CYCLOPEDIA
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Lucy Abbott -1929)developed housing on thirty-three unsettled acres north of Fort Marion after the Civil War. The Abbott Tract extended between Shell Road and the Bay, from Clinch Street (adjacent to the fort green) north to Joiner Street. Between 1872-94, Abbott developed at least 100 buildings on seventeen blocks which expanded the footprint of the residential city, while commercial interests were developing tourist property downtown. She lived in an extant mansion at the corner of Water and Shenandoah Streets built in 1861 by her uncle, Captain John Starke. For fifteen years, Abbott was the organist of Trinity Parish Episcopal Church and an advocate for the Confederate Monument in the Plaza that was erected in 1879.
"My mother came to Saint Augustine for her health when I was but a mere child. I almost cried my eyes out as Saint Augustine was such a poor-looking place, with many small and wretched looking houses" Lucy Abbott |
Pedro Benet ()king of menorcans ran a liquor store at 62 Saint George Street was Florida's first appointee to the US Military Academy at West Point. He served the Union in the Civil War and rose to the rank of Brigadier General at the youngest age in history. His grandfather was Esteban Benet, a Menorcan immigrant who was not associated with the Turnbull colony, but rather came over with his brother in 1785. Esteban married a New Smyrna refugee named Juana Hernandez, and their son ran a liquor store at 62 Saint George Street. General Benet and his wife Frances Neill Rose had three grandchildren who were notable American writers: Laura, William Rose, and the General's namesake Stephen Vincent Benet, who published the historical novel Spanish Bayonet about the colonial experience in East Florida.
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Cristobal Bravo (1806-1886)was Acting Mayor of Saint Augustine when Union forces entered the city in May 1862. He surrendered the Fort and control of the city, and Saint Augustine remained under light US military control until the end of the Civil War. In the decade previous, Bravo had served as a Lieutenant in the US Army and was wounded in the Seminole War. He eventually settled into a home in New Augustine that was described in the 1885 guide as four acres with hundreds of fruit-bearing trees and seedlings. Bravo was the son of a 2nd-generation Menorcan mother, Josefa Femenias (born in the New Smyrna colony in 1775) and a Spanish father, Cristobal Sr (born in Europe in 1759). Bravo Sr was a military officer who immigrated to Saint Augustine at the beginning of the Second Spanish Period, rising from Sub-Lieutenant to Commander of the Garrison. The short street from Bay Street to Hospital Street is named in the Bravo family's honor.
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George Buntingwas the owner of GT Bunting Furniture at 66 North Charlotte Street.
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Heth Canfield |
Margarita Capo (1847-1923)was seventeen years old when Roscoe Perry (18xx-19xx) was assigned to Fort Marion with the 17th Connecticut Regiment as part of the Federal occupation force during the Civil War. They met and courted, but Perry's orders sent home to New England to be mustered out of the Army. Within a year, he returned to Saint Augustine to marry Capo and they established a home at 52 Saint George Street. The Perrys ran a grocery out of that building.
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Philip Capo (1836-1901)was a Confederate veteran who returned the the city of his birth to establish Capo's Bath House. He was descended from a Menorcan family.
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PF Carcabaowned and operated a large cigar manufacturing plant in Cincinnati, before relocating the factory to -- Hypolita Street in Saint Augustine in 18--. Carcaba's Hypolita factory burned in 1885, but he promptly reopened on Cathedral Street. By 1921, cigar-making was the largest employer in Saint Augustine other than the Florida East Coast Railway. Carcaba's son William partnered with Augustine Solla and Antonio Martinez to operate the city's most modern factory at -- Riberia Street.
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Clarissa Cochran (1800-81)was the matriarch of the Anderson family who managed the construction of Markland Hall at 102 King Street beginning in 1838. A widow from Boston, she moved to Saint Augustine to assist with the household duties of her gravely ill friend Mary Watt, the first wife of Dr Andrew Anderson. When Watt died in 1837, Cochran married and started a family with Dr Anderson, but was widowed again less than two years later when her husband succumbed to yellow fever. While the Anderson children went to school in the north and lived off their inheritance, Cochran completed the mansion home and supervised its orchards. During the 1840s and 50s she rented rooms at Markland to elite guests who provided letters of introduction. Her son, Dr Andrew Anderson Jr, returned to Saint Augustine after the War and became a close friend of Henry Flagler. After his mother's death, he sold a portion of the Markland estate to Flagler, and worked local political channels to aid in the development of Flagler's tourist empire. The Anderson family's legacy in Saint Augustine includes the Ponce de Leon statue on the bay front, the sculptures at the Bridge of Lions, and the Memorial Pedestal and flag staff in Anderson Circle. The younger Dr Anderson also funded the Colored Welfare Center on Central Avenue.
