TEN DOLLARS REWARD.
Stolen or strayed out of my yard, on the night of Tuesday last, a bright bay Horse, upwards of fourteen hands high, about eight years old, paces, trots, and canters; lately branded on the mounting shoulder, M.S. with a slit in his left ear. The above reward will be given to any person that will deliver the said Horse to the subscriber in St. Augustine, Captain Cameron in Pacalato, or to Mr. Sutherland at Hester’s Bluff. JAMES SEYMOUR.
NOTARY PUBLIC.
JOHN MILLS,
For the conveniency of Captains of Vessels, Merchants and others,
HEREBY GIVES NOTICE,
That he keeps his Notary-Office
At his House the North end of Charlotte-street, near the house of Mr. Robert Mills, House Carpenter.
All sorts of LAW PRECEDENTS done with care and expedition.
CHAPTER V
Spanish Rule Returns
When they reoccupied Florida in 1784, the Spaniards had changed but little during their twenty-year absence from the scene. With their return St. Augustine reverted to its former status as an isolated military post, heavily dependent upon outside sources for its supplies and financial support.
Agriculture was neglected and brush soon covered the plantation fields, which the English and their slaves had cleared. Indians again roamed at will through the countryside. On the heels of the departing English they burned Bella Vista, the beautiful country estate of Lieutenant-Governor Moultrie, located a few miles south of St. Augustine in the community now bearing his name.
The population of the capital, which had overflowed into new districts just before the English left, shrank to a fraction of its former size. Only a few score English remained to take the required oath of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. A relatively small number of St. Augustine’s former Spanish residents, or Floridanos, uprooted in 1763, returned from Cuba to claim their former homes. The Minorcan group, including a few Greeks and Italians, made up the major portion of St. Augustine’s civilian inhabitants.
Vacant houses stared blankly along the narrow streets. Some with flat roofs and outside kitchens were relics of the first Spanish period. Others had been remodelled after the English taste with glass window panes, gabled roofs, and chimneys. St. Peter’s Church, in which the English had worshipped, remained unoccupied and soon became a ruin.
Although a Spanish possession, St. Augustine acquired from time to time interesting residents of other nationalities. Juan McQueen, a close friend of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Lafayette, came to the city in 1791 to escape embarrassing debts, and held official positions under the Spanish regime until death closed his colorful career in 1807. John Leslie, the famous English trader, also lived here after the Revolutionary War. The firm of Panton, Leslie and Company enjoyed a monopoly in trading with the Indians of Florida, and supplied St. Augustine with many of its needs on liberal credit.
Ruins of the Fish mansion on Anastasia, or Fish’s Island, from a pencil sketch made by the Rev. Henry J. Morton in 1867.
Philip Fatio, a Swiss, owned a large plantation on the St. Johns River in a section now known as Switzerland. He maintained a store and residence at St. Augustine, and had other extensive land holdings. Among the Minorcan group was an Estevan Benet, one of whose descendants was Stephen Vincent Benet, the noted writer.
Jesse Fish lived across the bay on what is now called Fish’s Island with his many slaves and famous orange grove, from which he shipped fruit and juice to England. He was sent to St. Augustine as a youth by a trading firm during the first Spanish period, won the confidence of the Spaniards, and remained as custodian of some of their property through the English regime. The old patriarch still occupied his coquina mansion across the bay when the Spaniards returned.
Father Pedro Camps, Padre of the Minorcan group, followed them to St. Augustine from New Smyrna in 1777, and continued as their beloved spiritual leader until his death in 1790. Also prominent in the city’s religious life was Father Michael O’Reilly, an Irish priest, who came with Governor Zéspedes in 1784 and remained active until removed by death in 1812.
