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Daily Life in Spanish St.
Augustine 1565-1763


Presenters: Laura W.,
Y., Joan D., Calvin P.,
R., Cathryn B.


Kathy
Carol


Middle School Group (July
19-24, 2004)








Purpose:


* Students will research
different aspects of daily life
in St. Augustine and create
an artifact box of objects or
illustrations of objects that
represent their research.

* Target grades: Middle
School 6-8 (also adaptable
to elementary or high
school)




Inquiry questions:
What can artifacts tell us about .... during
the First Spanish Period?
(1565-1763)



* A child's life in St. Augustine
* Religious life in St. Augustine
* Employment/masonry/professions
* Food
* Pottery/art
* Social Structure








A Child's life in St. Augustine




"Spaniards were passionate about
gambling, and men, women and children
of all classes and ages played both dice
games and board games. In the absence
of official game pieces or markers, the
residents of St. Augustine made their own
out of ceramic fragments"






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Religious Life 0 0.
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This rosary of jet beads was strung on gold thread, and
terminated in a silver cross. It was found around the neck of a
Spanish man who had been buried in the church of Nuestra
Senora de la Soleded during the seventeenth century. He was the
only burial found with a rosary, and he may have been a parish
priest.
(Black jet rosary beads and silver cross: SA-37-6. Sisters of St.
Joseph Convent Collection, St. Augustine.)
Thousands of rosaries were shipped to St. Augustine 1511-1613.
This showed that Catholicism was the most important part of
Spanish life and that they lived by the principal that "the altar
comes before the hearth." It also illustrates the intimate
relationships between the Spanish government and the Catholic
Church.









Employment/Professions


Blacksmith shop
* St. Augustine had three
blacksmith forges during the
seventeenth century. This
image of a Spanish colonial
smithy in the Southwest shows
a scene that was also typical of
St. Augustine's blacksmiths,
except that the Indian worker
was more likely to have been
an African in Spanish Florida.
(Cover illustration from Southwestern
Colonial Ironwork by Marc Simmons and
Frank Turley. Museum of New Mexico
Press, 1980. Courtesy of the Museum of
New Mexico and Marc Simmons).








Food


Seventeenth Century Crops included figs,
grapes, oranges, peaches, pomegranates,
mulberries, squash, radishes, kidney beans,
onions, garlic, lettuce, peppers, cabbage, and
sweet potatoes.










Pottery


Mexican majolica
* Most households in St. Augustine
ate their meals from European-style
glazed dishes, however by the
seventeenth century these came
from Mexico rather than from Spain
or Italy, as they had during the
previous century. A thriving
majolica industry began in Mexico
City during the mid-sixteenth
century, and in Puebla by the mid-
seventeenth century. The products
of these workshops were used in
seventeenth century St. Augustine
to the exclusion of dishes made in
Spain.








Social Structure


Women's amulets
* Spanish women used a
variety of amulets,
particularly for protection
and assistance in the
reproductive cycle. White
quartz or glass beads
("Cuentas de leche") were
thought to increase the flow
of milk in nursing mothers,
while red agate and
carnelian prevented
hemorrhage.