Submitted by Descendants: Andre Eugene FERREIRA
Juan Bautista Serapio Ferreira was born in St Augustine, East Florida 13 November 1813. It was at the beginning of Florida’s Second Spanish Period when his grandfather, Juan Bautista Ferreyra of Villa de Murcia, Portugal brought his wife Isabel Bently Nixon of Charleston, South Carolina and their two youngest children to the mixed English-Spanish speaking Township of St Augustine.
Juan, later known as John B. Ferreira, became interested in the local issues of St Augustine during the Territorial Days of Florida 1830-1844. At age 23, John joined the Florida Mounted Volunteers to maintain peace during the Seminole Indian Wars in the mid-1830s. After his marriage to Lauriana Rogero in 1837, he remained as a 1st Lieutenant in the Hanson’s Company until 1839. Their first child was born in1839, and by 1855 Lauriana and John had raised five sons and one daughter.
It was in the Moccasin Branch Precinct of St Johns County where John B Ferreira proudly voted on 28 May 1845 in the very first statewide election of Florida.
In 1858, John and Lauriana had moved to the Township of Fernandina to the north of St Augustine where workers had begun construction of the first cross-state railroad of Florida from Fernandina to Cedar Key. It was completed in 1861. Because of the outbreak of the Civil War and Fernandina being left unprotected, John decided to move his family to Palatka until the war ended. By 1868, his family returned to Fernandina to continue the revival of the Florida Railroad. John B., Railroad Engineer and Pioneer, and his wife, Laurianna, remained in Fernandina until their death where they are buried in the beautiful woods of Bosque Bello Cemetery.
Juan Bautista Serapio Ferreira was first established as a Florida Pioneer in 2001