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). |