The People of Spanish Florida

The people who played a role in the initial European exploration and later settlement of Spanish Florida, as well as the members of the many indigenous Southeastern Indian societies who ultimately became part of this far-flung and multi-ethnic colonial society, are a diverse and numerous group, most of whom we have no names or other historical documentation for. For the moment, on this website I have included pages with comprehensive lists of royal and ecclesiastical officials within whose jurisdiction Florida fell, governors and friars within Florida, and a growing list of soldiers in Florida, as well as a preliminary set of pages focusing on the native groups. I have also provided links below to the parish records of St. Augustine. Additional pages and information will be added as time permits.

Royal and Ecclesiastical Officials, 1474-1849

Governors of Colonial Florida, 1565-1763

Soldiers of Spanish Colonial Florida, 1565-1763

Franciscan Missionaries sent to Florida, 1583-1739

Indigenous Groups of Spanish Florida

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Parish Records of St. Augustine

The parish records of the cathedral of St. Augustine contain an invaluable record of individual baptisms, marriages, and burials performed in the city of St. Augustine for individuals of all ethnicities during the 16th-18th centuries. While there are some converted indios (Native American) recorded in these books, the vast majority of such sacraments were performed by Franciscan missionaries, whose records were kept separately in the Franciscan missions and in the Franciscan convent in St. Augustine, none of which are known to have survived to the present day.

Typescript transcriptions of many of the original records (made in the 1970s) can be found in chronological order at the links below:

Baptisms, 1594-1763
Marriages, 1594-1756

Digital imagery (and some transcriptions) of the original St. Augustine parish records can be found online here, with selected subsections predating 1763 linked below. Please note that most of these records were in a really bad state of preservation when they were finally stabilized, so many entries are at least partly consumed by bookworm holes, and ink is frequently quite faded.

Baptisms, Burials and Marriages - 16th & 17th Centuries
Baptisms, Burials, Confirmations and Marriages - 16th & 17th Centuries
Marriages, 1632-1720
Baptisms and Burials, 17th Century
Miscellaneous - 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
Burials - 18th Century
Baptisms - 1720-1737
Baptisms - 17th and 18th Centuries
Baptisms and Marriages - 18th Century
Baptisms - 1735-1763
Burials and Confirmations - 18th Century
Baptisms - 1760-1763
Baptisms - 1737-1751
Baptisms - 1751-1760

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