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Today in Keys History – Dec. 5, 2022

A man kneels with his arm around a white goat.

1830 – William R. Hackley recorded in his diary: Rose before the sun. After breakfast down to the store with Brother. George Weaver better. Nearly everyone is sick or complaining of a bad cold. After dinner took a nap. At 4 P.M. a slight rain came attended by a fresh breeze and about 9 P.M. a heavy squall accompanied by heavy rain for a short time came up from the southwest, wind south southeast fresh. Weather pleasant.

1859 – In the Key West city election Mayor John P. Baldwin was re-elected and James C. Clapp, John Curry, Richard M. Kemp and Henry Mulrennan were elected to the board of aldermen.

1911– The officers of the new Key West Yacht Club were elected. They were J. Vining Harris, commodore; John Wardlow, vice commodore; Thomas E. Reedy, secretary and J.N. Fogarty, treasurer.

1940 – Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and his party left Key West after spending the night at the BOQ at the new Naval Air Station on Trumbo Point. He had inspected all the Navy property in Key West and left for Panama.

1953 – The first annual Upper Keys Lime Festival got underway on the Indian Key Fill with a memorial service honoring the pioneers of the Keys.

1959 – The new Seventh Day Adventist Church on Fifth Street at Seidenberg was dedicated by Don Rees, president of the Southern Union Conference of Seventh Day Adventists.

1968 – Earl J. (Pete) Toomer of Key West was elected president of the Florida Shrimp Association.

1976 – Key West resident Tennessee Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The announcement was made by part-time Key West resident John Hersey.

1976 – Victor R. Shavers, Key West native, was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in a ceremony in Washington. Shavers was a graduate of Douglass High School’s class of 1956.

1981 – Artist Henry Faulkner, a long-time winter resident of Key West, was killed in a car crash in Lexington, Kentucky.

Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library

Image: Artist Henry L. Faulkner and his pet goat Alice. Photo Gift of Jessie Watkins. Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library. https://www.flickr.com/photos/keyslibraries/12388868113/

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