The Calvin Shedd Papers > Background > Bird Key, Dry Tortugas

Bird Key, Dry Tortugas

Date(s) of Letter(s) Little, Henry F. W.  The Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion.  Concord, New Hampshire:  Seventh New Hampshire Veteran Association, 1896. 

Schmidt, Lewis G.  The Civil War in Florida:  A Military History.   Vol III: Florida's Key's & Fevers.   Allentown, Pennsylvania: L. G. Schmidt, 1989.

March 15, 1862
April 25, 1862
June 14, 1862
East Key
A hospital, established on Bird Key, isolated cases of small pox from the rest of the regiment.   Bird Key was a low, flat island composed of white sand, with scarcely a shrub on it, located about three miles from Fort Jefferson. (Little, p. 39). Patients were housed in tents.  In 1864, a quarantine hospital was established in Sand Key (then renamed Hospital Key) and Bird Key served as the site of another defensive structure.  This construction most likely destroyed the integrity of the island resulting in its eventual disappearance.   (Schmidt, pp. XXXI, 176).