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Thomas Hines Coleman |
Isaac Cruftsbuilt the first true resort hotel in Florida in 1881: the Magnolia Springs Hotel on the Saint Johns River. It was a palatial design that he imitated in Saint Augustine three years later, building the four-story San Marco Hotel on twenty acres north of the City Gates, near the Huguenot Cemetery. The San Marco included 1000 rooms and competed with the Flagler hotels on King Street for guests and for prestige. William Jennings Bryan campaigned for the presidency from its verandah in 1896 to an overflow crowd so large that their weight led to a structural accident. The San Marco was destroyed in a suspicious fire in October of 1897.
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Alexander Darnes (1840-94)was the first African American doctor in Jacksonville. Born into slavery in Saint Augustine, he served as valet to Major Edmund Kirby Smith (1824-93) during missions in Mexico in the Mexican American War. After emancipation, Darnes earned his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University and a medical degree from Howard University in 1880. He returned to Florida to practice, settling in Jacksonville, where he attended to patients during the yellow fever epidemic of 1888. A statue of Darnes and Smith honors both men at the Segui-Kirby Smith House at 6 Hospital Street where they both lived as boys.
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Thomas Douglas (1790-1855)served for nineteen years as US Attorney and was appointed judge of the Circuit Court when Florida was admitted to the Union in 1945. He moved his family from Indiana to Saint Augustine in 1826, and maintained a permanent residence at ---. He was elected to the Florida State Supreme Court in 18--. Served in militia during Seminole Wars.
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Luella Day"Presumably, Ponce de Leon's first landing was north of St Augustine and south of Jacksonville. The exact spot of the landing will probably never be known. The claim that the actual site of the landing has been definitely established at the Fountain of Youth Park seems unsupported by satisfactory evidence. The Fountain of Youth seems to be a well, not a spring, and to be without authenticated historical importance. One gets the impression that an effort is made to give the tourists their money's worth and to popularize history with such revisions as will best serve the gate receipts, and that in so doing historical accuracy has suffered."
Roger W Toll Department of the Interior 1935 |
Mary Evanswas a Saint Augustine midwife who led a more open public life than most women of her era. Her knowledge of the body and the treatment of pain allowed her to answer calls as an amateur physician to women. As an always on-call midwife, she was allowed a freedom of movement and the frequent accompaniment of men who were not her husband—possibly the father of the new baby, or a neighbor who came with the alert. Evans arrived in Saint Augustine as the British were taking control of the colony from the Spanish in 1763. With her second husband, she purchased a home today known as the Gonzalez-Alvarez House (or The Oldest House) at 14 Saint Francis Street, across from the soldiers' barracks. Her life was fictionalized by Eugenia Price in the novel Maria, published in 1977.
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George R Fairbankswrote the first serious historical account of Saint Augustine using Spanish records and documents. He came to the city in 1842 as Clerk of Superior Court, and later served as State Senator and Mayor. Fairbanks learned Spanish in order to read ancient documents in their original form. He organized the original Florida Historical Society and crafted the scholarly paper "The Early History of Florida" in 1858.
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Louisa Fatio |
Ward Foster |
Bartolo Genovar (1846-1945)built a two-story wood building called the Opera House on Charlotte Street near the corner of Cuna in 1876. He used the first floor as a warehouse and as a place to manufacture Scuppernong and Orange wine. The second floor was a grand hall that hosted entertainment, sports, and dances. After fire destroyed the first, Genovar built a second Opera House on Saint George Street north of Treasury. This theatre was designed to handle traveling theatrical companies with stage equipment and folding theatre seats. The second Genovar Opera House burned in the Fire of 1914. Bartolo was the grandson of Margarita Gallard and Francisco Genovar, who were both born in Menorca and married there before the Turnbull expedition departed. Genovar joined the Saint Augustine Blues at the age of fourteen, and after the War in 1872, married Mary Gomez (1852-1945), a descendant of a Spanish family with roots back to the city's founding in 1565. They lived at 46 and 20 Bay Street.
