Santa Elena Desktop Font

In the early months of 1577, a pregnant and recently widowed Spanish noblewoman arrived in Mexico City with her two young children. Doña Catalina Barbón had spent the previous five years living in the northern Spanish settlement of Santa Elena, present-day Parris Island, South Carolina.

There are conflicting accounts of the events that caused her to flee from Santa Elena eight months earlier. Some claimed that doña Catalina’s husband and several other soldiers had been killed when surrounding Native forces launched an attack on the settlement. In the confusion that followed, doña Catalina and her two children barely escaped to one of three ships in the harbor. Upon her arrival in Mexico City, doña Catalina appealed to Mexico’s High Court for financial support.

This font includes letters pulled directly from the petition she left behind, a document that provides a rare glimpse into the challenges faced by many women of the colonial period, as well as their tales of resilience and survival.

Thanks so much for purchasing a font and supporting La Florida! The process for installing fonts depends on a number of factors, including what type of computer you have. If you own a PC, installation will depend on the version you are using. YouTube has some great videos for how to install new fonts to a variety of PCs. If you are using a Mac computer, we recommend this short video. YouTube is also a great resource if you are using any other computer, such as a Google Chromebook.

The letters used to create these unique fonts varied widely, and the spacing for many of them extended beyond one or two lines. In order to see the letters fully, we recommend that you set your spacing to double when writing in one of our fonts. 

Thank you for your support and we hope you enjoy your font!

Designed and Programmed by Melissa Morales, in collaboration with OverlaB Intelligence and La Florida.