Was this Tampa Catholic school built on more than 700 graves?

TAMPA — Two marked gravesites are on the property that is home to the shuttered Sacred Heart Academy, a reminder of that land’s previous decades as St. Mary’s Cemetery.

When the burial ground, also known as the Catholic Cemetery, was relocated in the 1920s, the Arguelles and Ficarrotta-Ferlita family mausoleums were too expensive to move, so they remain along the fence line of the nine-acre property at 3515 N. Florida Ave.

But there is evidence that the school, which opened in 1931 and closed in 2012, may have been built on top of more than 700 unmarked graves.

Cemetery advocates are now demanding action from the Diocese of St. Petersburg, which owns the property, and Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which operated the school.

“I want ground-penetrating radar to search for any graves there,” said Aileen Henderson, who advocates for Tampa Bay’s erased, lost and endangered burial grounds through The Cemetery Society, which she founded two years ago.

The mystery behind St. Mary’s Cemetery is personal for Henderson. Her maternal great grandmother had two babies buried there, and they are among the missing.

“I want it recognized that their souls are resting there, and should be in peace,” she said. “I want answers … I want the truth.”

It is not shocking that early 20th century Tampa Bay graves might have been built over.

Over the past five years, archaeologists confirmed that six sites throughout the region are home to erased graves. Another five sites have been identified as likely locations but have not yet been surveyed. Each of the discoveries came after the Times in 2019 discovered that Zion Cemetery was under public housing, warehouses and a tow lot located one block from Sacred Heart Academy.

Those 11 sites were primarily home to graves for pioneering Black residents and erased in the Jim Crow era when the families had no power to stop it. St. Mary’s Cemetery was multicultural, with records for white, Latin and Black residents.

Henderson wonders if there is a common factor between those buried in the erased Black graves and those possibly at the former site of St. Mary’s Cemetery, at least for her family.

“They didn’t have money,” she said. “They didn’t have power. They likely didn’t have a voice either.”

According to property records, the land that would become St. Mary’s Cemetery was purchased in 1889 by Rev. John Quinlan of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, when it was known as St. Louis Parish.

Burials began in 1896, according to death records gathered by Ray Reed, a researcher whose work has been vital in identifying the locations of erased graves throughout Tampa Bay.

In 1925, the church decided to close St. Mary’s Cemetery to make way for Sacred Heart Academy.

Graves were to be moved to Myrtle Hill Cemetery, according to news archives. “The reason for the change,” one article reported, “is due to the impossibility of keeping the old cemetery in good condition. It is pointed out that, in the new grounds, graves will be continuously cared for.”

Newspapers reported that 400 people were buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery at that time.

But Reed said he has 929 death records listing St. Mary’s Cemetery. Of those, he found reburial records for around 200. Three-fourths of those were in Myrtle Hill Cemetery, with the others located in Oaklawn, Woodlawn and the Italian Club cemeteries.

Where are the rest?

“That’s what we need answered,” Henderson said.

In an email to the Tampa Bay Times addressing Henderson’s ancestors, a Sacred Heart Catholic Church spokesperson said: “We believe her family’s remains were removed by private undertakers.”

The spokesperson also wrote that St. Mary’s Cemetery records do not include information on graves moved by undertakers hired by families. Theirs only include those relocated by the church.

When asked via email why that provides them certainty that the graves were moved, the spokesperson wrote back: “The facts as presented to us from the operators of the former St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery are clear and well-documented ... The prayers and rituals of the Catholic funeral rites affirm the Church’s reverence for its deceased members. The Catholic Church teaches that the earthly remains of the deceased are to be reverently buried in a cemetery where families may visit and pray for their loved ones.”

The spokesperson eventually added: “The Diocese was not involved with the removals/transfers of the graves, which were handled by the previous operators of the former cemetery, so we cannot answer that question.”

When the cemetery was to be moved, the Diocese of St. Augustine oversaw Tampa Bay.

“We do sincerely believe that those removals/transfers from St. Mary’s Cemetery were managed properly,” the email continued. “We have nothing else to add.”

Henderson is unsatisfied.

“That’s speculation,” she said. “I am not just taking their word for it.”

The Diocese of St. Petersburg attempted to help Henderson find her great grandmother’s babies — a girl known as “the infant of Manuel Quintana” who was stillborn in 1913 and Renaldo Quintana who died at a few months old in 1915, according to their death certificates, which list St. Mary’s Cemetery as the place of burial.

A diocese spokesperson told Henderson via an email shared with the Times that their St. Mary’s Cemetery records do not include anyone with the last name Quintana. But “some removals were impossible to identify ... It appears that 14 graves were marked ‘unknown’ with one notation I found that read: ‘unknown – Infant’ buried in Space 3, Lot 218, Section 35 of Myrtle Hill Cemetery.”

That doesn’t prove her ancestors are there, nor does it account for the more than 700 missing, Henderson said.

There are no current plans to develop the unused school grounds. The acreage has a market value of $5.8 million, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s website.

But because the land was once a cemetery and it cannot be proven that all graves were moved, the property cannot be built on until there is an archaeological survey.

“I realize this is something the church may not want to relive,” Henderson said. “I think sometimes we get hung up on the bad or ugly. ... What we can do though is seek the truth, hope we find it and make things right.”