when Menendez arrived.
Colonial Quarter
The Colonial Quarter takes you from those first Spanish settlers into colonial times. The DeMesa Sanchez House is a 1740s home dating to the first Spanish period. It later was added to during the British colonial time, and again during the second Spanish period.
Oldest House
A National Historic Landmark, the González-Alvarez House, the oldest surviving Spanish colonial dwelling in St. Augustine dates to the early 1700s. There is evidence of a previous dwelling there that had been occupied since the 1600s. The dining room shows food people would have eaten then.
Fort Mose
When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés arrived to found St. Augustine, there were free and enslaved Africans on his ships. In October 1687, fugitive slaves from Carolina began arrived in St. Augustine. Governor Diego de Quiroga accepted them and put the men to work building the new Castillo de San Marcos and as blacksmiths. The women became domestics in the governor’s home. All were free and paid for their labor. By 1738, so many freedom seekers came to Florida that Governor Manuel de Montiano granted them land where they could build a settlement and fort. They had to become Catholics and the men serve in the militia to defend St. Augustine. Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, known today as Fort Mose, (mo-say) became the first legally-established free -14- | SEASONS EATINGS ~ 2023
African settlement in North America. It’s the first of what later became known as the Underground Railroad but where enslaved people ran South instead of North. They hold an annual First Harvest event in early November where docents prepare food early settlers would have eaten. It’s a National Park with a small museum telling its history and worth a visit any time of year.
First Winemaking
Another interesting “fact” history disproves is about wine. California likes to claim U.N. winemaking as beginning in 1769 when Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra establishes California’s first vineyard
