Posted on 02/17/2016 12:40:01 PM PST by Bodleian_Girl
Amateur archaeologist Tom Garner had time to kill and took a drive along Pensacola Bay in the Florida Panhandle. Spying a newly cleared lot, he poked about, hoping to find artifacts from the city's rich history dating back centuries to the Spanish explorers.
Garner stumbled upon some shards of 16th Spanish pottery.
"There it was, artifacts from the 16th century lying on the ground," said Garner, a history buff whose discovery has made him a celebrity in archaeological circles.
Experts have confirmed the find as the site of the long-lost land settlement of a doomed 1559 Spanish expedition to the Gulf Coast led by Tristan de Luna. The discovery bolsters Pensacola's claim as the first European settlement in the modern-day United States, six years before the Spanish reached St. Augustine on Florida's Atlantic seaboard. The expedition was scuttled by a hurricane in September 1559, shortly after the fleet arrived in Pensacola. Five ships sank.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
One of my ancestors found what is referred to as "The Alabama Stone" in the ruins of a small fortication as he was helping his father prepare land for farming. The stone carried an inscription in Latin and what was presumed to be mileage to Mexico.
Would be great to link those things up!
Ping!
The Alabama Stone: http://www.archeologyink.com/Alabama%20Stone.htm
That is so cool! It would be so neat to find stuff like that
Right under their feet!
Gannet is one of the most leftist media groups out there. They were one of the first to come down on FR for posting full articles. Oddly enough, they also owned all military Times papers for a couple of decades until they recently spun them off.
In Tonopah NV there is/was a silver mine for many decades. The richest part of the vein was on the surface and intersected the road that all the miners used daily to get to and return from the mine shaft. It was only discovered after the mine was closed and is still there to this day.
Like you say “in the box”.
Bkmrk.
I so enjoy reading about the early history of the Gulf Coast. My ancestor, Jean Cadet LaFontaine, arrived in the mid 1600s with other French soldiers on expedition from Canada and by orders of the King. In the journal of their ships’ travels they reported encountering the Spanish at Pensacola. Makes me appreciate just how intertwined our histories are,and how much those brave people endured.
Thanks for posting! We live near Pensacola so I hope the site receives appropriate attention and funding. Perhaps we will get to see it!
One day I saw a strange rock that looked like quartz but was egg shaped. I picked it up and brought it home and forgot about it. My little boy was about 3 and reading his dinosaur book and said that egg is just like daddy's egg rock. Closer inspection revealed that was exactly what it was. I rushed to ebay to see just how rich I was. Proud to say I could be as much as $15-20 richer if I ever sold it.
I love Pensacola, wish I could visit more often. Interesting on your ancestor! I call genealogy a hobby but I could do it full time if it paid the bills!
There is actually a term for that in psychology, It’s called “set functional fixness.”
If I had my life to live over again I’d stay more on the look out for things like this. Just so interesting!
Many years ago when the oil patch was slow, I was working for a geophysical survey outfit, ‘stomping’ and picking up jugs (geophones). While picking up a string of geophones I found a ground stone axe head. (Someone had walked right over it a couple of times while putting those geophones in place.)
Yeah, I’ve been finding meteorites on the beaches of Massachusetts. It turns out that they are a part of a wave of supernova debris that came through our solar system about 13,000 years ago.
Damn illegals have always been a problem!...................
His family will be wealthy forever.
Clearly wrong.
The oldest existing city, perhaps, but certainly not the first continuously populated city.
Call the guy in the article. He would be very interested. Also the head of the history department at UWF in Pensacola. It used to be Judy Bense, but don't know if she's still there.: http://uwf.edu/jbense/
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