230 St.George St.
S t.Augu s tine,Flo ri da. March 24,1932
Mr.Harral Ayres Gunter Hotel Arcade
204 E.Travis St. San Antonio,Texas
My dear Mr.Ayres,
Your letter of December 8th. 1931 and the one received recently suould have been answered long ago,but I waited to present the last letter and the OST booklet and your short history to the St.Augustine Historical Society,before writing and they are now in the Library . The Society was mucn interested in your letter ,ana what I said about the correctness of the history you had written. We all feel you deserve to be thanked for placing St.Augustine in its proper place,and at present I nave no suggestions to offer about your historical article. Congress has ,I believe,appropriated money to mark the place where Ponce de Leon first landed and I hear that many places are making claims to be where he first landed,and now an array officer Col.H.L.Landers Chief of the Historical Section of Tlf&rmy War College has been put in charge of going over all the evidence .Col.Landers can read ± tne old Spanish and will I feel ^ure give it careful consideration.The Library ox Congress ,at my suggestion, secured photostat copies of many old documents concerning Ponce de Leon that I have not seen ,ana possibly could not read so I am very glad to have Col.Landers consider tne wMle question ,and hope ne will decide to place the marker at St.Augustine.He will consider the date 1512 or 1513 as well,and I gave him ,in my interview with him in St.Augustine the result of what I had found in my researches,and since have sent him more particulars of the books to consult. From an old book printed in London on trie old and new time about I7II, I found that the Pope did not make the moon a;..te and c; lendar a;;.te quite agree as he snould have gone back to the time of Caesar and dropped about fourteen or fifteen days instead of ten wiiich went back only to the third century. Also in some old English Chronicles publisned 1543 ,1568,1577 I found that in England in 1512 Easter .as celebrated on the moon dc(ge 1'arcn 27 , wnile on the continent tne Pope, by an Italian history printed 1561 ,celebrated Easter on April 11,1512 on which day was fought trie battle of Ravenna. Spain,by an old book printed 1519/began tne ■ year with January.
Your letter about the mission near Darien is of interest,but I am afraid that I snail not see it as it is so far away,and I am like others,have little money and no cars at my disposal. 1 am not always able to t: ke long trips either on account of my age ,being in the last lap of life and not very strong. I note by your booklet that the large missions in the ’.Test were built°during the English period of Florida or shortly b«foreI763. In 1728 tne only stone mission in Florida was the one at Nombre de Dios near St.Augustine and the large Franciscan Convent in St.Augustine on St.Francis St. which was the head-quarters of all the missions. You may be interested in an article "Tne Sea "islands" in Harper's Magazine lTov.1878 Vol.LVII a trip from Fort George Island to Beaux ort.Your description of the mission at Darien docs not sound as tnough it were Spanish but belonged to the period after the Revolutionary War.The ruin on the St.Mary’s River belongs to the second Spani ish period , as far as I can see by tne records. Even Fort Picolata was not built in stone until 1755. The English had plantations in Georgia ,and even on the St.Mary's River and St.John's River the English had plantations in the second Spanish oeiiod. Ix you read"The Sea Islands" jou v/ill see that they used the tabby for negro houses at that time.