Fort Mose Historic State Park | |
Location | St. Augustine, Florida |
---|---|
Coordinates | 29°55′40″N81°19′31″W / 29.92778°N 81.32528°W |
Area | 24 acres (9.7 ha) |
NRHP reference No. | 94001645 [1] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 12, 1994 [1] |
Designated NHL | October 12, 1994 [2] |
Fort Mose (originally known as Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose [3] [Royal Grace of Saint Teresa of Mose], [4] and later as Fort Mose, [2] or alternatively Fort Moosa or Fort Mossa [5] ) is a former Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1738, the governor of Spanish Florida, Manuel de Montiano, had the fort established as a free black settlement, the first to be legally sanctioned in what would become the territory of the United States. [6] It was designated a US National Historic Landmark on October 12, 1994.
Fort Mose Historic State Park, which now includes a visitors' center and small museum, is located on the edge of a salt marsh on the western side of the waterway separating the mainland from the coastal barrier islands. The original site of the 18th-century fort was uncovered in a 1986 archeological dig. The 24-acre (9.7 ha) site is now protected as a Florida state park, administered through the Anastasia State Recreation Area. Fort Mose is the "premier site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail". [7]
In 2022, the Florida State Parks Foundation was awarded a grant from the Florida African American Cultural and Historical Grants Program to reconstruct the fort for historic purposes. Additional funds were raised from a jazz concert held shortly before the announcement. [8]
Fort Mose has become a venue for outdoor concerts. Another blues concert was held in February 2023.
As early as 1689, the colonial authorities of Spanish Florida had begun to offer asylum to escaped slaves fleeing from the Virginia Colony. One particular place of interest was St. Augustine, where the Spanish had established Mission Nombre de Dios with the help of Afro-Spanish slaves and settlers in the late 16th century.
In 1693, King Charles II of Spain issued a royal decree proclaiming that runaways would be granted asylum in Florida in return for converting to Catholicism, which required baptism with Christian names, and serving for four years in the colonial militia. [9] By 1742 the community had grown into a maroon settlement similar to those in other European colonies in the Americas, and the Spanish utilized the settlement as the first line of defence against outside incursions into Florida. [10]
In 1738, Governor Montiano ordered construction of the Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose military fort, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of St. Augustine. Any fugitive slaves discovered by the Spanish were directed to head there. If they accepted Catholicism and were baptized with Christian names, and those capable served in the colonial militia, the Spanish treated them as free. The military leader at the fort, who had since 1726 been the appointed captain of the free black militia at St. Augustine, [11] was a Mandinga born in the Gambia region of Africa, and baptized as Francisco Menéndez. He had been captured by slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to the colony of Carolina, [12] from where, he, like many other black enslaved persons, escaped and sought refuge in Spanish Florida. His status as a leader was solidified with the Spanish colonial authorities when he helped defend the city from a British attack led by John Palmer in 1728, and distinguished himself by his bravery. [13] He was the de facto leader of the maroon community at Mose.
Fort Mose was the first free black settlement legally sanctioned in what would become the United States, and had a population of about 100. [6] The village had a wall around it with dwellings inside, as well as a church and an earthen fort.
