1798 Spanish-Era Burial Ground on Amelia Island
1500 N 14th St, Fernandina Beach, FL 32034
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access to municipal cemetery. Some ghost tours visit the perimeter for a fee.
Access
Limited Access
Live-oak shaded grounds with sandy soil, old tabby walls, and uneven historic markers
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1798 · Spanish Colonial Florida · Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1877 · Multiple-Flag Amelia Island History · Tabby Wall Construction
Bosque Bello Cemetery was established in 1798, when Fernandina lay within the Spanish province of East Florida. The land formed part of a Spanish land grant issued to Domingo Fernandez, who donated the parcel to the city in the early 1800s for burial use. The cemetery's name — "beautiful woods" — reflects its setting under a canopy of live oaks, with Spanish moss draping the older sections.
The oldest legible grave belongs to French soldier Peter Bouissou de Nicar, dated 1813. Subsequent decades layered burials reflecting the island's unusually complex political history. Amelia Island passed through eight different flags in the early 19th century — Spanish, French, English, Patriot, Green Cross of Florida, Mexican Republic, Confederate, and American — and the cemetery's markers reflect that turnover. Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans rest in marked sections. The Sisters of Saint Joseph, French Catholic nuns who arrived in Fernandina to teach the children of formerly enslaved families after the Civil War, are buried in a marked Catholic plot. Several of the sisters died nursing Yellow Fever victims during the 1877 epidemic that struck the port heavily.
Notable later burials include Sollecito Salvador, the Sicilian immigrant remembered as the father of Fernandina's shrimping industry, and Domingo Acosta, who served as Old Fernandina's first postmaster in 1821. Sections of the cemetery are still bordered by tabby walls — a Lowcountry construction of oyster shells, lime, and sand — which give the older plots a distinctly coastal Southern texture.
The cemetery remains an active municipal burial ground maintained by the City of Fernandina Beach, with a volunteer Friends of Bosque Bello group supporting documentation and preservation.
Sources
The cemetery's paranormal reputation circulates largely through Amelia Island ghost-tour operators rather than formal investigations. Local tradition centers on the older Spanish-era and Catholic sections, particularly the plot holding the Sisters of Saint Joseph who died during the 1877 Yellow Fever epidemic. Tour guides describe reports of phantom singing and the smell of incense near the sisters' graves at twilight.
The oak-shaded older section, with its weathered tabby walls and the 1813 marker for Peter Bouissou de Nicar, draws additional reports of cold spots and the impression of being watched while alone among the older stones. None of these accounts has been independently corroborated by the Friends of Bosque Bello Cemetery or the city, which maintain the site primarily as an active historical burial ground.
Walk the live-oak-shaded grounds of one of the oldest cemeteries in Florida, established in 1798 during Spanish colonial rule. Notable burials include French and Civil War veterans, Sisters of Saint Joseph who died nursing Yellow Fever victims, and Sollecito Salvador, the Sicilian immigrant remembered as the father of the local shrimping industry.
The cemetery is included as a stop on multiple Amelia Island ghost-tour itineraries. Check local operators for current schedules and meeting points.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Mobile, AL
Cathedral Square occupies part of Mobile's 18th-century Catholic Campo Santo cemetery, a roughly 400-by-300-foot burial ground spanning portions of city blocks between Joachim, Dauphin, Franklin, and Conti Streets. Most burials were moved to the new Church Street Graveyard in 1819 when Mobile's city limits expanded, but additional remains continued to surface along Conti Street as late as the 1890s. The blocks were filled with buildings through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before being demolished in 1979 to create the public park facing the Cathedral Basilica.
Savannah, GA
Colonial Park Cemetery was established in 1750 as Savannah's principal burial ground and remained active through 1853. The six-acre site at Abercorn and Oglethorpe Avenue holds Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a mass grave for nearly seven hundred victims of the 1820 yellow fever epidemic.
New Bern, NC
Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern, North Carolina, was acquired by Christ Episcopal Church in 1800 after the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1798-99 filled the original churchyard burial ground. The City of New Bern took over the cemetery in 1853 and added the distinctive coquina Weeping Arch entrance in 1854. The cemetery holds one of North Carolina's finest collections of 19th-century mortuary statuary.