IRB Media Summary of Laura Albritton & Jerry Wilkinson's Hidden History of the Florida Keys

Annotation

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 On a cold February evening in 1829, Captain Charles Hawkins returned home to his wife, who was having an affair with his attorney, William Allison McRea. He shot McRea, but it was too late. The young man had escaped.#2 The next morning, the sun temporarily turned the island's warehouses and wharves pale shades of rose and tangerine. Captain Charles Hawkins was impatient, and he marched through Key West's dirt roads to the boarding house where McRea resided.#3 The two men walked a set number of paces apart, and then shot at each other. William Whitehead recorded that Hawkins' first ball passed through McRea's overcoat and glanced, while his second went through his pantaloons and bruised his body.#4 The tradition of dueling in western society stretches back centuries, with roots in the Middle Ages. It was particularly popular among the aristocracy in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. In the United States, it fell out of favor among the upper classes, but it persisted in the South among the aristocratic planter class.