The Oldest City: A Column by Susan Richbourg Parker, Ph.D.

September 13, 2025 STORMY WEATHER THWARTED THE FRENCH ATTACK ON THE INFANT CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE It was not quite two days since Pedro Menéndez de Avilés led the formal founding of St. Augustine on September 8, 1565. He needed to write to King Philip of Spain about the event. Surely writing to the king required careful wording as well as including plenty of praise for the monarch. Very early on Monday, September 10, 1565, Menéndez faced two simultaneous problems—the worsening weather and the French settlement forty-odd miles north of the brand new city of St. Augustine. According to the chronicle by Menéndez’s brother in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, Menéndez had a premonition at midnight that French ships would appear off St. Augustine at dawn. The Spanish and the French had already faced off in their respective ships on September 4 near the mouth of the St. Johns River, not far from the French settlement of Fort Caroline. Each side held a shouting match. They boasted, challenged, threatened, cursed, and knew that they would meet again. Thus Menéndez quickly acted on his concern for his flagship, San Pelayo, and ordered it to sail for the island of Hispaniola in hope of escaping the coming storm and the French. At some time between midnight and dawn, while briefly on board the galleon San Salvador, Menéndez sat to write a hurried letter to the king. Menéndez addressed the monarch “Catholic Royal Majesty.” He dispatched the letter that day. We know of the September 10 letter because Menéndez refers to it in another letter that he wrote a month later, in the middle of October. It would be months before the letter reached Spain, if it ever arrived. First, the letter would sail to the Spanish city of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola. Eventually it would be placed on a ship bound for Spain. Water damage from storms or loss of the letter in a shipwreck were always a possibility. For important information, it was typical for duplicate letters to be sent on different ships. As Menendez feared, with daylight four French galleons appeared only three-fourths of a mile from where his own boat was anchored. In his mid-October letter he reported to the king that the French had come to “prevent our disembarking and to seize our artillery and supplies.” Menendez faced losing 150 persons and bronze cannon either through capture or through shipwreck. Menendez’s only escape was to risk crossing the St. Augustine Inlet and reach land. It was low tide. The water on the bar was only about 8½ feet deep, and his ship drew more water than that. It was a gamble that he was willing to make. Solís de Merás wrote “When the French were close to him, he (Menéndez) let go the rope with which his boat and another boat were anchored and at great risk he got over the shallows. The enemy were afraid of the harbor entrance and waited for high tide.” Two hours after the French ships began their wait for high tide, the sea became very rough and the strong wind from the north blew the French south and away from St. Augustine and away from the French fort. That September and October in what is today northeast Florida the initial contest between European nations over the control of the North American Atlantic coast was taking place. The weather was a major player in the rivalry. The French and the Spanish, both very recent arrivals, did not yet know that the history-influencing weather was just typical September weather for the area.

December 27, 2025

CONTINENTAL CONGRESS RESOLVES TO SEIZE ST. AUGUSTINE

On January 1, 1776, six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress passed a resolution declaring that “seizing and securing the barracks and castle of St. Augustine will greatly contribute to the safety of these colonies.” Therefore, the Congress “earnestly recommended the
reduction of St. Augustine.” The invasion was to take place “without delay.”

General George Washington was soon appointed commander to head the invasion of East Florida and the capture of St. Augustine. The supply of ammunition in British St. Augustine was especially attractive to Revolutionary forces.

By 1776, St. Augustine had been a British town for thirteen years. Spain had ceded its La Florida colony to Great Britain in 1763. British East Florida stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Apalachicola River and to the southern tip of the peninsula.

In October 1774, the Congress had written to Patrick Tonyn, governor of British East Florida, urging that his colony send representatives to the Congress. Identical letters were sent to British West Florida, Georgia, Quebec, St. Johns, and Nova Scotia
as other colonies “who have not deputies to represent them in this Congress.” Georgia would be the only colony in this list to join the Continental Congress.

[Image: Governor Patrick Tonyn. A color tile reproducion of the portrait of Governor
Tonyn is located on the east wall of the Webb Building at the Oldest House Museum Complex. The tile portrait was created by Manuel Real Alarcón of Valencia, Spain in 1958.]

Historian Daniel Schafer explains that British East Florida’s sending representatives was unlikely. All the White residents of East Florida in 1776, except a few holdover Spanish subjects, had not lived here before 1763. Thus, the White population was recently settled in the colony. “Most of the people who were here had very strong, deep ties to England and they had not developed self-governing, institutional ties.”

The British Board of Trade had ordered that assemblies be organized in the British American colonies, but Governor Tonyn and his predecessor, James Grant, had not called for an elected assembly for East Florida and the citizens complained about the
lack of an elected assembly. With no assembly, who would have chosen East Florida’s delegates to the Congress, even it had been desirable? Surely, Governor Tonyn would not send a representative.

