St. Augustine has records before pilgrims landed

Diocese of St. Augustine archive hosts oldest American documents

St. Augustine, Fla.(CNA).- The oldest extant European documents written in U.S. continental territory are now hosted at the Archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine.

One of the earliest documents, dated Jan. 24, 1594, is a handwritten record by Fr. Diego Escobar de Sambrana. It describes the marriage of soldier Gabriel Hernandez to Catalina de Valdes in St. Augustine.

That marriage took place 13 years before the first successful English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia and 26 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

The archives’ artifacts include materials of the Spanish Navy admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who founded St. Augustine in 1565.

Bishop of St. Augustine Victor Galeone dedicated a new center for the Archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine on Sept. 22.

“These are the historical papers, in the original and on microfilm, that record the beginnings of our country’s first parish, St. Augustine, Fla. (in 1565), through an interregnum when Great Britain ruled Florida (in 1763-84), up to and following the creation of the Diocese of Saint Augustine (in 1870), and as far as the present day,” commented Dr. Michael Gannon, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida.

“It is a story that, in 2015, will be 450 years old,” he said,

Gannon recounted to the Associated Press his effort to collect the archives, which began in 1961. He found documents in several places: the closet of the cathedral rectory in St. Augustine, in the University of Notre Dame’s library attic, and in two large Victorian houses that were about to be demolished.

Dr. Timothy Matinova, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, said that the collection is an important resource for American Catholic history.

"As Hispanic Catholics grow in number across the country, the legacy of colonial Catholicism becomes all the more important to research and remember,” he said.

Curators intend to digitize the archives so that they can be easily and safely used by researchers.