Maria Gracia Turnbull: The Untold Story of the First Greek Woman in America

Maria Gracia Turnbull. Public Domain

The past of the Greek diaspora successful the United States is often traced to the monolithic waves of migration successful the precocious 19th and aboriginal 20th centuries.

However, the existent roots of this communicative scope overmuch further back, to the sun-drenched, tumultuous shores of 18th-century Florida. At the bosom of this early, often overlooked section stands a pistillate of analyzable identity: Maria Gracia (née du Robin) Turnbull.

In 1768, Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a Scottish doc and entrepreneur, launched a monolithic colonization task known arsenic New Smyrna, located connected the eastbound seashore of Florida.

He recruited astir 1,400 indentured servants from crossed the Mediterranean—a divers radical consisting of Greeks, Minorcans, Italians, and others. Among them was his wife, Maria Gracia, calved into a salient Levantine household successful Smyrna, the cosmopolitan jewel of the Ottoman Empire.

Maria Gracia is wide recognized successful humanities accounts arsenic the archetypal pistillate of Greek—or, much accurately, Greek-Levantine—origin to settee permanently successful what would go the United States.

Maria Gracia: A Greek pioneer successful St. Augustine

Her travel was 1 of immense hardship. The New Smyrna colony was a calamity of epidemic proportions. Within conscionable a fewer years, hundreds of settlers perished owed to disease, starvation, and the brutal conditions imposed by the colony’s overseers.

Throughout this decennary of suffering, Maria Gracia served arsenic a changeless fig of enactment and resilience. She was not simply the woman of the founder; she was a pistillate of precocious societal lasting who recovered herself successful a raw, untamed wilderness.

When the colony yet collapsed successful 1777, the survivors sought refuge successful St. Augustine. It was present that these pioneers, including Maria Gracia, established the archetypal imperishable Greek-related assemblage successful North America.

The St. Photios accumulation interprets the past of the Greek Orthodox religion successful St. Augustine. Credit: Visit St. Augustine

Today, the St. Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine successful St. Augustine stands connected the tract wherever these survivors erstwhile gathered to sphere their religion and culture, serving arsenic a testament to their enduring spirit.

The aboriginal years of Maria Gracia’s beingness were defined by transition. Following the nonaccomplishment of the New Smyrna venture, she and her hubby yet moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a metropolis that served arsenic a hub for the assemblage elite.

It was successful Charleston that she spent the last section of her life, passing distant successful 1798. She and Dr. Turnbull are buried there, marking the last resting spot of a pistillate who bridged 2 worlds.

‘Greek’ was a broader word astatine the time

While historians often statement the circumstantial taste labels of the era—noting that “Greek” successful the 18th period was a broader word for those from the Levant who held to the Eastern Orthodox tradition—Maria Gracia remains the symbolic matriarch of the Greek-American experience.

Her beingness embodies the resilience required of the earliest pioneers. She arrived connected a chaotic frontier, navigated the illness of a expansive dream, and helped prolong a assemblage that would yet bloom into 1 of the astir vibrant diaspora groups successful American history.