St. Augustine, Florida: A Name Picked Off the Calendar in 1565

The Spanish fleet that founded St. Augustine, Florida, reached the coast on August 28, 1565. On the Catholic calendar, that was St. Augustine’s day. The commander, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, gave the place the saint’s name.

A name from the calendar

George R. Fairbanks told the story twice. In his 1871 History of Florida, he writes that “on the 28th of August, being the day devoted in the calendar of the Roman Church to the memory of St. Augustine, they came in sight of Florida and landed on her coast.” In his earlier history of the city, from 1858, he explains the custom behind it: the name “was given, in the usual manner of the early voyagers, because they had arrived upon the coast on the day dedicated in their calendar to that eminent saint of the primitive church.”

Other writers agree. Caroline Mays Brevard’s 1919 school history says Menéndez “sighted the coast on the day consecrated to St. Augustine, August 28, and he gave the name of that holy man to the place where he landed.” The USGS place-name guide Henry Gannett compiled in 1905 puts it in one line: the city was “so named because the first landing was made on that day.”

Sighted, landed, or both?

Here’s where you have to read closely. The sources agree on the date and the saint, but not quite on what happened that day. Brevard says the coast was sighted. Gannett says a landing was made. Fairbanks’s 1871 book says both.

His 1858 book adds a later date. After reaching the coast on August 28, he writes, Menéndez chased some of the French ships off the mouth of the River May, and “on the 7th day of September” he “cast anchor in the River of Dolphins, the harbor of St. Augustine.” The formal landing came the next day. Fairbanks quotes the expedition’s chaplain, Francisco López de Mendoza: “On Saturday the 8th day of September, the day of the nativity of our Lady, the General disembarked, with numerous banners displayed, trumpets and other martial music resounding, and amid salvos of artillery.”

So the city carries the name of the day the fleet reached Florida, not the day of the big ceremony ashore. As Mendoza’s own words show, September 8 belonged to a different feast.

Racing the French

Menéndez wasn’t sightseeing. Fairbanks says Philip II of Spain sent him to drive out a French Huguenot colony and take possession of the country. The timing was close. In the 1871 book, Fairbanks notes that on the same August 28, the French fleet under Ribault anchored at the mouth of the St. Johns River, “the two hostile fleets being thus within fifty miles of each other,” and neither knew it. Upriver on the St. Johns, at a crossing English speakers later called the Cow Ford, Jacksonville would grow up.

A chief’s house for a first fort

The Spanish didn’t land in an empty place. “The Indian village of Selooe then stood upon the site of St. Augustine,” Fairbanks writes. Fairbanks, following Mendoza, says the first troops ashore “were well received by the Indians, who gave them a large mansion belonging to the chief,” near the river. The engineers dug a ditch and threw up an earth wall around it. You could say the first fort of the city named for a saint’s day was an Indian chief’s house with a trench around it.

Sources & further reading

• George R. Fairbanks, The History and Antiquities of the City of St. Augustine, Florida (1858), pp. 17–19. Philip II’s orders, the arrival on August 28, the anchoring on September 7, chaplain Mendoza’s account of September 8, the village of Selooe, the chief’s house, and the reason for the name.
• George R. Fairbanks, History of Florida (1871), p. 115. August 28 as St. Augustine’s day, the sighting and landing, and the French fleet anchoring at the St. Johns the same day.
• Caroline Mays Brevard, A History of Florida (1919), p. 49. Menéndez sighting the coast on the saint’s day and giving the name.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 270. “So named because the first landing was made on that day.”
• GNIS feature 308101 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Saint Augustine, in St. Johns County. It has no note on the name.