Florida was awarded to Britain as part of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, and marked the time when Britain moved her focus from Europe to a more global domination.

When the British landed in Florida they found it unpopulated, and Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a Scottish doctor, took advantage of the treaty which offered easy terms of settlement to those who desired land grants.

The doctor felt that people from the British Isles might have found it difficult to adjust to the heat in Florida. Instead, he went to Greece hoping to find colonists. The Greeks were accustomed to humid, hot conditions and he felt they would do a good job of cultivating olives, cotton and tobacco.

Dr. Turnbull acquired land near Ponce de Leon Inlet near present day Daytona. He planned to have 500 Greek settlers from islands like Crete and Corfu to come back with him and would call his new colony New Smyrna. He arrived in June of 1767 at the port of Mahon on Minorca.

There he chose to delay his trip to Greece and vied instead for the attention of Italians in Leghorn Italy, of whom he heard some were interested in migrating to the New World. Sure enough several Italians males signed up to become inhabitants of New Smyrna, encouraged bu the thought that the climate would be similar to the Rome weather.

Alongside the Italians, a few Greeks from Levant joined the voyage.

As the doctor collected his new immigrants he sailed back to Mahon in February of 1768. There he found the Italians he had recruited had married Minorcan women.

On April 17, 1768 he sailed from Minorca with eight ships carrying a total of 1,403 settlers. This doubled the number he’d originally hoped for and then some. Unfortunately, 148 of the colonists died during the voyage from Minorca to Florida.

New Smyrna Residents Arrive

Upon arrival, the colonists’ met with rough conditions in New Smyrna. The land had yet to be cleared of trees and thick bush.

Two of the biggest obstacles were Indians and alligators. Food had to be gathered, hunted or caught by fishing, and they had to work the swamps for their very survival. Malaria from the mosquitoes quickly took its toll on the new settlers.

Settlers had several options to get food, but little time was allotted to the people to forage. They were forced to spend much of their time building homes for themselves.

These conditions led 300 of the colonists to revolt. They seized a ship and sailed south. A British Frigate found the ship and captured its passengers; taking them to St. Augustine. Most were returned to the colony, but two were executed.

In the first year, 450 colonists perished. Despite many of the hardships New Smyrna was one of the better colonies in North America at the time.

What to Expect in New Smyrna Today

The indentured Greek and Italian servants, who through their blood, sweat, tears made the colony successful are honorued by The Odyssey Monument. Every year on the first Saturday after Labor Day there is a commemoration in their honour at the monument.

In St. Augustine Florida, the St. Photios National Shrine honours the settlers. There you will find exhibits that adjoin a chapel. The stories of the people and their plight are told in wonderful detail, and the connection between today’s Florida and Minorca is evident.

For more details about Minorca including holidays in Minorca visit yourmenorca.net

Included is the latest news and press releases

American media report on a festival to celebrate it’s history, including early settlers from Menorca:

When French explorer Jean Ribault sailed into the area of what is now Mayport on May 1, 1562, he didn’t stay long.

He came ashore and exchanged gifts with friendly Timucuan Indians.

Then he returned the next day to place a large stone monument, which he’d brought with him, to claim the land for France.

After that, he sailed north with his crew to the Carolinas, then went back to Europe, where he was imprisoned. When he returned to Florida a few years later, he was executed by the Spanish near St. Augustine in 1565.

Even though Ribault’s visit to the Mayport area was short, his name is forever linked to the Northeast Florida village where the St. Johns River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Today, the Mayport Village Civic Association will honor him at an inaugural Mayport Fishing Village Historic and Cultural Fest slated to begin at 10 a.m. with a re-enactment of his meeting with the Timucuans.

The free public event will include historical speeches, exhibits, tours and a fish fry, aiming to educate people about Mayport’s long history, which began “years before Jamestown, Va., and Plymouth Rock,” said Sandra Tuttle, one of the fest organizers.

The ferry boat that crosses the St. Johns River at Mayport bears Ribault’s name, as does the Duval County School district’s Marine Science Education Center, which was initially named Ribault School No. 32 when it was built decades ago.

“We’re honoring Jean Ribault for founding Mayport; we love this town,” Tuttle said. “There have been Mayport fishing village festivals and save the ferry festivals, but not one in honor of Jean Ribault.”

The festival is being held during the latest interesting chapter in the town’s history, which is a colorful and multifaceted story that dates back to at least 2,000 B.C. when the Timucuan Indians settled the area.

The Jacksonville Port Authority recently bought about 8 acres along the village’s waterfront to possibly set up a cruise ship terminal. But many residents oppose turning the town into a cruise ship destination and they’ve been working for years to beautify their village in hopes of turning it into a quaint tourist destination and upscale residential area.

Regardless, Tuttle said the festival is not about what’s happening in the present, it’s about celebrating the village’s rich history.

That’s a worthy idea, because Mayport has a “great” history, Beaches Museum and History Center archivist Taryn Rodriguez-Boette said.

