The Inn At Key West

Key West, Florida is filled with history. Recently, I slept in a bed and breakfast Picturesque on Eaton Street, called La Maison Knowles. It was a wonderful time, quite paradise. When I got home, I did a little research on the family history Knowles House in Key West. Here's what I found.

The Knowles family branch of Key West have emigrated from the island of Eleuthera, Bahamas. The Knowles family engaged in fishing and agriculture. The agricultural economy in the Bahamas has declined in the early 10th century. Due to the decline many Bahamians sought new opportunities in nearby areas. Key West seemed an attractive destination for many islands due to the growth of maritime trade. Fishing, sponge and cigar making more and more attracted many Bahamians to another part of the Caribbean, Key West, Florida.

Family tradition maintains that the Knowles had previously lived in the American colonies in the 18th century, but remains loyal to Britain during the American Revolution and were forced to move to the Bahamas, where they received land grants British government as compensation for their loyalty to the crown, when their lands were confiscated in America.

The beginning Knowles worked on fishing, sponge and the cigar industry. In the late nineteenth century, David Knowles and his family resided in Knowles House. David was a sponge fisherman and his house looked through the open water that lapped up the other side of Eaton Street. In the years before 1880, the shallows across the road have been completed and that the current row of Victorian houses were built in the 1890s, depriving the family Knowles from his point of view of the water. David and his wife Rosa raised seven children in Knowles House. In 1909, David died leaving his widow alone to raise their younger children in the homestead.

For many years lived in the house Rosa Knowles with her youngest child, Benjamin Rupert Knowles. Rupert was born in the house in 1896. Rupert started a wholesale business specializing in tropical fruits. In 1928, he met and married a young Swiss girl, Rosalie Weisser, known as Nancy. She worked as a nanny for a wealthy family in Miami when they met at the Hotel Casa Marina in Key West. After their marriage, they continued to live at the House Knowles. Nancy looked after and Rupert Rupert aging mother until her death in 1929. Rupert and Nancy had 3 children, Gene, Elizabeth Rose and Joan, who were all born in the house Knowles.

During the Great Depression, the business of Rupert of tropical fruits and the family has not experienced hard times as economic conditions worsened in Key West. Just when things could not be worse, Rupert won the equivalent of $ 10,000 in the National Lottery of Cuba in 1935. This economic boom has allowed it to open a restaurant on Caroline Street near the busy port. He also used some of the money to expand the family farm, which had seen few changes since its construction. The transformed result Knowles House to its present and planned space for her children.

While 1935 brought good fortune to Rupert family, it also brought calamity to the Florida Keys, in the shape of the disastrous hurricane on Labor Day 1935. Thousands of people died in the middle and upper Keys, but Key West has avoided the worst of the storm. Key West has experienced torrential rains. Unfortunately, the storm coincided with the renovation of Knowles House at a time when the roof had been ripped to add the second floor. The children remember their mother Nancy sweeping the rain water to the front door as it cascaded like water falling down the stairs. Despite this setback, the renovation of the house has been completed and the family enjoyed many happy years in the old farmhouse

As children Rupert and Nancy.