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Cecelia Weeks, 84, is among the last of Goodland’s living legends. She packed her belongings, with her cats Pixie and Dixie sneaking into cardboard boxes for naps whenever they found one vacant for long enough.

“A legend is leaving Goodland today,” said Cecelia’s daughter Linda Weeks Rose, as she helped her mother gather her things and move to Kentucky to be closer to family.

The home in Goodland was among the first 15 houses to be moved from Caxambas to Goodland by the Barron Collier heirs in 1949.

“The way I figure, it was 1932 when we come to Caxambas. When this house come to be vacant I was seven or eight. We (the Whidden family) moved in,” Cecelia recalled.

Cecelia was born in Lost Man’s Key, now a part of Everglades National Park. The government paid the Whiddens to leave and without choice they moved to Caxambas.

Since 1932 Cecelia never moved from the house again. Built in 1913, the house was moved in what was known as the “general house move” of 1949 when the Collier’s wanted to clear the Caxambas area, also called Collier City at the time, and Cecelia went along with the house.

She and first husband Ralph Weeks bought the 75-foot by 100-foot Goodland lot for $600 and the house they once rented from the Collier Corporation from landlord Tommie Barfield, was given to them in exchange for the agreement to move.

Now the house is for sale and from that era only one other home from the general move to Goodland remains with its occupant, Cecelia said.

Longtime family friend Kappy Kirk, niece of Tommie Barfield, remains in Goodland and is also among the first Goodland settlers, she added.

Cecelia and the memories of her birth family, the Whidden’s, as well as her married family, the Weeks,’ are among the legendary stories Cecelia takes with her to Kentucky.

Cecelia’s first husband, commercial fisherman Ralph Weeks, died from encephalitis caught from a mosquito at age 50. She later married Hank Keith who since passed away in 2005.

Cecelia worked many places including Joe Taylor’s Fish House, the Episcopal Church with Deaconess Bedell and the Island Country Club.

“All those rich people, I thought they’d be picky but there were just sweet,” Cecelia said of the Island Country Club.

While Cecelia said she planned to move with her daughter some day, she didn’t expect it to be so soon and regretted she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to the people she came to know and love at the country club and throughout the island community.

The Week’s family still continues in Naples, Estero and further north, but family friend Faye Brown doubts that their history has been fully told to the youngest generation.

Elizabeth McDonald, writer of “Island Voices, They Came to Marco Island” said there are several reasons why few of the historical stories have been told.

“Many of the old timers didn’t talk to the newcomers. It wasn’t a class thing,” McDonald said.

She explained that some families wanted to keep the information for their own future memoirs while others didn’t want their stories told at all.

“There were a lot of drug runners in this area and the families just didn’t want to talk about it,” McDonald added.

The Weeks moved to Southwest Florida during the Revolutionary War, before the Collier family.

“They even traded with the Indians, that’s how far back they were,” Cecelia said.

McDonald of the Marco Island Historical Society wrote that Cecelia's great grandfather was a midwife and the Weeks come from a long line of commercial fishermen. Some of the Weeks worked at the Clam Factory, which was operated by Tommie Barfield and J.H. Doxsee for the last two years of its operation until a storm in 1932 destroyed the building.

“The clamming industry is what brought them to Marco Island ... It’s almost incomprehensible the isolation they lived in. They were survivors that’s for sure,” Brown said of many of the area's first settlers.

The early generations lived far from settled areas. Electricity was late to come to their homes and the only way around for most was by boat, either sail or row boat.

Cecelia went to the Scripps School, the first Marco Island school which closed in 1958. She received up to an eighth grade education.

“I’ve known Cecelia all my life. She is very pretty, neat in appearance and sweet natured,” said Brown.

Cecelia hopes she will be able to come back and visit her friends for the Marco Island Historical Society’s “Old Timers Reunion” at 3 p.m., Oct. 7, at the Little Church of God.