Deciding the Future

Baptismal records show Margarita was baptized on February 3, 1786, by Father Thomas Hassett. Image courtesy of the Archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine. Margarita MacPhail was a sixteen-year-old orphan when the Revolutionary War ended. 

She owned a house and some property that her father had purchased from a free Black carpenter. When asked if she wanted to leave St. Augustine with the British evacuation or live under Spanish rule, Margarita’s response was emphatic. She wished to stay in St. Augustine and convert to Catholicism. MacPhail also requested to be placed under the tutelage of a woman from a respectable family. 

The young orphan was granted permission to remain in East Florida. In a ceremony held on February 3, 1786, Father Thomas Hassett baptized Margarita, and the following day, Hassett officiated at Margarita’s marriage to a Spaniard named Antonio de Palma.