Volume 10 , Issue 48

A French Pilgrim Connection

We all know that the English Pilgrims traveled on the Mayflower to the Americas in the seventeen century, but did you realize that there was a French connection of pilgrims that landed on the balmy Florida shores in June of 1564 at what was earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville)?

The French emigres promptly held a service of "Thanksgiving." Carrying the seeds of a new colony, they also brought cannons to fortify the small, wooden enclosure they named Fort caroline, in honor of their King, Charles IX.

These French pilgrims built houses, a mill and bakery, and apparently managed to press some grapes into a few casks of wine.

relationships with the local Timucuans were friendly , at first, and some of the French settlers took native wives and acquired the habit of smoking a certain local "herb."

In 1565, King Philip II of Spain had other visions for the New World, and issued orders to "Hang and burn the Lutherans" (spanish catchall term for Protestants) and dispatched Adm. Pedro Menendez to wipe out these French heretics who had taken up residence on land claimed by the Spanish -- it was also an annoying habit of attacking Spanish treasure ships as they sailed by.

Menedez established St. Augustine and ordered what local boosters claim was the first parish Mass celebrated in the United States. he also engineered a murderous assault on Fort Caroline, in which most of the French settlers were massacred. More than 300 French shipwreck survivors were executed at a site just south of St. Augustine, marked by an inconspicuous national monument called fort Matanzas (from the Spanish word for "slaughters").

These were American's first pilgrims that disappeared from the pages of history. They fell victim to Anglophile historians who erased their existence as readily as they demoted the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to 2nd class status behind the later English colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth." -- taken from a New York Times article that appeared 11/26/2008, written by Kenneth C. Davis and submitted to The OkieLegacy by Steven N.
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