The books in the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series demonstrate the University Press of Florida’s long history of publishing Latin American and Caribbean studies titles that connect in and through Florida, highlighting the connections between the Sunshine State and its neighboring islands. Books in this series show how early explorers found and settled Florida and the Caribbean. They tell the tales of early pioneers, both foreign and domestic. They examine topics critical to the area such as travel, migration, economic opportunity, and tourism. They look at the growth of Florida and the Caribbean and the attendant pressures on the environment, culture, urban development, and the movement of peoples, both forced and voluntary. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series gathers the rich data available in these architectural, archaeological, cultural, and historical works, as well as the travelogues and naturalists’ sketches of the area in prior to the twentieth century, making it accessible for scholars and the general public alike. The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program.

This delightful book is a compilation of stories depicting the history of Leon County. The stories were written and submitted by different authors and families. The text includes a wide variety of topics and time periods ranging from the 1820s to modern day. Many of the stories contain photos that were submitted by the author. The subject matter is divided into several categories that include; LEON COUNTY ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LEON COUNTY BUSINESSES LEON COUNTY COMMUNITIES LEON COUNTY SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES LEON COUNTY LOCAL LANDMARKS LEON COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES/CEMETERIES LEON COUNTY SPECIAL EVENTS LEON COUNTY REMINISCENCES LEON COUNTY FAMILIES The reader can find tales that describe Leon County as families learned to live in the wilds of northwest Florida, as well as, learn information about some family genealogies. Some stories chronicle the individual life of a unique person in the history of the county. You may read anecdotes about Grandma and how she shaped the lives of future generations or learn about renowned politicians. The reader can also discover information about some of the unique sites and landmarks in Leon County including Cascades Park and Mabry Field along with many other historical places and events of significance. The Tallahassee Genealogical Society, Inc. has compiled a book that represents many of the threads that over time have been woven into the community of Leon County. Overall, this book is an intriguing mixture of the old, the new, the events, the places & the people that shaped Tallahassee, Florida.

In a sweeping survey of archaeological sites spanning thousands of years, Heritage and the Existential Need for History asks fundamental questions about the place of cultural heritage in Western society. What is history? Why do we write about the events of yesterday and set up memorials for them? Why do we visit places where momentous things have happened? Maud Webster takes readers on a journey from Bronze Age Mycenae through the Greek Dark Ages, from Medieval Rome through the Italian Renaissance, and from Viking Sweden to Restoration-period England and Civil War America. Combining archaeology, history, and psychology, Webster explores themes including literacy and text, monumentality and spoliation, and death and identity. She traces the human need for history at two levels—the collective, here shown through archaeological evidence, and the individual, shown through written records and the behavior they document. Webster’s robust cross-examination of artifacts and texts, and the illustrations drawn from this methodology, attest that locating our history helps us anchor ourselves, for multiple purposes and from varying perspectives, and that the drive to write and build histories is an enduring part of the human experience.

Based on ten years of collaborative, community-based research, this book examines race and racism in a mixed-heritage Native American and African American community on Long Island’s north shore. Through excavations of the Silas Tobias and Jacob and Hannah Hart houses in the village of Setauket, Christopher Matthews explores how the families who lived here struggled to survive and preserve their culture despite consistent efforts to marginalize and displace them over the course of more than 200 years. He discusses these forgotten people and the artifacts of their daily lives within the larger context of race, labor, and industrialization from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.  A Struggle for Heritage draws on extensive archaeological, archival, and oral historical research and sets a remarkable standard for projects that engage a descendant community left out of the dominant narrative. Matthews demonstrates how archaeology can be an activist voice for a vulnerable population’s civil rights as he brings attention to the continuous, gradual, and effective economic assault on people of color living in a traditional neighborhood amid gentrification. Providing examples of multiple approaches to documenting hidden histories and silenced pasts, this study is a model for public and professional efforts to include and support the preservation of historic communities of color. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel  Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Once considered just an insect-ridden swampland, Florida is now a top destination for tourism, business, agriculture and innovation thanks to these 25 individuals. Florida is in many ways both the oldest and newest of the megastates. The ideas and actions of a colorful cast of characters - from beloved cultural icons to political heroes and even a socialist dictator - transformed the peninsula. A Barbados native rescued Florida's orange industry after the catastrophic 1835 freeze. Known as the "Grande Dame of the Everglades," Marjory Stoneman Douglas worked tirelessly to save the state's vast, incomparable wetlands from annihilation in the early twentieth century. In the mid-1800s, a Florida doctor developed a precursor to modern air conditioning. Join former U.S. senator George LeMieux and journalist Laura Mize as they profile and rank, according to impact, the 25 trailblazers who have changed the Sunshine State forever.

