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Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy
Officials incorporated the city in 1859 and changed its name
to the more euphonious Lake City, either because the newly arrived
mayor’s wife refused to hang her lace curtains in a town called Alligator
or because the mother of a local girl did not want her daughter, who
was going to college, to be embarrassed when she said she was from
“Alligator.” Randall C. Berg Jr. of the Florida Justice Institute,
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said that his great grandfather, James McNair Baker, married
Fannie P. Gilchrist in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1859 and they
moved to the town of Alligator. The family story is that she refused to
hang her lace curtains in a town called Alligator and insisted that he
change the name. Since he was an official of the town at the time,
possibly the mayor, he did so. Hence the name Lake City.
The judges of probate who acted as county superintendent of
schools that decade were George S. Herbert (1850 - 1855) and
Silas L. Niblack (1855 - 1861) (see next page for more about him).
An envelope postmarked 1857 had the
“Alligator” name in the postmark (see arrow).
In 1858 Suwannee County was created from a portion of
Columbia County.
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www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: 7C3282B3-DDE1-49C3-985A-3A9C9467368D
