Home & History – Jan/Feb 2009

A Gothic Tampa Romance
By Maureen J. Patrick


As Valentine’s Day approaches, New Heights sought to offer its readers Tampa’s most famous tale of love in the Urban Corridor. To narrate the piece, we once again reached out to the President of the Tampa Historical Society, Maureen J. Patrick. Without further ado, we introduce you to love story that has transcended racial bigotry and the grave: the saga of William and Nancy Ashley.

During the 1870s, Tampa fit right into the grim landscape called “the Florida frontier.” By the last third of the nineteenth century it had survived – barely – four yellow fever epidemics, all three Seminole Wars, two storms (that virtually wiped the settlement off the map) and the complete dismantling of its civic infrastructure by Reconstruction. It had taken three tries to incorporate a town government and make it stick. The municipal treasury was so small a group of locals reached into their own pockets to furnish the Town Hall. (Purchased were a small table, six chairs, an inkstand, two candlesticks, some record books, and a sandbox for the tobacco spitters.)

Tampa had no rail service, no paved roads and no buildings over three stories in height. The only way to cross the Hillsborough River was either a single-plank footbridge or a ferry, so the town clung to the east bank. Sand was ankle deep everywhere and almost none of the buildings were painted.

It was the least likely place for a classic romance to bloom, but one did. It had all the traditional elements, too: a man of power and prestige, a woman far beneath him on the social ladder, a loyal friend, a lingering deathbed scene and a relic of lost love. Let me start from the beginning. Once upon a time …

… there was man of power and prestige: William Ashley. Ashley was one of Tampa’s most illustrious pioneer citizens. The Virginian had come to Tampa in 1837, at age 42, and began clerking for the Army trading post at Fort Brooke. Ashley, a go-getter, became prominent enough that by 1847 a street was named after him. (Yes, he’s that Ashley.)

Elected Clerk of the City in 1856, Ashley participated in many of the town’s important civic and social affairs. His first house along the River was blown away in the Hurricane of 1848, but Ashley rebuilt what was, for the time and place, a grand home.

Like other power brokers in early Tampa, William Ashley was wealthy and white. And like many others from that era and social class, William Ashley was a slave owner.

Ashley’s only slave (that we know of) was Nancy. In the fashion of slaves elsewhere, she took her owner’s surname, and was generally – and legally – known as Nancy Ashley. In most cases, the practice denoted ownership and little more, but in the case of William and Nancy Ashley, the story was far more complex than the legal records display.

For Nancy, it was a story that began and ended with her owner. That was common for slaves. Once removed from Africa, they and their descendants often became anonymous features in the New World landscape. They labored on the plantations, in the cities, on the farms, bridges and railways that gave the American dream physical form, but their names and histories were more often than not buried – along with their used, broken bodies – in the land they built.

Even so, not every slave owner was viewed as a demon in the era. Master-slave relationships were frequently complicated and unconventional – none more so than the relationship of William and Nancy.

In slave inventories before and during the Civil War, Nancy is listed in Ashley’s household as a slave. After Emancipation, Nancy’s location remained the same, but census lists record her occupation as “cook.”

William never married. After a long illness, he died. There is some debate about his death date, but reliable data places it at 1871. He was interred at downtown’s Oaklawn Cemetery (Morgan and Harrison Streets.) Nancy died a year after William. In death, she was probably – to most locals – no more than she had been in life: a woman of no importance. The Ashley deaths, like their unconventional domestic arrangement, caused no public stir in what was then a growing, busy and increasingly unromantic Tampa.

Enter the loyal friend. Throughout his time in Tampa, William Ashley’s best friend was John Jackson. Jackson, an Irish immigrant, had been assistant city engineer of New Orleans before coming to Tampa in 1843.

As successful as Ashley in his new environs, Jackson made the city’s first formal survey and plat, had a street named after him (yes, he’s that Jackson), and – like Ashley – lost his first house in the Hurricane of 1848. Jackson later served under the Deputy General of the U.S., John Westcott, in surveying much of Central Florida, which was then mostly wilderness populated by mosquitoes, snakes and militant Seminole Indians.

John Jackson – Dublin native, industrious pioneer, daring surveyor, wealthy Tampan – was also William Ashley’s executor. And as unusual as the request was for the era, upon Nancy’s death and in accordance to his friend’s instructions, Jackson opened the Ashley grave at Oaklawn Cemetery and placed Nancy’s body within.

We must reconstruct the scene in imagination, since no written record of the event survives. Was it done surreptitiously; sadly, in the half-light of dusk? Or done boldly, in sunshine and vindication? Whatever the tone of the action, it was done.

The end? Not quite. There was no point then – just as there is no point now – in rehashing the tortured political issues surrounding William and Nancy’s life and love. The law said that for some number of years William owned Nancy, that she was his property, as much and as little as a horse or a gun or a chair. But when you stand at Oaklawn and read the couple’s epitaph, you may say, as they did, that love owns the heart.

Here lies
Wm. Ashley and Nancy Ashley
Master and Servant
Faithful to each other in that relation
In life in death they are not separated
Stranger consider and be wiser
in the Grave all human distinction
of race or caste mingle together
in one common dust.

To commemorate their fidelity in each other
This stone is erected by their Executor
John Jackson
1873


Find Out More History!
[uc] Tampa Historical Society
www.tampahistoricalsociety.org

[uc] Historic Guides
www.historicguides.com

[uc] Tampa Bay History Center
www.tampabayhistorycenter.org

[wt] West Tampa History (1892 -1925)
www.socialtampa.com/westtampa

[yb] Ybor City Museum
www.ybormuseum.org

Read More at www.NewHeightsMag.com.