CLAY COUNTY - In 1607, things were grim in St. Augustine, Florida, the city located east of what would become Clay County. The people were so hungry – starving really – that some ate cats and dogs to survive. At least that’s what the inhabitants told the fiscals (officials) in Mexico City and wrote in letters sent to Spain.

Five years earlier, in 1602, an investigator from Mexico City named Fernando Valdes was ordered to check on the feasibility of continuing to sustain St. Augustine. At that time, La Florida encompassed all of today’s Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, as well as parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. It was a huge swath of territory for the Spanish to control and support. Spain came looking for gold, but they got sand and swampland instead. Yes, it’s true that the good Franciscan fathers had done a reasonably decent job of converting the local natives into Catholics, but faith alone was not going to keep La Florida afloat.

Mexico City was tasked with paying St. Augustine her yearly situado (support funding). The Situador traveled to Mexico City to collect the situado and bring back supplies like olive oil, flour, vinegar, gifts for the caciques (Indian chiefs), munitions, and silver church goods, like chalices and crucifixes. The dangerous problem was in transporting the money and goods back to La Florida. The Situador sometimes fell victim to pirates and hurricanes. Going back on land was not an option, as that trip could take a year or more to complete.

Day-to-day life in 1607 St. Augustine wasn’t as dire as the citizens made it out to be. The worst of their fears were pirates, like Sir Francis Drake, who burned down the town in 1586, and hurricanes. Disease and population loss were the main problems that curbed the cattle trade and other agricultural endeavors. Sounds bad enough.

Archeological excavations proved the citizens were eating a broad diet of both Old World and New World foods, including garbanzo beans, citrus, figs, corn, melons, hot peppers, squash and beans. Protein came from gallena (chicken), Iberica cerdo (pork), pescado (fish), and some carne (beef).

St. Augustine had the oldest European government in North America and the first crown-owned governor’s mansion in European North America. Although the “mansion” was a wood structure with a thatch roof, it was still a first. By 1606, there were about 350 adults in the diocese, with about twenty Spaniards and 216 Native Americans at the Nombre De Dios Mission.

In 1764, John Bartram noticed the melting pot that St. Augustine was, stating that there were “inhabitants of all colors, whites, negroes, mulattos and Indians.” Almost every household felt the influences of African and Native American cultures. St. Augustine archeologist Kathleen Deagan also wrote about this blending of cultures. “As time passed an American identity developed,” she says, with a shift from “I’m a Spaniard, living in America” to “I’m an American with Spanish heritage.”

Per Deagan, the contrast in the stories told by documents and artifacts are clear. In letters home, the Spanish settlers purported to be on the brink of starvation.

“The people in St. Augustine were always saying, ‘We’re starving, we’re starving, we’re eating our boots, please send more supplies,’ Deagan says. ‘Yet, in their actual household trash, they’re eating tons of fish. They weren’t starving, they just didn’t like what they were eating.’”

Investigator Valdes reported his findings about the nature of what he had seen in St. Augustine. The report to King Phillip was not a great one, noting supply problems, disease, failure of the population to expand, and the difficulty of making the colony profitable. The Spanish King was a relatively conservative spender and didn’t relish the thought of having to pay for the upkeep of such a huge territory with limited returns. After all, by 1607, St. Augustine had been there forty-two years and had yet to return a profit. King Phillip pulled the plug.

Then, in May of 1607, Jamestown, Virginia was founded. When the Spanish discovered the colony in October, they were shaken. Realizing that they now needed St. Augustine as a military post and a buffer zone between Florida and Jamestown, the shutdown order was quickly rescinded.

The Spanish were angry about the encroachment on what they believed was their territory. What to do about it? There were two factions debating the fate of the intruders at Jamestown. One idealistic group was adamant about protecting Spain and Catholicism. They argued that the Spanish should send someone like the founder of St. Augustine, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who wiped out the intruding French Huguenots in 1565. The more practical-minded group advocated for doing nothing and letting Jamestown’s intruders live another day. It was a competition between ideology and strategic reality. Strategic reality ultimately won, as Spain could not afford to launch an armada of ships and soldiers to wipe out a handful of ragtag colonists. Those Spanish figured, “Well, they won’t make it past the first winter and are going to starve to death anyway.”

Spain figured wrong. The end story of Jamestown was that it gave Britain a toehold in Spanish North America that lasted until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War. Spain traded La Florida to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Havana, Cuba, which British forces captured during the war.

Today, there are many archeological sites around and even under the streets of St. Augustine. The Nombre de Dios mission and the sites at the Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth Archeological Park are there for the viewing. They all reflect back to the early days of St. Augustine’s founding.

This information can be found at: St. Augustine in the Seventeenth Century: Capital of La Florida by Susan Richbourg Parker, The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 92, No. 3, 500 Years of Florida History—The Seventeenth Century (Winter 2014), pp. 554-576 (23 pages), Bonnie G. McEwan, The Florida Historical Quarterly, https://explore.research.ufl.edu/first-colony.html, Spain and the Founding of Jamestown ,William S. Goldman, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 427-450, floridamemory.com, menedezartstudio.com and in subject files and court records maintained locally at the Archives Center.

For more information about this topic or about anything related to Clay County history, please contact Clay County Clerk of Court’s Historical Archives Division personnel at (904) 371-0027 or by email at clayarchives@clayclerk.com. The Archives Center is part of the Old Jail at the county’s Historic Triangle (21 Gratio Place, GCS, 32043) and is open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., minus holidays. Stop by to take a self-guided tour of the Old Jail or seek research assistance from staff.