Through their efforts, it was restored and interpreted to reflect its function as a fashionable boarding house during Florida's first tourist boom, which began after 1821.

The property is a historic house museum, furnished and presented to tell stories of the visitors who lodged there, the women who owned and managed it, and how people lived during Florida's territorial period.

[6] The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, in which Spain settled a border dispute and ceded Florida to the United States, brought big changes to St. Augustine.

The city was filled with military personnel and refugees from the war, and she found work managing boarding houses with her sister Eliza.

First-hand accounts, such as Charles Lanman's Adventures in the Wilds of the United States, note her reputation as a hostess: "From personal experience I can speak of one...of these establishments kept by Miss Fatio, a most estimable and popular lady; and if the others are as home-like and comfortable as this, the ancient city may well be proud of her houses for the accommodation of travelers and invalids.

[22] Physicians in northeastern states recommended Florida's mild winters to patients suffering from a variety of illnesses, especially tuberculosis (consumption).

Most were accustomed to a higher standard of living than the typical St. Augustine resident enjoyed, and preferred the more individual attention offered in a boarding house, as opposed to the city's public hotels.

Fort Marion in St. Augustine became the center for U.S. military action, with Army officers often billeting at boarding houses and hotels in the city.

In 1845, when Florida joined the Union as the 27th state, the boarding house industry was firmly established, with a reputation as a healing destination for invalids.

Archaeologists including Dr. Charles Fairbanks, Dr. Kathleen Deagan and others have found evidence of human occupation on the property dating back to the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

A sub-surface sampling survey of the city conducted by Dr. Deagan in 1976 placed the Ximenez-Fatio lot at the approximate center of the 16th century Spanish settlement.

According to Halbirt and Deagan, the high-ground position of the site — and artifacts discovered there — suggest that the property was inhabited by St. Augustine's upper class from the beginning of the colonial period and that there was continual activity in the centuries that followed.

For example, animal bones in abandoned trash pits provided clues to what was served on the table, shards of china helped identify the pattern used during Sarah Petty Anderson's ownership, and a cache of silver buttons and pins led to the discovery of a laundry shed footprint.

Crafted in Spain, it predates the boarding house era by two centuries and is the most mysterious object found on the site to date.

After purchasing the Ximenez House in 1939, the Florida Dames were inspired by members of the Carnegie Restoration Committee to engage the most knowledgeable consultants available.

Seale, who helped restore many historical American buildings, including a number of state capitals, conducted extensive research on the Ximenez-Fatio House in the 1970s.

Historic sources include early maps and deed transfers, letters, journals, wills, marriage licenses and sales records.

Researchers have also traced activity on the property using city maps that show footprints of residences built in St. Augustine during Spanish and British colonial times.

Artifacts found during a dig are believed to date from his occupation and corroborate with documentary evidence that Contreras was from the upper echelon of St. Augustine society.

[26] The house with detached kitchen that he built on his new property was mentioned in his 1802 will, providing historians with a reference point to date construction.

Ximenez sold tobacco, children's reading books, palm leaf brooms, assorted vases, empty bottles, reams of white paper and bone buttons.

An assessment of the property taken shortly after the death of Andres Ximenez calculated the approximate quantity and worth of the masonry and wood elements.

Hernandez also counted three doors, three windows and a shingle roof for the kitchen building and noted additional wood structures such as a privy, wash shed and wooden fences.

It enabled NSCDA-FL to hire architect Charles E. Peterson, considered one of the founding fathers of historic preservation in the United States.

Previously, Peterson had established the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and was a founding member of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT).

NSCDA-FL research committee members studied city maps, historic newspaper articles, letters and journals; compared details in related houses such as St. Augustine's Second Spanish Period Don Manuel Solana House; analyzed artifacts found underground; and consulted the findings of historians and architects.

Following Peterson's advice, the Dames also documented house features in detail, published information to attract interest from the academic community, and got the property listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Based on physical evidence such as construction details, nail chronology and saw marks rather than solely on stylistic features, Shepard believed that most of the remodeling undertaken to transform the residence into a boarding house occurred between 1830 and 1840.

In his follow-up report, he called the boarding house interpretation executed by the Dames in the 1970s "as valid as ever, reflecting current interests in the history field over the nation."

NSCDA-FL, the Florida society of The Colonial Dames of America, owns and operates the Ximenez-Fatio House Museum in St. Augustine.