Life in St. Augustine followed a distinctive pattern, due to its isolation and lack of frequent communication with other cities. It was Spanish in language, dress, customs, and for the most part in architecture and population. Some of its officials and planters owned slaves, fine horses, and lived comfortably if not elaborately. They enjoyed leisure time for gambling, cock fighting, and to lounge through the long summers in a cool patio or at a congenial tavern. The populace was characteristically lazy and did little more than necessary to keep body and soul together. As in other Spanish colonies, the siesta, or after-dinner nap, was routine. During the mid-day heat streets were deserted and nothing stirred as if under the spell of an enchanter’s wand.
Old print of Plaza showing Cathedral and Constitution monument.
One of the chief additions made to the city during its second Spanish period was the construction of a graceful new Parish Church. The building was begun in 1791, dedicated in 1797, and later consecrated as a Cathedral. Damaged by fire in 1887, it was restored the following year with the addition of the present clock tower. The Spaniards also commenced a new Treasury building, which was never completed due to lack of funds. Its mute walls remained standing until after the Civil War.
For a time the Spanish government offered grants of land in East Florida on liberal terms to attract settlers. Hardy pioneers from the adjacent South poured in, who secretly wanted to overthrow Spanish rule. Fearing this influence, Spain closed the territory to further settlement by Americans in 1804.
The story of East Florida and its capital from 1800 on is one of increasing difficulties, caused by the course of events in Europe and friction with neighboring southern states. Spain’s wealth and power were rapidly declining. One after another her American colonies sought and won their independence. In the southeastern United States sentiment for the possession of Florida was fanned by Indian raids and the loss of slaves across the border, which Spanish officials seemed to do little to control.
In 1812, to assuage popular clamor, the Spanish Cortés adopted a more liberal constitution, and decreed that monuments be erected to commemorate it. At St. Augustine a coquina shaft was raised that still graces its Plaza, but scarcely had it been dedicated when the constitution was revoked, and the monuments were ordered dismantled. Here only the tablets were removed and later replaced.
The North Florida Republic
When the war of 1812 broke out between England and the United States, it was feared that England, then allied with Spain, might seize the Floridas as a base for military operations. The Congress authorized President Madison to appoint two agents, who were to endeavor to secure the temporary cession of East and West Florida to the United States. In the event this failed, steps were to be taken to forcibly occupy the provinces, should England threaten to seize them.
President Madison appointed old General Matthews as his agent to East Florida. He was a Revolutionary War veteran and a former governor of Georgia. With promises of liberal grants of land, Matthews encouraged the planters along the northern borders of East Florida to set up an independent republic. The plan was to then turn over the territory it occupied to the United States. After seizing Fernandina these Patriots, as they were termed, advanced on St. Augustine with a small detachment of regular troops, occupied Fort Mosa on its northern outskirts, and called upon the Spanish governor to surrender. He sent a gunboat up the river to dislodge them, but they continued to camp in the vicinity for several months. St. Augustine was cut off from supplies and the surrounding country plundered by Indians and outlaws.
The unfinished Spanish Treasury on St. George Street, from a sketch made in 1867. Present Old Spanish Treasury, shown in the background, still stands.
Loud Spanish and English protests caused President Madison to recall his agents and repudiate their actions.
Streets such as this once were gay with costumed revelers.
A Bit of Spain
In a Narrative of a Voyage to the Spanish Main, published in 1819, an Englishman gives the following description of St. Augustine’s residents during this period:
“The women are deservedly celebrated for their charm, their lovely black eyes have a vast deal of expression, their complexions a clear brunette; much attention is paid to the arrangement of their hair; at Mass they are always well dressed in black silk basquinas with the little mantilla over their heads; the men in their military costumes.”
The same traveler later returned to St. Augustine by land, and found the city in a gay mood despite its difficulties.
“I had arrived at the season of general relaxation, on the eve of the Carnival, which is celebrated with much gaiety in all Catholic countries. Masks, dominoes, harlequins, punchinelloes, and a variety of grotesque disguises, on horseback, in carts, gigs, and on foot paraded the streets with guitars, violins, and other instruments; and in the evening the houses were opened to receive masks, and balls were given in every direction.”
