Men Without God or King: Rural Settlers of East Florida, 1784-1790

In 1784 Spanish colonists returned to the Florida peninsula after a twenty-year hiatus of British rule. In St. Augustine troops from Cuba walked the streets talking in Spanish, former émigré residents or their relatives moved in to reclaim old homes, and mass was sung again in the parish church. Out in the countryside the settlers debated in English what their fate might be under the new regime. The few Spanish that they saw were the military detachments assigned to the frontier posts or the sailors bringing supplies