Pedro Men%C3%A9ndez de Avil%C3%A9s

Pedro Menndez de Avils was a Spanish admiral and explorer from the region of Asturias, Spain, who is remembered for planning the first regular transoceanic convoys and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful Spanish settlement in La Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries. St. Augustine is the oldest continuouslyinhabited, Europeanestablished settlement in the continental United States. He was also the first governor of Florida .

Pedro Menndez de Avils was born to an old noble family in the kingdom of Asturias. He was one of the younger sons of Juan Alfonso Snchez de Avils, who had served the Catholic Monarchs in the war of Granada, and Mara Alonso y Menndez Arango. His parents had twenty children, and Pedro was still a child when his father died. When Doa Maria remarried, the boy was sent to live with a relative who promised to oversee his education. Pedro and his guardian did not get along, and he ran away from home. He was found six months later in Valladolid and taken back to his foster home. Eventually he went off to fight in one of the wars with France, serving in a small armada against the French corsairs who harassed the maritime commerce of Spain.

Source: Wikipedia