Ceded to the United States
After the War of 1812 there was still friction between Spanish Florida and the United States. Bands of Indians and escaped slaves occupied choice lands of the Florida interior, fortified the navigable rivers, and made occasional raids across the border. The Spanish garrison was not large enough to control lawless elements. In 1817 Fernandina and Amelia Island were taken over by MacGregor, an English soldier of fortune, later occupied by the pirate Autry, and became a den of outlaws and smugglers. United States troops were sent to dislodge them and restore law and order. General Andrew Jackson led an expedition into north central and west Florida in 1818 to punish the Indians, and after destroying their strongholds occupied Pensacola.
England and Spain vehemently protested these violations of Spanish territory. Negotiations for the purchase of Florida were reopened. During February of 1819 a treaty was concluded whereby Spain finally ceded Florida to the United States, which appropriated up to five million dollars to pay the claims of Americans arising from the recent depredations. Spain ratified the treaty in 1820.
On July 10, 1821, Colonel Robert Butler and a small detachment of United States troops received possession of East Florida and Castillo de San Marcos from José Coppinger, the last of the Spanish governors. After the Spanish flag was lowered, leaving the stars and stripes flying over the fortress, Spanish troops marched out between lines of American soldiers and they mutually saluted. The Spaniards then boarded American transports waiting to convey them to Cuba, one of the few remaining possessions of Spain’s great colonial empire in America.
The Llambias House, a picturesque St. Augustine home dating back to the first Spanish period.
CHAPTER VI
Under the United States
St. Augustine was at last a part of the United States. Most of its Spanish residents bid the narrow streets farewell. The Minorcans, now firmly domiciled here, made up the major portion of the town’s population. Many by this time had risen to positions of influence in its affairs.
Officials of the new regime found St. Augustine a rather dilapidated old town, devoid of progress and ambition. Due to the poverty that had marked the closing years of the second Spanish period, public and private buildings were badly run down, some almost in ruins. Soon after the change of flags, speculators and promoters flocked to the city, and were quartered in some of the deserted houses. In the fall of 1821 an epidemic of dreaded yellow fever carried off many of the newcomers. A new cemetery was opened up near the City Gates to receive the victims, a few of whom may have been of Huguenot descent. It became known as the Huguenot, or Protestant cemetery.
In spite of its unkempt condition, St. Augustine possessed a certain mellow charm. At times the scent of orange blossoms hung heavy in the air and could be noticed by passing ships at sea. Along the narrow streets latticed gates led into cool courtyards and secluded gardens. There was no industry or commerce to disturb the serenity of the scene. St. Augustine’s shallow inlet, which preserved it from its enemies, also prevented it from becoming a place of bustling trade.
Visitors Begin to Arrive
Although difficult to reach by sea because of its treacherous bar, and by land over a road that was little more than a trail, a few adventurous travelers began to visit this quaint old city, which the United States had recently acquired. They were chiefly invalids and tubercular victims, for whom the mild winter climate was considered beneficial. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was later to become the noted New England poet and philosopher, visited St. Augustine in 1827, at the age of 23, suffering from what he termed a “stricture of the chest.” During his ten weeks’ stay he recorded in his journal and letters his impressions of the city as he then saw it.
“St. Augustine is the oldest town of Europeans in North America,” he observed, “full of ruins, chimneyless houses, lazy people, horse-keeping intolerably dear, and bad milk from swamp grass, as all their hay comes from the North.”
Napoleon Achille Murat, one of St. Augustine’s early visitors.
But it restored his health and later he was inspired to comment: “The air and sky of this ancient, fortified, dilapidated sandbank of a town are delicious. It is a queer place. There are eleven or twelve hundred people and these are invalids, public officials, and Spaniards, or rather Minorcans.”
While here Emerson met another distinguished visitor of the time, Prince Napoleon Achille Murat, son of the King of Naples, and nephew of the great Napoleon. Murat came to Florida in 1824, purchased an estate south of St. Augustine, and was a frequent visitor to the city, living here for a time during the Seminole War. He later settled on a plantation near Tallahassee. St. Augustine began to prosper in a small way from its increasing number of visitors and winter residents.
