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Jacksonville, FL--Jacobs Jewelers, Florida’s oldest jewelry store, is set to close its doors on March 25 after 156 years of business in Downtown Jacksonville. To honor their more than six decades in the industry, the Jacksonville City Council presented owners Ray and Delorise Thomas with a framed Council resolution on March 6.

[Photo by Karen Brune Mathis via JDR]

According to a report, the resolution thanks the couple for all they have done for Downtown Jacksonville and wishes them many happy and healthy years in their retirement.

“We are eternally grateful,” Delorise Thomas said, per the report. “It’s been our pleasure.”

Jacobs Jewelers was founded in 1867 by Damon Greenleaf along Bay Street and was later renamed by V.E. Jacobs in 1930. The Thomases married in 1960 and leased a jewelry retail space in the May-Cohens department store before moving to Jacobs Jewelers in 1968 and purchasing the business in 1986. They also previously restored and gifted the four-sided Seth Thomas Clock in front of the Greenleaf & Crosby Building, where the store is located, to the city.

Read more in the original report.