"Among documents of Florida's Spanish colonial period, few eyewitness accounts exist. One of these, the 1595 narrative by Fray Andres de San Miguel, translated by John Hann, describes the two-year odyssey of a teenager from Spain across the Atlantic to Mexico, Havana, and Florida and finally back to Spain. The future friar's account of his experiences as a young sailor brings to life the fleets of the Golden Age of Spain and reveals how those adventures would change his life forever. It also provides vivid information about the Indians of the Georgia and Florida coast." "After Andres's ship passed Cape Canaveral, it was battered by a four-day storm and separated from the fleet. The officers comandeered the only launch and escaped; the crew kept the ship afloat and improvised a box-like vessel in which 30 survivors reached shore near the mouth of the Altamaha River - more dead than alive for lack of food and water. The author offers detailed descriptions of the Guale Indians and of Mission San Pedro Mocama on Cumberland Island. He also provides vignettes of life in St. Augustine and, on his way to Havana, of encounters with South Florida Indians who came out to trade and with a gentlemanly English pirate. The adventure closes with Fray Andres's return to Cadiz, where he witnessed the 1596 British siege and burning of that port." "Only seventeen years old at the time of the voyage, Fray Andres presents a cold-eyed view of the sailing experience in the 16th century, trenchant observations on the behavior of the ship's officers and the circumstances of the survival of the crew, and insight into the ambitions, concerns, and religiosity of the Spaniards. The book includes Hann's translation of a brief introductory essay written by Fray Andres's Mexican publisher, telling of the young man's entry into the Carmelites and the accomplishments of his later life as a church architect, builder, and hydrographic expert involved in the drainage of the valley of Mexico City."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cuban Cultural Heritage explores the role that cultural heritage and museums played in the construction of a national identity in postcolonial Cuba. Starting with independence from Spain in 1898 and moving through Cuban-American rapprochement in 2014, Pablo Alonso Gonz lez illustrates how political and ideological shifts have influenced ideas about heritage and how, in turn, heritage has been used by different social actors to reiterate their status, spread new ideologies, and consolidate political regimes. Unveiling the connections between heritage, power, and ideology, Alonso Gonz lez delves into the intricacies of Cuban history, covering key issues such as Cuba's cultural and political relationships with Spain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and so-called Third World countries; the complexities of Cuba's status as a postcolonial state; and the potential future paths of the Revolution in the years to come. This volume offers a detailed look at the function and place of cultural heritage under socialist states.

An illustrated history of Key West, Florida, paired with histories of the local companies.

"This first-ever book on Florida's colonial architecture will be an eye-opener to readers who identify American colonial buildings solely with the powdered-wig states of Virginia and New England. Armed with the rich findings of historical and archaeological research, and gifted with an attractive writing style that brings long-forgotten buildings to life, Elsbeth Gordon has greatly enlarged our understanding of Old Florida. May this book find its way onto every Florida bookshelf--and to those in Virginia and New England, as well."--Michael Gannon, University of Florida "The first well-researched and carefully written history of an important period in Florida architecture, which details the work of the original inhabitants and the Spanish and English settlers."--Donald W. Curl, Florida Atlantic University Florida's Colonial Architectural Heritage is the story of how buildings were planned and constructed in Florida from 1565 to 1821, the 256 years that the colony was ruled by Spain and England. From indigenous Native American dwellings through Spanish/Indian, Spanish, and British architecture, Gordon traces the styles, materials, uses, and context of almost every building recorded or standing during this period. Not only does Gordon recount a story never before fully told, she tells it ingeniously, by resurrecting the lives of the colonial designers, their personal histories, and their drawings and building technologies. Gordon shows how local materials, climate, cataclysmic events, and even faith all played a part. Readers will find that Indians had technology to build community structures able to hold 3,000 people, that the Spanish and British both erected impressive buildings embellished in current European fashion, that the plaza and streets of St. Augustine still exist today as they were laid out in 1572 and 1598, and that this oldest surviving European-founded capital in the country had undergone two urban renewals by the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. In this substantial and detailed account, Gordon draws on archaeological findings and on historical documents and drawings in archives in Spain, Cuba, Mexico, England, and the United States. Her combination of detailed scholarship, crisp writing, and abundant illustrations will reach beyond historians and scholars to embrace the wide circle of those eager to discover that Florida's colonial legacy is far richer than anyone knew. Elsbeth "Buff" Gordon is a photographer, artist, and art historian.

This book examines the relationships between community, politics, and heritage through an analysis of four Native American heritage landscapes in southern New England (Deerfield, Aquinnah, and Plimoth, Massachusetts and Mashantucket, Connecticut).