The Freeze of 1835
The growing of oranges was an important industry in St. Augustine and its vicinity at this time. Many of its residents derived their principal income from the sale of the golden fruit, which was shipped by sloop to northern cities. The town was described by visitors as being virtually bowered in groves, and on each side of the Plaza were two rows of handsome orange trees, planted by Governor Grant during the English occupation.
During February of 1835 a biting cold of extended duration swept down out of the northwest. At nearby Jacksonville the thermometer dropped to eight degrees, and ice formed on the St. Johns River. St. Augustine’s beautiful orange groves were killed to the ground, sweeping away the main source of livelihood for many of its people. Only the bare trunks and branches remained, making the city look bleak and desolate.
Some of the trees sprouted from their damaged roots; others were planted, and in a few decades St. Augustine’s orange groves were again the subject of admiring comment on the part of visitors. But during the winter of 1894-95 another freeze destroyed them. The citrus industry moved farther south and was not again revived on a commercial scale in St. Augustine or its immediate vicinity.
Osceola, colorful leader of the Seminoles. From a portrait by George Catlin, painted during the chief’s imprisonment at Fort Moultrie, S. C.
The Seminole War
The Seminole War followed closely on the heels of the disastrous freeze of 1835. Shortly after New Year’s day of 1836 St. Augustine learned of the massacre of Major Dade and his command of 110 men. They were ambushed by Seminoles while enroute from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to Fort King (Ocala). On the same day, December 28, 1835, General Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent at Fort King, and another officer were killed. Soon plantations in the vicinity of St. Augustine were attacked and burned, and refugees arrived with gory tales of Indian atrocities. The February 27, 1836, issue of Niles Register carried the following item:
“The whole country south of St. Augustine has been laid waste during the past week, and not a building of any value left standing. There is not a single house remaining between this city and Cape Florida, a distance of 250 miles.”
When this occurred the original Indian tribes of Florida encountered by the early Spaniards had completely disappeared. Some had been wiped out during the long period of border conflict with the English. Others had succumbed to epidemics of disease. By the early 1800’s the principal Indians found in Florida were called Seminoles, and were a combination of several tribal remnants from Georgia and Alabama.
Under United States rule the Seminoles were first restricted to a more limited area by the Treaty of Moultrie in 1823. But as settlers continued to pour in, a demand arose for their complete removal from Florida to reservations in the West, which the younger Seminole leaders were determined to resist. The effort to force their removal to western reservations resulted in conflict that dragged on for seven years, from 1835 to 1842.
Officer after officer was sent to Florida to take command of operations against the Indians, including General Winfield Scott of subsequent Mexican War fame; and General Zachary Taylor, later to become President of the United States. But roving bands of Seminoles continued to strike and vanish into the dense swamps and little known woodlands.
In 1837 two prominent Seminole leaders, Osceola and Coacoochee, with seventy of their warriors, were seized by General Hernandez under orders from General Jesup at a point a few miles south of St. Augustine. The Indians had come in under a white flag for a parley with United States officers. The captives were brought to St. Augustine and imprisoned in the Castillo, from which Coacoochee and twenty companions managed to escape. Osceola died soon after transfer to Fort Moultrie, Charleston.
During May of 1840 a party of actors enroute from Picolata to St. Augustine were attacked by Indians, and near the same point two St. Augustine residents were murdered.
“It is useless to complain,” stated a news item of the day. “The fact remains that we have been pent up in this little city for the last four years and a half by a few worthless outlaws. Our friends and neighbors, one after another, have been hastened to the mansions of the dead, and he who is foolhardy enough to venture beyond the gates may be the next victim.”
