Do you know which city this is? No, its not Plymouth (as taught to school
children). Nor is it Jamestown (the
oldest in the 13 colonies). America's
oldest city is actually St. Augustine, Florida founded almost 450 years ago in
1565 by Menendez. In fact, Florida is
celebrating its 500th birthday - Ponce de Leon "discovered" Florida
in 1513.
This year, the National Society Children of
American Colonists met in St. Augustine for their 73rd annual General
Assembly. This meeting is always a lot
of fun, because we travel to different cities every year and learn about the
local history of each.
The fort can only be reached by ferry.
We started off with a visit to Fort
Matanzas, south of the city. Matanzas means massacre
or slaughter. The river is so named
because in 1565, Pedro Menendez killed off a group of French Protestants (Huguenots) who were shipwrecked at the mouth of the river, unless they would convert to catholicism. Even those who converted were killed later
when the Spanish realized they didn't have enought supplies for all of them.
Some of our members touring the fort.
This fort was built in 1742 to protect the "back door" into St. Augustine along the Matanzas River. The Fort itself is uniquely made. It is essentially a fortified watch tower made of Coquina (seashells). The cannon in the fort had a range of about 1/2 mile.
On Saturday, we had the actual business
meeting of the Society. National
President Anthony Panei told of his national project, to help preserve the
Little Red School house at St. Clement's Island in Maryland. CAC members gave their reports prior to
heading off to our next tour.
www.nsdac.org/nscac
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