May 18, 2014, 10:45 a.m.
Pensacola Historic District
It wasn’t hard to find the parking lot behind the old City Hall building in downtown Pensacola. Even if my van’s GPS decided to conk out, one wouldn’t get lost. The darn thing is a hulking example of beige Spanish architecture. It’s pretty; unique. You can’t miss it.
Speaking of unique, I’m meeting the head archivist of the Pensacola Historical Society for a walkabout of Emmett’s old haunts this morning: His old offices; the park he probably strolled through (maybe the bench he slept on in a drunken state); the site of the old theatre where he watched vaudeville or maybe viewed a picture show; the place where he filled prescriptions or bought shoelaces; the place where he probably ate, or argued with friends, or cried in private.
I really can’t wait — this woman is truly one of a kind. She and I have been emailing each other for months about my research. She’s been patient, helpful, and wonderfully interested in what I’m doing, though I admit having a hard time accepting the last part — I mean, Emmett as a research topic is odd and obscure.
But Jacki Wilson loves the obscure and unique. She’s someone who gets what it is like to track down disparate mysterious pieces of what seems to be disconnected information. She is also someone who understands these pieces are often connected and lead to greater understanding of who we are today, and where we’re going.
Historic Pensacola Village
The first thing Jacki and I did, after we met, was to visit the Pensacola National Register Historic District — a group of 27 properties in all — and to tour several that were specific to 1890-1920, several, Jacki said, were certainly homes that Emmett likely would have visited, because they belonged to prominent Pensacolians. And at a minimum, she said, I’d get an understanding of the decor, the home environment, the economic scale of which Emmett was accustomed. He was, after all, moving in high society circles up to the point that he was a U.S. Congressman, so that made perfect sense.
She’d reminded me in an earlier email that even though Emmett was their congressman, there was absolutely nothing of significance in their holdings about him. So, Jacki’s interested in Emmett too. She reminded me that Emmett’s grandfather, Augustus Emmett Maxwell, was hugely important in Pensacola — it seems strange to her that given the connection the archive has nothing on Emmett.
We walked over to the original 1832 Christ Church on 405 South Adams Street, which is still in the Pensacola National Register Historic District. Jacki tells me that this would be church that Emmett’s mother, Elizabeth Maxwell Wilson and his grandfather, Augustus Emmett Maxwell, would have attended when they lived in Pensacola. The ‘newer’ Christ Church — the one Emmett attended and where his funeral service was held — was built in 1903 and is located at 18 West Wright Street.
Next, we walked towards the business district. Jacki points out two sites of significance: the Blount Building where Emmett’s uncle Evelyn Maxwell worked. Jacki and I had had an email conversation about Emmett’s uncle and grandfather; both were and still are much revered in Pensacola history. She wasn’t surprised that Emmett’s family had paved the way for him more than a few times; that seemed natural then as now for established family to help those on the way up.
Uncle Evelyn gave Emmett his first job when when he moved to Pensacola in 1906 after he’d was either fired or ‘invited’ to quit from his ‘dream job’ in Sterling, Illinois,” I tell Jacki, as we look at the building from across the street. I can — and do — point out Evelyn Maxwell’s old office window on the corner, four floors up.
“An interesting thing about Emmett — he had a lot of opportunities given to him, literally, that he didn’t seem to have to work too hard for — and it seems like he just never was able to launch successfully,” I say to Jacki.
Maybe that was the problem, Jacki says. Maybe something about him was never developed; maybe that held him back all his life.
“And maybe that was really what was at the heart of who he was, something broken that he never got over.”
Maybe there was a broken heart involved, she says, as we walk along the sidewalk towards a giant pink building that was the tallest structure in West Florida during Emmett’s time.
Categories: Book Congressman Florida History
jsmith532
Professor,
Communication, Arts, and the Humanities
The University of Maryland Global Campus
Tell my story. 
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