Frances or Francis Street?

By Mary & Karl Haffenreffer

Locals often joke that the longest street in Key West is Duval Street because it runs between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. For me the longest distance traveled has been between Frances and Fleming Streets. Last month, after writing a brief history of Frances Street, I turned into Fleming and thus began, with Karl, a journey of detours, dead ends, and unexpected discoveries as we leafed through a thicket of historical documents.

Much of Key West’s written history is based on Walter C. Maloney’s A Sketch of the History of Key West, Florida (1876). Maloney arrived here shortly after the departure of William A. Whitehead, who in 1829 pencil-sketched the early settlement and surveyed the island, laying out and naming its streets. The raging fire of 1886 destroyed the first City Hall where the earliest documents were kept. Thus we do not know upon what evidence Maloney based his statement on p. 81 that “Frances” Street was named “after a daughter of Mr. Fleeming.” John W. C. Fleeming was a friend and business partner of John Simonton and John Whitehead. After his death Fleeming’s surname mutated to “Fleming”. Maloney’s undocumented sourcing of our street’s name has been quoted and relied upon by historians and writers for 134 years.

Then in 1966 Colin G. Jameson [“What’s in a Street Name?”, Martello, No. 3 (1966), reprinted in Florida Keys Sea Heritage Journal (Summer 1998)], citing no evidence, stated that “Francis Street” was named after a gentleman whose surname was so cacophonous that it never achieved street-sign status. This was Francis Rotch, a merchant from New Bedford. … Rotch’s stepson (and husband of his niece) was W. C. Fleming [sic], English-born, a prime developer of Key West. Rotch’s given name was reasonable enough, and it now decorates our Francis Street, bravely resisting repeated attempts to feminize it.

Named after Francis Rotch? Francis was an unsuccessful whaler and hapless inventor whose innovations included “sundry kinds of fly traps,” a whaling gun “not fired” on its only test voyage, and “two-hulled boats with a canal in the middle.” However, he played a significant part in American Revolutionary history at the Boston Tea Party of 1773, where he represented his family’s ships, the Dartmouth and the Beaver, laden with the East India Company’s cargo of precious tea.

In The Rotches (1947), John M. Bullard gives this account of Francis’s role:
On the arrival of the Dartmouth feeling ran so high that the consignees and the British Governor found it necessary to retire to the fortifications known as “the Castle. It fell to the lot of Francis Rotch to go back and forth between the two factions, in neither of which he was particularly interested. His entire energy was devoted to endeavoring to save his vessels, a far from easy task. … This affair was a very troublesome one for a young man of twenty-three to manage, as there was a tremendous pressure brought to bear upon him by Samuel Adams and other influential patriots, to return the teas to England. … Rotch pleaded that a compliance [with the Patriots’ demand] would ruin him, and as he could not obtain [a clearance from the Collector of Customs, and, thus] a pass [from the Governor] for his ships, they would either have been sunk by the British batteries, or captured and confiscated under the revenue laws.

No agreement could be reached and tempers broke loose. The Patriots, disguised as Mohawk Indians, “gave the War-Whoop,” boarded the ships, and dumped the tea into the drink. [The Boston Evening-Post, December 20, 1773.] However, Francis escaped the impasse with no financial loss, his family’s ships intact, no person harmed, and little personal criticism. It was said that over the long twenty days of negotiations he conducted himself with “dignity and ability.” [Bullard, pp. 45-50, 53, 62-69.] Francis Rotch died in New Bedford in 1822, the very year that Fleeming arrived in Key West, bought a quarter share of the island, and left for New Bedford.

The first available street map of Key West is a copy, not the original, of Whitehead’s 1829 survey. There our street is named “Frances,” as it is on the “Bird’s Eye View” of 1884, and as it is today. Yet in 1966, according to Jameson, the street signs said “Francis”, and so it is spelled in “The Street Map to the Lower Keys … used by Law Enforcement and Emergency Personnel” (1975).

Did Fleeming ask that a street be named after his late stepfather? If so, did Whitehead’s pen alter “Francis” to “Frances”? Or did the distance between author and printer occasion a typographical error? In all our research we have not found the names “Frances” or “Francis” attached to any other relative of Key West’s four Founding Fathers. One thing is certain: the street is not named “after a daughter of Mr. Fleeming”. According to Bullard, p. 412, Fleeming sired just one child. Her name was Caroline.