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Historic St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish on
September 8, 1565 under Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. Menéndez
first sighted land on August 28, the feast day of Augustine of
Hippo, and consequently named the settlement San Agustín. In all the
territory under the jurisdiction of the United States, only
European-established settlements in Puerto Rico are older than St.
Augustine, with the oldest being Caparra, founded in 1508, whose
inhabitants relocated and founded San Juan, in 1521.
In 1586 St. Augustine was attacked and burned by Sir Francis Drake,
an English privateer. In 1668 it was plundered by yet another
English privateer, Robert Searle and most of the inhabitants were
killed. In 1702 and 1740 British forces unsuccessfully attacked from
their new colonies in the Carolinas and Georgia. The most serious of
these came in the latter year, when James Oglethorpe of Georgia
allied himself with Ahaya the Cowkeeper, chief of the Alachua band
of the Seminole tribe and conducted the Siege of St. Augustine
during the War of Jenkin's Ear.
The country's first legally sanctioned free community of ex-slaves
was established in St. Augustine in 1738. Called Gracia Real de
Santa Teresa de Mose, or Fort Mose, it served as the northern
defense of the city, and was populated by those who had escaped from
slavery in the British colonies to the north. The first Underground
Railroad actually headed south, into Spanish Florida, where the
policy was to give sanctuary to those who would join the Catholic
Church and swear allegiance to the king of Spain. The battle of Fort
Mose in 1740 was the turning point in a siege of the city by General
James Oglethorpe of Georgia, and saved the city from being taken
over by the British. The leader of Fort Mose was Capt. Francisco
Menendez, who was born in Africa and twice escaped from slavery. The
Fort Mose site is now owned by the Florida Park Service, and
recognized as a National Historic Landmark.
In 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War and
gave Florida and St. Augustine to the British, an acquisition the
British had been unable to take by force and keep due to the strong
force there. St. Augustine came under British rule and served as a
Loyalist colony during the American Revolutionary War. John Hancock
was burned in effigy in the town plaza, and three of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence were held prisoner in St. Augustine.
One of the great development efforts of the British period was the
establishment in 1768 of a colony of indentured servants from the
Mediterranean by Dr. Andrew Turnbull at New Smyrna, south of St.
Augustine. Included were many Greeks (marking the first large scale
Greek settlement here, an event now heralded by a Greek national
shrine on St. George Street, in the heart of the tourist district),
Italians, and, Minorcans from the Balearic Island of Minorca in the
Mediterranean.
The conditions at New Smyrna were abysmal, and the settlers
rebelled, walking all the way to St. Augustine in 1777, where the
governor gave them refuge. The story of the Minorcan colony is told,
fictionally, in the book Spanish Bayonet by Stephen Vincent Benet, a
prominent descendant of one of the leading Minorcan families of St.
Augustine. The Minorcans, whose story bears many historic
similarities to the Cajun settlers of Louisiana, stayed on in St.
Augustine through all the subsequent changes of flags, to become the
venerable families of the community, marking it with language,
culture, cuisine and customs.
The majority of residents during the British period were black, as
the British tried to establish a plantation economy as they had done
with their colonies to the north.
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 gave the American colonies north of
Florida their independence, and ceded Florida to Spain in
recognition of Spanish efforts on behalf of the American colonies
during the war.
Florida was under Spanish control again from 1784 to 1821. During
this time, Spain was being invaded by Napoleon and was struggling to
retain its colonies. Florida no longer held its past importance to
Spain. The expanding United States, however, regarded Florida as
vital to its interests. In 1821, the Adams-Onís Treaty peaceably
turned the Spanish colonies in Florida and, with them, St.
Augustine, over to the United States.
Florida was a United States territory until 1845 when it became a
U.S. state. In 1861, the American Civil War began and Florida
seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Days before
Florida seceded, state troops took the fort at St. Augustine from a
small Union garrison (one soldier) on January 7, 1861. However,
federal troops loyal to the United States government reoccupied the
city on March 11, 1862 and remained in control throughout the
four-year-long war. In 1865, Florida rejoined the United States.
