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I didn't learn this in school though...I had to read about it later myself.

Nor did I. It was part of my family history which I paid little attention to.....more interested in cars and girls and guns. But it was brought up in middle school by my history teacher who took me aside and gave me a hard assignment. Said I had an old family name and challenged me to to explore more deeply into my family's history; how they arrived, how they lived and how they succeeded while planned colonies failed.

My history teacher's name was Ponte; he was a Spaniard,

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Addenda: Whale oil, sugar and later, cotton founded this country.