Rodriguez-Boette disputes the fact that Ribault founded Mayport, saying he explored the area but did not colonize it. But the town’s history “has passion, blood, lust,” she said. It features soldiers, missionaries, plantations, pirates, lumbermen, fishermen, railroads, the U.S. Navy, tourism developers and more. It also includes an eccentric, wealthy woman who married her chauffeur and ran an opulent resort called Wonderwood-by-the-Sea, where Mayport Naval Station now stands.

Mayport’s history “is very colorful,” Rodriguez-Boette said. “Better than any fiction.”

Spanish explorer Juan Bono Quexos discovered the river that runs through the town in 1520 and named it Rio de Corrientes, river of currents.

Ribault knew the Spanish had claimed the area, but when he landed and met with Timucuan chief Saturiba, he renamed the waterway Riviere du Mai, May River.

After Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles executed Ribault and disposed of the French, the Spanish established a series of missions along the coast, including in the Mayport area, through the 1600s, Rodriquez-Boette said. They renamed the river Rio de San Juan, the St. Johns River.

In 1702, the British came down from the Carolinas and on their way south to St. Augustine destroyed everything in their path, including all the missions and sentinel block houses that had been erected like miniature forts along the river to keep the area safe from invasion.

When the British took over Florida in 1764, all the Spanish left, and the British divided property into land grants, giving the Mayport area to a man named N. Woods. British settlers brought people from the island of Minorca off the coast of Spain with them, to be indentured servants on indigo plantations.

When Spain regained control of the state 20 years later, the British fled, but the Minorcans stayed and began moving north, some settling in the Mayport area.

It was a great place for them, because they were fishermen, Rodriguez-Boette said. They were also skilled boat captains who could navigate through the dangerous tidal opening of the St. Johns River. In 1820, they created the St. Johns Bar Pilot Association, which still exists.

Florida was formally organized as a U.S. territory in 1822, and the Mayport area was named Hazard in 1827. The first lighthouse was built in 1828, and the first sawmill in 1830.

Florida became a state in 1845 and after Kingsley B. Gibbs opened a sawmill in Hazard a few years later, he renamed the town Mayport Mills after the river.

The Union army burned the mills and the town during the Civil War.

After the war, the town’s name was changed to Mayport in 1870 when the post office opened, and in 1873 the first year-round hotel opened, followed by another in 1874.

By the 1880s, Mayport was being developed as a tourist destination, which was “brilliant,” Rodriguez-Boette said. A railroad was built between Jacksonville and the town, jetties were built to open the river to large ships, and by 1885, the village of 600 people was flourishing with stores and a fishing industry.

In 1914, Elizabeth Worthington Philip Stark bought 375 Mayport acres and two years later opened Wonderwood-by-the-Sea, a resort featuring cottages, swimming pools, riding stables and a 1,100-foot fishing pier that catered to wealthy tourists including sheiks, sultans and other foreign royalty.

As a member of an 11-generation Mayport family, Tuttle said she knew Stark, long after the liberated woman who’d crossed the ocean 13 times and disgraced her family by marrying her chauffeur had passed her prime.

In 1939, the U.S. Congress enabled the creation of Mayport Naval Base, and by the next year, occupied what had been Wonderwood-by-the-Sea and much of the town.

The Marines carried Stark out, Tuttle said. “She wouldn’t leave.”

Stark will posthumously receive a plaque in honor of Jean Ribault at today’s festival, and the honor will be placed on her grave. Two other Mayport supporters will also get awards.

Tuttle said they hope to make the festival an annual event, and every year will give awards to worthy supporters of Mayport.

As a lifelong resident of the town, Tuttle is proud of her Minorcan heritage. Tuesday, she toured the seven-block area of the remaining Mayport “fishing village” area on Ocean Boulevard, which runs along the river between Minorcan Way and Broad Street.

She pointed out a historic cemetery that is now mostly buried by the Navy base and roads, and beyond to the Mayport lighthouse, which is on Navy property and closed.

She remembered how Mayport looked when she was a child, when there were lots of sand dunes and trees and it “was beautiful.”

“That’s why Jean Ribault said it was ‘the fairest and most beautiful place’ he’d ever seen.”

In the 1940s through the early 1980s, businesses and restaurants lined Ocean Street and the town prospered, she said. Those are gone now, but she and others are hopeful the town can be restored.

“The people here are wonderful, down to earth,” Tuttle said. When she saw Janice Strickland sitting on her porch this week with her brother Bill and friend Alec Newell, she stopped to chat. The Stricklands are longtime Mayport families too, related to Tuttle through the Minorcans.

“Everybody in Mayport is related by marriage or blood, pretty much,” Newell said.

