Tolomato and 1763

As every St Augustinian knows, 1763 was the year that Spain ceded Florida to Britain in the treaty ending the French and Indian War  and all of the Spanish citizens sailed for Cuba.  This amounted to about 3000 people, including the Europeans, the different Indian groups and the free Africans from Fort Mose.

Recently I came across a Cuban genealogical site with rich information about this:  the names of several hundred of these refugees.  The names are mostly those of the male heads of family with a description of the group to which they belong (familias Isleñas, for example, meaning people from the Canary Islands who had come to Florida as settlers only in 1757, or familias de Yndios, meaning one of the Mission Indian groups).  Also included was information about their occupation and where they went when they got to Cuba.  To back this up, I came across an article by a Cuban scholar and another by Jane Landers and got a very interesting view of the fate of these former Floridians.

Because there were so many of them that they would virtually have overwhelmed Havana, they were sent to different areas. Most of the Canary Islands families, along with other Spanish families, the German Catholic families that had lived in St Augustine, and a miscellaneous assortment of non-European St Augustine citizens, were given land in a place called San Agustín de la Nueva Florida, in the province of Matanzas, northeast of Havana.  The parish church there, built in 1797 (the same year as the present Cathedral of St Augustine!) and thus after the arrival of these refugees, is named Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria y San Agustín de la Nueva Florida de Ceiba Mocha.  The devotion to La Candelaria was very popular with Canary Islanders.  I was unable to find a photo of the church, but here’s an old holy card of La Candelaria from a Cuban website.

The Franciscan friars who staffed the missions went to the Convento de San Francisco in Havana, although some were reassigned elsewhere, and it indicates that at least one was sent to Caracas. The doctrinero at Tolomato, Fray Agustín Trujillo, went to the Convento but unfortunately died in Havana shortly after his return.

Other residents, particularly the mission Indians, went to a place called Guanabacoa, not far from Havana.  The town church, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, is shown in this photo by Herb Frazer from the Charleston Mercury.  It was built somewhere between 1721 and 1748, so it would have been standing when the St Augustine refugees arrived.  We know that the cacica (the female chief) of Tolomato, María Francisca, died in Guanabacoa and was buried there.

Guanabacoa had long been an area reserved to Indians, who had their own governing councils and maintained other customary institutions, and the new residents – who were from a wide variety of tribes, but who had been living in a tribally mixed situation in the few remaining, consolidated Florida missions – probably found it a congenial location.

Many of the free blacks from Fort Mose also went to San Agustín de la Nueva Florida, today known as Ceiba Mocha.  This area was a center of sugar production and there were a number of recently “imported” Africans already in the area, although Cuba also had a large free black population and many persons of mixed blood (and many Haitians would arrive after the Haitian rebellions). The members of the free African-descent population from Fort Mose were each given a slave of their own to help them, but conditions in the province were very difficult.  However, that area is still known as a center of Afro-Cuban culture, and quite possibly some of our long-ago former St Augustine residents are responsible for some of these cultural contributions.

Don Juan McQueen…at last!

One of the most frequent questions of our visitors is about John McQueen, aka don Juan McQueen. He was one of our many colorful 18th and 19th century St Augustine residents and appears in Eugenia Price’s books on St Augustine, Maria, and, of course, Don Juan McQueen.

He spent much of his life in South Carolina and Georgia, where he was a land speculator, ship owner and captain…and Revolutionary War patriot, who had business connections with France and carried letters from Washington to Lafayette to enlist the aid of the French in the American Revolution. 

After the war, he seems to have owned much of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, including places like Sapelow Island, but unfortunately his land deals went bad and he had to flee the new United States to avoid debtor’s prison…and ended up in Spanish Florida, specifically, in St Augustine. Here his career flourished and he became an important local citizen, the friend of people ranging from Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, first pastor of what is now the Cathedral, to the Spanish governor at the time (and don Juan conveniently arranged to live nearby, so that he could profit from any spare land grants that might be available!). 

He was in the process of building a house a few miles north of St Augustine, to which he wished to bring his wife and children after long years of separation, but he died suddenly of a fever.  His body was brought to St Augustine and he was buried at Tolomato Cemetery in 1805. A few years later, he was followed by his friend, Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, who died in 1812.

But while Fr. Miguel O’Reilly had a vault, John McQueen had no marker, or at any rate, if he had had one originally, it had disappeared long ago.  So while we knew that he was buried at Tolomato, there was nothing to show people.

But the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) changed all that. Today they installed a very beautiful marker for him…right next to the vault of his old friend, Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, incidentally…and suddenly made our history visible!

A group of about 80 people assembled, many of them from St Augustine and including people such as George Gardner and St John’s County Commissioner Cindy Stevenson, and of course DAR officers and members from the area and beyond.  It was a particular honor because this is the first DAR patriot’s marker in St John’s County.

The current Chapter Regent, Lynne Cason, started with a few words and Father Ed Booth from the Cathedral did the invocation.  Former Regent Virginia Hassenflu told John McQueen’s never-dull story. Then, after a dignified ceremony, enhanced with an ROTC color guard (top photo), the marker was unveiled.  Above, Lynne Cason, Shirley Thompson and Fr. Ed Booth, who blessed the marker.

And here it is:

But just for you blog readers, here is the scene a couple of weeks before, while Lynne’s husband and other men from the Garrison were installing it:

A beautiful job, a wonderful addition to both Tolomato and St Augustine…and, as Virginia Hassenflu said, we can just look at it and imagine the shades of don Juan McQueen and Fr Miguel O’Reilly playing checkers together on a warm evening…

And another thing we did…

Easter travels have prevented me from staying up to date here, but now that I’m back, I wanted to post a few more photos from our last Preservation Work Day.

