They came from Greece's Smyrna, Santorini, Crete and Mani, joining the Italians and Menorcans to form an expedition of 1,403. The majority were Menorcans, 900, and Greeks, 400.

   They had agreed to work for Dr. Andrew Turnbull for six to ten years to pay for their voyage and opportunity for a new life in America.

   They landed in St. Augustine June 26, 1768, before sailing south to New Smyrna, where the English entrepreneur would establish an indigo plantation on a 20,000 acre tract.

   Indigo, the plant producing highly prized blue dye, came primarily from India, where it got its name. A successful plantation in this new British colony of East Florida, awarded by treaty in 1763, would bring Turnbull and his partners great profits.  

   Food shortages for the large number of laborers, the area - aptly-named by the Spanish Mosquito Coast, and the intense process of crushing and stirring the rotting vegetation, all served against New Smyrna's success. In nine years the industrious laborers exported a remarkable 43,283 pounds of indigo with other crops from the wharves of the New Smyrna plantation.

   But the toll was heavy. Malaria and starvation claimed more than half the original work force, and pleas that Turnbull honor their indenture agreements were met with beatings.

   May 5, 1777, some 600 survivors of the failed colony walked 75 miles to refuge in St. Augustine. Three of their number had secretly made the trek before them to file complaints with East Florida Governor Patrick Tonyn.

   They were granted the shelter of a large home near the city gate, built in 1749 by the Spanish Averos family. Here they worshiped and entered into new lives, establishing Menorcan and Greek cultures which survive to this day.

   The Averos house was purchased in 1965 by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America as a holy site. While it exhibits the boxlike Spanish architecture outside, the interior has been transformed to replicate a Byzantine chapel with arches and four domes aligned to make a Greek Orthodox cross.

   The inscription in Greek over the entranceway says, "Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it." (Revelations 22:17)

   A statue of Father Pedro Camps, sheltering the colonists as he had through their ordeal and in refuge at St. Augustine, was placed in the west courtyard of the Cathedral Basilica in 1975 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the colonists.