Freed slaves in St. Augustine established the community of
Lincolnville in 1866. It is now listed on the National Register of
Historic Places, because of its origin, because it contains the
city's largest collection of Victorian architecture, and because it
was the launching place for demonstrations that led directly to the
passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Spanish Colonial era buildings still existing in the city include
the fortress Castillo de San Marcos. The fortress successfully
repelled the British attacks of the 18th century, though it came
under their control (and was renamed St. Mark's) as a result of the
1763 Treaty of Paris. When the Americans acquired it in 1821, they
renamed it Fort Marion, after Francis Marion the "Swamp Fox" of the
American Revolution. During the Seminole War of 1835-1842 the fort
served as a prison for the Native American leader Osceola as well as
Coacoochee (Wildcat) and the famous Black Seminole John Cavallo
(John Horse) in 1837, and was occupied by Union troops during the
American Civil War. After the Civil War it was used twice, in the
1870s and then again in the 1880s, to house first Plains Indians and
then Apaches who were captured in the west. The daughter of Geronimo
was born at what was then called Fort Marion, and she was named
Marion--though she later chose to change that. The fort was used as
a military prison during the Spanish-American War of 1898. It was
finally removed from the Army's active duty rolls in 1900 after 205
years of service under five different flags. It then began a career
as St. Augustine's leading tourist attraction. It is now run by the
National Park Service, and called the Castillo de San Marcos
National Monument.
In the late 19th century the railroad came to
town, and led by northeastern industrialist Henry Flagler, St.
Augustine became a winter resort for the very wealthy. A number of
mansions and palatial grand hotels of this era still exist, some
converted to other use, such as housing parts of Flagler College and
museums. Flagler went on to develop much more of Florida's east
coast, including his Florida East Coast Railway which eventually
reached Key West in 1912. Flagler had Albert Spalding design a
baseball park in St. Augustine, and the waiters at his hotels formed
one of America's pioneer professional black baseball teams, the
Ponce de Leon Giants. It later became the Cuban Giants, and one of
the team members, Frank Grant, has been inducted into the Baseball
Hall of Fame.
The hot and flavorful datil pepper was brought from Cuba to St.
Augustine in the 1880s by jelly manufacturer S.B. Valls. It
flourished in dooryard gardens, and became a distinctive element of
local cuisine, particularly associated with the Minorcan families.
Minorcan clam chowder, pilau (a rice dish), tomato-based hot sauce,
Minorcan sausage, and datil pepper vinegar are some common uses. In
the late 20th century a number of commercial manufacturers began
presenting datil peppers to a national audience, and there is an
annual Datil Pepper Festival.
In 1918 the Florida Baptist Academy moved from Jacksonville to St.
Augustine, and became the Ancient City's first college. Over the
years it was known as Florida Normal, then Florida Memorial College,
before it moved to Miami in 1968, where it is now a university. It
made a major impact on the community while it was here, providing
cultural activities, job training and employment for the black
community. During World War II it was chosen as the site for
training the first blacks in the U. S. Signal Corps--that branch of
the service's counterpart to the famous Tuskegee Airmen. Among its
faculty members was Zora Neale Hurston, the famous black novelist
and anthropologist. There is now a historic marker on the house
where she lived at 791 West King Street (it was there that she
completed work on her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road).
The city is a popular tourist attraction, for the rich Spanish
Colonial Revival Style architectural heritage as well as elite 19th
century architecture. The St. Augustine Alligator Farm, incorporated
in 1908, is one of the oldest commercial tourist attractions in
Florida. In 1938 the world's first oceanarium (because the term was
coined for it), Marineland, opened just south of St. Augustine,
becoming one of Florida's first theme parks and setting the stage
for the development of this industry in the following decades. The
city is one terminus of the Old Spanish Trail, a promotional effort
of the 1920s linking St. Augustine to San Diego, California with
3000 miles of roadways.
The rich black history of the area, long neglected, has started to
be recognized for its importance. There is now a permanently marked
Freedom Trail of historic sites of the civil rights movement of the
1960s, and a museum at the site of Fort Mose, the pioneer free black
settlement from the 1700s. Excelsior School, built in 1925 as the
first public high school for blacks (previously, only whites had
access to public high school in St. Augustine), was saved from
demolition in 1979 and has now become the Ancient City's first
museum of black history. Only in 2009, however, did the city's
official website first mention black history.
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