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A continuation of insights on the city's Colonial Spanish Quarter, drawn from its volunteer handbook.
Within today's Colonial Spanish Quarter were real houses, with real people, 250 years ago.The living city of St. Augustine made changes over two and a half centuries, but a community effort in the late 1950s and 1960s researched this very area, documented, and reconstructed the houses you see today - in the construction style of that period.
The DeHita House is made of tabby - an oyster shell and limestone mix. It was the home of Juana Avero and Geronimo de Hita, a cavalry solider. She was the mother of a baby girl.
Juana Avero had been married at age 14, widowed at 16, and now remarried. She was a daughter of the Avero family. Her mother lived at the Avero home next door (today the Greek Orthodox Shrine). Geronimo is the grandson of the past governor of Florida.
Juana owns the house, which was given to her by her mother. Mother- to-daughter inheritance of property was an important provision of Spanish law, unlike English law under which property was passed down on the male side of the family.
The Gallegos House, also made of tabby and plastered and painted inside and out, represents the home of a typical St. Augustine family of the mid-1700s.
The 1764 Puente map shows Martin Martinez Gallegos, an artilleryman, lived here with his wife and three children.
The Gallegos home shows the daily life of a typical family in 1740s St. Augustine. A large family of seven, by today's standards, could easily live in this two-room house. Many family activities took place outdoors. The cooking was done inside on the fogon, a masonry stove.
The garden is planted with typical types of vegetables grown in 1740s St. Augustine, but the family did not depend solely on the garden for food. Many food items were obtained through barter on market days at the Plaza. Since Gallegos was an artilleryman, he earned more than his neighbor.
This was a working class house, so the cooking was not fancy. Everything went in the "cocido" or hot pot - whatever meat and vegetables that were in season.
Since furniture was for the adults, children slept on mattresses on the floor.
That round table with a pan in the center is called a "brasaro", a portable heater. By placing hot coals in the center pan and closing up the house, the "brasaro" would serve to take the chill off the house.
It will take an army of volunteers to present 18th century life in Saint Augustine to the world during our 450th anniversary. Contact Operations Manager Catherine Culver 904-825-6830 for information on volunteering. | 
bayfront sightseeing vehicle drop-off opposite the Castillo.