Pioneer Cemetery

Pioneer Cemetery. . This cemetery memorializes the determination and vision of over 50 pioneer Anglo-Bahamian Conchs who labored to settle and organize the first community on Matecumbe Key. Descendants of three Islamorada pioneer families, the Russells who homesteaded in 1854, the Pinders in 1873, and the Parkers in 1898, are buried on this land. Deeded to Richard Pinder on January 20, 1883, by President Chester A. Arthur, the land now is the property of the Matecumbe United Methodist Church., North and adjacent to the cemetery lay the first church on the key, built in 1884 an transported to this site by raft ca. 1890. Next to it the first two-room frame schoolhouse was built ca. 1900, and later replaced by a coral-rock building., A raging hurricane struck Islamorada on Labor Day in 1935, killing 50 members of the Russell family alone. The storm also destroyed the church, the schoolhouse and the "Millionaires' Row" of beachfront homes adjacent to this property. The survivors' descendants rebuilt their homes, a new church and a school west of this site and east of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway, now US 1.