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
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