Submitted by Descendants: Brendan Jennings, Frank Joseph III, Marie Cecelia, and Mary Frances SANTRY
Juan Bautista Serapis Ferreira was born in Spanish East Florida’s St. Augustine on November 13, 1813 to Francisco Lorenzo Ferreira and Josepha Fernanda Martha Estefonopoly. His paternal grandparents, Juan Bautista Ferreira and Isabel Bente Nixon, settled in St. Augustine as early as 1787, while his maternal grandparents, Nicolas Estefanopoly and Juana Maria Marin arrived in New Smyrna with Andrew Turnbull’s colony in 1768 and migrated to St. Augustine in 1777.
As a young man, known as John B. Ferreira, he served alongside his neighbors in the Mounted Volunteers of Florida Militia during the Indian Wars. At the age of 24, he married Lauriana Antonia Josepha Rogero on October 25, 1837. They raised six children in St. Augustine and moved the family to Fernandina prior to the Civil War in approximately 1858. One son, John Apolonia Ferreira, was recruited at age 16 by Florida Railroad pioneer David Yulee, and became Engineer on the Fernandina/Cedar Key line. In 1880, he transported President Ulysses S. Grant to Cedar Key as part of Grant’s tour of Florida, Cuba and Mexico.
John B. Ferreira died in Fernandina on October 11, 1883 and is buried beside his wife in Fernandina’s Bosque Bello Cemetery.
Juan Bautista (John B.)Serapis Ferreira was first established as a Florid Pioneer in 2001