TESSIE KYLE AND HER FAMILY ON PIGEON KEY 1912: Tessie Mae Kyle was born in Naranja, Florida 16 May 1907 moving with her family to the Florida Keys around 1912 where they resided on Pigeon Key, a small five acre island connected to Marathon, Florida by a railroad bridge which ran the length of the Keys from Key Largo to Key West with the Atlantic Ocean bordering half of the key and the Gulf of Mexico the other half.
Tessie lived on that little island, key, that had a number of buildings for the railroad employees, used mainly during the construction of the railroad but at the time she and her family lived there it was used as a maintenance facility with her father, Robert Kyle originally from Georgia, being the chief bridge tender for the Seven Mile Bridge which connected the Middle Keys to the Lower Keys. Her mother was Leona (Leone?) Cavender, originally from Missouri.
Pigeon Key had a small one-room wooden schoolhouse set next to the water for the children living on the key. There is a photo attached taken 22 December 1923 showing three of Tessie's siblings: Katherine, Kenneth (twins) and Annie. The children in that group are also shown in a short video clip contained in a DVD detailing the building of the Florida East Coast Railway and the Key West Extension. It should be noted that the film clip is shown backwards on that DVD as evidenced by the school house positioning and the children saluting with their left hands during a flag raising ceremony.
Tessie obtained a teaching certificate and for one year taught school in a similar school house on Marathon, that being in 1928. She likely received her teacher certification from Florida State or University of Florida. She may also have taken dancing lessons.
Her father passed in 1927 and Katherine, Zollie, and Robert may have lived in the Keys for another several years, possibly on Marathon.
While the children resided on Pigeon Key, school lasted only four months of the year and the children in the Kyle family returned to Naranja, Florida where they attended Redland Farm Life school in the off-season, returning to Pigeon Key when that school let out.
Tessie had an older brother, Zollie, another brother, Robert (Jr), and Kenneth. She had two sisters, Katherine and Annie (Ann).
History is incomplete as yet but somehow Tessie relocated to Yonkers, New York and practiced nursing there and worked with the Yonkers Visiting Nurses Association. She attended a Baptist church while in New York and later married Kurt Frentzel, a German immigrant, and the pair had a son in about 1937, Robert Kyle Frentzel.
Later they relocated to Pensacola, Florida where Tessie passed on 01 January 1989. Her sister, Katherine (Timmons) passed in 2008 in Venice, Florida.
