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In 1763 after 250 years of Spanish rule , Florida came under English rule. The English divided Florida into two provinces. West Florida's capital was Pensacola , and East Florida's capital was St. Augustine . The British Government encouraged colonization by offering large land grants for the production of cotton, hemp, indigo, and silk in order to fuel the Industrial Revolution going on in England . Dr. Andrew Turnbull , a Scot enticed by the possibility of wealth and power, organized the largest attempt at British colonization in the New World. The New Smyrna Colony, founded in 1768, encompassed some 101,400 acres (410 km&2) and was nearly three times the size of the colony at Jamestown . Andrew Turnbull, was a former British Consul at Smyrna, Greece was given a grant of approximately 20,000 acres (80 km&2) of land about 70 miles (100 km) south of St. Augustine, Florida and called it New Smyrna. It was proposed that the colony would undertake the raising of cotton, olives, indigo, and make wine and silk. Turnbull married Gracia Dura Bin while traveling in Asia Minor . Gracia was the daughter of a wealthy Greek Smyrna merchant, and the colony here was named in honor of her birthplace. This largest group of colonists to reach the North American Continent included some 1200 people. The colonists agreed to work for Turnbull for seven years of indentured service in exchange for 50 acres of land at the end of that time. The group consisted of 200 Greeks , 120 Greek Sicilians and Italians , as well as several hundred Minorcans , with each ethnic group bringing its own language and culture. In June, 1767, Turnbull arrived with his ships in the Mediterranean, and he visited Minorca; Leghorn, Italy; Smyrna, Asia Minor; the island of Melos; Mani, Koroni, Greece; Methoni, Greece; Crete; Santorini; Corsica; Mahon. He found opposition from French, Italian, and Turkish authorities, who did not want to see their subjects leave, but after persistent efforts, he finally rounded up about 1,400 colonists and left for his new colony in East Florida, which he was to name “New Smyrna” in honor of his wife, a native of Smyrna, Asia Minor. Professor Panagopoulos’ research on the New Smyrna Colony has brought to light many of the names of these first Greek colonists to the New World, such as: Gasper Papi, Anastasios Mavromatis, Demetrios Fundulakis, Maria Parta (or Ambross), Kyriakos Costas, Ioannis Giannopoulos, Kyriakos Exarhopoulos, Nicholas Stefanopoli, Petros Drimarachis, Petros Cosifachis, (Cotsifakis) Michael Costas, Elia Medici, Clatha Corona, Ioannis Koluminas, Domingo Costa, Maria Bross, Yorge Costa, Antonio Llambias, Marcos Andreu, Nicolas Salada, Domingo Exarcopoulos, Michael Costa. Turnbull’s fleet of eight ships with 1,403 colonists on board left Gibraltar on April 17, 1768 for the long voyage across the Atlantic to Florida. Although records are incomplete, at least 500 of these colonists were from the mainland and the islands of Greece, and the others were from Minorca, Italy, Corsica, and Mahon. Included among these latter were also a large number of Greeks whose families had emigrated in earlier years from Greece, to escape Turkish oppression. (There were more than 700 emigrant Greeks in Corsica, alone, at the time, who were from the Peleponnesus.) EXTERNAL LINKS |
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