Word of the settlement of free blacks at Mose reached the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, and attracted escaping slaves. Fellow blacks and their Indian allies helped runaways flee southward to Florida. The Spanish colony needed skilled laborers, and the freedmen strengthened St. Augustine's military forces. In 1738 the Spanish governor established the runaways in their own fortified town (officially known as Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, but usually referred to simply as "Mose" in governmental documents of the period). This administrative action followed the example of colonial governments in the Caribbean, enabling the Spanish to hold and populate territory threatened by the Carolinians. [14] The existence of Fort Mose is believed to have helped inspire the Stono Rebellion in September 1739. [15] This was led by slaves who were "fresh from Africa". [16] During the Stono revolt, several dozen Africans believed to be from the Kingdom of Kongo tried to reach Spanish Florida. Some were successful, and they rapidly adjusted to life there, as they were already baptized Catholics (Kongo was a Catholic nation) and spoke Portuguese. [15]
As a military outpost, Mose defended the northern approach to St. Augustine, the capital of La Florida. Most of its inhabitants came originally from numerous different tribal and cultural groups in West Africa (predominately Kongos, Carabalis, and Mandinka) and had been sold into slavery in the colonies of North and South Carolina. [17] While struggling to make their way to freedom in Florida, they had frequent interactions with many Native American peoples. By successfully defending their freedom and Spanish Florida in the mid-18th century, the black inhabitants of Fort Mose had a significant role in contemporary political conflicts between European colonial powers in the southeast. [18]
The people of Mose made political alliances with the Spaniards along with their Indian allies, and took up arms against their former masters. Following the murder of some inhabitants at the fort by Indian allies of the British, Montiano ordered it abandoned and its inhabitants resettled in St. Augustine. The British later occupied the fort themselves.
The black militia fought beside Spanish regular soldiers against British forces under James Oglethorpe, who launched an attack on St. Augustine in 1740 during the War of Jenkins' Ear. During the ensuing conflict, a Floridian force consisting of Spanish troops, Indian auxiliaries, and free black militia counterattacked Oglethorpe's troops and defeated them, destroying the fort in the process. Oglethorpe was eventually forced to withdraw his forces back to Georgia, where the Black Spanish militia also participated in the unsuccessful Spanish counterattack in 1742.
By 1752, the Spanish had returned to and rebuilt Fort Mose, and the new governor forcibly relocated most of the free blacks back into the defensive settlement, from the more cosmopolitan, multilingual culture of St. Augustine. [19]
After East Florida was ceded to the British in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, most of the free black inhabitants emigrated to Cuba with the evacuating Spanish settlers. [20] [21] At that time, the black population at St. Augustine and Fort Mose totaled about 3,000, of whom about three quarters were escaped slaves. [22]
The British refurbished the fort after its evacuation by the Spanish, who later returned in 1784, once again using the fort as a military outpost. It was later occupied by the Florida Patriots, who sought to capture Florida for the newly established United States. An ambush by a Spanish and Indian alliance (again including black combatants) destroyed the fort for a final time in 1812. [23] [24]
A haven for refugee slaves mainly from South Carolina and Georgia, Fort Mose is considered the "premier site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail". [7] The National Park Service highlights it as a precursor site of the Underground Railroad. [6] This was the network in the antebellum years preceding the American Civil War by which slaves escaped to freedom, most often to the North and Canada, but also to the Bahamas and Mexico.
The site was abandoned when Spanish Florida was ceded to British in 1763 Treaty of Paris, with the community being evacuated by the Spanish to Cuba. The empty site was demolished by the British in 1812, during the War of 1812. In 1968, motivated by the recent (1963–1964) racial violence in St. Augustine (see St. Augustine movement), Frederick Eugene "Jack" Williams, a long time St. Augustine resident, historian and amateur archaeologist, located the site from an old map, purchased the land, and began a campaign, supported by the Black Caucus in the Florida legislature, to have the site excavated. [25]
From 1986 to 1988, a team of specialists, the Fort Mose Research Team—led by Kathleen Deagan of the Florida Museum of Natural History, Jane Landers (then with University of Florida and subsequently with Vanderbilt University), and John Marron of the University of Florida—performed an archaeological and historical investigation at Fort Mose. [26] Their work revealed the site of the original fort, [27] as well as the second facility constructed in 1752. Their discoveries showed that Africans played important roles in the geopolitical conflicts between European colonial powers in the southeast of what is now the United States.
Documents examined by historian Jane Landers in the colonial archives of Spain, Florida, Cuba, and South Carolina reveal who lived in Mose and some idea of what their lives were like in the settlement. In 1759 the village consisted of twenty-two palm thatched huts housing thirty-seven men, fifteen women, seven boys and eight girls. The people of Mose grew their own crops and their men stood guard at the fort or patrolled the frontier in service to the crown. [28] They attended Mass in a wooden chapel where their priest also lived. Most of them married other refugees, but some married Indian women or slaves who lived in St. Augustine.
