An Archaeological Discovery

An Archaeological Discovery. . In 2011, archaeologists from the University of Florida made an unexpected discovery at this spot. Coquina and oyster shell foundations, outlining a building of at least 90 by 40 feet, were uncovered just inches under the sod. Artifacts associated with the foundation date to the late 17th and early 18th centuries , indicating that the building is more than 300 years old. , The foundation is thought to be the church or shrine built in 1677 by the Spanish Governor of Florida, Don Pablo de Hita y Salazar, in honor of Nuestra Señora de la Leche y Buen Parto (Our Lady of Milk and a Safe, Happy Delivery). It was the first stone church in all of Florida, and the Governor boasted that "there was no other like it in the provinces". It was said to be richly decorated with paintings and statues, and it could hold 200 souls., Nuestra Señora de la Leche , Franciscan missionaries brought the devotion to Nuestra Señora de la Leche to Florida in the early 17th century, and installed the statue of Our Lady in a wood chapel at the Mission Nombre de Dios (Name of God), the closest Franciscan mission to the town of St. Augustine. It became a site of pilgrimage for Spanish, Indian and African mothers and mothers-to-be. In the humid sub-tropical climate of Florida, however, wood did not endure, and when the Governor became the leader of the confraternity of Nuestra Señora de la Leche in 1677, he determined to build a more permanent sanctuary. It was one of the largest churches in colonial Spanish Florida, larger even than the parish church in downtown St. Augustine. A stone convento (housing for the Franciscan monks) was added later. , Wars and Destruction , In 1702, English raiders from South Carolina attacked and laid siege to St. Augustine. Before leaving in defeat, they burned nearly all of the buildings in the town, including those at the Mission Nombre de Dios/Shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche. The church was rebuilt, but was again occupied by English forces attacking St. Augustine in 1728. Ten years later, the Spanish government decided that the church and convent structures provided potential enemy cover too close to the town, and they blew up the buildings at Nombre de Dios so that they could not be used by the English raiders. Many of the stones were used to build a new church closer to the fort, and the old church site gradually became buried both in the ground and in memory., What happens next? , Continuing excavation at this site and continuing work in Spanish document archives will help answer many questions: Is this the Governor's 1677 church? Is it the rebuilt church after the English raid of 1702? Is part of it the convent? Could it have been built above an even older chapel or church? What will the artifacts tell us about life here at the mission during 17th and 18th centuries?