About Gregory Town

The original population of Taino, or Arawaks, was mostly deported by the Spanish to work in the mines of Hispaniola, where they died out by 1550. The island is believed to have been unoccupied until the first European settlers - puritan pilgrims - arrived in 1648 from Bermuda. These settlers, known as the "Eleutherian Adventurers", gave the island its current name - eleutheria means "freedom" in Greek, while eleuthera means "free". Some people think that Christopher Columbus may have come to Eleuthera before any other islands in the West Indies. The island was quite prosperous in the period from 1950 to 1980, attracting several prominent American industrialists such as Arthur Vining Davis, Henry J. Kaiser, and Juan Trippe. Frequent visitors included movie stars like Robert De Niro as well as the Prince of Wales and a pregnant Princess of Wales