Plan of Fort Caroline
In 1846, John Carter Brown purchased this rare print newsletter which outlines the events of the second French attempt to establish a colony in Florida, in 1564 near present-day Jacksonville. The colony, founded and defended by two French Protestants military leaders, Jean Ribaut and Réné de Laudonnière, was attacked and destroyed the following year by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who then founded near-by Saint Augustine. This newsletter contains the earliest known printed plan of a European settlement - in this case Fort Caroline - in the territory of what would become the United States. The plan depicts eight cannons within the arrow-shaped fortified walls, around which winds a river with an unknown source leading to the sea.