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By Associated PressAfter years of searching, Monroe County's sheriff finds an unmarked grave that represents a sacrifice long forgotten.
KEY WEST - In the northern corner of Key West's grand but tattered cemetery, between the Veliz clan and Mary and John Barrett, beneath a patch of freshly mowed grass that heaves ever so slightly, lies a tale buried in history.
It's the story of the first law enforcement officer in the Keys to be killed in the line of duty. His name was Frank E. Adams, a man who carried a gun and badge as a deputy sheriff in a year - 1901 - when few black people held such jobs.
For more than a century, the location of Adams' simple pine coffin remained a mystery. No longer, thanks to another local lawman, Monroe County Sheriff Rick Roth, who spent years tracking down the grave site to give a fallen comrade his proper due. Felled by stolen bullets from his very own gun, Adams died 104 years ago in October. One of the bullets pierced his heart.
The deputy had been trying to arrest a man who interfered when he tried to break up a brawl between two drunkards. The man was the brother of one of the recreants. He scuffled with Adams, grabbed his pistol and wounded him in the face, arm and fatally in the left part of his chest.
The man, Robert J. Frank, fled. He was later caught and sentenced to life in prison. To the end, he insisted it was self-defense and bore no remorse.
But Adams' widow, Clementine, had remorse to spare.
Days after her husband's death, the Monroe County Commission offered her some assistance. They gave her $20.
When Clementine begged for more help months later, the commissioners refused, according to minutes of the meeting that have been preserved.
"The board does not feel justified under the circumstances in making a continuing allowance," the notes state.
That was the last anyone heard of Frank Adams.
Enter Roth, Monroe County's longtime sheriff. He began considering Adams' plight 10 years ago when the Sheriff's Office began designing a memorial to honor officers killed in the line of duty.
Intrigued by accounts of the death briefly mentioned in turn of the century Jacksonville newspapers, Roth made at least six trips to the city cemetery to locate the grave of the man who died at age 42. For years, he searched through headstones and picked through bramble in the graveyard's historically black section. No luck. Ambiguity didn't settle well with him.
Then Roth enlisted the aid of Russell Brittain, the cemetery's sexton. In a dark gray file cabinet holding the only organized records that exist on the circa-1847 burial ground, Brittain found a 3-by-7-inch card.
In wobbly type, Adams' date of death was listed as Oct. 7, 1901; the next day he was reported buried in the cemetery. But the card provided no other clues.
Grave number? Lot number? Block number? Section? Next of kin? Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.
Nobody had thought to record the details that would make sure Adams would not be lost.
This black deputy warranted half a footnote in this rambling cemetery - where droopy trees, iterant roosters and elaborate stone homages consume 19 acres.
At least 80,000 dead people - more than the current population of the entire Keys - are believed to rest here.
The break came when they took their mystery to Tom Hambright, a Monroe County historian, who searched through baptismal records from a local Catholic Church, and a burial book recorded in Latin. Francis Adams - aka Frank - was about to be found.
Turns out Adams wasn't buried in the cemetery's traditionally black section because he was Catholic.
It made sense.
During Adams' time, Key West was the state's third-largest city, behind only Jacksonville and Tampa. And it was considered one of the most liberal toward black people, who served in many key posts.
"It was much better here than a lot of other places. One black doctor wrote in the late 1800s that Key West was the "freest city in the South,"' Hambright said.
Some in Key West's black community had migrated from St. Augustine, where blacks fleeing slavery sought freedom in "Spanish Florida." Many who aided them were Catholic.
Adams' son, James, showed up in census records. Cemetery documents showed a spot where James was buried in 1944, followed a dozen years later by a sister, Lillian. Given the local custom of interring immediate family members together, often stacked atop one another, Adams should have lain below.
The location: J. Pinkney Lot No. 39, Section B - marked today by nothing but grass. A vault casts a shadow over Adams' vista.
Not for long. In the coming weeks, Roth plans to place a marble headstone there.
"His services and sacrifices to the citizens of Monroe County will never be forgotten," it will read.
He has already raised more than $4,000 for the headstone from individuals and law enforcement groups. Although he continues to search for relatives, he knows that even if none are found, Adams found a brother in the end.
Said Roth: "His grave was not even marked and I think that was a shame. It needed to be done."