“It’s important to remind people that we’re here and have been here,” Janice Strickland said. “That Capt. Jean Ribault put his foot here in 1562.” For the full article click here

More details about Menorca, including Menorca villa holidays and the weather in Menorca are available by visiting travel resource yourmenorca.net

An interesting article appeared recently in the Hellenic News Of America about the settlers from Menorca and other parts of the Mediterranean who started one of the first colonies in Florida. Here’s an extract:

The courageous Mediterranean people who left the shores of Minorca in the eighteenth century to “seek a newer world” in Florida, were the largest group of white people to form their own colony in America. They began their extraordinary odyssey in 1768; the ambitious goal was to serve as laborers in a British colonial enterprise designed to grow the indigo plant, then more precious than gold. After completing seven years of servitude, the new colonists were promised fifty acres of their own land.

The project was conceived by a Scottish physician, Dr. Andrew Turnbull. He wanted to grow the precious indigo plant in hot and humid Florida swampland and he felt people who lived in the Mediterranean were best suited to work in this type of climate… Dr. Turnbull went to Minorca where he gathered 1,255 Minorcans, Italians, Greeks, and Corsicans, placed them on eight ships and embarked on a three-month journey to the Musquetos area of Southeast Volusia County. Records show that a total of 148 perished at sea. When the remaining 1,107 arrived they discovered there were provisions for only half that number and, furthermore, most had to build their own shelters.

The AHEPA Chapter in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., has honored the courageous Greek pioneers who died populating and trying to grow this colony with a magnificent sculpture called “The Odyssey Monument.” Built in 2000 with funds raised by AHEPA, the monument was designed by the late Argyros Xepappas, an architect who had an international reputation.

To read the full article click here

For more details about Menorca and Menorca villa holidays and other accommodation including the hotels in Menorca visit yourmenorca.net

More Mediterranean island information for Majorca is at http://www.yourmajorca.net and includes the latest Majorca weather forecast

Having a holiday with a baby is no longer as hard as it used to be as many travel companies have better trained staff than they used to, but it helps to be prepared.

Many holiday destinations across the globe now offer baby friendly vacations. When taking a holiday with a baby, the most important part of choosing the right accommodation is finding something that meets your standards.

Babies may not care where they stay, but you need to ensure that their environment is smoke free and sanitary. There are some things that must be considered before making a destination choice however.

Some of the most important ones are: * Ascertaining health requirements for travel with a child, such as making sure your child is properly immunised. Once the decision is made to travel with a baby, check with the child’s pediatrician to find out what vaccinations are needed if you’re going outside of Europe or the US, Australia and Canada.

Some countries require that young children have particular types of vaccines before leaving. Do this early so that you can get it out of the way and move on to planning your trip. And if you’re going somewhere that a baby - and you - require injections to ensure your health, who is this holiday for? Are you putting your own needs before your baby’s? Can’t that exotic holiday wait a few years and be a lower priority than your children for a while?

* Make sure that you have a medical kit handy when travelling with babies and children. This is especially important if the baby has a special medical condition like asthma. Since you may need a special permit to travel with some types of medications, plan ahead. Call your travel agency or check with your tour operator such as Thomas Cook or ask your child’s doctor for information.

* Pack light for your baby. There is no need to take every piece of toy or clothing. In fact you may find that buying a few things when you arrive may be easier. * Determine early on whether you will take the baby as a “lap passenger” or get an extra seat. Most children under three can sit in a parent’s lap on an airplane. Call the airlines or check with companies like expedia and make inquiries regarding different airlines policy on carrying children on flights. * When vacationing with a baby, don’t try to do everything that is on the list of “must see” and “must do.” Take time to enjoy without making yourself or your baby overly tired.

If you live in the U.S. there are many vacation spots in the U.S. that offer baby friendly vacation options. Two that come immediately to mind are Florida and Hawaii. With their tropical climate, great beaches and numerous natural attractions, these locations have something for everyone. With themes parks like Disney World and Sea World, Orlando, Florida is a hit with children and the adults travelling with them. Many of the hotels are now marketed as family friendly resorts. They have nannies and babysitting facilities to take the little ones off your hands while you enjoy the nightlife or just take some time for yourselves.

Europe also has a number of locations where babies and children are welcome. One popular spot is Menorca, the second largest of the Balearic Islands. This Mediterranean isle caters to the entire family and actually markets its tourism product as such.

 Menorca holidays are great as it’s a quiet peaceful island, but still has a full range of holiday amenities, and a lot of the Menorca hotels are designed with children in mind.

Quite a few Menorca beaches are ones that gently slope into the Mediterranean, great for paddling with the little ones! And if you live in the UK flights to Menorca are only a couple of hours - a good choice for a first family holiday perhaps.

Finally, there are companies that can help make traveing with children easier. These companies specialise in shipping whatever you need for babies and children to you at your holiday location. They ship to almost any country in the world. This minimises the amount of things you need to pack and take with you. This service is especially helpful if you are holidaying with more than one child far from home.

One such company is Babies Travel Lite. They send food, clothing and just about anything else you will need for your child. While this may seem an expensive option, in some instances the convenience is worth the price to help make your first family holiday one to remember. Babies Travel Lite appear to serve the North American tourist more than European ones, but they can be visited at Babies Travel Lite