Saturday was a busy day! The usual wonderful group from the Flagler College Archaeology Club came out and got the prize: they cleaned more markers in one morning than any other group! With their president, Elizabeth Valnoha, they cleaned a total of 8 markers.
TCPA Preservation Committee Co-Chair Ray Hinkley, who has worked in historic cemeteries in New York, was there to show them the ropes. Ray and Archaeology Club President Elizabeth Valnoha started by probing the area, because there had been some discussion of straightening one of the markers. But since the probes revealed that the marker probably has a large concrete base under it, which requires more people and possibly even machinery, we decided that it would be better just to clean the markers and plan a special day – with outside assistance – for straightening them.
The marker above is that of the Irish-born Fr. Edward Mayne, who arrived in St Augustine in 1827 and died in 1834, probably of tuberculosis, after a few very stressful years as the parish priest of the parish that is now the Cathedral Parish (it didn’t become a cathedral until 1870, when St Augustine got its first bishop).
The club members – as seen below, Allison Struck, Andrea Broaderick, Shelby Schultz and Elizabeth Valnoha, with TCPA members Janet Jordan and Ray Hinkley standing behind them. – began work on it, and below we see the cleaned marker, which is legible again. The lichen and stains have been removed…but they’ll be back, alas. This marker was cleaned only a few years ago, and had already become illegible when we started to work on it. In the photo, it’s still damp, but it will lighten, become more uniform, and the lichen will fade as it dries.
We cleaned several early markers – 1820s and 1830s – and a number of mid-19th century markers, including a marker for Jane Masters, a matriarch of the important local Masters family, which we hadn’t been able to read before. It’s located at the east end, over the “door” of a ruined vault, and it turned out to have a long poem at its base.
Janet Jordan, TCPA treasurer, took a break from her books to clean markers. This marker belongs to Margaret Weir, who died in 1869 and was the widow of Samuel Weir; the marker was placed by her son.
Just as we were finishing our cleaning, it started to rain….so we fled. But a small group of us came back a couple of hours later to welcome Jesus Permuy from Miami, along with members of two Cuban exile groups, one devoted to Fr. Felix Varela, and one that represents various Cuban municipalities, They came to install a plaque in the form of a book, in Spanish on one side and English on the other, dedicated to the visit made in 1892 by Jose Marti to the chapel/mausoleum to honor Fr. Varela.
But more about that next time…Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!
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