The 2023 St. Augustine History Festival is more than academic talks and demonstrations. Historic Tolomato Cemetery will host a scavenger hunt within the cemetery grounds on Friday, May 12, from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. It will be a great afternoon of good old-fashioned family fun as you search for clues to help you solve the puzzle of the hunt.
Tolomato Cemetery is one of the most historic locations in St. Augustine. It was in use as a cemetery from the 18th century until 1884. This beautiful space is the last resting place of some 1,000 St. Augustinians, including many people important to the history of Florida and the United States. It is a distillation of St Augustine history in less than one acre, starting with the First Spanish Period, when Tolomato was a Franciscan mission, and going through its use as a cemetery during the British Period and the Second Spanish Period and then on through Florida’s Territorial and early Statehood periods.
Burials include people from Spain, Cuba, Ireland, Minorca, Italy, Greece, Africa, Haiti, France, and the American South and Northeast. Graves of soldiers from both sides of the Civil War, and even the burial place of a man important in the history of Cuba, who may one day be declared a saint, Fr. Felix Varela, rest here. There is no place in St Augustine that is a richer concentration of our city’s long history.