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From: "Peggy" <>
Subject: The invitation & guests
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 21:07:45 -0400


You are cordially invited to a family reunion dinner at six o'clock P M, on Saturday next at 125 George Street, St Augustine, Florida.
RSVP

This is the invitation my guests have received. All have accepted and are now arriving. The year is 1830.

The guests of honor are Joseph St Sebastian Arnau/Arnow and his first wife, Maria Catalina Bonelly Pacetti Arnow (paternal 3rd great grandparents) and Domingo Pedro de los Santos Acosta and his wife, Juana Maria Ana Alberti ( maternal 3rd great grandparents). Because they grew up as neighbors in St Augustine, I am sure they will have a lot in common. Their parents all came to Florida in 1768 as indentured servants to work in the colony Dr Andrew Turnbull was trying to establish at New Smyrna. They escaped nine years later and settled in St Augustine.The four of them are first generation Floridians.The home in which we are having the party is the one

Joseph Arnow is a tall, robust man with a mop of dark, curly hair and a full moustache as is the current fashion. He was born in 1798 so is now 32 years old. He is wearing a black suit with a solid color bow tie. He is very stern looking, an arrogant, domineering man with a bit of a temper. He once bit off a cousin's ear in a fight. His second wife, whom he married when she was just thirteen because he needed someone to care for his orphaned children, once described him as "the devil". But I am not afraid of Joseph. I want to ask him many questions. Why did he change the name from Arnau to Arnow? Why did he reject the Catholic religion of his parents and become a Methodist? Why, when Joseph was only seven, did his father, Jose, abandon Joseph's mother and take Joseph to Georgia with him? (Because of this, Joseph's mother took up with another man and bore him five illegitimate children.) Joseph is a tailor and grows orange and olive trees at his home in St Mary's, Georgia, !
a first for that area. As is the Spanish custom, when he dies everything will go to his eldest son, creating family animosity.

Maria, also known as Mary, is gentle but strong. She was a widow when she married Joseph and is 12 years older than he. She will be dead in less than five years. Although she was already married to her first husband, Tomas, when her mother and five siblings were kidnapped by the Miccosukee Indians (and her brother was scalped) in 1805, she also felt that tragedy. She is wearing a very austere black dress with a bit of white lace at the collar.

Domingo Acosta is eleven years older than Joseph. He is somewhat shorter than Joseph, but very patrician looking, clean shaven with straight dark hair combed to one side. He, too, is wearing a dark suit but his bow-tie is narrow, with red and white stripes. He is a sweet, gentle man who, at eighteen, took responsibility (along with his sister) of his other six siblings after his mother died and his father, Miguel, remarried and took his new wife to Cuba, where he started another family. Domingo is already the first postmaster of Florida and has acquired several large land grants for his service to the Spanish crown. The house in which we are having dinner is the one Domingo lived in with his mother and stepfather after they moved to St Augustine. (It is now part of St Augustine's historic district.) St George is a very narrow street and the houses are all built quite close to each other. I would like to ask Domingo if he ever reconciled with his father. I don't think he did.

Juana Acosta, at forty-four, is the oldest guest. Like Mary, she is dressed very austerely. She will die of yellow fever in eight years. She is a quiet lady of Italian descent. She worships her husband.

With such similar backgrounds, I expect these four to enjoy each others' company, but little do I know that I am brewing a tempest!


Enough for tonight. I will follow Lizzie's lead in not putting everything in one post!

Peggy

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