Pet calf excavated downtown History dig dates bones at about 175 years old

Pet calf excavated downtown

History dig dates bones at about 175 years old

By CHAD SMITH
chad.smith@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 08/13/08

In the mid-1800s, Pablo Sabate's family kept a calf in the backyard of its home on Spanish Street, where it grazed near an orange grove that stretched to what is now Cordova Street.

It was somewhat of a pet until it died young. Then it was laid on its side in a pit in the backyard and buried, almost like a cat is today.

Or at least that's the best Carl Halbirt can figure.

Halbirt, the city's archeologist, was digging Monday in what was Sabate's backyard -- now 63 Cordova St. -- for signs of the Rosario Line, an earthen defensive wall that surrounded the city in the mid-18th century.

He didn't find evidence of the wall, but he did find the calf's skeleton.

"Our interest was the Rosario Line, but whenever you do archeology in St. Augustine you can't just focus on one time period," he said. "You have to pay attention to all occupations."

He's come across two other livestock skeletons in past digs, both of them also belonging to young animals: In the 1990s, he found a colt's skeleton; in 2004, he found the skeleton of another calf.

All of them seemed to have been buried in the same period, between 1820 and 1850, and they were each neatly buried, suggesting to Halbirt that the animals meant more to their owners than if they were being raised for utilitarian purposes.

It's likely that they were kept as pets, but probably not to the extent of a family dog, he said.

Flagler College now owns the lot and wanted to get the mandatory archeological dig out of the way before it builds on the site. So Halbirt and his team have been digging on the lot off and on since April, with their main priority being to find the wall -- something he's been trying to do for decades.

"It doesn't want to be found," he said, noting that most of it, since it was made of dirt, has withered away over time. Parts of some garrisons that were located along the wall have been found but not the actual wall itself.

Local historian David Nolan said that chase has been part of the wall's intrigue.

"It's been of great interest to archeologists in recent decades because they could never quite find it," Nolan said.

But as for what Halbirt did find, Nolan said it was likely that a family did keep a calf in a domestic setting in that period.

Though he wasn't sure, he said the city might have had an ordinance forbidding people from letting livestock roam the streets at the time, making the theory of Sabate's domesticated calf a viable one.

Halbirt said the bones were too brittle to be excavated, so after he finishes at the site Thursday they will be reburied. But he is carefully documenting them, noting that they were a significant find, even if they weren't what he was looking for.

"When people come to St. Augustine, they think of the colonial period, they think of the Civil Rights era, they think of these periods of time that have always received a lot of exposure," Halbirt said. "Yet St. Augustine is not a static community. It's constantly evolving, so to get this information about a period that is not as well known, at least compared to these other time periods, I think it's a good thing."

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