Veterans’ Day at Tolomato Cemetery

Tolomato Cemetery has the graves of many veterans, including veterans of both sides of the Civil War, and our last preservation work day focused on repairing some of these headstones. We cleaned numerous markers, but the biggest project of the day – actually, it took two days – was the straightening of the marker of Hector Adams,  who died in 1876 and had served in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War.  These were regiments set up by the Union Army specifically for the recently emancipated African Americans.  The Emancipation Proclamation was read in St Augustine in 1863 and Hector Adams joined the 21st Regiment, Company A, at Fernandina Beach on June 3, 1863, along with Frank Papy, who is also buried at Tolomato.

Hector Adams and Frank Papy both have the military markers provided by the Veterans Administration, probably shortly after their deaths in the 1870s.  We cleaned Frank Papy’s marker, as you see in the photo above, and then set about straightening Hector Adams’ marker, which had been tipped over and pushed off of his grave site by an aggressive palm tree that had been allowed to grow up on the site.  Unfortunately, once we had opened the ground, we found that the root ball of the palm tree had wrapped itself around the base of the marker and refused to let go.  As a result, what looked like a simple project turned into a long and arduous day as volunteers dug and scraped to free the marker from the tree and then reset it a couple of feet away in a safer location.

In the above photo, Matt Armstrong and other volunteers examine the marker while in the photo below, a volunteer begins to dig.

The marker also turned out to be much longer than we had expected, and for a while it seemed that we would never reach the bottom edge.  But it finally happened, and below we see volunteers Bob Kennedy and Haley Wigley working out a strategy for lifting it.  Next to it you see the new hole dug for it.

Heave ho!

And it’s out!  Haley balances it on the dolly before moving it off for cleaning.

Matt examines the marker, pointing to the how deeply it had been buried. The marker is 36” high and had been buried about 22”, something that would not have been a problem without the palm roots.

Next came cleaning with our trusty D/2 product.

This was followed by resetting it in the new hole (after carefully recording the change that we had made, of course!).

And then our Veterans Day work was done, with Hector Adams’ marker restored to the upright position, cleaned and once again visible to all.

Another November

Tolomato Cemetery was the parish cemetery for the church that is now the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine and returns to its roots, so to speak, every November. In the Catholic Church, November is the month in which the dead are prayed for and commemorated, and priests from the Cathedral generally celebrate a Mass in the Varela Chapel for this occasion.

Once again this year,  on Saturday, Nov. 3, the Menorcan Society sponsored the Mass and encouraged its members to come, since there are many Minorcans  buried at Tolomato. In fact, it was the priest who served the Minorcans in their New World ordeal during the British Period and also accompanied them on their flight to St. Augustine, Fr. Pedro Camps, who asked British Governor Patrick Tonyn for permission to use the “Old Catholic Cemetery” for burials once again. If you live in St Augustine and visit Tolomato, you will recognize many of the Minorcan names that you see on streets and shops throughout town.

Below is the statue of Fr. Camps and the Minorcans in the west courtyard of the Cathedral. The term “Minorcan” also includes those of Greek, Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian and other stock who were part of the emigration.


The Menorcan Society and other attendees placed flowers on the graves, although unfortunately when I went out to the cemetery later that same day, I found that our abundant squirrel population had tipped over the vases and eaten the flowers, leaving only a random scattering of petals here and there.



But the squirrels didn’t win!  Above, Fr. Ed Booth (who has Minorcan roots) from the Cathedral parish stands for a moment after blessing the grave of his long ago predecessor, Fr. Miguel O’Reilly, who during the Second Spanish Period was the first pastor of the parish that is now the Cathedral. Fr. Miguel O’Reilly died in 1812 and was buried at Tolomato; his successor, Fr. Miguel Crosby (another Irishman ordained in Spain) is buried nearby.

Record-Breaking Open Day at Tolomato!

Every month, our number of visitors increases, and in October, 2012, we hit our highest number so far: over 400 visitors came through the gates from11-3 pm that Saturday.  Granted, on this occasion we were helped by a nearby political campaign event, which gave us visitors who stopped in on the way back to their cars upon its conclusion.  We were also recently listed in the AAA magazine and we are getting people who have timed their trip to St Augustine just to coincide with our Third Saturday openings.  Whatever the reason, it was a busy day…

Below, Nick McAuliffe took a picture of Elizabeth Gessner, in vaguely 18th century dress, giving a tour to some interested visitors.  Our docents were hoarse by the end of the day!

Matt Armstrong spent the afternoon finishing up the ironwork restoration project that he had started about two weeks ago with the aid of some 15 volunteers.  In this photo, he is putting  flat black oil-based paint on top of the cleaned, primed and undercoated metal. It’s a time-consuming process, and the visitors stopped to chat with him about it. Some of them signed up are going to be doing it themselves at our next event in November (date to be announced).

And finally, here’s the cemetery cat, who came out to keep an eye on things.

The photo was taken by Louise Kennedy from her new genealogy and reference table at the back of the cemetery. The cat appeared to be unimpressed by our goings on and soon went off to check out a neighboring backyard.

Preservation Dedication

Today we did our very first metalwork preservation session.  Matt Armstrong, who has taken the NCPTT metalwork preservation course, instructed a group of some fifteen enthusiastic volunteers (some from the Flagler College Archaeology Club), who then spent the morning brushing, cleaning, stabilizing and finally painting part of the wrought iron grave enclosure around the Benet marker. 

In the photo below, Matt describes the project. This enclosure was chosen because the ironwork is in poor condition, but still good enough so that cleaning and painting will help it.  Some of our metalwork is so deteriorated that it has rusted through, but most of the Benet enclosure is intact.

The purpose of this is not to make it look “like new,” but simply to arrest the deterioration while it is still possible. This ironwork shows the results of probably a century of neglect.

