WEST PALM BEACH — Robie Mortin, a survivor of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre, passed away on June 12 after a brief illness. She was 94.

Ms. Mortin, who moved to Palm Beach County at age 8, often spoke of her experiences to local school children and civic groups interested in learning about Florida history.

"The way she would convey the story was not frightening but (she was) very, very classy," said longtime friend and attorney Richard A. Ryles,. "I think that would be the best way to describe her as very classy person with no (animosity) or hard feelings. ... She looked for the best in everyone."

When she moved to Palm Beach County after fleeing the Rosewood massacre, her aunt bought three lots for $25 in Kelsey City, now known as Lake Park. Where they settled became Riviera Beach.

She helped fight for the preservation of Sugarhill Cemetery, where the earliest bodies were buried in Riviera Beach sometime before 1920, and was at its rededication in 2007. Some Rosewood survivors are buried there and Mortin said families spent all they had to put their loved ones in the ground there.

She was married twice, raised four successful children and buried one. And she saw the state grant $2.1 million in reparations to the Rosewood survivors in 1994. She got $150,000 of it.

Ms. Mortin began work in Palm Beach as a laundress in the 1940s and later in life became a nurse's aide and live-in caretaker.

Ms. Mortin was born Aug. 29, 1915, in Rosewood - a town that no longer exists except for a historical marker at the side of State Road 24 in Levy County. On New Year's Day 1923 racial violence broke out when a 22-year-old white woman named Fannie Taylor told the Levy County sheriff that a black man had assaulted her.

"I was 8 years old when this whole thing happened, home with our father in bed asleep, less than a mile from where they hung Uncle Sam," Ms. Mortin told The Palm Beach Post in a December 2007 interview.

After the allegation, a mob of between 400 and 500 people began searching the woods around Rosewood, a community of about 30 black families east of Cedar Key. Ms. Mortin's uncle, Sam Carter, was killed. Ms. Mortin told The Post that "his body was riddled with bullets and then hanged from a tree."

Ms. Mortin, her sister Sedie, and her grandmother escaped the town by flagging down a train in the woods. They made their way through several Florida locations, eventually finding their way to Kelsey City.

She was a proud resident of Riviera Beach most of her life, but more recently resided in West Palm Beach until her illness.

Ms. Mortin is survived by her son Allen N. Mortin and his wife Rosezell of West Palm Beach, daughter Dorothy King of Riviera Beach and a host of grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces, nephews and friends.

A viewing will be held at 8 p.m. on June 21 Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, 1313 Division Avenue in West Palm Beach. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. on June 22 at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, 801 8th Street in West Palm Beach.