His brother was Frank B Genovar (1842-1917) who served as State Senator and Mayor of Saint Augustine, and who signed the 1885 Florida State Constitution that, among other things, made racial segregation mandatory in schools and instituted a poll tax to disenfranchise impoverished citizens. |
Col George Couper Gibbs (1822-73) |
Charles Hamblen (1837-1920)moved to Saint Augustine in 1874 from Stillwater, Maine, and opened a successful hardware store in an extant building at 11 Hospital Street. Hamblen Hardware later moved to 111 King Street and remained in business until 2012. Hamblen and his wife, Catherine de Medicis (1846-1920), built a large house at the most southern corner of Bay Street before the Plaza, directly across from the Saint Augustine Yacht Club. After his death in 1920, Hamblen left the house he called Blenmore to a non-profit corporation to provide a social club for low income men excluded from institutions like the Yacht Club. Blenmore later became the home of the American Legion.
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Genl Martin Hardin (1837-1923)was one of the last surviving Civil War generals when he passed in 1923. He was buried with his wife at the National Cemetery on Marine Street. Hardin fought on the Union side of the War and had no experience with Saint Augustine until he retired from military duty and began to winter there in 1885. He lived in the historic Tovar House at 22 Saint Francis Street for nine years. During extensive renovations, he found cannonballs embedded in the walls and nicknamed the residence "Casa del Canonaza." Hardin spent his final years at the "Union General's House" at 20 Valencia Street—a house built by Henry Flagler for the hotel manager.
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Antonia Hernandez (1830-1909)lived in the unsettled part of the city (Pacetti Road) later named for her husband, Domingo Pacetti, in Bakersville. She was the granddaughter of Brigadier General Joseph Hernandez.
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Fred Henderich (1879-1941)was a leading architect of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. He was a native of New York and graduated from Columbia University. Henderich came to Saint Augustine in 1905 to work for Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Hotel Company and lived and worked in the city for over twenty years. He designed multiple bungalow style homes south of Saint Francis Street, as well as the Plaza Bandstand, the Saint Augustine Record Building, the Solla-Carcaba Cigar Factory, Flagler Hospital, and the Florida Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1925, designed the Colored School (later renamed Excelsior) at 120 Central Avenue which served as Saint Augustine's first public high school for African-Americans.
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Anna Hughes (1843-1935)personally retrieved the body of her first husband from the battlefield at Shelbyville Tennessee in 1863. She later crossed the plains of North Dakota as a pioneer who helped established Fargo, before settling for a life in Saint Augustine in 1886. She lived at 9 Carrera Street. In 1892, Hughes founded a society newspaper called The Tatler, and provided commentary from her position as a prominent member business and charity. The Tatler was in publication for seventeen years and described the activities of winter visitors to the Flagler hotels. She occupied an office at the Alcazar and maintained a register so northerners could locate friends staying in town.
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James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)was born in Jacksonville and became familiar with St. Augustine at an early age. A modern renaissance man he was a poet, novelist, educator, diplomat, attorney, journalist, and songwriter--most notably of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"--before serving from 1916-1931 as a top official. One thing he did in that position was to arrange a meeting in St. Augustine between civil rights supporters and U.S. President-elect Warren G. Harding in 1921.
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Frances Kirby (1785-1875)was accused of spying for the Confederacy and exiled from Saint Augustine during the Civil War by Federal Troops. Originally from Connecticut, she was married to Joseph Lee Smith (1776–1846) and moved to Florida in 1821, when her husband was appointed Superior Court judge for the new territory. They had two sons who attended the US Military Academy: Ephraim Kirby Smith (1807-47) who died in the Mexican-American War in 1847, and Edmund Kirby Smith (1824-93), who also served in the Mexican-American War, and later a General for the Confederacy. During the Union occupation of Saint Augustine, Kirby smuggled mail to CSA troops and passed on War plans that she overheard while entertaining Federal officers. She was exiled following a Spring 1863 US Government order calling for removal of Southern sympathizers. The Kirby Smiths lived at 6 Hospital Street in the building now known as the Segui-Kirby Smith House. The building was later used as the Public Library and now is the home of the Saint Augustine Historical Society Research Library.
