The Tolomato Cemetery Preservation Association (TCPA) was created for the preservation and interpretation of Tolomato Cemetery, an historic cemetery located on the site of an earlier Franciscan Indian mission (Our Lady of Guadalupe of the Tolomato) in St Augustine, Florida. Burials officially ceased in 1884, but there are large numbers of documented burials from the 18th and 19th centuries.
There is little doubt that Tolomato was the site of many earlier burials for which scanty or no records exist.
Members of the Association include descendants of many diverse communities that have created St. Augustine, such as the Spanish, Minorcan, Irish, African, Greek, Italian and 19th century Southern and Northeastern American families who have ancestors buried in the cemetery. Tolomato Cemetery is of interest to a wide range of other groups: it has the earliest graves of the Sisters of St Joseph, as well as burials of veterans that represented both sides of the Civil War. It was also the burial site of important political and religious leaders, such as General Georges Biassou of Haiti and Father Felix Varela of Cuba, whose canonization process is underway. Association members also include preservationists and archeologists interested in the long historical record of Tolomato. And of course the Cemetery is of great interest to genealogists and cemetery buffs.
The Cemetery was once the parish cemetery for what is now the Cathedral Parish and is still owned by it, maintaining it and protecting it over the years. However, the main job of a church is not that of running an historic site, so visitor access was limited and preservation needs built up. But in 2008, researcher Matthew R. Kear spent most of a year studying and documenting the cemetery for his 2009 Cornell University thesis, In Reverence: A Plan for the Preservation of Tolomato Cemetery. It was his suggestion to create the TCPA to deal with the intrepretation and preservation of the site. With his help, advice from similar organizations and the archaeological community in St Augustine, and the support of the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine, the TCPA became reality on August 28, 2010.
The TCPA is now working to preserve and protect the site and to interpret its rich history to the public. Association members will participate in this activity, working on preservation projects, guiding visitors through the site and assisting researchers in examining this virtual time-line of St. Augustine history. The goal of the Association is to provide regular access to the Cemetery to introduce visitors to this fascinating part of St. Augustine’s past and to make the Cemetery an even more beautiful part of modern St. Augustine.