Martín de Argüelles

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Martín de Argüelles, Jr. (born 1566) was the first child of European descent born in what is now the United States. His birthplace in St. Augustine, Florida (San Agustín, La Florida) marks the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city anywhere in the greater United States.

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[edit] Birth

Coat of Arms for the Argüelles family, said to have descended from an ancient settlement in Northern Spain of shipbuilders originally from the Greek city of Argos.
Coat of Arms for the Argüelles family, said to have descended from an ancient settlement in Northern Spain of shipbuilders originally from the Greek city of Argos.

Martín was born in 1566 in the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, approximately twenty-one years before the short-lived colony at Roanoke Island in North Carolina. Martín's parents were Martín de Argüelles (Sr.) and Leonor Morales. Martín Sr., an Asturian hidalgo, was one of the expeditioners who came to New Spain in the New World with Captain General Pedro Menéndez in 1565. Martín Sr. was the first Alcalde (Mayor) of San Agustín, and had been in charge of munitions in the Florida forts of Santa María, San Agustín (now St. Augustine), and Santa Elena.

[edit] Lifetime

Martín Jr. served the Spanish crown in Portugal and several garrisons and expeditions which embarked in the Spanish Armada which went in search of Corsair Sir Francis Drake. Martín Jr. was later transferred in 1594 from Havana, Cuba, to Mérida, Mexico, where he was appointed "Executive Officer" of the Mérida fortress and coast. Martín Jr. was married in Mérida.

[edit] Descendants

Martín's descendants included José Argüelles, who was one of the colonizers of the Province of New Santander in 1749, now known as the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

[edit] References

  • Abbad y Lasierra, Iñigo, Relación del descubrimiento, conquista y población de las provincias y costas de la Florida - '

Relación de La Florida (1785); edición de Juan José Nieto Callén y José María Sánchez Molledo.

  • Fairbanks, George R. (George Rainsford), History and antiquities of St. Augustine, Florida (1881), Jacksonville, Fla., H. Drew.
  • Reynolds, Charles B. (Charles Bingham), Old Saint Augustine, a story of three centuries, (1893) St. Augustine, Fla. E. H. Reynolds.
  • Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro. Cartas sobre la Florida, 1555-1574 / Pedro Menéndez de Avilés" "Letters regarding Florida, 1555-1574 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés; Juan Carlos Mercado, edición, introducción y notas. Library of Congress.
  • Lyon, Eugene, The enterprise of Florida : Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish conquest of 1565-1568 (1976), Gainesville : University Presses of Florida.