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Manucy |
Mary Dolores Masterswas the eldest daughter of Captain John Masters
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William Felix MicklerAt
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Mier |
Amelia Monson |
Pacetty |
Dr Seth Peck (1790-1841)added the second floor to the Peña-Peck House at 143 Saint George Street. With coquina walls dating from 1750, the residence was used by Royal Governors John Moultrie and Patrick Tonyn during the Birtish period, before being acquired and enlarged by Dr Peck in 1821. More than a century later, the family left the house to the City as a historic site, with maintenance and public tours provided by the Woman's Exchange since 1931.
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Pellicer |
Rudolph Pomaroperated a grocery store in the Mallette Building on San Marco Avenue between Cincinnati Avenue and Hope Street. Jose Pomar and Juana Llina were colonists at New Smyrna.
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Benjamin Putnam |
Reyes |
Ione Rogerowas known in the community as Sister Mary Hebert, a teacher and principal of Saint Joseph Academy. She was the daughter of Rosa and Francis Herbert Rogero... Menorcan... Beth Rogero Bowen
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Raymond Sabate (1862-1945)was Deputy Sheriff from 1901-22. His wife was Henrietta de Mier, Spanish
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Osborn Seavey (1848-1923)met Isaac Crufts at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston in 18--, and soon found himself managing hotel properties in Magnolia Springs and Saint Augustine, Florida. He was literally born into the industry, entering the world in a room at the Central Hotel in Unity, Maine, which was run by his father. Seavey was hired away from Crufts' San Marco Hotel by Henry Flagler in 1884 and he then supervised construction, furnishings, organization, and staffing for the Ponce de Leon, Alcazar, and Cordova Hotels. Flagler built a modest two-story house for Seavey and his wife that still stands at 20 Valencia Street on the Flagler College campus. Seavey was a committed athlete and was responsible for the Cuban Giants baseball team locating at the Ponce de Leon. In 1894, he resigned from the Flagler Hotel System, traveled the country for two years, then fell back into managing hotels, purchasing the Magnolia Springs after Crufts died in 1898.
"He is a man of strong individuality, a most original man, a bright man, a business man, and a thorough hotel man. It was while manager of the San Marco, that Mr. Flagler, then a guest at his house, first broached the subject of the Ponce de Leon to Mr. Seavey. This was in the winter of 1884-85, and the scheme was not long in taking shape, for the early part of January, 1888, will see the immense establishment in full blast. Mr. Seavey has had charge of the construction of the Ponce de Leon from the first, and to his experience and practical ideas it owes many of its most striking features. In height Mr. Seavey is about five feet seven or eight inches, is of a complexion approaching the blonde, has bluish-gray eyes, wears a full beard, and is a little inclined to be stout…To great executive ability is added that measure of bonhomie and companionableness which make the perfect hotel man.” Boston Home Journal 1887 |
Buckingham Smith (1810-71)was the son of the United States Consul to Mexico, and displayed an early interest in Florida's Spanish history on a visit there when he was fourteen years old. As an adult, he practiced law in Saint Augustine and lived on the plot of land that later became known as the Garnett Orange Grove. To further his historical research, Smith sought appointment as Secretary to the US legation in Mexico City in 1850 and in Madrid in 1855. In those cities, he copied ancient manuscripts and published historical articles. After his sudden death in 1871, Dr Oliver Bronson executed Smith's wishes to leave his property for the use of African American people, with a focus on the aged and infirm. The Buckingham Smith Benevolent Association established the Colored Home for fifty residents on the west bank of Maria Sanchez Creek just south of King Street in 1873.
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Franklin W Smith (1826-1911)was a Boston hardware merchant and political reformer, who travelled widely and built a Moorish inspired winter home in Saint Augustine at 83 King Street in 1883. Villa Zorayda was constructed using an experimental technique of cast concrete fashioned from crushed coquina as its aggregate. The house impressed visitor Henry Flagler enough that he tried to purchase it for his new wife, and upon failing that, he borrowed the construction method for the Ponce de Leon Hotel and the Hotel Alcazar. These structures sparked a movement in public architecture called the Moorish Revival. Smith purchased land from Flagler on the corner of Cordova and King Streets and opened the the Casa Monica Hotel on New Year's Day 1888. Just four months later, however, Smith was suffering financial difficulties, and sold it back. He pursued visionary projects outside of Saint Augustine for the rest of his life, and his family sold the Villa Zorayda in 1913.
