Jack and Jeanne Lovelace live in the former St. Anthony the Abbott Catholic Church on Olive Street in Brooksville. Behind their home is an old cemetery that was forgotten and neglected for decades. The cemetery was never a part of the church, but a family plot, part of the 160 acre Howell Plantation. In 1907, Robert J. Mickler sold a small piece of property from the Howell Estate, which he inherited from his late wife Mary Howell, to establish a much needed Catholic Church.
A Catholic Women’s Club was formed for the purpose of raising money to get a Catholic Church built. They found an unlikely benefactor in Pennsylvania, Hon. H.A. Hirst. The church was named for his deceased son Anthony Jr. Catholic followers finally had their own church to worship in, thirty five years after the first Catholic Mass was held in Brooksville.
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church served the Brooksville community until 1972 when the Diocese of St. Petersburg sold it to Earl and Kay Patterson. According to Mrs. Lovelace, they planned to retire and transform it into their residence. Unfortunately Mr. Patterson passed away and the couple never got a chance to live there. His wife Kay decided to transform the property anyway. She had a loft built, the sacristy converted to a galley kitchen and converted the rear of the church into a master bedroom. She rented it out until she sold it to Jack and Jeanne Lovelace in 2008.
Since then they have lovingly cared for their home as well as the cemetery. Mr. Lovelace has volunteered his time to maintaining the cemetery. He keeps the headstones clean and the grounds well trimmed. He is a veteran and retired from running a veteran’s charity organization in St. Petersburg, FL. Thoughtfully, Mr. Lovelace placed a small cherub statue where three young siblings were buried after their family moved the original headstone to the family plot in the Brooksville Cemetery. Although the marker had to be removed, Mr. Lovelace did not want those children to be forgotten or any of the others buried in the cemetery behind his home. Lovelace was the sole caretaker of the cemetery for five years until the City of Brooksville took ownership of the property.
Before that, nobody knew exactly who owned the cemetery since the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, listed as the property’s owner by the property appraiser, did not realize that they still owned the property or ever owned it. The church’s attorney wrote in 1972 to the diocesan comptroller that, “The legal description was so vague as to be unidentifiable.”
The cemetery is home to at least 15 people of the Howell, Law, Mickler, Duren, and Keathley families. In the early 1850’s, the widowed mother of Mary Howell came to Brooksville from South Carolina with Mary and her three siblings as well as 11 slaves. Mary’s father died when she was only 7 years old. Thomas B. Law, the first husband of Mary Howell and Confederate veteran, was buried in the cemetery three months after their 6 month old son Thomas Howell Law. Four years after the death of her first husband, Mary Howell married Robert J. Mickler, also a Confederate veteran. They had three children H.T. Mickler, Anna Belle Mickler, and Marie “Mamie” Mickler. Anna Belle did not survive childhood and was buried in the family cemetery as well. In 1902, the cemetery became the resting place of her mother Mary Howell or Mrs. R.J. Mickler as it appears on her grave stone. Mamie’s oldest son Robert Duren Sr. was laid to rest there in 1970. Marie “Mamie” Mickler Duren died on Christmas Eve, 1974 at the age of 94. She was a Daughter of the Confederacy, the county supervisor of registration for almost 15 years and the last to be buried in the family’s cemetery.
Photo courtesy of Jack Lovelace