As a loving tribute to mothers everywhere, our May's Legacy Program spotlight focuses on the legacy of Rosie Sebastiano. Her children have chosen to celebrate her life with a commemorative brick here at the St Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum. Since the Museum was Rosie’s “happy place,” her children know that they can visit and remember her here. We appreciate that they shared their unique story with us: Now we can meet in your favorite [...]
On th at day, our 1st order Fresnel lens was put back into service after being repaired. In 1986, a vandal shot the lens at the top of the Lighthouse tower damaging 19 of the prisms. Beginning in 1980, the Junior Service League led a massive community effort to restore the St. Augustine Light Station. The restoration of the Keepers’ House was completed in 1990 after a disastrous fire in 1970. The League opened the Lighthouse [...]
by Chuck Meide I was just 26, a bright-eyed graduate student at Florida State University, and it was the archaeological project of a lifetime. My friend and colleague David Johnson was a grad student at Texas A&M University. He’d taken a phone call from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an island nation in the extreme southeast of the Caribbean. Better known now, but not then, as the scenic island filmed on location for Disney’s Pirates [...]
Each month we feature a Member Spotlight in our member newsletter giving our members a chance to share why the Museum is important to them and why they value their membership. This month we recognize Kelli McGreevy and Rick Poehlman. Members since 2021, Rick and Kelli were married on the front lawn of the Museum in December 2020! Kelli has been visiting the Lighthouse since she was a child while her dad was stationed at [...]
The Coastal Barracks recently received a new cypress shingled roof. The funding for the project came from the Gene Oakes Grant Program of the Florida Lighthouse Association (FLA). The FLA is a non-profit organization that provides grants to support historic preservation, restoration and educational programs at Florida's light stations. The Coastal Lookout Building was built in 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The building served as the barracks for the United States Coast [...]
Last year, the Museum purchased property as part of an organizational initiative to consolidate operations. The new property offers the Museum a permanent space to expand as well as a new home for our collection of documents and artifacts. The location also means that the building is safer from storms and hurricanes. Since the end of 2022, the Collections and Conservation teams have been working diligently to pack up and move over 20,000 historical artifacts, [...]
In 1970, a suspicious fire gutted the abandoned Keepers’ House located at the St. Augustine Light Station. The following year, St. Johns County purchased the property from the United States Coast Guard with the intention of demolishing the burned-out shell of the building. Enter the Junior Service League of St. Augustine and the idea of restoring the Keepers’ House as a museum and community center. The women of the JSL literally turned back the bulldozers, [...]
The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) Conservation team installed a new case in the Wrecked! Exhibit. This new case replaces the Star Waters mannequin and features one of the muskets recovered from the Storm Wreck, the American Revolution-era shipwreck excavated in 2009. Other artifacts associated with the musket including flintlock, flint, shot and even some paper wadding are also featured. The team has recently installed a second musket in the exhibit. The muskets have undergone [...]
On Friday, February 10, 2023, the Museum welcomed four descendants of Hezekiah Pittee, the superintendent over the construction of the St. Augustine Lighthouse tower between 1871 and 1874. The descendants made the trip from Tampa for a family member's funeral here and reached out to the Museum. The descendants (pictured above) sat down with Jason Titcomb, Chief Curator; Lee Capitano, Retail and Finance Director; and Rick Cain, Museum Operations Director. During Pittee's time here [...]
This December, the St. Augustine Record republished a series of Letters to Santa printed in the St. Augustine Evening Record from December 1921. Peter Willott, a reporter for the Record, worked with the staff at the St. Augustine Historical Society's Research Library to gather these letters. One of the letters came from little Eloise Malloy, the only daughter of Clarence and Agnes Malloy. Clarence served as the First Assistant Keeper of the St. Augustine Light [...]
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