In the first year of excavating the archaeologists uncovered remains of fort structures, including its moat, clay-daubed earthen walls and the wooden structures inside the walls. They found a wide assortment of artifacts: military paraphernalia such as gunflints, lead shot, metal buckles and hardware; household items such as pipestems, thimbles, nails, ceramics, and bottle glass; [29] and food remnants such as burnt seeds and bone. [30]
Fort Mose's location on the small tidal channel called Mose Creek (Caño Mose) (now generally referred to as Robinson Creek) gave the Mose settlers access to the estuarine mud flats, oyster bars, salt marshes, and other tidal creeks of the Tolomato River, or North River, which joins the Matanzas River to form Matanzas Bay, St. Augustine's harbor. This tidal estuary was a rich source of food. Analysis of faunal remains found at the site by the team zooarchaeologist Elizabeth Reitz indicated that the Mose villagers had a diet very similar to that of the nearby Indian communities, with a heavy dependence on marine proteins and wild foods. [31]
From 2019 to 2024, new archaeological investigations have been carried out at the site in a project jointly sponsored by Flagler College, the University of Florida, the University of Texas at Austin, and LAMP (Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program), the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum. These excavations are unique in that they have been conducted both on land and underwater in the surrounding creeks, resulting in a wide variety of domestic and military artifacts and food remains from the 1752-1764 Black militia along with other periods of occupation. [32]
Today, artifacts are displayed in the museum within the Visitor Center at the park. On the grounds, interpretive panels are used to illustrate the history of the site. Three replicas of historic items have been installed within the park: a choza or cooking hut, a small historic garden, and a small Spanish flat boat called a barca chata.
In January 2024, a groundbreaking ceremony was enacted for the construction of a replica of the 1738 fort on park grounds. This is intended to be a full-scale replica of the original fortification. The construction of a replica open to visitors to the park has been a goal of the Fort Mose Historical Society since the mid-1990s, though the project did not move forward in earnest until the early 2020s when major donations and grants secured the necessary funding, estimated at around $3 million. Construction is currently underway. [33]
The story of Fort Mose is told in a juvenile book published in 2010 by Deagan and Darcie MacMahon. It contains material not typically found in a children's book: an index, a long list of sources, internet resources, and documentation for all the illustrations. [34] Landers has also written a full-length history of Spanish Florida, which covers Mose in detail. [35]
In 2022, a Black-owned Fort Lauderdale distillery released Fort Mosé [ sic ] Bourbon. [36]
These panels are posted at the Visitor Center in Fort Mose Historic State Park.
St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish colonists, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.
The institution of slavery in the European colonies in North America, which eventually became part of the United States of America, developed due to a combination of factors. Primarily, the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by Europeans during the era.
The Stono Rebellion was a slave revolt that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave rebellion in the Southern Colonial era, with 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed. The uprising's leaders were likely from the Central African Kingdom of Kongo, as they were Catholic and some spoke Portuguese.
George Biassou was an early leader of the 1791 slave rising in Saint-Domingue that began the Haitian Revolution. With Jean-François and Jeannot, he was prophesied by the vodou priest Dutty Boukman to lead the revolution.
Ximenez-Fatio House Museum is one of the best-preserved and most authentic Second Spanish Period (1783-1821) residential buildings in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1973, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a Florida Heritage Landmark in 2012.
Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, that was named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."
Francisco Menéndez was a notable Spanish free Black militiaman who served the Spanish Empire in Florida during the 18th-century. He was a leader of Fort Mose, the first free Black settlement in North America.
The siege of St. Augustine was a military engagement that took place during June–July 1740. It involved a British attack on the city of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida and was a part of the much larger conflict known as the War of Jenkins' Ear.
