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Fort Mose: America's Black Colonial Fortress of Freedom
Artifact Gallery |
Fort Mose Team |
Further Readings
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A
free black militia solider from
Havana, ca. 1770-1776 |
More
than 250 years ago, African born slaves risked
their lives to escape English plantations
in Carolina and find freedom among the Spanish
living at St. Augustine. Battling slave catchers
and dangerous swamps, they helped establish
the first American underground railroad more
than a century before the Civil War. Courageous
Africans and their Indian allies shuttled
runaways southward, rather than to the north,
as the later railroad would. In Florida the
Spanish freed the fugitives in return for
their service to the King and their conversion
to the Catholic faith. The Spanish were glad
to have skilled laborers, and the freedmen
were also welcome additions to St. Augustine's
weak military forces. In 1738 the Spanish
governor established the runaways in their
own fortified town, Gracia Real de Santa
Teresa de Mose, about two miles north of
St. Augustine, Florida. Mose (pronounced "Moh-
say") became the first legally sanctioned
free black town in the present-day United
States, and it is a critically important
site for Black American history. Mose provides
important evidence that Black American colonial
history was much more than slavery and oppression.
The men and women of Mose won their liberty
through great daring and effort and made
important contributions to Florida's multi-ethic
heritage.
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Side
view of part of the moat. Note the dark soil with shells,
which dips down to the left towards the base of the
moat. |
From 1986-1988 a team of specialists headed by Dr.
Kathleen Deagan of the Florida Museum of Natural History carried
out an archaeological and historical investigation at Ft. Mose.
Their discoveries show that African Americans played important
roles in the rivalry and confrontations between England and Spain
in the colonial Southeast. The people of Mose were guerrilla fighters
who made politically astute alliances with
the Spaniards and their Indian allies, and waged fierce war against
their former masters. The Black militia fought bravely alongside
Spanish regulars to drive off the English and Spanish forces who
attacked St. Augustine in 1740, and the Black troops also fought
in the Spanish counter-offence against Georgia two years later.
The men and women who formed the community at Mose are no longer anonymous. Centuries-old
documents recovered in the colonial archives of Spain, Florida, Cuba, and South
Carolina by historian Dr. Jane Landers tell us who lived in Mose and something
about what it was like to live there. We know that in 1759 the village consisted
of twenty-two palm thatch huts which housed thirty-seven men, fifteen women,
seven boys and eight girls. These villagers attended Mass in a wood church where
their priest also lived. The people of Mose farmed the land and the men stood
guard at the fort or patrolled the frontier. Most of the Carolina fugitives married
fellow escapees, but some married Indian women or slaves living in St. Augustine.
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Artifacts
as they are recovered during screening at Fort Mose. |
Archaeology
has filled in some of the details about daily life at Mose. In
the first season's excavation archaeologists uncovered the remains
of the fort itself, with its moat, clay-covered earth walls and
wooden buildings inside the fort. They also found a wide variety
of artifacts; military items such as gunflints, flattened bullets,
metal buckles and hardware; household items such as thimbles, nails,
ceramics, and glass bottles; food items such as burned seeds and
bone, and even a hand-made St. Christopher's medal.
The villagers came from many different tribal and cultural groups in West Africa
and were taken as slaves to English Carolina. While struggling to gain their
freedom they had extensive contact, both friendly and hostile, with many Native
American peoples, and ultimately settled among the Spanish. How much of the way
of life at Mose was African? How much was Spanish? How much was Indian or English?
Archaeologists are looking for the answers to these questions and other questions.
Whatever the
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All
soil is sifted through different screens down to 1/16
of an inch in size, in order to capture the smallest
artficat fragments, plant remains and animal bones. |
answers might
be, the archaeological investigation of Ft.Mose is helping to document
the critical, and previously unrecognized role of African Americans
on the colonial frontier, and produce a better understanding of
how various ethnic groups interacted in the Americas.
Mose stands as a monument to the courageous African Americans who risked, and
often lost, their lives in the long struggle to achieve freedom. It is the only
site of its kind in the United States, and is a precious and valuable part of
our state and national patrimony. The Florida State Legislature, with the encouragement
of Representative Bill Clark and Florida's Black Legislative Caucus, has supported
the ongoing research at Mose, and has approved acquisition of the site in order
to protect and preserve it. Thanks to their efforts Ft. Mose was named as a National
Historic Landmark in 1995, and is an important element in Florida's Black Heritage
Trail. |
You
can learn more about Ft. Mose in Ft.
Mose, Colonial America's Black Fortress
of Freedom by Kathleen Deagan and Darcie
MacMahon (University Press of Florida,
Gainesville. 1995), and by visiting
the Ft. Mose Historical Society web
site at http://www.oldcity.com/mose/ |
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