The "From The Fountain Of Youth To The Discovery Of History," Story

It was an ordinary day.  Talking with Carol about a trip we took after our first year of marriage in 1967 to Florida.  We spent two weeks traveling along the east coast and finally arriving in Florida.  After a few days of exploring Florida we landed in St. Augustine.  The city was beautiful and we actually had a chance to drink the water of The Fountain of Youth.  Because of that you are now able to read these stories today.

This sketch is what I assume is the church in St. Augustine

While in St. Augustine we made a visit to an old church called the church of St. Augustine, Nuestra Senora de Los Remedios which was  originally founded in 1572.  We thought that our church in Lancaster, PA, St. James Episcopal, which was founded in 1744 was old, but it was nothing in comparison to St. Augustine.  The city of St. Augustine has existed for more than 450 years when it was founded by Spanish conquistador Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565.  That is 42 years before the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia was founded and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.  

This is part of a skeleton found

Therefore, St. Augustine is our nation's oldest city.  The parish church known as St. Augustine was destroyed three times; 1586 during a raid by Sir Francis Drake, 1599 by a fire and hurricane and in 1702 when the  British burned it to the ground.  The exact location of the original church was not discovered until 2010.  During construction in the city' historic downtown, a trench was discovered and a wall that marked the rear of the church.  Then in October of 2017 Hurricane Matthew damaged much of the city.  

The wine shop archeologists looking for remains

A wine shop on St. Augustine's plaza was damaged and was in the process of being renovated when, during examin- ation of the soil under the shop, human remains were found.  During the first week of digging, archaeologists discovered an adult skeleton and an adult skull.  One was a white European woman and a man of African ancestry.  Outside the wine shop was found a leg bone and another skull from two other graves.  Then they found a few children.  Pottery fragments found with the skeletons date the burials between 1572 ad 1586, a few years after St. Augustine was founded.  It is now believed that the burials came from the floor of the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Remedios, the parish church built in St. Augustine shortly after the colony was established in 1565.  

A full set of teeth can be seen in this photograph

It was said that the mission churches across Florida buried everybody in the church floor.  It  was  considered consecrated ground.  The skeletal remains may have come from the location of what at one time was the original church in the city.  The church that Carol and I had visited in 1968 wasn't the original  church, but the location chosen to rebuild the church after it had been burned to the ground by the British in 1702.  Perhaps the discovery of the skeletal remains will help in locating the original location of St, Augustine, Nuestra Senora de Los Remedios.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.