The Pompano Beach Post Office did not institute home delivery routes until 1953. Prior to that year, city residents had to go to the Post Office to pick up their mail.

There was one rural route that included not only outlining farms, but also the lightly-populated beach area.

By the early 1950s, the local population growth (including that on the beach) led to the creation of six home delivery routes.

The Pompano Beach Mets was an "A" League farm team for the New York Mets that played here from 1969 through 1973.

During that time a total of 201 players were on the local Mets rosters.

Of all those who played for the Pompano Beach team, only 27 ever played so much as an inning with the New York Mets.

Almost as soon as it opened on Valentine's Day, 1959 on A1A in Pompano Beach, Harris Imperial House restaurant became the meeting place for community organizations as well as for social and family gatherings. More than once, the 700-seat restaurant was referred to as the "unofficial city hall."

The owner and public face of the restaurant was George M. Harris. He was the son of a Greek immigrant who arrived with his brother in the United States as 12-year-old who knew not a word of English. After years of hard work (and changing his name from Stamatis Hourdakis to Sam Harris), he got into the restaurant business in Aurora, Illinois.

In 1943 Sam Harris moved his family to Fort Lauderdale and opened the Seahorse Restaurant on Las Olas Boulevard. Sam's son, George, began working in the family restaurant business following his return from service in the Army Air Corps. The Harris family opened other Fort Lauderdale dining establishments, including the Town House and the Bahia Mar restaurants.

For over four decades the Imperial House restaurant and George Harris were fixtures in Pompano Beach. Mr. Harris was an active member of the community, and served as president of the Greater Pompano Beach Chamber of Commerce, on the board of directors for the United Way and as a member of the Broward County Tourist Development Council. In 1985 he was named "Restaurateur of the Year" by the Florida Restaurant Association.

Although he was but 15 years-old at the time, Roland Hardy became one of the first permanent residents of the Pompano area, when he settled here in 1899 with his family.

Later in life, he could claim several other "firsts."

In 1925 he entered the insurance business, and served as president of Hardy, Sours and Walton Insurance Company, the first such agency in Pompano.

When the Pompano Rotary Club was formed in 1930, Mr. Hardy was elected to serve as its first president.

In addition to the above, Roland Hardy"s civic activities included serving on the county committee for the distribution of federal emergency relief during the early years of the Great Depression, as a member of the local draft board during World War II, as a member of the governing board of the Central and Southern Flood Control District and as a founder and board member of the Pompano Beach Library.

He passed away on February 2, 1963.

A 1946-47 U. S. Department of Agriculture report identified 185 Pompano-area farmers that were growing green beans. Although the acreage devoted to beans varied greatly from farmer to farmer, the average was estimated at 157 acres per grower.

The first commercial crop of okra in southeast Florida was reportedly grown in the early 1900s by J. M. Bailey on farmland just south of Pompano. He is said to have made $1,500 for a single acre's harvest of the crop.

Like many other northerners, L. Donald Sutton arrived in Pompano Beach in the years following World War II. Nicknamed "Red" because of his hair color, he moved his family from Pittsburgh in 1947 for his wife Lorraine's health.

He initially entered the construction business, but soon began purchasing real estate. His success in the latter endeavor allowed him to retire before he was 50 years old.

At the urging of friends, he ran for the Pompano Beach City Commission in 1970 and won. He served as vice mayor his first year in office, and in his second year was elected mayor by his fellow commissioners.

When it came time for reelection, "Red" Sutton decided he had had enough of politics and declined to run for reelection. In an newspaper interview, he stated that among the commission's significant accomplishments during his tenure were acquisition of additional beach property, a new density ordinance and increased pay for city employees.

In 1989, Mr. Sutton moved to the town of Inverness in Citrus County, Florida. He passed away on December 31, 1990, at the age of 79.

Pompano's first mayor, John R. Mizell, was one of several Civil War veterans living in the community when it incorporated in 1908.

Mizell was born on December 7, 1838, in Columbia County, Florida. Following Florida's secession from the Union, he enlisted in Company F, 7th Florida Infantry of the Confederate States Army.

