they pushed on to the southward.

Long weeks dragged by before they finally reached St. Augustine. War
talk, and the possibility of attack by sea again caused them to change
their plans. Pooling their money, they chartered a boat and embarked for
Key West. Surely they would be safe that far south. One of their
Virginia neighbors, Fielding A. Browne, had settled there thirty years
before. Taking advantage of the periodic sales of salvaged goods from
wrecks on the treacherous keys, he had become wealthy and was said to
hold a responsible position with the city.

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 fa