The Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine is the seat of the current Bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine and is the oldest Catholic Church in the country. This is where the city of St. Augustine was founded in September 1565, more than a century before many other American towns were ever established. Known as […]
Category Archives: Florida History
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Aug
Aug
French explorer, colonizer, naval officer, and navigator, Jean Ribault, was born in 1520 in the coastal community of Dieppe in the Normandy region of Northern France. Dieppe was a critical port during the Renaissance period where some of the country’s most infamous cartographers, navigators, and sailors were based. Born in such a place during the […]
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Jul
Jul
History of Jacksonville, Florida: Early European Settlement To Thriving Metropolis Early in the 16th century, uncertain times in Europe brought several explorers to the shores of the New World. The first of these was the Spanish explorers who landed in Florida in 1513. As a result, Spanish explorers such as Pedro Menéndez forged Florida’s history, […]
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Jun
Jun
The early history of Florida is interwoven with the spread of the French Protestant movement across Europe, the United States, and Africa. From the early 1600s to the late seventeenth century, thousands of Huguenots left their homes in France due to repeated waves of religious persecution. One of these Huguenots was the famous French navigator, […]
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May
May
An integral part of the history of Florida is its maritime heritage that dates back thousands of years. Around 2400 BC, Native Americans began to occupy what is now modern-day Florida. As a loose amalgamation of tribes that shared a common language, the Timucua were not bound politically as a common people. While they traded […]
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Apr
Apr
In the first half of the 1500s, the Spanish made several expeditions to the New World, laying claim to a large region that included modern-day Florida, along with much of what we now know as the southeastern United States. However, unbeknownst to the Spanish, the French (French Huguenots) had already established a settlement at Fort […]
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Mar
Mar
The History of Jacksonville dates way back to Jun 22nd, 1564, when the French Colony of Fort Caroline was first established on the site of what we now know as the city of Jacksonville. Built under the guidance of French Huguenot explorer, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, Fort Caroline served as a New World refuge for […]
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Feb
Feb
In 1565, Pedro Menendez de Aviles and his men set sail for the New World. King Philip II of Spain, a devout Catholic, ordered his men to sail to Florida to remove the French Protestants from the region. He and his men landed in what is nowadays St. Augustine, and set off overland to overturn […]
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Jan
Jan
Long before the pilgrims arrived in Jamestown, the longest-standing permanent European settlement in the modern-day United States had already been founded. In fact, it was founded fifty-five years earlier. Back in September 1565, the history of St. Augustine began with Spanish sailor, soldier, and explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men established a settlement […]