Residents were also frustrated that East Florida had no newspaper. The residents, however, were not uninformed. They relied on newspapers published in South Carolina and Georgia that arrived in East Florida to keep them up to date on the activities of the Revolutionaries. Finally, in February 1783, the colony’s first
newspaper, The East- Florida Gazette, would be published.

Yes, St. Augustinians lacked an assembly and a newspaper, but there was no shortage of taverns in the city. Just as when St. Augustine was a Spanish town, there was an “inordinate number” of taverns in British St. Augustine, according to Professor Schafer. When sickness hit St. Augustine in the unusually wet summer of 1775, Dr. David Yeats claimed that the number of “grog drinkers” who suffered illness was especially high.

Governor Tonyn focused on strengthening the defense works built by the Spanish, especially the century-old fortress that the British called by its Anglicized name, Castle St. Mark. Tonyn expanded his defense manpower by ordering East Florida’s
residents to form a militia. Residents were joined by recently relocated loyalists to be members of the militia.

Tonyn had issued a proclamation on November 1, 1775, offering refuge in East Florida to persons who remained loyal to Great Britain and were suffering threats and harm from their patriot neighbors. Loyalists would pour into East Florida in the
1780s. However, loyalists had already begun to arrive in East Florida before July 4, 1776.

The invasion envisioned on January 1, 1776, to capture St. Augustine did not take place. That year, raiding and fighting happened about 75 miles north from St. Augustine, along the East Florida-Georgia border. 

January 17, 2026
COWS’ NIGHT LIFE UPSET ST. AUGUSTINE’S RESIDENTS

In 1941, the St. Augustine Police Department considered “Westernizing” its police force to look (somewhat) like actors in a movie. Would the officers abandon modern equipment and uniforms? The motorcycles, machine guns, radios, and tear gas the police used were not a good solution to the problem plaguing St. Augustine. The problem was cows.

At night cows roamed in from the woods to the north and to the west to “invade the city.” The St. Augustine Record of November 23, 1941, described the nighttime marauding in dramatic prose. “They come in massed attacks through the outskirts of the city, feasting on flowers. The cattle were big and small ones, gentle and wild ones.”

At night, the police radios blasted “cows to the north, cows to the south.” The police rushed to chase the cattle. Sometimes the cattle chased the police. Police claimed that “some of the bulls, cows, etc., are plenty wild.” There was no television in 1941, so spectators arrived to watch the free entertainment.

Cattle had arrived with the Europeans in the 1500s. Roaming cattle posed a problem for the defense of St. Augustine. The animals damaged and undermined the mostly earthen defense line that surrounded St. Augustine. The cows also made small holes in the defense work as they pawed at the wall.

Today we see a replica defense wall, the Cubo Line, as it crosses the grounds of Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. The Cubo Line was the name for the portion of the wall that connected with the City Gate and ran from the Castillo to the San Sebastian River. That reconstructed wall of replica palm longs represents a late version, of 1808, of the defense line.

In the 1700s, the defense wall was made mostly of soil. Sometimes there were coquina blocks included to strengthen and stabilize it. The earthen wall required constant repair.

In 1941, the defense wall was no longer a concern but the scratching at it by cattle contributed to maintenance problems. The cattle were also destroying flower beds and damaging the yards of residents who lived near the city limits.

The City built four pounds, two in the northern part of the city and two in West Augustine for captured cattle. Rounding up cattle was, according to The Record, getting to be big business. The police felt that they needed old-fashioned equipment to handle the problem and considered asking for horses and cowboy suits. One night the police “cowboys” rounded up 29 animals and put them in the pounds.

The wild cattle brought money into the city treasury. The fees for bailing out the cattle were one dollar for a yearling and three dollars for a cow. During the month of October 1941, more than $100 was collected in impound fees.

The concern over the cattle intrusions soon was overshadowed by the beginning of World War II. Just two weeks after the newspaper articles on December 8 and 11, the U.S. declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

The concern over carousing cattle at night was soon replaced with the much bigger threat of German naval vessels lurking off the coast of St. Augustine.

In 1949, the Florida Legislature enacted fence laws or closed-range laws. This time, St. Augustine’s nighttime cattle raiding was not a factor. The problem was animals on highways with fast-moving cars. Tourists complained about the roaming cattle on Florida’s roads. The legislation required owners to keep their animals fenced in. Florida was the last of the then-48 states to pass a fence law. 

January 31, 2026

FIRST “SUPER BOWL” WAS NOT A BIG DEAL

Super Bowl Sunday is just days away. The first championship game was officially known as the AFL-NFL World Championship, played January 15, 1967. This first game was often called the “supergame.” That game, as this year, was played in California. The Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs faced each other at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

I’m going to assume that most of us will not be watching the game from a seat at the venue that costs 5-digit dollars. Tickets for the first championship game were $12. Potential purchasers thought that price was way too high. The game did not sell out.