We started with a lead test to determine whether whatever paint remained on the ironwork contained lead. It probably had, once upon a time, but by now, so little of the paint remains that the test was negative.  So we put on masks only to protect ourselves from little metal chips stirred up by our next activity, steel-brushing the metal.

This cleaned off the loose rust, and then we washed the cleaned metal with Photoflow, a gentle, non-reactive cleaner.

Once that had dried, the next step was spraying the metal with a rust converter (Rust-Oleum Rust Reformer, in this case), a product that bonds with the rust, stops its progress and creates a smooth, paintable surface, as we see below where the treated metal, black, is next to an as yet untreated rusty upright.

Once the rust converter had dried, we moved on to the next step, painting it with an oil based primer.   The undercoat used in the 19th century was often a red oxide based paint, and we used something very similar to it.  But wait…after a beautiful, sunny morning, all of a sudden clouds rolled in and we had the Florida specialty, a completely unanticipated drenching rain.  But did that stop the volunteers?  Not at all!

In this photo, we see them working under a piece of plastic drop cloth, held up by human tent-poles.

And, alas, although we had one more step – letting the primer dry and then giving it a couple of coats of flat black oil-based paint – we had to call it quits after the primer coat. However, even having gotten that far was enough to protect the metal, so we packed up our things and the dripping volunteers then went their ways to dry off or, better yet, to eat barbecue at Mojo’s across the street.

So I can’t put up the final photo yet…but Matt and others will be back in the cemetery some time in the next few days to do the final coats, and as soon as they’ve finished, their splendid work will be displayed here for you. 

It was a great project with great volunteers and a truly excellent presentation and instruction by Matt.  And it is the first of many!

Metalwork Preservation

Tolomato Cemetery has a number of cast and wrought iron grave enclosures – or at least what’s left of them!  As you can see, they have rusted through, fallen over or been disrupted by plant life.

But we’re going to attempt to halt the deterioration. Matt Armstrong, our Preservation Chairman, attended the NCPTT workshop on historic ironwork a few months ago, and now he’s going to bring his knowledge to bear on Tolomato’s collapsing ironwork.

On October 6, we’ll have another Preservation Work Day for our members and volunteers, where they’ll clean, remove rust, repair what can be repaired, and use rust-proofing paints and materials to prevent further loss of these features, some of which are very lovely examples of 19th century cemetery art.

Our 16th Century Burial

Earlier this year, we reinterred bones from the burial place of some 16th century St. Augustinians found during an archaeological dig at the site of the first St. Augustine parish church, Los Remedios, on what is now Aviles Street.

We planned to mark the site with a piece of coquina (which may have originally have come from the Tolomato belltower) and a brass plaque.  And here it is.

Lux Perpetua is Latin and means “Perpetual Light.”  It is from the old Latin funeral rite, and the full phrase was  Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. The translation is Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

The Cathedral Bells–and Tolomato?

The Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine has embarked on a renovation and restoration program this year, and the first project was getting the Cathedral’s many bells to ring again.  There are two sets of bells, one set in the free-standing Flagler bell tower near St George Street, which was added in the 19th century after the 1887 fire, and the four original bells in the campanario or espadaña (a traditional Spanish false-front bell-wall) over the door. 

The bells have not rung for years, although the four original bells, which had been damaged in the 1887 fire, had been recast and rehung for the 400th Anniversary in 1965.  But for one reason or another, they were not used, possibly because no adequate ringing mechanism was in place.  In the 19th century, they were rung by being swung with ropes – or by little boys who would climb up to a platform behind them and strike them with a hammer!  Obviously, it’s time for something more modern. 

The mechanism that rang the Flagler bells had also ceased to work and they placed too much of a strain on the bell tower if they moved, so an electronic chime replaced them years ago.  But now something has happened.

Here we see Tolomato Cemetery Preservation Association Secretary Louise Kennedy, standing in front of the bells as they are placed on a truck to be taken away for cleaning and restoration.

What is the connection with Tolomato?  As we know, Tolomato was originally the site of a Franciscan Indian mission, which had a four-story coquina bell tower that remained standing until sometime between 1793 and 1800, when it was slowly taken apart so that the stone could be used in the building of the current Cathedral. 

When the Spanish left Florida in 1763 as the British arrived, they took with them to Cuba all of the church furnishings from all of the churches, including the missions such as San Sebastian, and of course the parish church, which was at that time Nuestra Senora de la Soledad on St George Street. In the inventory done upon the arrival of the goods in Cuba, there is a record of three bells, “one large, one medium and one small,” being brought to Havana.  Most of these goods were distributed to other parishes in Cuba or to the new one founded by St Augustine residents in Guanabacoa. Only a few things were returned to St Augustine when the Spanish came back in 1784, and the bells were not mentioned on the list that I have seen.

So it seems that three of the current bells were acquired for the building of the new church, the current Cathedral. Construction had actually been planned some 10 years earlier, but the funds needed to be used for rebuilding the town after a disastrous hurricane. However, it is possible that the bells had been ordered at this time, because when they were taken down, one was found to be dated 1787.

But what about the fourth bell?  The oldest bell, dated in 1689 and named San Jose, is possibly the one that came from Tolomato. It’s the one at the lower left in the bell tower, and is not the largest.  Below is a photo taken by Louise.

Bells were very important to the missions and to the town.  Life began every morning with the Angelus at 6:00 am, and the Angelus bells rang again at noon and at 6:00 pm, marking the day. It is certainly possible that this bell was somehow left in the bell tower at Tolomato, of no interest to the British, or perhaps was hidden elsewhere and recovered by the Spanish when they returned.  Will we ever know?  Well, rest assured that we’re certainly trying to find out!