Tolomato was the cemetery for the Catholic parish during the time that St Augustine was almost entirely Catholic and also during the Territorial and early Statehood periods, when large numbers of non-Catholics began to move into town.
Our neighbor, the Huguenot Cemetery, was established during this period. Originally bought by the city for use during a yellow fever epidemic in 1821, it was eventually purchased by the Presbyterian church, which has owned it since 1835 and made it available to other Protestant churches until it was closed in 1884. Since then, most Protestant burials have been at Evergreen Cemetery in West Augustine.
It’s a lovely place, and has well-researched markers with small signs telling you details about the persons buried there. Like Tolomato, it has large, mature trees – and last night, during a particularly tempestuous rain coming from the east (always the worst kind of storm in St Augustine), one of the trees came down, taking down an obelisk with it.
It doesn’t look like an oak tree, but possibly a beech, and they are usually somewhat sturdier. However, once the wind starts up, it seems to magically detect any weak spot on a tree, and this one clearly had a vulnerable point.
The Huguenot Cemetery is very carefully tended, but these things happen no matter what. Trees are trees, and wind is wind.
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