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St. Augustine is the county seat of St. Johns County , Florida, in the United States. It is the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the oldest port, in the continental United States. St. Augustine lies in a region of Florida known as The First Coast, which extends from Amelia Island in the north, south to Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Palm Coast. According to the 2000 census, the city population was 11,592; in 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that its population had reached 12,157.

History

St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish under Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565. The first Christian worship service held in a permanent settlement in the continental United States was a Catholic Mass celebrated in St. Augustine. A few settlements were founded prior to St. Augustine but all failed, including the original Pensacola colony in West Florida, founded by Tristán de Luna y Arellano in 1559, with the area abandoned in 1561 due to hurricanes, famine and warring tribes. Fort Caroline, founded by the French (and including a number of free Africans) in 1564 in what is today Jacksonville, Florida only lasted a year before being obliterated by the Spanish in 1565.

Spanish rule

The city of St. Augustine was founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés on September 8, 1565. Menéndez first sighted land on August 28, the feast day of Augustine of Hippo, and consequently named the settlement San Agustín. Martín de Argüelles was born there one year later in 1566, the first child of European ancestry to be born in what is now the continental United States. This came 21 years before the English settlement at Roanoke Island in Virginia Colony, and 42 years before the successful settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Jamestown, Virginia. The first recorded birth of a black child, in the Cathedral Parish Archives, is for Augustin in the year 1606 (there were probably earlier black births, but this is the oldest one for whom a written record has been found--thirteen years before the conventional wisdom says that black people first arrived on these shores at Jamestown in 1619). 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 English privateer Sir Francis Drake. In 1668 it was plundered by English privateer Robert Searle and most of the inhabitants were killed. In 1702 and 1740 it was unsuccessfully attacked by British forces 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.

British rule

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.

American rule

See also: St. Augustine in the American Civil 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.

From Flagler to the present

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 event

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