Today in Keys History – Dec. 8, 2022
1830 – William R. Hackley recorded in his diary: Rose before the sun. My wrist is very painful so much so that I have procured a bottle of Opodeldoc to rub it with. Some six or eight years since I sprained my wrist and ever since at intervals it has been painful. It has been sometime since I felt any inconvenience from it and I was in hope it was quite cured but it is again very painful and I am at a loss to know in what manner I hurt it. Captain Wallace is much better and it is though will recover. Read May’s Maxims. During the night it blew hard from southwest accompanied with rain.
1852 – Fernando J. Moreno was elected Mayor of Key West.
1899 – Captain Robert E. Impey assumed command of the Key West Naval Station.
1934 – Key West Mayor William M. Malone, Mrs. William R. Warren, president of the Garden Club, Mrs. W.J. Phelan, vice president, and Miss Molly Parker, secretary, planted the first trees in the Key West Botanical Gardens on Stock Island. The trees supplied by the U.S. Plant Introduction Station at Chapman Field, Miami were all acacias, South American exotics.
1941 – Florida Highway Patrolman Paul Daniels, a Key West native who was shot and killed in the line of duty in Dade County, was buried in the Key West City Cemetery.
1955 – “Caribe Gold,” a film about shrimping, was being shot in Key West. The movie starred Ethel Waters, Coley Wallace and Cicely Tyson.
1959 – Frank Yaccarino was the owner of the Overseas Fruit Market at 934 Truman Ave.
1972 – Ground was broken for the new Southern Bell Telephone Building at 604 Simonton St.
1983 – Preliminary plans for the development of the Truman Annex were unveiled before the Historic Preservation Board. The plan called for the Custom House to be used as the lobby for a hotel complex that would expand to as many as 500 rooms.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library
Image: Custom House before restoration C 1980s. Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library. https://www.flickr.com/photos/keyslibraries/14788971515