Tolomato Cemetery, St Augustine, FL.

Today, I hydroplaned my way to St. Augustine, FL through a series of bodacious little thunderstorms, all the while screaming at the sky, "CUT IT OUT! I HAVE SH*T TO DO!" I get a little worked up when something like weather threatens to mess up my photo shoots. But, I was doing it regardless, already eyeing the plastic grocery bag I use for trash in my car as a protector for my camera. Mother Nature generously took a time out just in time for my scheduled visit to...

Tolomato Cemetery
Tolomato, is the oldest planned cemetery in the State of Florida, with burials starting during the First Spanish Period (1565-1763). It was the site of a Franciscan mission built just outside of the old city walls as a home for Guale Indians from the Tolomato mission in Georgia. The mission chapel, circa 1726, was a simple wooden structure with a thatched roof and a remarkable four-story coquina bell-tower on the east façade. (ref http://www.tolomatocemetery.com/History.html)

It was closed in 1884 due to a misunderstanding of a Yellow Fever epidemic in St. Augustine at that time and the fear that the cemetery could somehow help to spread the illness. The cemetery is the property of the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Augustine.

Elizabeth
Much of this information was given to me by Elizabeth, a tiny, intelligent, gracious and amazing woman who met me at the gates and let me into her world of Tolomato. Her world, filled with this beautiful place she is helping to preserve, but also facts and knowledge of the cemetery, burials in general, and the city itself. If I knew a 10th of what she knew...

We sat in the tiny white chapel, while the heat of Florida summer blazed outside at 10:30 in the morning. She told me the preservation group had existed about one year only and that they had even done some geo-imaging around the chapel to see if they could find structural history. She told me the story of the St. Augustine Minorcans, a very important historical group who are buried primarily in Tolomato.

She told me that over 1000 burials had been recorded in the cemetery. But, that after it closed in 1884, some could not bear to be buried elsewhere, so fences were hopped, burials happened and city fines were paid.

She told me about a little door in an old visitors center in St. Augustine which was built atop a burial site. If you opened this little door you could see behind a glass window, skeletal remains. And that a popular bar was built on top of another subterranean burial place. That her sister, while with a prominent university, took photos years ago during an excavation of one of these burial places. She captured the remains being moved. She gave these slides to Elizabeth, who has these invaluable pieces of history in her own collection. I dared not ask to see them, though I was dying (graveyard junkie humor) of curiosity.

Elizabeth had so much to offer. Thank you to her for opening the doors to the interesting old Tolomato Cemetery, with its broken stones and crumbling encasements, that sits quietly on a side street very close to the mainstream Old St. Augustine tourist fervor, un-noticed unless at night when people are trying to see ghosts. This quiet old neighborhood cemetery sits in decay from years of going un-noticed. I am so glad to help it become noticed if I can to help the preservation effort and save this wonderful piece of history.

My photos will be posted soon. Visit Historic Cemeteries on Facebook to see more.