Here Lies Our Family History

We went down to Mill Creek on Sunday to look at a house that my brother and sister-in-law are renting in one of those new developments (more on THAT tomorrow.) My family used to own most of the land in that area (my GGGG grandfather had 640 acres.) My great-great-great grandfather, Domingo Pacetti, received 50 acres from his father, on which he raised his 300 head of cattle (I told you we were crackers!) That area is now...ugh...But I digress...

While we were in the area, we decided to stop by Mill Creek Cemetery, where we knew much of our family was buried. In fact, I knew that Domingo was buried here soon after our trip to The Mission a couple months ago (I don't know why my parents thought so surely that he was buried there.) Anyway, we found a few things there that I thought I would share with you.

Great grandparents...Great people. My mom loved her Grandma Dora. She was only about 5 feet tall with silver, curly hair. We have short videos made in Mill Creek back in the '60s, when all of the family would be together, and many, MANY chickens would be seen grilling over a fire in the front yard. When Hurricane Dora came through in '64, there was a lot of ribbing going on :-D. My mom loved her Grandpa Harry and Grandma Dora. The house in which they lived still stands, I believe, on a piece of our original 640 acres. It's an oasis right now.

Peter Pacetti (also known as Pedro Pacetti) is my great-great-great uncle. He fought alongside his brother (GGG Grandpa Domingo) in the 2nd Florida Cavalry Regiment under Captain J.J. Dickison (famous in Florida as "Swamp Fox of the Confederacy.")

This intrigued me because I had multiple ancestors who fought in 3rd Florida Company B. They fought in numerous battles, most notably at Chickamauga. I am learning much more about this right now, and I will be able to post much more in depth about their movements in future posts. But for all I know, this guy could be a distant cousin, too.

This right here was a very pleasant and relieving surprise. Do you know what it is? FC, you are not allowed to answer this one :-D

We Found Him!

More on this tomorrow!!

If you haven't read the post about this, you can find it here.

Hmmmm...A Factual Error

On my way home from church today, I got to thinking about my geneology once again. It turns out that it was my great, great, great, great, (gasp), great, great grandfather who came to Florida in 1768. This makes me a 9th generation native Floridian instead of the 7th generation I have been telling people all this time. Wow. My little nephew is the 10th generation of Floridians in my family. Hopefully, he will care about that extraordinary fact when he grows up.

Another Piece of Florida Gone...But This Time, It's Personal

I was in St. Augustine with my parents yesterday taking pictures of parts of the Old City for my brother, who is writing his Bachelor's thesis on the Minorcans of Florida. We stopped by The Mission (It's called something else, but we've always just called it "The Mission") to take some pictures there, and I figured this would be a good time to visit the grave of my great, great, great grandfather, who is buried in Tolomato Cemetery, which surrounds The Mission. After taking some pictures and stopping for a moment at the Knights of Columbus memorial to the victims of abortion, we began looking for the gravesite of Pvt. Domingo Pacetti and his wife Antonia. We believed that they were somewhere near the abortion memorial, taking off of the memory from many past visits by my mom and dad. But neither he or she were anywhere to be found. We scoured the entire cemetery...twice...seeing familiar names such as Mickler, Andreu, and Pellicer, but there were no Pacettis to be found anywhere. Our ancestor's graves were gone. They simply disappeared. They've been there for over a century, and they are simply gone. Maybe somebody in the family relocated them, maybe they feel victim to vandalism (the cemetery has been vandalized many times in the past,) and...I would be disappointed if this is the case...maybe the abortion memorial took their gravesite. The memorial is nice, but I would be (expletive) (expletive) if it stood over the gravesite of my ancestors. There for years and years, and simply gone. Sound familiar?

I may go over to Mill Creek Cemetery, where a lot of our family is buried, and just see if they are there. It would make sense, because Domingo and Antonia did live (and die) on his father's land grant in Mill Creek (around what is now Bakersville.) But, still, what happened to the Pacettis at Tolomato Cemetery?

Please, if anybody knows there wherabouts of Private Domingo Pedro Pacetti and Mrs. Antonia Hernandez Pacetti, tell me. Both my mother and I are deeply hurt, and we want to know what happened. Thanks.