St. Augustine Adventure: Day Five or Research, Father O'Reilly and More Research

Two more days of our St. Augustine Adventure.

Day Five...breakfast...squirrels...research library visit.

After lunch The Colonel and I take a short break from research and visit the Father Miguel O'Reilly House Museum.

The house is located in the oldest part of St. Augustine (founded in 1565) and was built in 1691.

In 1784 Father O'Reilly purchased the house to live in. He was St. Augustine's parish priest from 1784 to 1812.

In 1866 it became the first convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph who came from France upon the request of St. Augustine's first bishop, Bishop Verot (also from France) to educate the liberated slaves after the Civil War. The museum displayed a portrait of Verot as well as his Miter (hat) and Crosier (staff).

The last class conducted in the house was in 1956.

As a museum the house holds Catholic Church and The Sisters of St. Joseph memorabilia among other items like the "Hurricane Lady" statue.

The story is told that the statue was aboard a cargo ship bound for the Port of St. Augustine and during the voyage the ship encountered a fierce hurricane. The Captain and crew feared all would be lost when the statue was brought up from the hold and they all prayed for their deliverance. The storm quieted and the cargo ship limped into port. The statue is hundreds of years old.

There is also a small, authentic, historic garden beside the house in the walled yard.

It was back to the research library after our O'Reilly house tour.

One day left.

St. Augustine Adventure: Day Four or Light House, Little Sister and More Research

Day four starts with breakfast with the squirrels again (we eventually needed to buy one more bag of peanuts before our trip was through).

The Colonel and I made our way to the St. Augustine Lighthouse. We climbed it back in 2003 with Yam and Spud (before it was made famous by TAPS, the ghost hunters on television; we did not experience any entities) so we opted not to climb the 219 steps to the top this time. I snapped a couple of pics. Here is one of them.

As we were at the lighthouse I got a phone call from my little sister. She and her husband would be passing through St. Augustine on their way to Savannah from Miami. They would be in town around lunchtime and would love to see us, have lunch and do a little sightseeing. We would love it too.

The Colonel and I had some time to spend before they arrived. We did a little shopping while we waited.

J & J arrived and after hugs and kisses of welcome, The Colonel and I escorted them through the Old City Gates and onto St. George Street, the main street of the Spanish Colonial city.



We passed by the Oldest Schoolhouse on our way to the Columbia Restaurant.

The Columbia Restaurant serves excellent Spanish and Cuban cuisine. J & J loved their lunch. The Colonel and I as well as Yam and Spud always enjoy eating at the Columbia Restaurant, especially at the original one in Ybor City in Tampa.

After lunch we took J & J around sightseeing. We visited the Cathedral Basilica. It was beautiful inside with many painted murals depicting the history of St. Augustine. Then we stopped by Flagler College. The college is housed in what was once the very opulent Ponce de Leon Hotel built by Henry Flagler in 1887. My sister and I used the restroom while there...the ladies restroom had a fireplace in it! It must have been something to stay at the Ponce de Leon in its hey day. It is a fantastical building. A must see!

Across the street from Flagler College is the Lightner Museum, it is housed in what was once the Alcazar Hotel, also built by Mr. Flagler. It is not as ornate as the Ponce de Leon, but still impressive.

Next we took J & J to the Castillo de San Marcos (the fort) for photo ops (time was too short to tour the inside).

After the Castillo visit The Colonel parted ways, he had more research to conduct, so I took J & J on to the grounds of the Ripley Museum to see the statue of David and a four room house, carved from a huge redwood tree laid on its side. From there I took them to the Mission De Nombre De Dios to see the huge cross, the Our Lady chapel and the gift shop.

Inside the gift shop was a little room that held the outer coffin of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine and his portrait. There was also a diorama depicting the first mass being offered after Aviles landed.

It was finally time for J & J to hit the road and continue their trip up to Savannah. We said our goodbyes and then I joined The Colonel at the research library.

Wordless Wednesday

St. Augustine Adventure: Day Three or Mainly Research

Day three started out like day two...breakfast from McDonald's, taken to the Mission Nombre De Dios cemetery grounds to eat, except that we were prepared for the onslaught of hungry squirrels. We had purchased a bag of peanuts the night before.

After breakfast we visited another cemetery across town to discover where Joseph Blanchard's first wife was buried. She was the mother of little Arthur whose grave we found earlier in the mission's cemetery. She was not buried with Arthur because she remarried, died years later and is buried next to her husband.

We spent the biggest part of the day pouring through historical documents at the local historical library and learning more about the Blanchard family. The Colonel was in his element. He is the historian for the Blanchard House Museum and enjoyed himself while digging through the old papers. I enjoyed it too.

