"I hadn't the slightest clue," says Hilda Pomares y Treto.

"I didn't know at all," says Alberto Martinez-Ramos.

"I had no idea," says Peter Carr.

The surprise that awaited all three? Florida. Before their families were Cuban, they were Floridian. Before they dwelled on the island, they made their home on the peninsula.

The discovery was a delight of symmetry for them and others who came to Florida from Cuba. In a sense, they were returning home, back to the land where their families lived for generations during the Spanish colonial period in Florida, which spanned almost three centuries.

The families represent not only Florida's past but its future. They are metaphors for the Latin dynamic that is one of the engines propelling Florida into the future. Hispanics are the largest minority in the state and the nation, and their population and influence continue to grow.

"Florida was Hispanic," says historian Jane Landers, "and it's becoming Hispanic again."

St. Augustine, where most of the families lived, was founded in 1565. Except for 20 years when it belonged to Britain, the town was the northernmost outpost of the Spanish crown in the Caribbean until 1821, when the Americans arrived.

Florida was a part of Spain for a half-century longer than it has been a part of the United States. It's no wonder that for many Cuban families there is a comfortable connection: For centuries, Havana was St. Augustine's big sister. Ships routinely sailed between the Cuban capital and the Florida frontier, carrying government officials, soldiers, priests, mail, goods and foodstuffs.

Nor was Florida a mere stopover or a temporary military posting. Peter Carr, 53, a genealogy expert who lives in Palm Coast, came to this country 42 years ago today as part of Operation Pedro Pan, in which 14,000 Cuban children were sent by their parents to the United States.

He started researching his family in 1965. Records kept by the Catholic Church are invaluable to Cubans researching their roots, especially because they cannot return to Cuba to pursue family links. Priests in St. Augustine kept detailed documents of every wedding, birth, baptism and death going back to 1595.

More than a dozen years after Carr began his research, he stumbled across the family's connection to Florida. "From that point," says Carr, "it was zoom, backward into Florida."

What he found was this: Of the 13 generations he has traced, the six most recent were Cuban. But before that, his family lived in Florida even longer -- for seven generations, or about 180 years. To offer a bit of perspective, that is a period roughly equal to the number of years Florida has belonged to the United States.

For many Cuban-Americans, their tie to Florida relates to one of the most significant events in the colony's history: the coming of the British. After possessing the land for more than two centuries, Spain reluctantly gave Florida to the British in 1763 in exchange for Havana, which the British had captured.

The Spanish didn't think kindly of the British, and the feeling was mutual. So when the British came in, the Spanish, almost every one of them, left town.

Of St. Augustine's 3,100 residents, only six to eight stayed. The rest eventually left for Havana.

Because St. Augustine was a military town, most of the men were soldiers. They soon took their places in the military establishment of Cuba.

"The Florida families were prestigious" in Cuba, says Sherry Johnson, a historian at Florida International University in Miami. "Being Floridian meant something. This was a society that venerated military service, and you had families that had come to Florida and fought for the king for generations."

When Spain regained Florida 20 years later, only about 400 Floridanos of the original 3,100 returned to St. Augustine. You can't blame anyone for not wanting to trade the good life they had found in Havana -- a thriving city of 30,000 -- for the boredom and drudgery of the Florida frontier.

It feels like home

Visitors find St. Augustine delightful and charming -- the narrow streets of the historic district, the restored houses and the huge stone fort. For Cuban-Americans, though, the connection is almost visceral.

Alberto Martinez-Ramos, 53, came to Miami from Cuba in 1962. After a year, he moved to New Jersey, but has lived in Miami since 1966. St. Augustine, he says, "gives me a sense that neither Miami nor any other place does: It gives me a sense of belonging, that part of me belongs there. It also gives me a sense of tranquillity."

The town feels like home to Martha Ibanez-Zervoudakis, who lives near Fort Lauderdale and visits St. Augustine three or four times a year with her husband.

"When I visited the Sanchez house [where her ancestors lived], it felt very creepy, but not in a bad way," says Ibanez-Zervoudakis, one of the founders of the Cuban Genealogy Club. "That's why I love St. Augustine."

Last year, Hilda Pomares y Treto of Miami made her first visit to St. Augustine, walking the same ancient streets as her great-grandfather nine generations back.

"I was thrilled to be there," says Pomares, 60.

Her ancestor, Domingo Leturiondo, was a military man who came to St. Augustine around 1640. He married Anna Solana, of the prominent local family, in 1648; they had four daughters and a son. (The Solana connection, by the way, makes Pomares a member of one of Florida's, and the United States', oldest families.)

Despite the separation of 350 years, Domingo exerts a powerful tug on Pomares.

"I have 40 book binders of research on more important people," she says, "but I am fascinated by this guy.

"I can relate to Domingo because he was exiled and had to come to a terribly foreign place. That's not exactly like me because Florida is similar to Cuba, and I was always surrounded by familiar things. I was never in a totally alien place like this man was.

"He really adopted this new land for his family, and maybe that is what makes me feel close to him."

The visit to St. Augustine made Domingo and the rest of her Florida ancestors "come alive," she says. "I can imagine a lot of things about how they lived."

While touring the Castillo de San Marcos, the fort on the bay, and walking the ancient streets, Pomares thought to herself, "I know for a fact that he stepped on these stones."

Pomares admires the tenacity of her ancestors and appreciates that they lived in a time very different from our own.

"Life was hard," Pomares says. "I always say I would rather be poor in the 21st century than a king in the 17th century, thank you very much.

"There were no antibiotics, no aspirin, the doctors would bleed you to death . . . the food was scarce, the diet was horrible, the water was impossible to drink."

It was Domingo's grandson, Francisco, who moved to Cuba from Florida. Pomares isn't sure of the exact date, but she has a record of Francisco's marriage in Cuba in 1699.

Almost 300 years later, in 1990, Pomares completed the circle. She moved from Madrid to Miami, ending her family's long exile from Florida.

Ken Clarke can reached at kclarke@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5485.

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