Tolomato Cemetery lies along Cordova Street, a Catholic burial ground on the site of a Franciscan mission village. This ground was once the village and Franciscan mission called Tolomato, home to Guale Indian converts and the friars who ministered to them. The site is even marked on a 1737 map of St. Augustine, a reminder of how long this place has shaped lives and faith.
A cemetery for the village lay here as well, and a portion was set aside for former American black slaves who had converted to Catholicism after escaping bondage in the Carolinas. Tolomato’s location was just outside the old city, directly across from the Rosario Line — a defensive earth embankment planted with cactus and Yucca gloriosa, the striking “Spanish daggers. In 1763 Britain gained control of St. Augustine and most of the Spanish population of 3,100 left for Cuba, taking with them many of the Native American converts, the friars, and inhabitants of Tolomato.
Stand quietly and you can feel the layers of history: mission village, refuge, and burial ground. Picture the Guale converts and freed slaves once laid to rest here, near where the cactus-lined Rosario Line once stood.