St. Augustine Adventure: Day Two or A Few Forts

7 AM...up and at 'em.

We hit the drive-thru of "Mickey D's" and took our breakfast to the park-like setting of the Mission Nombre De Dios and ate while we watched many squirrels boldly beg for treats.

We narrowly escaped the mob of hungry squirrels and made our way to Fort Matanzas.

The Colonel and I took the fort's first tour of the day. We were joined by an older couple. The Fort Matanzas tour is free to all. We did not visit the fort during our 2003 trip with the kids, I don't know why, but after the tour we wished we had, they would have loved it!

We all boarded a pontoon boat. A park ranger gave us a brief history of the fort as he piloted the boat across the Matanzas River. It was a clear, sunny morning and seeing the fort across the water was quite a sight to see.

Fort Matanzas was constructed in 1740-42 as Spain's last effort to ward off British attacks and encroachments on St. Augustine.

The town had one weakness: Matanzas Inlet, 14 miles south, allowed access to the Matanzas River, by which enemy vessels could attack St. Augustine from the rear.

The trip across the river was short and soon the ranger (along with the help of ranger #2) docked the boat near the fort.

The Colonel and I were the first ones out of the boat and onto dry land (being younger and more nimble than the other tourist couple).

We tourists were given free range of the fort. The Colonel and I climbed over every inch of the fort. We climbed stairs into the fort and first saw the cannons on its gun deck.

Then into the Soldiers' Quarters on the same level as the gun deck.

Soldiers were rotated from St. Augustine for one-month duty tours at Matanzas, usually an officer-in-charge, four infantrymen, and two gunners. More could be assigned to this remote outpost when there was an enemy threat, up to 50 more during a crisis.

We climbed more stairs up to the Officer's Quarters, a vaulted room directly above the Soldiers' Quarters.

In the middle of the Officer's Quarters stood a wooden ladder that led up to the Observation Deck. You know we had to go there.

Climbing up the ladder, there was not much room to spare (remember the Spanish were a lot smaller than we are today), but The Colonel and I made it to the Observation Deck. The older couple did not attempt the climb, so The Colonel and I had the deck to ourselves.

We toured the fort for about half an hour.

The boat ride back across the river was as pleasant as the one to the fort. When the boat docked we saw a large crowd of adults and children waiting for the next tour. The Colonel and I both were glad we took the early tour. I am sure the older couple were thinking the same thing.

Our next stop was to Fort Mose (pronounced moe-say) Historic State Park.

There is no longer a fort there, only a museum, a picnic pavilion and a boardwalk to the overlook where you can see where the original fort was built as well as the second, after the first was destroyed. The clump of vegetation on the left is Fort Mose site number one and the clump on the right is Mose number two.

This is an artist's drawing of what Fort Mose number two would have looked like.

By the late 1600s, black slaves had learned that they could escape their British masters in the Carolina Colony and seek freedom and asylum in Spanish Florida if they embraced Catholicism and pledged to serve the Spanish Crown. In 1738 the Florida Governor granted these blacks a plot of land about two miles north of St. Augustine where they could build their own community and fort. The community housed 38 men and their families. It was estimated that about 100 people lived there. They adopted Spanish names and Spanish culture with an African flavor.

This was the beginning of Fort Mose, North America's first free legally sanctioned Black community.

In 1740 British soldiers from the newly colonized Georgia marched toward Fort Mose, its inhabitants were safely evacuating to St. Augustine. The British troops set up camp at the abandoned Fort Mose. The next month 300 Spanish soldiers, including the black militia, staged a surprise attack on the British. They recaptured the fort, leaving 68 British dead and taking 34 prisoners. The remaining British soldiers retreated to Georgia.

With the original fort demolished, African settlers lived in St. Augustine until 1752 when a new fort and town were rebuilt.

In 1763, Florida was ceded to Britain and those living at Fort Mose evacuated along with other Spanish citizens to the northwest coast of Cuba.

The last fort we visited was the Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine's main fort. We did not take an inside tour (we did that in 2003), I only wanted to walk around the fort and take pictures.

The building of the Castillo began in 1672 and it took 23 years to complete. Originally the fort was covered with white plaster and the towers in the four corners were plastered in red.

The British attacked the fort in 1702 and 1740, but both times the Spanish were able to defend themselves from within the fort. It is an impressive fortress. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

In addition to visiting the forts on day two, The Colonel and I took a tour of the local winery, lunched at Columbia Restaurant, walked other cemeteries (more buried Blanchard family members), drove through Lincolnville (a historic black community of St. Augustine where Dr. Martin Luther King stayed while there, we drove by the houses) and we also saw an exact replica of the statue of David on the grounds of the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.

St. Augustine on Dwellable