On 20 April 1564, it became the port of departure for the French expedition of René Goulaine de Laudonnière to the New World where he created the first French colony at Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville, Florida.

During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, Jacksonville and nearby St. Augustine became popular winter resorts for the rich and famous.

During this time, Jacksonville also became a banking and insurance center, with companies such as Barnett Bank, Atlantic National Bank, Florida National Bank, Prudential, Gulf Life, Afro-American Insurance, Independent Life and American Heritage Life thriving in the business district.

According to TVS president Eddie Einhorn, the games actually got decent ratings at first, but affiliates started bailing out after the Philadelphia and Jacksonville free-ticket scandals, a trickle that became a flood after two teams moved in the middle of the season and two more folded altogether.

The area that became Duval County was home to the 16th-century French colony of Fort Caroline, and saw increased European settlement in the 18th century with the establishment of Cowford, later renamed Jacksonville.

Earl moved to Jacksonville, FL and became a successful land speculator.

Brown and Etheridge became engaged in May 2010, when Brown proposed during a performance at the Funk Fest in Jacksonville, Florida.

He continued to be engrossed in music, and in Jacksonville he met Thomas Ward, who became his teacher in counterpoint and composition.

* Jacksonville Stallions – folded before playing a game, and evidently became the Green Cove Lions.

In 2006, for the third year in a row, World became the official air-travel provider of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League.

In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became unshakably convinced that Robert was deathly ill. She traveled to Chicago to see him, but found he wasn't sick.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Brown earned a bachelor of science from Florida A & M University in 1969 In college she became a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, one of four African American Greek letter sororities in the United States.

The Miracle of Downtown Jacksonville, as First Baptist has become known as, continued in 1982 when Dr. Jerry Vines became Co-pastor with Dr. Lindsey, Jr. Up until 1988, the church had expanded to nine buildings and membership went from 2, 385 to 14, 172.

Two factions developed in Jacksonville that eventually became the major statewide camps, the Antis and the Straightouts.

Miners began prospecting for gold in the watershed, including a Bear Creek tributary called Jackson Creek, where they established a mining camp in 1851 at the site of what later became Jacksonville.

During the conversion, SEFTY became NFTY-SER, and then in 2001 split into two regions: NFTY-SAR ( the previous Northern Region of SEFTY / NFTY-SER, plus the Jacksonville and Tallahassee TYGs ) and NFTY-STR ( the remainder of the Southern Region of SEFTY / NFTY-SER ; STR is pronouned " star ").

The school underwent several stages of growth and development through the years and in 1923, it merged with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville, Florida and became a co-ed high school.

Her Berlin-born father immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1891 and became a naturalized citizen ; her mother was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, of Portuguese and Irish extraction.

In 1851, he became a music teacher and band leader in Jacksonville, Illinois.

In 1974 he became Commanding Officer of Patrol Squadron TWENTY-FOUR ( VP-24 ), a P-3C " Orion " Squadron stationed in Jacksonville, Florida and was promoted to Captain following his squadron command tour.

WTLV became the de facto official station of the Jacksonville Jaguars when the team joined the NFL in 1995, by virtue of NBC owning the rights to the American Football Conference.

Originally built in 1927, it was radically reconstructed in 1994 in preparation for the Jacksonville Jaguars inaugural season and became Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, now EverBank Field.

In 2003 he became a wide receivers coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and was their quarterbacks coach.

Contributing to this decline in ticket sales is the fact that Jacksonville is one of the league's smallest markets, though its stadium is relatively large ; since 2005 the team has covered nearly 10, 000 of the stadium's 73, 000 total seats with tarp in order to lower the stadium's official capacity to a more typical size and reduce blackouts.

They dominated the Sunshine Hockey League, finishing with the best record and winning the championship in each year of the league's existence, defeating the Jacksonville Bullets each time in the finals.

In 2003, the Texans introduced an alternative red jersey ( most of the time worn in divisional games against the Jacksonville Jaguars ) with blue trim.

While attendance figures were stagnant for most of the NFL, Jacksonville saw an increase of 36. 5 %, by far the highest in the league, and had none of their home games blacked out.

For most of their short history, the Jaguars did what many other NFL teams located in subtropical climates traditionally practice: wear their white jerseys at home during the first half of the season — forcing opponents to wear their dark ones under the sweltering autumns in Jacksonville.

Jacksonville most recently wore white in their 2011 regular season game against the Cincinnati Bengals, and for the 2011 regular season home opener wore all white against the Tennessee Titans.

Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits ; with a population of 821, 784, it is the most populous city proper in Florida and the Southeast, and the eleventh most populous in the United States.

Jacksonville, like most large cities in the United States, suffered from negative effects of rapid urban sprawl after World War II.

Hurricane Dora as seen on Daytona Beach WSR-57 radar in September 1964. Jacksonville has suffered less damage from hurricanes than most other east coast cities, although the threat does exist for a direct hit by a major hurricane.

Like most of northeast Florida, the Jacksonville Beach area was originally inhabited by the Timucua peoples.

In 1968 most residents of Duval County voted to approve consolidation between the county and the City of Jacksonville.

Gallatin's most famous past resident was the singer-songwriter, Johnny Horton, who graduated from the high school at Gallatin before going on to college in Jacksonville, Texas, at Lon Morris College.

Finegan did not exploit the retreat, allowing most of the fleeing Union forces to reach Jacksonville.

By 1968 Southern's route system extended from its most northerly stop at the Tri-Cities regional airport in Tennessee south to New Orleans and Jacksonville.

It has been spotted twice in the Western Hemisphere, the most recent being on May 14, 2009, in Jacksonville, Florida.

The most frequently cited reason is Georgia's 4 – 18 win-loss record in the series since 1990, leading to questions about whether Jacksonville, located from Athens but only from Gainesville, is truly a neutral site.

Having lost most upper-class players to service in World War II, the 1942 Florida Gators brought an inexperienced 3 – 4 squad into Jacksonville for the 1942 contest with Georgia.

The district includes most of Jacksonville, as well as a small sliver of Tallahassee.

Though he also made four starts with the Mets in 1967, McGraw spent most of the season, and all of 1968 in the minor leagues with the Jacksonville Suns.

In 2000, Jackson County had a population of about 181, 300, most of them living in the Bear Creek Valley cities of Ashland ( 19, 500 ), Talent ( 5, 600 ), Phoenix ( 4, 100 ), Medford ( 63, 200 ), Central Point ( 12, 500 ), and Jacksonville ( 2, 200 ).

WTEV also gained most Jacksonville Jaguars games, as part of the NFL on CBS package that covered the American Football Conference of the National Football League.

Although the ride was initially designed for the New York to San Francisco () crowd, the most popular route is the ride from Jacksonville, Florida to San Diego, California.

In 1998 at AA Jacksonville Suns, he won the Southern League MVP award, as he batted. 322 with a league-high 28 home runs, 47 doubles ( 3rd-most in the minor leagues ), and 146 RBIs ( most in the minors in 1998 and most ever in the Southern League ).