The first Greek known to set foot on U.S. soil was Don Teodoro or Theodoros, a sailor and ship caulker serving aboard the expedition of the Spanish explorer, Panfilio de Narváez, who anchored off what is now Pensacola, Florida, in 1528. Offering himself as a hostage in presumably killed by the Indians on the land. In 1763, as Florida passed from Spanish to British hands, 1,403 people from the Mediterranean, 500 of them Greeks mostly from Mani, were recruited to establish plantations near present-day New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Andrew Turnbull, a Scott, married to Maria Gracia Rubini, the daughter of a Greek merchant in London, born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, secured land about 75 miles south of St. Augustine, Florida, which he named New Smyrna in honor of his wifes birthplaceAs the colony was unsuccessful, the Greek remnant of New Smyrna, no more than 100 people, found a new life in St. Augustine, Florida in 1776. A census in 1783 reports that most of the Greeks in St. Augustine were prospering and some had established themselves as merchants, but eventually became assimilated with the local Spanish population. The first significant Greek community to develop was in New Orleans during the 1850s.
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