But St. Augustine as usual managed to be gay. A young lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman of later Civil War fame, was stationed at Picolata and frequently rode into St. Augustine for diversion. In one of his letters home he wrote under date of February 15, 1842:
“The inhabitants (of St. Augustine) still preserve the old ceremonies and festivities of old Spain. Balls, masquerades, etc., are celebrated during the gay season of the Carnival (just over), and the most religious observance of Lent in public, whilst in private they can not refrain from dancing and merry making. Indeed, I never saw anything like it—dancing, dancing, and nothing but dancing, but not such as you see in the North. Such ease and grace as I never before beheld.”
Dr. Motte, a young military surgeon, made a similar observation in his journal: “The St. Augustine ladies certainly danced more gracefully, and kept better time, than any of my fair country women I ever saw in northern cities. It was really delightful to see the beautiful Minorcan girls moving through their intricate waltz to the music of violin and tambourine.”
Finally most of the Seminoles were killed or surrendered for transfer to reservations in the West. A few were allowed to remain deep in the Everglades. There were probably less than 5,000 Indians in Florida at the outset, yet the war involved the enlistment of 20,000 men, an estimated cost of thirty million dollars, and 1,500 United States casualties.
St. Augustine somewhat reluctantly saw the war come to an end. The presence of officers and troops had enlivened its social life, and poured government funds into the city.
A Peaceful Interlude
The end of the Seminole War made Florida safe again for travelers. William Cullen Bryant, the popular poet and author, paid St. Augustine a visit in 1843 and wrote articles about the city that were widely read. He noted that gabled roofs were rapidly replacing the flat roofs of the first Spanish period, and that some “modern” wooden buildings had been constructed. More than half the inhabitants still spoke the Minorcan, or Mahonese language.
Another visitor of 1843 was Henry B. Whipple, later a prominent Episcopal Bishop. He found masquerading still a popular pastime in the city. Masking began during the Christmas holidays and continued until Lent. Small groups of people dressed in various disguises spent the evenings going from house to house, acting out their parts and furnishing their own music with guitar and violin. Whipple wrote that St. Augustine was still full of old ruins, and that “he liked to wander through the narrow streets and gaze upon these monitors of time, which whispered that the hands that built them were long since mouldering in the grave.”
St. George Street as it looked in the 1870’s.
In 1845 Florida became the twenty-seventh state admitted to the Union. Tallahassee had been selected as its territorial capital in 1824, being a compromise between St. Augustine and Pensacola, both of which were difficult to reach from most of the state.
General Edmund Kirby Smith.
During the Civil War
St. Augustine lived on, enlivened during the winter by an influx of visitors, and drowsing undisturbed through the long summers until aroused by another conflict—the Civil War.
Slaves played a relatively minor role in its economy, as compared with the rest of the state. Although a few plantations in the immediate vicinity employed slave labor, they were chiefly used as domestic servants and were generally well treated. There was considerable Union sentiment in the city due to its number of northern-born residents.
Edmund Kirby-Smith, who had played in St. Augustine’s streets as a boy, became one of the leading Confederate Generals. His father came to the city in 1822 as Judge of the Superior Court and died here in 1846. His mother continued to occupy their home on what is now Aviles Street. During January of 1861 she wrote her son: “Our hearts are steeped in sadness and anxiety. Forebodings of evil yet to come depress us. We are threatened with the greatest calamity that can befall a nation. Civil war stares us in the face.”
In the same letter she tells of how the news of Florida’s secession from the Union was received at St. Augustine: “Our state has seceded, and it was announced here by the firing of cannon and musketry, and much shooting. A large flag made by the ladies is waving on the square. By order of the Governor of this State, the Fort, Barracks, and Federal property were taken possession of. Cannon are mounted on the ramparts of the Fort to defend it if any attempt should be made to retake it.”
Soon the shouting ceased and war became a stark reality with its heartaches, poverty, and privation. Many young men from St. Augustine went into the Confederate armies. The majority of its northern-born residents returned to the North to live for the duration of the war. The flow of visitors to the city ceased.
