St Augustine Florida – Castillo Cannon Firing. Learn more about the nation’s oldest city.
Wednesday, April 26 — The first baby of European parentage born on the shores of the future United States came into this then-New World in 1566. Martin de Argȕelles Jr. was born to a soldier father, who had brought his wife, Leonor, to the new Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida. Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is, the nation’s oldest permanently occupied European settlement. The better-known Virginia Dare, of the vanished Roanoke Colony in North Carolina, was born 21 years after the young de Argȕelles, who followed his father by serving in the Spanish army in Cuba and Mexico. Americans of Spanish descent are counted among the 56.5 million Hispanics in the U.S. Within the nearly 42 million foreign-born population, Spaniards number about 101,000.
Profile America is in its 20th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
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