ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - In the heart of St. Augustine is one of the oldest graveyards in the state: Tolomato Cemetery.
A one-acre space that is even the final resting place to the city’s early settlers.
Native Americans were the first to live on the land that was once a village. Then came the Spanish, the British, and the Americans. Designated as a cemetery in the 1700s, burials took place on the land for more than 150 years.
Elizabeth Gessner is the President of Tolomato Preservation Association.
"It started with the Minorcan’s during the British period and anybody who knows St. Augustine knows there was a 20-year period when the British were here and during that time the Minorcans who are the ancestors of practically everybody here in town,” Gessner said.
She added that the oldest marked grave in the state is located near the center of the cemetery: Elizabeth Forrester, a 16-year-old from Pennsylvania died while visiting Florida and was buried at Tolomato in 1798.
“This is not the first burial in the state or even at Tolomato, but it is the first one with an individual marker with a date," Gessner said. "She was one of the first of many people from the northeast to be buried in this cemetery.”
However, not all burials were authorized. The cemetery stopped digging graves in 1884 during the yellow fever epidemic. Gessner explained the practiced bothered some families who had been burying relatives behind the gates for generations.
“They would sort of hop over the fence and bury the person and then the city would fine them $25, but they left the body there and they were not shy about it because there’s one back there with the date engraved on the stone," she said.
She said that makes those the last official internments in Tolomato.