During March of 1862 a Union blockading squadron appeared off the inlet, and an officer came ashore with a white flag to demand the city’s surrender. During the night its small Confederate garrison withdrew. Next morning St. Augustine was occupied by Union forces and held by them during the remainder of the conflict. Before the Federal troops landed the women of the city cut down the flag pole in the Plaza so that the Union standard could not be raised where their Confederate banner had waved.
Travelers complained bitterly of the service on the Picolata stage line, here shown bogged down enroute to St. Augustine. From a sketch made in 1867.
Tourist Industry Resumed
When the Civil War came to an end in 1865, St. Augustine was three centuries old. As the effects of the war and the reconstruction period wore away, the entertainment of winter residents and visitors was resumed. The city was still exceptionally quaint and foreign in appearance.
A visitor of 1869 found the Florida House, one of the city’s three small hotels, crowded with guests and wrote: “The number of strangers here greatly exceeded our expectations, and thronged in every street and public place. The fashionable belle of Newport and Saratoga, the pale, thoughtful clergyman of New England, were at all points encountered.”
The city badly needed better hotels and travel facilities. Visitors then had to come up the St. Johns River by steamer to Picolata, and from there a horse-drawn stage jolted them for eighteen miles over a miserable road to the San Sebastian River, where a flatboat ferried the carriage across the river to the city’s outskirts.
By 1871 travelers could go up the St. Johns River by steamer to Tocoi Landing, and there take a mule-drawn car over a crude railroad that ran fifteen miles east through the wilderness to St. Augustine. It was called the St. Johns Railway and a few years later installed two wood-burning locomotives.
The San Marco, St. Augustine’s first great resort hotel, was opened in 1886, and burned to the ground in 1897.
Its Isolation Broken
The bonds of isolation and inaccessibility, which had retarded St. Augustine’s growth yet preserved its Old World character, were gradually being removed. Some signs of this awakening were apparent. “Hammers are ringing on the walls of a new hotel,” a visitor noted, “in which northern tourists are to be lodged, a splendid coquina wall, which might have stood for another century, having been torn down to make room for this ephemeral box.”
The same observer lamented that because of these changes the city was losing some of it former charm: “The romance of the place is gradually departing now. The merry processions of the Carnival, with mask, violin and guitar, are no longer kept up with the old taste; the rotund Padri, the delicate form of the Spanish lady, clad in mantilla and basquina are gone.”
In 1883 the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railway was completed, linking the city with South Jacksonville. A mammoth four-story wooden hotel, the San Marco, arose on a site just west of the Castillo. The tide of tourists swelled. Souvenir shops, museums, and showplaces sprang up.
The Flagler Influence
Among St. Augustine’s many visitors during the winter of 1883-84 was Henry M. Flagler, one of the co-founders of the Standard Oil Company. Immensely wealthy, he came to rest but was impressed with St. Augustine’s charm and possibilities. Many well-to-do families were then wintering on the southern shores of France and Italy, a section known as the Riviera. Flagler believed they could be induced to come to Florida if proper facilities were provided for them. He decided to invest in the construction of luxurious hotels at St. Augustine that would make the Florida coast an “American Riviera.”
His first hotel, the Ponce de Leon was begun in 1885. Two others, the Alcazar and Casa Monica (later renamed Cordova), were soon underway nearby. These and other Flagler-financed structures were massively built of solid concrete in a style of architecture adapted from palaces in Spain.
The magnificent Ponce de Leon opened on January 10, 1888, the Alcazar and Cordova soon afterward. Wealth and fashion flocked to St. Augustine, which became termed the “Southern Newport.” Sailboats dotted the bay and fine carriages dashed about the streets.
When Flagler began the construction of his hotels, he also purchased the small railroads in the vicinity, improving their service and facilities as a means of making the area easier to reach. This marked the beginning of the Florida East Coast Railway, which he later extended down the coast, creating Palm Beach in 1894, and launching Miami upon its career of magic growth in 1896.
The building of the Hotel Ponce de Leon ushered in a new era.
A reconstructed portion of St. George Street near City Gateway.
