In the Sun Shine State on this day in 1565 From the journal of Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, chaplain to the Menendez expedition:

“On the fifth day, Wednesday, the fifteenth, the day of our Lady, we embarked at ten o’clock More than 30 men, including three of the seven priests who came, deserted and hid themselves in this settlement. The could not be discovered, dead or alive, which made the General (Menendez) very angry.”

“I was not less so because it made hard work for me.I was offered a chaplaincy in this port, a peso of alms for each mass I might say, guaranteed for a year.I did not accept because I did not want to be talked about as the others were; and also because it is a settlement where little advancement is probable; and I wanted to see if my work would be rewarded by the Lord in the journey which I felt would serve the Lord, and our Lady, His Blessed Mother.”

“Men are wealthy there, in cattle.There are men who own 20,000 and 30,000 cows, and as many mares worth 120 Spanish reales.The mares are not worth more, for there is nothing in which they can be profitably used unless it be occasionally to draw loads or to produce colts.As to the cattle, only their hides are profitable for they do not do work and have no value for anything else. A hide is valued at 11 or 12 local reales.They tried to persuade me to remain but it cost Lord Valverde, and I, 8 reales there for a half gallon of wine, not very good either. We stocked up with a few delicacies for the voyage, jerked beef and oranges, limes and potatoes and sugar cane. We got a dozen beef tongues with some dried loins. We did this because by the time we arrived there we knew the hungers we suffered at sea.”

Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Laudonniere and Fort Caroline.

In 1842 The monument to soldiers who died in the Seminole Wars was unveiled in St. Augustine.

In 1934 The first Florida Emergency Relief Administration camp for unemployed women opened on Anastasia Island (St. Augustine).This Federal sponsored camp was the first in the South and was part of the New Deal Program of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.