TK Godbey

Thomas Kelly Godbey was born on February 16, 1858, to Josiah and Sena Godbey in Cooper, Missouri.

      On March 13, 1879, he married Sally "Sarah" Brooks. The couple moved to Waldo, Florida, in 1882. There, he started his farm with twenty acres. He kept adding to it until he had over one thousand acres. With the land purchased, T. K. Godbey started the Waldo Nurseries in 1889.  He had found seven flowing wells on his property that he used to water his produce. In 1899, Godbey started growing bulbs and cut flowers for the market.

     Godbey also grew fruit in the Waldo Nurseries that were adapted for the Florida climate including, pineapple, strawberries, and specializing in peaches. By 1899, he had created a new variety, the Waldo peach, as a cross between the Peento and the Honey peaches. By 1902, he was regarded by H. Harold Hume as a key player in the peach industry.

   Godbey grew a large number of different vegetables in his nurseries in Waldo. He grew lettuce, onions, parsley, pepper plants, corn, spinach, tomatoes, beets, egg plants, Chinese velvet beans, cabbage, and Japanese sugar cane and shipped them throughout the United States.

     One of Godbey's biggest sellers was his sweet potatoes. His best-known and best-selling was Godbey's early sweet potato.  It was grown from the seedling of the triumph sweet potato and was extremely popular at the time.  He had these, the Triumph, vine cuttings of Nancy Hall sweet potatoes, and what was at the time spelled Porto Rico sweet potatoes.

     In 1910 he was growing paper whites and Chinese paper lilies, and in 1911 he added gladiolus.To this day he’s known for his work.  In 2009 the Florida Daffodill Society recognized his work raising wonderful flowers in their newsletter