The Changing Scene
Progress, like St. Augustine’s former invaders, had little respect for the past. The old and storied inevitably gave way to the new and so-called modern. Old houses and remaining sections of the defense lines were torn down to make room for new buildings of the prevailing period, and the changes were hailed as a great improvement.
Even before this took place many of the old landmarks had disappeared. When building material was needed, St. Augustine’s residents of former periods used the stone from some old dilapidated structure. It was much easier than cutting and transporting new blocks of coquina from the Anastasia Island quarries.
A visitor of 1870 reported: “Although the ruins of its former greatness are to be seen on every side, yet by one and another means the most venerable are passing out of sight. The Palace of the British Attorney General (located opposite the Cathedral), which it is said was of grand proportions, has been torn down so that the material could be used for other buildings.”
Fires also took their toll. The settlement was completely burned by Drake in 1586, and again burned by the Carolinians under Moore in 1702. In 1887 flames swept the Cathedral and portions of the block north of the Plaza. Again in 1914 a disastrous fire wiped out many of the buildings in the older section of the city between the City Gates and the Plaza.
The St. Augustine Historical Society’s Oldest House is a carefully preserved example of a Spanish colonial home.
As in all towns of Spanish colonial origin, a stately Cathedral looks down upon an ancient Plaza.
St. Augustine Today
In spite of the many changes made in its physical appearance down through the centuries, many evidences of St. Augustine’s historic past have managed to survive. Massive Castillo de San Marcos still frowns upon the bay as it did two centuries and a half ago. The City Gateway, remains as a mute reminder of the capital’s former defenses. The narrow streets of the original town have defied complete alteration, and still reflect their Old World origin and character.
The ancient Plaza, with its refreshing shade, is possibly more beautiful now than when worn by the tread of parading garrisons. Here also stood the residence of a long line of Spanish and English governors. Facing the Plaza on the north the Cathedral looks down in simple dignity, its clock and sundial marking the infinite procession of hours, days and years.
The city’s long period under Spain is reflected in some of its architecture, in many of its street names, and in the general plan of the older section, which was laid out as specified by the Spanish King. The name St. George Street, honoring England’s patron Saint, is a legacy from the English period, as is also Charlotte Street, named for the queen of George III.
The bayfront commands a view of waters where ships of many kinds and from many ports once rode at anchor. The original inlet through which they sailed has disappeared, and a man-made channel now cuts through the barrier islands. Davis Shores, a popular residential district across the bay, was once a marsh from which the English shelled the fort and town in 1740.
At the south end of the original settlement the State Arsenal occupies the site of the Franciscan Monastery, from which the heroic Friars went forth to Christianize the Florida Indians. Across from it the Oldest House, owned by the St. Augustine Historical Society, preserves some of the Spanish atmosphere of former periods. Its connecting museum and library contain many relics and records of the past.
The Old Spanish Treasury on St. George Street was once the residence of the Royal Treasurer, from which Treasury Street also derives its name. North of the City Gateway the Fountain of Youth perpetuates the memory of Ponce de Leon’s discovery of Florida and man’s longing for youth restored. Occupying high ground nearby the Mission of Nombre de Dios marks the probable landing place of Menéndez and the hallowed spot where the first Parish Mass was celebrated.
Few who visit St. Augustine can fail to feel the romantic spell of its antiquity. The memory of its eventful past still haunts its sandy shore.
New Library building of the St. Augustine Historical Society.
The voluminous historical records of St. Augustine and early Florida are preserved in the library of the St. Augustine Historical Society. Assembled over a period of more than fifty years, and spanning 400 years of history, these records include copies of literally thousands of documents from the archives of Spain, Mexico, England, and repositories in the United States. The collection also comprises hundreds of old maps, various forms of pictorial material, and some 7,500 books, many of them rare and out of print. To save space much of the material is in the form of microfilm.
Founded in 1883, the Society is dedicated to the preservation and accurate interpretation of St. Augustine’s rich historical heritage. It has been long active in protecting the historic landmarks of the city, and pioneered in restoring some of its older structures.