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Peter Skenandoah Smith (1795-1858)received his unusual middle name from an Oneida chief that his father negotiated lands deals with in upstate New York. Peter Sken, as he was called, came to Florida in 1830 and developed housing on land adjacent to the dairy farm of Juan Genopoly north of the City Gate. The tract was originally the property of Canary Islander José Noda, who had immigrated to Saint Augustine with the Turnbull expedition. Smith was ruined by the Financial Panic of 1837 and his properties were mostly sold at auction. He fled to Philadelphia and died of a brain disease in 1858. A Saint Augustine street named for Peter Skenandoah was accidentally renamed "Shenanodah" by a city sign painter who thought he was making an obvious correction.
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Frank Thompsonorganized a Negro baseball team in Babylon, New York, that after several iterations became the prestigious Cuban Giants, who won championships in 1887 and 1888. The team evolved from casual games between hotel staff in the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington areas. Despite their name, the Cuban Giants had no players of Cuban descent, but fostered an image of exoticism that came from the Caribbean. To remain financially viable, they sought a twelve-month season, and played many winters in Cuba. Through his work as a hotel waiter, Thompson knew hotelier Osborn Seavey, and there was mutual interest in bringing baseball to Saint Augustine when the Flagler Hotels opened in 1888. While in Saint Augustine, Thompson founded the Progressive Association of the United States, where he conducted sermons asking citizens to come together against prejudice in the South.
"The colored employees of the Hotel Ponce de Leon will play a game today at the fort grounds with a picked 9 from the Alcazar. As both teams possess some of the best colored baseball talent in the US being largely composed of the famous Cuban Giants, the game is likely to be an interesting one." St Augustine Weekly News January 17, 1889 |
Triay |
Usina |
Capt Edward E Vaill (1833-1904)was the proprietor of the Hotel Saint Augustine, a prominent four-story building on the Plaza that stretched from Charlotte Street to the eastern edge of the Cathedral. The hotel was one of the city's three principal destination hotels—along with Magnolia House and Florida House—from 1867 until it was destroyed by the Fire of 1887. Vaill and his wife were both from New England families, and hatched the idea of promoting the city as a luxury winter resort for northerners years before Henry Flagler laid eyes on Saint Augustine. Though the fire ruined his business, Vaill remained in the industry and served on the original staff of the Ponce de Leon Hotel when it opened in 1888. In 19--, the Vaills donated five acres to the city of Saint Augustine to help build a school for deaf and blind children.
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William Van Dyke |
Fr Félix Varela y Morales (1788-1853)was a Cuban independence leader and abolitionist who grew up in Saint Augustine. He was raised partly by his grandfather, Lieutenant Bartolomé Morales, who was the Commander of the Garrison and the interim Governor of East Florida for three months in 1796. Varela left Florida to study for the priesthood in Cuba and then attended the University of Havana, where he later taught philosophy, physics, and chemistry. In 1821, Varela argued for the abolition of slavery in Cuba and for his insolence was sentenced to death by the newly restored King Ferdinand VII of Spain. He escaped arrest and lived and worked most of his remaining life in New York. To help him cope with severe asthma, Varela retired to Saint Augustine, where he died in 1853. He was initially buried in Tolomato Cemetery on Cordova Street, but his body was moved six decades later to a place of honor in Havana.
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John Vedder (1819-99)was the founder a museum of curiosities established at 4- Bay Street in the 1880s. He was born in Schenectady, New York, and before arriving in Saint Augustine, lived a nomadic life of travel, work, and discovery. Though he used the title "Doctor," he was not trained in medicine. Instead, Vedder pursued a myriad of trades from blacksmith to locomotive engineer, and along the way learned the art of taxidermy. He opened a permanent museum of natural oddities at the corner of Bay and Treasury Streets, where he advertised sensational exhibits until his passing in 1899. The building and its collection were sold to the Saint Augustine Historical Society, who kept the curiosities available to the public until the Fire of 1914.
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Augustine Verot |
William English Walling (1877-1936)William English Walling (1877-1936), one of the organizers and the first chairman of the NAACP, was a frequent guest at the nearby Alcazar Hotel--now St. Augustine City Hall. A local NAACP Chapter was first organized here in 1915
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