In addition to our foray into masonry, we did a lot of headstone and vault cleaning. We had bought a lifetime supply of D2 from Cathedral Stone Products (thank you, Cathedral Stone, for your fast, helpful service!) and we were ready to use it!

We had some “old” volunteers, and Matt Armstrong directed them and showed the newbies how to clean markers.  Below, you see them preparing to clean a ledger stone.

Our big project was the vault of Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, the first pastor of the Cathedral. He died and was buried at Tolomato in 1812, but the current ledger stone on his vault was placed in the 1870s by “some of the old parishioners,” who remembered his hard work, intelligence and zeal. We think that the original 1812 top, which wasn’t really a stone but looked more like a stuccoed peaked roof, was possibly destroyed by a falling tree or collapsed from its own weight and needed restoration around that time.

In the last few years, the stone had gotten very dark and was almost illegible, as you can see above.  But our careful cleaning – which will look even better after the sun has bleached the lichen stains – has revealed it again.

Masonry Preservation at Tolomato Cemetery

 

We had a great preservation work day at Tolomato this weekend (March 31).  Matt Armstrong had gotten a number of people from his Flagler College contacts and Sarah Miller of FPAN put the information out on her list. Of course, the TCPA had also notified members and people who had signed up to receive notifications.

We had a lovely cool morning and all the tools and D2 (a cleaning solution) we needed. BTW, many thanks to the great people at Cathedral Stone Products, which expedited our last-minute order.

Life was good and it got even better when John Beaty arrived from Gainesville. John is a specialist in historic masonry, currently completing his doctorate in the subject, and is also a really great person for working with volunteers.  That means: honest, dedicated, organized, clear and not condescending. 

Our original objective was to clean markers and we did. But that will be another post.

However, the really interesting thing was that we got to repoint the bricks in the Andreu vault, which is beginning to show some ominous signs of collapse.   Below is John inspecting the vault.  Notice the exposed brick and non-existent mortar at the lower right.

And here we are, diligently digging out the debris, removing the plant material, vacuuming and cleaning…and filling in all those ugly cracks. 

The mortar is historically accurate. It is hydrated lime from Virginia Limeworks, combined with native sand and some purchased earth colorings.

Everybody worked like mad.  Here we see John pointing out some details to Percy de la Cruz.

And then suddenly the heavens opened and lightning started shooting down everywhere.

So we covered the vault with a tarp and ran for the protection of the Varela Chapel…and I’ll tell you the rest of the story later. (Spoiler:  I saw the Andreu vault this morning and when we removed the tarp - it looked great!)

A Mexican Contemporary of Tolomato

 

I was sorting through some photos I had taken on a recent visit to Oaxaca, Mexico and some of the more remote surrounding towns. This was glimpsed from the window on the way up to one of these remote towns…I don’t recall which one, at this point. But the area has been settled and Christianized since the 16th century, so there’s no telling the age of this cemetery.

Burials in the early days weren’t marked, or at any rate, not with anything that was going to endure for very long.  In recent times, Mexicans have tended to build little shrines over or near the graves.

Below are a few lines from a poem by Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish poet and philosopher, entitled En un Cementerio de Lugar Castellano (In a Country Cemetery in Castilla). It describes a typical cemetery on the plains of Castilla, windswept, abandoned looking, behind adobe walls – very similar to our Mexican cemetery above.

Corral de muertos, entre pobres tapias,
hechas también de barro,
pobre corral donde la hoz no siega,
sólo una cruz, en el desierto campo
señala tu destino….

Corral of the dead, between humble walls,
made like them of clay,
poor yard where the sickle no longer reaps,
only a cross, in the barren field,
points to your destiny…

Below is a very beautiful video/musical arrangement of the poem.

The Fossil Club

Spring has sprung and it’s time for school visits. We recently had a great visit with some highschoolers from Newsome High School in Lithia and Alonso High in Tampa. They are members of the Archaeology, Anthropology and Fossil Clubs of their schools. Teacher Valerie Walker, who is the coordinator of these clubs, arranged the trip. 

About 100 students came over to visit Tolomato Cemetery, the Huguenot Cemetery and other sites in St Augustine.  Here they are at Tolomato, standing around the vault of Elizabeth Forrester and listening to Sarah Miller give her great presentation on Ground Penetrating Radar.  I think we might have some future archaeologists in this group…

Tolomato by Infrared

Tolomato Cemetery is so photogenic that photographers simply can’t resist it.  When we were open last month, we had two photographers quietly posted in a remote corner taking some rather unusual photos.

These are infrared photos, meaning that they are taken using a filter or a film that is sensitive to infrared light. They were taken by photographer Steve Neff, who plans to come back and take more photos at some time when the cemetery doesn’t have as many visitors.  The technique is a little tricky, and judging by what we could see of the photographers as they focused and refocused, requires considerable care and adjustment, and having unexpected human figures suddenly walk across their carefully composed scene made it a lot  more difficult. 

The above photo is the marker of “Little James,” a child who is buried near the front of the cemetery and is a favorite with the ghost tours.  This photo certainly makes his burial place very evocative and mysterious looking.  Notice how the leaves of the trees come out as a sort of shimmering cloud.

Steve Neff also took this photo of the marker of Fr. Edward Mayne, one of our more dramatic markers because of its shape and the way it leans.  Steve will be back and tell us more about his work sometime later this spring.