 43 years. Nettie’s sister Irene, born about 1879, was also living there along with Irene’s spouse of three years, Silvester Cruz, whose father originally came from Canary Islands. John Russell worked as a “sponge clipper,” as sponging had become a huge industry in Key West. Nettie’s occupation was tobacco stripper, and Jose was listed as cigar maker. It is believed that the family still maintained property in the middle keys through this period. Decades later, Nettie told her grandson Richard Bramel that she had to take a ferry since there was no railroad or highway connecting the keys back then.

The earliest cigar factory in Key West dates back to 1831, but the industry really took off during Cuba’s Ten Year War (1868 – 1878), when Cubans fled to the United States in droves. Many Cubans resettled in Key West, bringing the art of cigar making with them. By 1876 the city’s 29 cigar factories were producing a staggering 62 million cigars annually. During the next few years, Key West boomed, and the population grew to more than 18,000 people by 1890, making it the largest and wealthiest city in Florida. The decline of the cigar making industry began with the Great Fire of 1886, which destroyed 11 factories, six wharves, and most of the downtown business district. Many of the factories were rebuilt and the industry recovered for a short while, at its height producing 100 million cigars in 1890 and again in 1911, but the inevitable process of the unionization of workers and opposition of factory owners drove many of the largest cigar makers to relocate their operations from Key West to Tampa’s cigar district, which would come to be known as Ybor City.

In those first years following their marriage in 1902, William and Nettie were busy starting a family and managing through the challenges faced by any military family. Their first three children were born in Florida, Florence (before 1905), Hazel Adel (1905), and Charles Allen “Chick” Semer (1907). Another child was born before Florence but died during infancy. William continued serving in coast artillery, and in 1908, he accepted a noncommissioned position with the Army that resulted in the family moving to the Bronx, New York. Military records document his arrival at Fort Schuyler to attend School for Firemen on January 15th, and then returning to gather his family. William, Nettie, and the three young children left Key West on a ship and arrived in the New York Harbor in April 1908, and they would spend the next six years living on military bases.

I found this birth record for Hazel Adele Semer (Hartsel) at the Key West library