St. Augustine, USA - Sister Catherine Bitzer slowly opened a file box and carefully removed a brittle page, scarred by years of neglectful storage, mold and insects. At 415 years old, the marriage record written by a Roman Catholic priest is still readable and is one of the oldest known European records from the United States.
It's among thousands of artifacts detailing the lives of the Spanish soldiers, missionaries and merchants who settled St. Augustine, the nation's oldest permanent city. The church kept the only official records, a role that today is filled by government.
After being scattered from Florida and avoiding destruction for centuries, they are now safe in a newly renovated waterproof, fireproof and climate-controlled building at the Diocese of St. Augustine, said Bitzer, the archivist of the diocese.
Michael Gannon, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida, calls the archives "a pocketful of miracles." He tracked down most of the documents, which had traveled to Cuba, back to St. Augustine and then Notre Dame, Ind.
The earliest documents detail the births, confirmations, marriages and deaths of the Spanish residents in St. Augustine from 1594 to 1763, when the British took over Florida.
Dated Jan. 24, 1594, and handwritten by Father Diego Escobar de Sambrana, the record held by Bitzer details the marriage of soldier Gabriel Hernandez to Catalina de Valdes in St. Augustine, some 26 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Other treasures in the archives include the records, headboard, and a piece of the coffin belonging to Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the Spanish Navy admiral who founded St. Augustine in 1565.
There are also records of the diocese's nine bishops and the Spanish colonial government, and microfilm of records on explorations, the attacks of English and French corsairs, the development of slavery and reports on Indian customs and languages.
Missing from the collection are the documents from the first 29 years of Catholic life in St. Augustine. Gannon believes they may have been destroyed by Sir Francis Drake, the English privateer, who sacked the town in 1586.
Tracking down and consolidating the collection in the diocese archive, which completed its renovation in September, has been a long project for Gannon and other archivists.
The documents were first housed in the Catholic Center in Jacksonville, where they remained until the construction of the new archive facility.
Now that they are safely stored, the next project is to digitize them, so they can be readily and safely used by researchers.
Kathleen Williams, executive director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., saw the archives for the first time recently and spoke at the dedication of the new building.
"Some of those holdings, they were incredible. It was a real joy to see the material," Williams said. "It gave me chills."
Dr. Timothy Matovina, professor of theology and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame, said the collection is an important resource for the history of Catholics in America.
"As Hispanic Catholics grow in number across the country, the legacy of colonial Catholicism becomes all the more important to research and remember," Matovina said.