Spanish Colonial St. Augustine

By VISIT FLORIDA staff
Published: July 17, 2009
Last Updated On: May 4, 2012

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St Augustine

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Florida's Spanish Colonial Heritage Trail

St. Augustine, founded in 1565, is the oldest city in North America.

In 1513, Ponce de Leon landed on the east coast of Florida somewhere between the St. Mary's River and Cape Canaveral, marking the beginning of the Spanish Colonial period in Florida. When Pedro Menedez de Aviles arrived in 1565 and established a settlement named St. Augustine, he founded what is today the oldest continually occupied European city in North America. St. Augustine served as an important defense outpost for the Spanish Flota (Fleet) that carried gold and silver from the Americas to Spain. It also served as a hub for Spanish incursions into the interior of Florida. From St. Augustine, Menendez and his successors developed a mission system that spread north, south, and west, converting Indians to Catholicism and establishing Spanish outposts and settlements throughout north Florida.

St. Augustine began as it started and was throughout its colonial history, as a place of refuge. Residents of East Florida’s countryside fled to St. Augustine when threatened by invasions from Americans, raids by Seminoles, and rumors of pirate attacks.

Though Spain had firm control over Florida for much of the 17^th century, British colonies to the north and French colonies to the west posed constant threats from British-allied Indians to the north and pirates from the sea to the east. In 1672, Castillo de San Marcos was constructed in response to these threats. In 1702, the British burned all but the fort in St. Augustine. By 1704 they had burned most of the missions between the city and Mission San Luis de Apalachee in present-day Tallahassee, effectively ending the mission period. Despite this loss, St. Augustine and Florida remained in Spanish hands, protected by Fort Matanzas to the south, Fort Mose to the north and the massive Castillo overlooking the city’s harbor. In 1763, however, the British gained Florida by treaty. Most Spanish residents left for Cuba.

During the British period, St. Augustine saw an influx of primarily Minorcan but also Greek and Italian immigrants from the failed Turnbull plantation near present-day New Smyrna. As the capital of the 14^th and loyal British colony of Florida, St. Augustine also served as a refuge for those loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution.

With the defeat of the British, Spanish rule returned to East Florida and its capital of St. Augustine in 1784. St. Augustine was a polyglot town of many cultures during the Second Spanish Period. The English language was heard on the streets almost as much as Spanish. The majority of British subjects departed Florida when the Spanish returned, but a number of them chose to stay on to become Spanish subjects, including those from the Turnbull plantation. Previous Spanish residents who had evacuated St. Augustine in 1764 returned to reclaim the houses and lots they had left behind. Squabbles and lawsuits followed as British period residents claimed the properties as their own. Free and enslaved blacks born in American or recently from Africa, Mexico, Cuba, and Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) worked and lived in St. Augustine. Unlike the First Spanish Period, Indians were no longer residents in the town, as most Indians fled after the 1702 burning of town.

As it did in the First Spanish Period, the situado (military budget) allocated by the Spanish Crown provided a major contribution to the economy of St. Augustine. After Napoleon Bonaparte's 1808 occupation of Spain, funding for Spain's colonies disappeared. Exports of timber, beef and citrus fruit to Spanish, British and American ports sustained the economy. Ships arrived from New York and Baltimore, Liverpool, Havana and Veracruz carrying cloth, cookware, wine and news. East Florida's governors relied on local militia to supplement the soldiers. Minorcans, Spanish and blacks formed their own militia units to protect St. Augustine.

Roman Catholicism returned as the official religion of the colony. Among the most important additions to St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period was the parish church, built on the north side of the plaza from 1793 - 1797, where it stands today as the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Augustine. At long last the congregation of the St. Augustine parish had its own church after decades of holding services in "temporary" quarters following the total burning of the town in1702. Native shellstone, known as coquina, served as the walls for the church and better houses in the town. About two dozen of the colonial buildings in St. Augustine today originated in the Second Spanish Period. Another dozen colonial structures still stand from the First Spanish Period, including Castillo de San Marcos. All but one have exterior walls of coquina.

St. Augustine began as it started and was throughout its colonial history, as a place of refuge. Residents of East Florida's countryside fled to St. Augustine when threatened by invasions from Americans, raids by Seminoles, and rumors of pirate attacks. In the summer of 1821, Spanish soldiers and families evacuated St. Augustine when Spain ceded the colony to the United States. But most of the town's population--Minorcans, naturalized residents who had immigrated from the southern U.S., free blacks and slaves--stayed to form the core of the now-American population.