1. Mary Ellen Masters, interview by Anna Hamilton, November 3, 2012; Renee Unsworth, “St. Ambrose Fair serves up famous chowder,” St. Augustine Record, March 18, 2013, accessed April 29, 2013, http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2013-03-17#.UX659iuDT-k; Masters, interview.
2. Jean Andrews, “A Botanical Mystery: The Elusive Trail of the Datil Pepper to St. Augustine,” Florida Historical Quarterly 74, no. 2 (1995): 146; Andrews notes that the Minorcans were “the largest stable body of people” in colonial St. Augustine; Masters, interview.
3. Masters recalls a Minorcan pediatrician in Palatka, Florida, who requested some native Minorcan peppers from relatives on the island. Of the Minorcan variety, Masters observed, “they don’t even remotely look like our peppers. They look more like … jalapeños than they do the Datils.”
4. “Tourism in SJC,” St. Johns County Government, accessed May 1, 2013, http://www.co.st-johns.fl.us/tdc/; “The Nation’s Oldest City,” City of St. Augustine, accessed July 26, 2014, http://www.staugustinegovernment.com/visitors/nations-oldest-city.cfm.
5. Kenneth H. Beeson Jr., Fromajadas and Indigo: The Minorcan Colony in Florida (Charleston: The History Press, 2006), 22; Ibid., 25; Ibid., 23; Ibid.; Philip D. Rasico, “A Nineteenth-century Traveler’s Notes on the Minorcan Dialect and Customs of St. Augustine, Florida,” Catalan Review: International Journal of Catalan Culture 1, no. 2 (1986): 90.
6. Beeson, 42; Ibid., 45; Patricia Griffin, Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans of Florida 1768–1788 (Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1991), 36; Griffin writes of the extremity of the plantation experience, “[B]y the end of 1768 a total of 450 people had died, a rate of 320.74 per thousand, a population crash equaling that of a natural disaster such as a flood or an earthquake.”; Ibid.
7. Frank Usina, interview by Anna Hamilton, July 26, 2013.
8. Pronounced “purr-lo” in St. Augustine; Masters, interview; Minorcan and Minorca are the English spellings that St. Augustinians generally use. But there are a few that stick to the Catalan/Spanish spelling Menorca. In this case, the Menorcan Cultural Society adopted the Old World spelling; Carol Lopez Bradshaw, interview by Anna Hamilton, July 17, 2013.
9. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek Cookery (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 130; Joan Adams Wickham, Food Favorites of St. Augustine (St. Augustine: Historic Print and Map, 1973/2002), 22; Nancy Pellicer Dyer, The Minorcan Yoke (Jacksonville: Global Authors Publications, 2011), 12.
10. Andrews, 136; Ibid., 140; Wanton S. Webb, Webb’s Historical, Industrial and Biographical Florida (New York: W. S. Webb & Co., 1885), 201; E. W. Lawson, “Interesting Information on Arrival of Datil Pepper in St. Augustine, Its Growth And Uses, Is Given,” Saint Augustine Record, June 13, 1937; Ibid.
11. Proclamations & Recognitions, St. Johns County Commission, September 17, 2013, http://stjohnscountyfl.swagit.com/play/02172014-955; Andrews, 144.
12. Chris Way, interview by Anna Hamilton, July 19, 2013.
13. Anne Heyman, “Causey spicing up sales at Dat’l Do-it,” St. Augustine Record, August 17, 2002; Anne Heymen, “Dat’l-now-doing-it in Japan,” St. Augustine Record, May 13, 1995; Way, interview.
14. Tracy J. Revels, Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2011), 13; Thomas Graham, “The Flagler Era: 1865–1913,” in The Oldest City: St. Augustine Saga of Survival, ed. Jean Parker Waterbury (St. Augustine: St. Augustine Historical Society, 1983), 182; “Henry Flagler’s Influence on St. Augustine,” St. Augustine Record, accessed May 1, 2013, http://staugustine.com/history/henry-flagler.
15. Federal Writers’ Project (Fla.) of the Work Projects Administration, Florida: A Guide to the Southern-most State, sponsored by the State of Florida Department of Public Instruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939); Revels, 88; “Tourism and Economic Impact Research,” report by the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches, Florida Visitors & Convention Bureau, 2003; Ron Word, “The Fake History of St. Augustine,” Folio Weekly, March 12, 2014; Revels, 112.
16. “About: St. Augustine, Florida Est. 1565,” St. Augustine 450, accessed March 21, 2014, http://staugustine-450.com/about/; The commemorative initiative includes programming that recognizes “the 500th anniversary of Florida in 2013, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act in 2014, and the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine in 2015”; Ibid.
17. E. Bottone and D. Maguire, “Heritage Tourism and Foods: Born in Pennsylvania,” paper presented at Culinary Arts and Sciences VII: Global, National and Local Perspectives, 2011, St. Johns County Commission.
18. In an interview on July 18, 2013 with Michael Usina, a St. Augustine resident and Minorcan descendant, he noted that not long ago, the Minorcans were an insular community: “At one time, Minorcans were very jealous of their seeds. Datil pepper seeds. For instance, forty, fifty years ago, if you weren’t a Minorcan, you wouldn’t get your hands on Datil pepper seeds. There was no commercial application at all. People—Minorcans would have Datil peppers in their yard and that was it. They shared with one another, but you couldn’t buy them. You couldn’t go in any store or any kind of market of any kind and buy Datil peppers, that’s for sure”; “Flavors of America Episode 1: Datil Peppers,” YouTube video, Firehouse Subs, December 19, 2012, accessed March 2014.
19. Ibid.