Founding of St. Augustine (1565): Oldest City in the US

The founding of St. Augustine on 8 September 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés created the first lasting European settlement in what is now the continental United States. Spain established the town to secure Florida and drive out a rival French colony, which Menéndez destroyed within weeks. St. Augustine went on to serve as the capital of Spanish Florida for most of the next two and a half centuries.

Background: Spain, France and Florida

Spain claimed Florida after Juan Ponce de León’s expedition of 1513, but every attempt to settle it failed. Expeditions under Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto from 1539 ended in disaster, and a colony at Pensacola Bay under Tristán de Luna was abandoned in 1561.

Florida mattered because Spanish treasure fleets sailed north along its coast, through the Bahama Channel, on their way home from Havana. In the 1560s French Protestants, known as Huguenots, tried to settle on this route. Jean Ribault founded Charlesfort in present-day South Carolina in 1562, and in June 1564 René Goulaine de Laudonnière built Fort Caroline near the mouth of the St. Johns River, close to modern Jacksonville.

For Philip II of Spain, a French and Protestant base so close to the treasure route was intolerable. The tensions also reflected the French Wars of Religion, in which the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny supported overseas colonies.

Menéndez’s expedition

In March 1565 Philip II signed a contract, called an asiento, with Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, an experienced commander of the treasure fleets. Menéndez was named adelantado of Florida and agreed to settle the land at largely his own expense and to remove the French.

His fleet left Spain in the summer of 1565. At almost the same time Ribault sailed from France with reinforcements for Fort Caroline. Menéndez sighted the Florida coast on 28 August, the feast of St. Augustine, and after a brief encounter with Ribault’s ships off the St. Johns River he sailed south to a harbour he named after the saint.

The founding on 8 September 1565

On 8 September 1565 Menéndez came ashore near a Timucua village called Seloy. His chaplain, Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, celebrated Mass, and Menéndez formally took possession of the land for the Spanish Crown. The settlers, several hundred soldiers, sailors and families, fortified a large Timucua building as their first stronghold.

The Spanish shared a meal with the local Timucua people after the Mass. Some modern writers have called this the first Thanksgiving in what became the United States, although the event had no connection with the later English and American holiday.

The destruction of Fort Caroline

Ribault decided to strike first and sailed south to attack St. Augustine, taking most of his fighting men. A hurricane scattered his fleet and wrecked his ships along the coast to the south. Menéndez seized the opportunity and marched overland through storms and swamps to Fort Caroline.

On 20 September 1565 the Spanish stormed the lightly defended fort. Most of the men were killed, while women and young children were spared; Laudonnière and a few others escaped by sea. Menéndez renamed the fort San Mateo.

Over the following weeks two large groups of shipwrecked French survivors surrendered to Menéndez at an inlet south of St. Augustine. Most of them, including Ribault, were executed, with only a few, mainly Catholics and some craftsmen, spared. Estimates of the total killed run to several hundred. The inlet has been called Matanzas, “slaughters”, ever since. In 1568 a French captain, Dominique de Gourgues, took revenge by attacking San Mateo and killing its Spanish garrison.

Capital of Spanish Florida

St. Augustine survived as a poor, isolated garrison town, supplied by a royal subsidy from Mexico. Franciscan missions spread among the Timucua, Guale and Apalachee peoples, and the town was the hub of a chain of missions across northern Florida and Georgia.

The town was burned by the English privateer Francis Drake in 1586 and raided by English pirates in 1668. In response Spain built the Castillo de San Marcos, a stone fort of local coquina shell rock, between 1672 and 1695. It withstood sieges by Carolina forces in 1702 and by James Oglethorpe of Georgia in 1740. Near the town, Spanish authorities founded Fort Mose in 1738 as a settlement for Africans who had escaped slavery in the English colonies.

Changing flags

After the Seven Years’ War, Spain ceded Florida to Britain in 1763, and most Spanish residents left for Cuba. Britain returned Florida to Spain in 1783, and the transfer took place in 1784. Spain finally ceded Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, which came into force in 1821.

During the British period St. Augustine was the capital of the colony of East Florida and a refuge for Loyalists during the American Revolution. In 1777 hundreds of Minorcan, Greek and Italian settlers who had abandoned a failed plantation colony at New Smyrna moved to the town, and their descendants became an important part of its community.

Under the United States, St. Augustine served as a military base during the Second Seminole War of 1835-1842, when the Castillo, renamed Fort Marion, held Seminole prisoners. From the 1880s the railway and hotel developer Henry Flagler turned the town into a winter resort for wealthy northerners.

Key people

• Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519-1574): Spanish admiral and adelantado of Florida, founder of St. Augustine.
• Jean Ribault (c. 1520-1565): French Huguenot navigator who founded Charlesfort and led the 1565 relief fleet; executed at Matanzas.
• René Goulaine de Laudonnière (c. 1529-1574): commander of Fort Caroline, who escaped its capture and later wrote an account of the colony.
• Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales: chaplain who celebrated the founding Mass and wrote an eyewitness account of the expedition.
• Philip II of Spain (1527-1598): king who sponsored the expedition to secure Florida and the treasure route.

St. Augustine today

The historic centre still follows the street plan of the Spanish colonial town, with its central plaza, narrow streets and coquina buildings. The Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, has been a national monument since 1924, and Fort Matanzas, built by Spain in the 1740s to guard the southern inlet, is also preserved.

Archaeologists have explored the site of the first settlement near the Timucua village of Seloy, now part of the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. The location of Fort Caroline has never been confirmed, but a memorial stands within the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve near Jacksonville. In 2015 St. Augustine celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding.

Timeline

• 1513: Juan Ponce de León names and claims La Florida.
• 1564, June: French Huguenots build Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River.
• 1565, 28 August: Menéndez sights the Florida coast on the feast of St. Augustine.
• 1565, 8 September: Menéndez founds St. Augustine.
• 1565, 20 September: The Spanish capture Fort Caroline.
• 1565, late September-October: French survivors, including Ribault, are executed at Matanzas Inlet.
• 1586: Francis Drake burns St. Augustine.
• 1672-1695: The Castillo de San Marcos is built.
• 1763: Florida passes to Britain; it returns to Spain in 1784.
• 1821: Florida is transferred to the United States.

Why it matters

St. Augustine is a reminder that European settlement of what became the United States began with Spain, decades before Jamestown and Plymouth. Its founding also marked a violent episode in the rivalry between Catholic Spain and Protestant France in the Americas.