Family Fights to Preserve Legacy of Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Who Lived to 120 Years Old
By Stacy M. Brown Senior Global Correspondent
Before W.C. Handy became the Father of the Blues, before the Civil War ended slavery, and nearly a century before the civil rights movement transformed America, Mary O. Key began a life her descendants say spanned 120 years. Born into slavery on May 10, 1848, she lived long enough to witness Black Americans emerge from bondage, endure Jim Crow, and fight for freedoms denied them for generations.
When she died on Nov. 19, 1968, in Florence, Alabama, she left behind more than a century of memories, a church she helped name, generations of descendants, and a connection to one of America’s most celebrated musicians.
Her great-great-granddaughter, Inga Carroll-Harden, believes Key deserves the recognition history has denied her.
“It is my duty to see that Mary O. Key is recognized!” Carroll-Harden declared during a public tribute to her ancestor.
Family members, including Carroll-Harden, granddaughter Evelyn Reynolds, and great-nieces Beverly McCainey and Audrey Brewer, maintain that Key lived to be 120, an extraordinary claim supported by genealogical research and accounts passed down through generations. A contemporary newspaper obituary described her as possibly Alabama’s oldest citizen, while a state death record listed her age as 119. Federal census records list conflicting ages, leaving her exact birth year unverified.
But her descendants are determined that any uncertainty about her age will not overshadow the remarkable life she led.
The Woman Who Remembered a Changing City
Florence had its official records, but Key possessed something the city could not find in its files. She remembered what had stood on a particular street before buildings replaced trees, where familiar landmarks had disappeared, and how the community had looked decades before anyone thought to preserve its history.
When officials needed answers about the city’s past, they sought her expertise.
A newspaper account published after her death described Key recalling Florence when it had more trees than people, when residents drew water from a public well, and when a courthouse and a jail occupied the corner of Court Street.
Her memory made her a living archive of local history.
Key also practiced herbal healing, drawing on generations of knowledge of plants, roots, and natural remedies passed down through Black families.
Her descendants remember her gathering moss from the north sides of certain trees for medicinal use. Dorothy Cooper, a family member, shared stories about Key’s healing practices, including her belief that nature provided remedies for ailments that affected her neighbors.
Long before holistic medicine became a familiar term, Key relied on traditions grounded in observation, experience, and knowledge passed down from earlier generations.
She was a historian without an academic appointment, a healer without a medical degree, and a respected community elder whose authority stemmed from a lifetime of experience.
The Woman Who Nurtured W.C. Handy
According to family history, William Christopher Handy, born in Florence in 1873, was among the children who benefited from Key’s care.
Handy would become one of the most influential figures in American music, bringing the blues to audiences far beyond the Black Southern communities where the musical tradition originated.
His compositions, including “St. Louis Blues” and “Memphis Blues,” helped establish a musical legacy that would influence jazz, rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and generations of performers.
Carroll-Harden says Key helped nurture Handy from infancy through his youth and that he remembered her affectionately as “Mother Mary” in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues. The family account of that reference has not yet been independently verified against the book.
Handy’s genius belongs to him, but a community of Black families, elders, and caregivers shaped his childhood, and their names rarely appear in accounts of American musical history.
Key was among those the family remembers helping care for the boy before the world knew his music.
The relationship offers another reason her descendants believe she should be remembered not only for the extraordinary number of years she lived but also for the people and institutions whose lives she touched.
A Church That Still Bears the Name She Chose
Key’s religious faith left a lasting imprint on Florence’s.
According to the history of Greater Mount Moriah Primitive Baptist Church, she received spiritual guidance about the name Mount Moriah while preparing for baptism in the Tennessee River. When the congregation was organized, Key was entrusted with naming the church, establishing a connection that would outlast her.
The church became an enduring institution within Florence’s Black community, offering a place for worship, fellowship, and spiritual strength through generations of segregation and social change.
Her personal life also held sorrow.
A newspaper obituary reported that Key gave birth to 10 children, seven of whom were boys, and that she outlived all but two of her sons. She endured the deaths of children and grandchildren while remaining a central figure in her extended family.
Historical records offer glimpses into the economic circumstances she faced. A 1905 notice in The Florence Herald identified Ruffin Key and his wife, Mary, in a mortgage foreclosure involving property in Lauderdale County.
The 1920 federal census listed a Mary Key as a self-employed laundress, a demanding occupation that many Black women relied on to support their households when other employment opportunities were closed to them.
A 1950 census record listed Mary O. Key in Florence alongside members of the Hollyfield and Key families.
The documents preserve fragments of a life spent working, raising children, and helping sustain a community through some of the most difficult periods in American history.
History Her Family Refuses to Lose
Key died just months after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., having lived, according to her family’s chronology, from the era of slavery to the year Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act.
She was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Florence, near the church she helped establish.
Her obituary listed 16 grandchildren, 41 great-grandchildren, and 29 great-great-grandchildren. Those generations inherited stories of a woman who remembered vanished streets, practiced traditional healing, and helped care for children whose futures she could not have imagined.
Carroll-Harden has gathered those stories and documented her ancestor’s life, determined to secure recognition for a woman whose accomplishments have largely been absent from the historical record.
The family’s research includes census records, death records, newspaper accounts, and genealogical materials that may help historians better understand Key’s life. Establishing her reported age of 120 years would require reconciling conflicting historical dates, particularly those recorded before modern birth registration became widespread.
For her descendants, however, the effort is about far more than setting a longevity record.
Key’s story is part of the history of Black women whose labor, wisdom, and care helped build communities even as their contributions went largely unrecorded. According to her family’s account, she lived through emancipation and Reconstruction, the entrenchment of segregation, two world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement.
The world remembers Handy’s music. Florence still has the church key, which helped name it. Her descendants carry the stories of the woman who knew their community before much of its history was recorded.
Carroll-Harden intends to ensure those stories survive.
“History making is in my bloodline,” she wrote. “It is my duty to have Mary O. Key recognized!”
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