Three days before the game, the column, “Television Review,” in The St. Augustine Record noted that “the big battle, as far as CBS and NBC [are] concerned is not between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs at the Super Bowl. It is between the two networks and the struggle to attract the bigger audience.” Days before the game, TV watchers were complaining that ads for the championship game “were cluttering the commercial breaks” of their favorite shows.

Imagine watching the game on a television, with a 20-inch screen in black and white, maybe in color. The broadcast of the game was a “pool job” for cameramen and the basic picture was the same, whichever network you chose. Airing the game on two different networks caused one issue. Coming out of halftime, NBC didn't cut back from commercial in time to catch the opening kickoff of the second half, so the network got the NFL to have the two teams replay the kick, for a history-making two second-half kickoffs.

That first game received little attention on the sports pages of The Record. And it never made the front page. But the television networks realized how important this event was. Could they have foreseen how gigantic it would become?

At the time of the game, St. Augustinians were living with plenty of change. The north Florida region was on the verge of losing its clout in the Legislature. The State was creating new legislative districts in proportion to population. South Florida was going to gain many Legislative seats at the expense of the northern part of the state.

Florida had its first Republican governor since 1873. Claude Kirk was inaugurated less than two weeks before the big football game. The big news at the time was Kirk’s appearance at the Inaugural Ball with a “mystery woman. They would marry a month later.

Medicare was only six months old, and headlines complained about its paperwork. On the other hand, most physicians were not as unhappy about the Medicare process as their dire predictions had imagined.

St. Augustine was deep into restoring and reconstructing historic buildings. The city had celebrated its 400th birthday in September 1965. The U.S. post office had just moved from Government House, overlooking the Plaza, to the then-new post office building at the corner of King Street and Central (now MLK) Avenue. The former post office building would change its character to a historical focus.

New life for old hotels was going strong. The Cordova Hotel building (today’s Casa Monica Hotel) was being renovated to become the St. Johns County Courthouse. The City of St. Augustine was considering moving its offices to the Alcazar Hotel building (Lightner Museum). The sale of the Ponce de Leon Hotel to become Flagler College was announced just days before the game. At the time the Ponce Hotel dining room was still open to the public for meals. Lunch was $1.95.

The Packers won that first game by a score of 35 – 10. Now, here we are, 59 games later.  

February 14, 2026

“LUDICROUS ENTERTAINMENT” AND “EXCESS PASSIONS” FILLED THE STREETS DURING CARNIVAL SEASON

Lent begins this coming Wednesday and thus Carnival ends for another year. St. Augustine no longer observes Carnival, the name for the pre-Lenten season, as it did in the past. In the 1800s, Carnival in St. Augustine featured street dancing, parades, masking, and pranks. Today the best known Carnival celebrations in the United States are in New Orleans, popularly called Mardi Gras although Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is just the final day of Carnival.

The editor of The East-Florida Herald, Elias B. Gould, disapproved of Carnival in St. Augustine and railed against it in his newspaper in the Spring of 1825. Gould was one of the many newcomers who arrived in St. Augustine soon after Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821. Gould took it upon himself to reform the people already living in his new residence.

Gould and many other immigrants (as persons relocating within the nation were called at the time) disparaged the traditions of St. Augustine’s long-time Spanish residents and disdained their
conduct. It was a time when anti-Catholic feelings were growing
throughout the U.S. The newcomers expected St. Augustine’s
people to forget their Spanish ways and become immediately
American, whatever that meant.

Carnival offered opportunities for release from daily annoyances and problems. In 1825, Carnival was also a venue for venting the cultural clashes. There was more to the animosities than behavior and attitudes. The formerly Spanish Floridians were anxious about whether the titles to their land and homes owned during the Spanish era would be validated by the U.S. Land Commissioners. They feared losing their homes and farms.

Gould attempted to persuade that the Carnival celebrations were pagan and inappropriate for Christians. In the issue of February 22, 1825 he disapproved of the “excesses of passion” and “night excesses” exhibited in the city’s streets. He complained that since Florida had become a part of the United States, Carnival had become a longer and larger event.

Gould warned that some newcomers to St. Augustine had been almost bewitched by Carnival. “Emigrants from the United States became suddenly charmed with its novelty and considered it creditable to excel in the arts of buffoonery.”

Gould found the mock funeral parades especially reprehensible. In his perspective, the mock funerals were “detrimental to public morals, unfriendly to our national institutions and the principals of free government.” Gould became the target of a mock funeral that took place in the public square (Plaza). In reaction, and probably in retaliation, to Gould’s editorializing, the funeral displayed an edition of The East-Florida Herald which had “condemned the ludicrous entertainment” of Carnival. The coffin contained an effigy of the editor of the newspaper (Gould).

[Image: The treeless Plaza hosted the mock funeral of the newspaper editor. Engraving in American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, June 1835.

Gould asserted that the Carnival activities showed just how far “unrestrained passions” would carry people. The revelers behaved like a “flock of sheep, following their leader to turn into an unthinking crowd.”

Gould seemed to have been selectively in favor of “the pure principals of free government,” such as the rights of assembly and free speech.