Tolomato Cemetery
Built on the site of a former Guale Indian village and Franciscan mission, Tolomato Cemetery served as St. Augustine's Catholic burial ground from the 18th century until it closed in 1884, holding roughly a thousand graves — among them Bishop Agustin Verot, the first Bishop of St. Augustine, and Father Felix Varela, the Cuban priest and reformer whose remains rested here for some sixty years. Visitors speak of figures in priestly garb seen drifting near the mortuary chapel, said to be Varela and Verot disturbed by the long-ago shuffling of their bones to share a single vault. A second legend lingers among the oaks: a young woman whose funeral procession passed beneath an apopinax tree, its thorn waking her from a death that was not death, granting her six more years of life. When she finally died for good her widower forbade the procession near that tree, yet visitors still report her shape gliding through the branches and a faint whisper carrying on still nights.
📍 14 Cordova St, St. Augustine, FL 32084, St. Augustine, FL · Get directions