Primary documents reading room

Kaye's hurricane letter — scans + readable transcript

The complete 24-image State Archives presentation is now preserved locally in this build. Because the cursive can be difficult to read, the exhibit pairs every original manuscript image with an accessible, paragraph-form transcription.

1926 context A handwritten letter was a primary communications technology. Personal accounts like Kaye’s carried detail that could not be captured by a short newspaper dispatch or weather observation. Reading the manuscript alongside the transcript preserves both the evidence and the slower, human scale on which experience was recorded and shared.

Open Kaye’s hurricane letter Official State Archives record ↗

Ruth Addams — hurricane relief through sixteen original pages

Travel and salary vouchers, letters written by Addams, and correspondence between the Red Cross and her Philadelphia employer reconstruct her movement through Miami, Dania, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. The complete hurricane sequence—National Archives objects 39–54—is preserved locally and presented in a zoomable page-turning viewer.

Travel and lodging

Rail fare, Pullman berth, Miami arrival, Hotel McAllister and Dania expenses.

Nurse, Hollywood Area

Graduate nurse, supervising nurse, emergency rates and the $141.66 monthly salary adjustment.

Addams writes back

Her own letter disputes the final salary calculation and separates it from unpaid expenses.

Ruth Addams: hurricane relief Open the sequence at NARA ↗

Max Chamberlain — uninsured vessel casualty

Two U.S. Coast Guard pages identify Max K. Chamberlain of 328 N.E. 35th Terrace, value the small wooden vessel at $2,500–$3,000, list no insurance, record total loss and describe the master jumping off to save himself.

Casualty report

Continuation

Examine both original pages Open object 2845 at NARA ↗

Coast Guard relief from Miami to Grand Bahama — ten original pages

Four paired reports from the cutter Yamacraw document city relief, an injured schooner engineer, two Cape Florida caretakers taken to a relief hospital, and a mother and child evacuated from North Cat Key to Miami. A fifth report follows an October Red Cross medical mission from West Palm Beach to Grand Bahama.

Relief to City of Miami

Policing, hospital transport, care for injured people and victims' bodies, September 21–October 1.

Cape Florida

Food, water, medical supplies, a volunteer boat and emergency transport to a relief hospital.

North Cat Key

Red Cross provisions and water; an ill mother and child carried fifty miles to Miami for treatment.

Grand Bahama

Dr. A. B. Wilbur, L. R. Leidig, medical supplies and Commissioner R. N. Thompson move through Settlement Point, Eight Mile Rock, East End and West End.

Coast Guard hurricane relief Open the Miami sequence at NARA ↗ Open the Grand Bahama report ↗

Compare the two official records Read the museum transcription ↗

City of Miami Beach — First Annual Report, 1926

The complete 67-page City Manager's annual report for the fiscal year November 1, 1925 through October 31, 1926 is preserved locally. It documents municipal development, engineering, streets, sewers, inspections and the immediate civic context of the hurricane year.

Open the complete local PDF

Florida Tornado — American Autochrome Company, 1926

The locally preserved pamphlet set contains the cover and the complete substantive pictorial sequence: 16 storm photographs across the surviving interior pages/spreads. The University of Miami institutional record remains linked for catalog metadata.

Cover

Interior page

Interior spread

Interior spread

Interior spread

Final preserved spread

View the cover + 16 photographs in the museum viewer University of Miami record ↗

Official Miami Weather Bureau record

Richard W. Gray's Monthly Meteorological Notes for September 1926 are available as three high-resolution scans through NWS Miami. These are primary federal records describing the barograph, anemometer failures, eye passage, storm tide and damage.

Leila Holmes — a Black religious memory of the hurricane

The Federal Writers’ Project recorded Holmes in 1939. Pages eight and nine preserve her memory of warning a friend away from Florida, learning of deaths and destruction, and interpreting the disaster through her Holiness faith. This retrospective testimony does not prove the “work or jail” order; it broadens the exhibit’s original-document record of how Black southerners remembered the storm.

Warning remembered

Storm and interpretation

Enter the contextual exhibit Open the complete local PDF Library of Congress record ↗

Florida Storm — Judge Jackson’s 1928 hurricane score

Judge Jackson composed this Black Sacred Harp memorial on July 18, 1928. Florida Memory preserves the three-page score and its complete transcript. The five verses name September 18, 1926; destroyed buildings; families searching for children; injured survivors; doctors; and the Red Cross. The chorus joins “the colored and the white” in a shared night of fear without erasing the unequal relief conditions documented elsewhere.

Examine the three-page score and transcript ↗ Open the official primary-source set and performance ↗

1927 Coast Guard annual report - authenticated federal scan

The complete 72-page Annual Report of the United States Coast Guard for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1927 is preserved locally from GovInfo. Report page 9 supplies the Coast Guard's own published list of hurricane-relief duties, while report page 3 explains that those operations were excluded from routine assistance totals.

Authenticated title page

Report page 3 - excluded from routine totals

Report page 9 - relief program

About the record: original 1927 federal publication in the U.S. Government Publishing Office collection.

Enter the contextual exhibit Open the complete local PDF GovInfo edition ↗

Primary-document catalog