The Peacock Inn: South Florida’s First Hotel by Susannah Worth Nestled along the shore of Biscayne Bay and five miles south of Miami, is the community of Coconut Grove. Founded in the 1870s as Cocoanut Grove, it sits atop a limestone ridge and still has a sizeable hardwood hammock (tropical forest). The location, the shade, and the availability of fresh water were certainly a lure to early settlers. One early settler who it attracted was John Thomas “Jolly Jack” Peacock, who lived in the bight, 1 which was named after him as “Jack’s Bight.” The 1870 census of Dade County (today’s Miami-Dade, Broward, Martin, and Palm Beach counties) listed only 85 inhabitants. There could not have been many more when Charles and Isabella Peacock arrived in Miami on July 12, 1875. 2 At the urging of his brother, “Jolly Jack,” they left their home in London, England, with their children for what they thought was a tropical paradise. According to Ralph Munroe, a founder of Cocoanut Grove, and probably the most famous resident, they 1 Susannah Worth is a graduate of the London College of Fashion and earned an M.S. from the University of Rhode Island and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. In addition to more than 20 years of experience as a lecturer and museum curator she has expertise in cultural resource management. She has received several research awards. A bight is a bend in a coast forming an open bay or a bay formed by such a bend. The name was changed to Cocoanut Grove in 1884 and to Coconut Grove in 1919 when it was incorporated. 2 Charles Peacock (1842-1905) and Isabella Sanders (1842-1917), were married in 1864. Their exact arrival date is in Ralph Munroe’s hand in the manuscript for The Commodore’s Story. The original manuscript consists of both handwritten and typed pages, not all of which are numbered, and many pages seem to be missing. Ralph M. Munroe Family Papers, Special Collections, University of Miami Libraries, Box 7, Folder 58, 38. 1