SEGUI-KIRBY SMITH HOUSE

The Segui-Kirby Smith House is one of only 36 Spanish Colonial houses remaining in St. Augustine. The house dates from the late 1700s. The site on which it is situated has been continuously occupied since the late 1500s. In 1786 it became the home of Bernardo Segui, a prosperous merchant of Minorcan descent who was also baker to the garrison and a Spanish militia official. Judge Joseph Lee Smith, first Judge of the Superior Court for East Florida, rented the home about 1823 from Segui's heirs, and in time the family purchased it. Edmund Kirby Smith was born here in May 1824. A West Point graduate, he became at 38 the youngest lieutenant general in the Confederate Army and was the last Confederate general to surrender his command. When General Kirby Smith and his sister sold the home in 1887, it became a boarding house with offices. The small building on the west was the kitchen and dining room. In 1895 John L. Wilson and Frances Wilson, gave the lot and building in trust to a private organization for use as a free public library. Today the St. Augustine Historical Society holds the property under this trust as its historical research library.