Elisabetha Merklin Knight Beiglett Smith

Elisabetha Merklin Knight Beiglett Smith. In 1846 Elisabetha Merklin left home in Oberhausen, Germany and sailed for Tampa, Florida to live with an uncle. According to her passport, carried in a tube around her neck, she was a citizen in good standing. The passport said she was leaving for America and was given the right to return to Germany at any time. The ship, carrying her to Tampa, wrecked on the Florida Keys reef, and she was rescued by Key West wrecker Peter Knight. In 1849 she married her rescuer. Peter Knight, died two years later in 1851. In 1852, Mary Elizabeth, her Americanized name, married Russian sea Captain Augustus Beiglett. Beiglett unfortunately died in 1855. In 1858, she married Joseph Henry Smith, a seaman from New York. She also outived Joseph Smith who died in 1883. Between marriages, she supported her children by making and selling cheese and noodles and running a boarding house. Mary Elizabeth died in 1898, and at her request, was buried with her first love Peter T. Knight. She was a true pioneer woman who arrived on the Island as so many did by shipwreck. Her children, numbering nine in all, went on to establish some of the leading families on the island. , Donated by , The Families , and , The District I Advisory Committee , of the Monroe County Tourist Development Council .