Editing Key West (section)

===First developers===
Soon after his purchase, John Simonton subdivided the island into plots and sold three undivided quarters of each plot to:
* John Mountain and U.S. Consul John Warner, who quickly resold their quarter to Pardon C. Greene, who took up residence on the island. Greene is the only one of the four "founding fathers" to establish himself permanently on the island, where he became quite prominent as head of P.C. Greene and Company. He was a member of the city council<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/k/keys10.htm |title=Exploring Florida Documents: Key West: The Municipality |publisher=Florida Center for Instructional Technology |access-date=August 29, 2012}}</ref> and also served briefly as mayor. He died in 1838 at the age of 57.
* John Whitehead, his friend who had advised him to buy Key West.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title = Key West: The Old and the New|last = Browne|first = Jefferson B.|publisher = The Record Company Printers and Publishers|year = 1912|location = St. Augustine, FL|pages = 7|chapter = Chapter 1: General History and Random Sketches|chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/keywestoldnew00brow}}</ref> John Whitehead lived in Key West for only eight years. He became a partner in the firm of P.C. Greene and Company from 1824 to 1827. A lifelong bachelor, he left the island for good in 1832. He came back only once, during the [[Civil War (United States)|Civil War]] in 1861, and died the next year.
* John Fleeming (nowadays spelled Fleming).<ref name=":1" /> John W.C. Fleeming was English-born and was active in mercantile business in Mobile, Alabama, where he befriended John Simonton. Fleeming spent only a few months in Key West in 1822 and left for Massachusetts, where he married. He returned to Key West in 1832 with the intention of developing salt manufacturing on the island but died the same year at the age of 51.

Simonton spent the winter in Key West and the summer in Washington, where he lobbied hard for the development of the island and to establish a naval base on the island, both to take advantage of the island's strategic location and to bring law and order to the town. He died in 1854.

The names of the four "founding fathers"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fabulous-florida-keys.com/history-of-key-west-florida.html|title=Loading|access-date=June 7, 2011|archive-url=https://archive.today/20101024204020/http://www.fabulous-florida-keys.com/history-of-key-west-florida.html|archive-date=October 24, 2010|url-status=usurped|df=mdy-all}}</ref> of modern Key West were given to main arteries of the island when it was first platted in 1829 by [[William Adee Whitehead]], John Whitehead's younger brother. That first plat and the names used remained mostly intact and are still in use today. Duval Street, the island's main street, is named after Florida's first territorial governor, [[William Pope Duval]], who served between 1822 and 1834 as the longest-serving governor in Florida's U.S. history.

William Whitehead became chief editorial writer for the ''Enquirer'', a local newspaper, in 1834. He preserved copies of his newspaper as well as copies from the ''Key West Gazette'', its predecessor. He later sent those copies to the Monroe County clerk for preservation, which gives us a view of life in Key West in the early days (1820–1840).

In the 1830s, Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6LjWg4xHKVUC&q=richest+city+per+capita&pg=PA157 |title=Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State |date=1939 |access-date=December 2, 2018 |place=New York |author=Federal Writers' Project |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=199 |isbn=9781603540094}}</ref>

In 1846, the city suffered severely from the [[1846 Havana hurricane]].

In 1852, the first Catholic Church, St. Mary's Star-Of-The-Sea, was built. The year 1864 became a landmark for the church in South Florida when five [[Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary]] arrived from Montreal, Canada, and established the first Catholic school in South Florida. At the time it was called Convent of Mary Immaculate. The school is still operating today and is now known as Mary Immaculate Star of the Sea School.

[[File:key west 1856.jpg|thumb|center|upright=4|A panoramic view of Key West, {{Circa|1856}}]]