Drawn from The Avero Story: An Early Saint Augustine Family with Many Daughters and Many Houses by Charles W. Arnade

  The Avero family, with its spreading cluster of houses along St. George Street in the 1700s, proved to be an ideal case study of historical sociology of Spanish Florida.

Principal in the Avero complex were the Arrivas House, at 46 St. George Street, and the Avero House at 41. The Avero family case study reflects the architectural history of St. Augustine.

St. Augustine was a military town, a presidio, totally geared to the garrison. There were no really rich and no really poor people, but by the end of the seventeenth century, once the powerful fort was finished, there was a moderate economic boom. Additional people came to St. Augustine who were not actual members of the garrison but who lived off the military apparatus.

While better off financially, these non-military elements failed to achieve the status reserved for military rank. Therefore they tried to establish status through marriage with military personnel. The desire to marry a military man was often equaled or outdistanced by the deep wish to marry an outsider, preferably from Spain.

The Averos fitted perfectly into this picture. The patriarchal figure, Victoriano de Avero, was an outsider, from the Canary Islands. This is what probably induced Francesca Maria Garcia de Acevedo, the granddaughter of the 1702 siege veteran Juan de Penaloza, to marry him. Then, as might be expected, their daughters very vigorously searched the military rostrum for husbands.

While in most colonial areas of Latin America social status was intimately connected with landed estates, this was never true in Spanish Florida, due to military and ecological conditions. Instead, the town house or houses acquired a greater importance as a symbol of status. The Avero cluster is good proof of this.

The geographical position of a house was in Spanish colonial America just as important as the quality of the building. Those in the best social stratum had their houses on the main square, if possible, near the cathedral. The farther removed they were from the square, the lower the social status they reflected.

The existence of the fort in St. Augustine brought a variable factor into the picture. A small cluster of fairly decent houses near the fort indicates that this location was the second best. The Averos were closer to the fort than the plaza and their cluster expanded only toward the fort, not the main square.

  This identifies them as an average family, of neither too high nor too low status. Naturally the documents do not provide a conclusive answer to social problems.