Elliott Key

For an indeterminate period of time the island was known as Ledbury Key, named after the 1769 wreck of a two-masted square-rigged sailing ship. Three years after the wreck, cartographer William de Brahm noted the ship’s end story in his 1772 Atlantic Pilot: “The vessel bilged in shallow water, but an anchor was thrown out, and the next day the vessel was found to have grounded on Elliott’s Kay, with its anchor among the trees.”

Located among a collection of nearly 50 islands found north of Key Largo, the approximately eight-miles-long and one-half mile wide Elliott Key is sandwiched between Old Rhodes and Sands keys. Like the once thriving communities of Indian Key and Planter, Elliott Key became a planting community. Bahamian transplants Asa Sweeting and his family sailed to Key West from Harbour Island, Bahamas in 1866. Some years after establishing a life in Key West, the patriarch and his two sons sailed north along the island chain in search of suitable farmland. They settled on Elliott Key in 1882, claiming just over 154 acres under the Homestead Act of 1862. They would later purchase an additional 85 acres.