Florida Family History Research From Ancestry.com Wiki This
entry was originally written by the Florida Pioneer Descendants
Certification Program Committee of the Florida State
Genealogical Society, Inc. for Red Book: American State, County,
and Town Sources. History of Florida "No man would immigrate
into Florida—no, not from Hell itself,” declared the Honorable
John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, in the 1821 United States
House of Representatives. The newly annexed territory was, he
declared, “a land of swamps, of quagmires, of frogs and
alligators and mosquitoes.” Nonetheless, Florida’s 2000 census
would show it to be the nation’s fourth most populous state at
that time. The Spanish colonial presence began with the landing
of Juan Ponce de Leon at Eastertide in 1513, ninety-four years
before the British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. Spanish
Florida ultimately embraced all of the present state and much of
the Gulf Coast, including large parts of Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana. In 1564 French Hugue