Records vary in when and where he enlisted, in one case stating March, 1862, in Gainesville, Florida, and in another April, 1862, in Orlando, Florida.

The 7th Florida was attached to the Army of Tennessee and took part in 32 major engagements during the war, including the battles of Chickamauga, Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge.

By now a Captain, Mizell was captured on July 3, 1964, the final day of the Battle of Marietta, Georgia. He was imprisoned at Johnson's Island, Ohio (a Union prisoner of war camp for Confederate officers located on an island in Lake Erie), and paroled on May 21, 1865, after which he returned to Florida.

The first woman elected as a Broward County constituional office-holder was Lillie Mae Smith. She was elected as Broward County Tax Collector in 1926.

The previous year, she had been appointed by Governor John W. Martin to fill the office after W. O. Berryhill resigned.

The April, 2009, issue of The Florida Genealogist contains an anecdote that was originally published in the St. Augustine Herald*:

In a skirmish between a party of Spanish troops and [Seminole] Indians, Tohopahay, a chief, was severely wounded by a load of buck shot. He bears with it for years,but becoming disordered from the effects of his wounds, and it being the opinion of his friends that it would at length occasion his death, he exclaimed, "It shall not be said that I was killed by a Spaniard!" -- and deliberately hung himself.

*The article in The Florida Genealogist uses the title St. Augustine Herald, but the proper name of the newspaper published in St. Augustine was the East Florida Herald, which was founded in 1822 and published under that name until 1829, when the newspaper's name was changed to the Florida Herald.

Obviously that newspaper was referring to an incident (which may have been apocryphal) that had happened in the past, since the Spanish officially relinquished Florida to the Americans on July 17, 1821.

The South Florida Water Management District is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Although the SFWMD was not formed until 1972, it traces it origins to the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District which was formed by the Florida Legislature in 1949.

To mark the anniversary, the SFWMD's website has added information on the agency's history, as well as the impact of water on the history of South Florida.

Leading causes of death in the United States, 1900:

Tuberculosis - 11.3%
Pneumonia - 10.2%
Diarrheal diseases - 8.1%
Heart disease - 8.0%
Liver disease - 5.2%
Injuries - 5.1%
Stroke - 4.5%
Cancer - 3.7%
Bronchitis - 2.6%
Diphtheria - 2.3%

At the turn of the twentieth century, the lifespan expectancy for a newborn was about 49 years, although this differed greatly depending on race and sex. In 1900, a newborn white female had a life expectancy of just over 51 years, while a black male's was less than 34.

(Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Ida Wilder Hardy arrived in Pompano in 1926 with her new husband, Roland Hardy (a member of a pioneer Pompano family). A graduate of Mercer University in her hometown of Macon, Georgia, Mrs. Hardy soon began to teach at Pompano's new high school.

She remembered that there were only a handful of teachers to cover all the subjects offered in the school" "We were so short of teachers that they had to cut a wall out so I could teach math in one room and typing in another, at the same time."

In the mid-1930s, with the Broward County School Board facing a shortage of funds, it was deemed necessary to reduce the teaching staff. Among the first to be let go were married women, and Mrs. Hardy was one of them.

Although out of a job in Broward County, Mrs. Hardy continued to teach, first as a substitute and then full-time, in Palm Beach County, where she retired in 1947 as an assistant principal at Belle Glade High School.

Ruby Hardin Sarvis was born in Pompano in 1926, the youngest child of David and Rosa Hardin, who had arrived here in 1910.

In a 1977 interview she recalled that as a young girl she watched silent movies that were projected on the wall of the old Kilgore Seed warehouse (now Ward City). The movie projector was located in a truck that parked nearby.

Isaac I. Hardy was one of the early settlers in Pompano. He arrived from Hypoluxo in 1899 and purchased forty acres east of today's Federal Highway for six dollars an acre.

He built his home near Lettuce Lake (today's Lake Santa Barbara) and farmed eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.

In those early years of the settlement, Hardy traded with the Seminoles who poled their canoes down the Cypress Creek to Lettuce Lake.