09/04/2026
Most people know St. Augustine as America's oldest city, but far fewer know about the group of Mediterranean families who quite literally walked their way into its history. 🌿 In 1768 a Scottish doctor named Andrew Turnbull recruited around 1,400 people from the island of Menorca, along with families from Greece, Italy, and Corsica, and brought them to a new plantation colony he called New Smyrna on Florida's Atlantic coast.
What they were promised and what they found turned out to be two very different things. Disease, brutal labor, and hunger took a terrible toll over nine long years. 🕯️ Finally the survivors, only about 600 of them, made the roughly 70 mile walk north to St. Augustine, where they were granted their freedom and started over. Their descendants never left.
To this day the Minorcan community is woven right into the soul of St. Augustine, from the fiery little datil pepper they still grow to the Minorcan clam chowder simmering in local kitchens. It is one of the oldest immigrant stories in the whole country, and it is still very much alive today. Have you ever tasted a datil pepper or a bowl of Minorcan chowder down in St. Augustine?
