That the Spanish colonials, not the British, were the first in North America to license a pharmacist (in 1769 in New Orleans) and were also the first to regulate pharmacy as a separate profession, points to the importance of non-British colonial governments and, indeed, settlers from mainland Europe throughout North America, in importing and translating the more modern pharmacy methods, standards and ways of organization and regulation—developing in Europe since at least the 1600s—for application in the infant United States.
"Franco-Spanish" Louisiana "more clearly reflected [pharmacys] development in Continental Europe."  Influential milestones achieved in 18th-century Louisiana included the February 12th, 1770 edict from the governor in New Orleans, Don Alexandre OReilly, delineating the responsibilities and boundaries of medicine, surgery and pharmacy and marking the first legal recognition of pharmacy as a distinct discipline in the territories that would become the United States.  Though the number of pharmacists licensed under this system in Spanish Louisiana never surpassed the single-digits, OReillys decree and its ethical code for pharmacists set an important precedent future developments would build upon.  It also brought on-line an important independent pipeline of licensed druggists, albeit a small pipeline, to add to the scant supply of Old World apothecaries who had immigrated to set up shop in the colonies.
Of the few apothecaries imported from Europe, those of Jesuit training had a long-felt impact in both New Spain and New France; so great was Jesuit involvement in "care of the sick" in their foreign missions, in fact, they sought and received a papal exemption from the ban on clerics serving in medical roles.  Two dedicated "pharmacopoles or apothecary brethren" Jesuits are listed under the heading "Missions of North America in New France" in Society of Jesus personnel records for the "Province of France at the End of the Year 1749."  Jesuit contributions, especially in translating Native American ethnobotany into medicines for European use, were highly influential as pharmacy developed in North America.