Manuel Joaquín de Montiano y Sopelana was a Spanish General and colonial administrator who served as Royal Governor of La Florida during Florida's First Spanish Period and as Royal Governor of Panama. He defended Florida from an attack by British forces in 1740 and launched his own unsuccessful Invasion of Georgia during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
The Battle of Fort Mose was a significant action of the War of Jenkins' Ear that took place on June 14, 1740, in Spanish Florida. Captain Antonio Salgado commanded a Spanish column of 300 regular troops, backed by the free black militia under Francisco Menéndez and allied Seminole warriors consisting of Indian auxiliaries. They stormed Fort Mose, a strategically crucial position newly held by 170 British soldiers under Colonel John Palmer. Palmer and his garrison had taken the fort from the Spanish as part of James Oglethorpe's offensive to capture St. Augustine.
Negro Fort was a short-lived fortification built by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812, in a remote part of what was at the time Spanish Florida. It was intended to support a never-realized British attack on the U.S. via its southwest border, by means of which they could "free all these Southern Countries [states] from the Yoke of the Americans".
Melchor Feliú (?-1766) was the last governor in the First Spanish Period of Florida's history, governing from March 20, 1762 to July 27, 1763. Feliú oversaw the cession of Florida to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris on July 21, 1763 and the subsequent immigration of most of the province's Spanish and African inhabitants to Cuba. Some of the Native Americans living in the Spanish Catholic missions also moved away from Florida at this time.
Fulgencio García de Solís was the acting Governor of Florida from 1752 to 1755, and Governor of Honduras from 1757 to 1759.
Slavery in Florida occurred among indigenous tribes and during Spanish rule. Florida's purchase by the United States from Spain in 1819 was primarily a measure to strengthen the system of slavery on Southern plantations, by denying potential runaways the formerly safe haven of Florida. Florida became a slave state, seceded, and passed laws to exile or enslave free blacks. Even after abolition, forced labor continued.
St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the continental United States, was founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The Spanish Crown issued an asiento to Menéndez, signed by King Philip II on March 20, 1565, granting him various titles, including that of adelantado of Florida, and expansive privileges to exploit the lands in the vast territory of Spanish Florida, called La Florida by the Spaniards. This contract directed Menéndez to explore the region's Atlantic coast and report on its features, with the object of finding a suitable location to establish a permanent colony from which the Spanish treasure fleet could be defended and Spain's claimed territories in North America protected against incursions by other European powers.
Angola was a prosperous community of up to 750 maroons that existed in Florida from 1812 until Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, at which point it was destroyed. The location was along the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida, near Manatee Mineral Springs Park. The exact location is expansive, ranging from where the Braden River meets the Manatee River down to Sarasota Bay; archaeological research focuses on the Manatee Mineral Spring—a source of fresh water and later the location of the Village of Manatee two decades after the destruction of the maroon community. Archaeological evidence has been found and the archaeology report by Uzi Baram is on file with the Florida Division of Historical Resources of the Florida Department of State. In 2019, the National Park Service added the excavated location at Manatee Mineral Springs Park to the Network to Freedom.
Kathleen A. Deagan is an American archaeologist who primarily focuses on excavations in Florida and the Caribbean. Known for her historic archaeology which uncovered the colonial past of La Florida, and work in St. Augustine, she has received multiple awards and honors, including the Award of Merit in 1992 and the J. C. Harrington Award in 2004, both bestowed by the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Jane Gilmer Landers is an historian of colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World who specializes in the history of Africans and their descendants. She is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, and former associate dean of the college of arts & science.
African Americans have made considerable contributions to the history and development of Jacksonville, Florida. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population make up of African American in Jacksonville Florida is 30.7%.
The Martyrs of La Florida were a group of Native American and Spanish Catholics killed in Florida during the Spanish Empire's colonial expansion into North America. The group of 86 individuals includes a number of priests and laypeople, killed by Native Americans and subjects of the British Empire. The lead martyr of the cause is the Native American layman Antonio Cuipa. Fr Luis Cáncer, OP is among the others killed, alongside a number of Dominicans, Jesuits, Franciscans, and various laypeople.