Fort Mose Historic State Park: A Free Black Settlement and Spanish Frontier Outpost

Site at a Glance

Country

United States

Primary era

Early Modern

Eras represented

Early Modern

Civilizations

Spanish

Site type

Military

Remains

Fort

History

Fort Mose Historic State Park preserves the site of a Spanish colonial free Black settlement and military outpost established in 1738, about two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida, United States. Officially called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, it was the first legally sanctioned settlement of formerly enslaved people in what became the United States. Its location helped protect St. Augustine and Spain’s frontier with British Georgia.

Refuge and foundation

Spanish Florida began offering refuge to people escaping enslavement in the British colonies during the late seventeenth century. Eleven fugitives arrived in St. Augustine in 1687 seeking asylum. In 1693, King Charles II of Spain promised freedom to fugitives from British colonies who converted to Catholicism and served in the colonial militia, a locally organized armed force, for four years.

In 1738, Florida governor Manuel de Montiano established Fort Mose as a free Black community and frontier defense post. The Spanish also valued its residents for their skills and military service. Montiano placed Francisco Menéndez, a Mandinga (a member of the West African Mandinka people) from the Gambia region, in charge. Menéndez had escaped enslavement in Carolina and become captain of St. Augustine’s free Black militia by 1726. He distinguished himself in the city’s defense against a British attack led by John Palmer in 1728.

Residents came from West African communities that included Kongo, Carabali, and Mandinka groups. Many had escaped enslavement in the Carolinas. Most married other refugees, while some married Indigenous women or enslaved people in St. Augustine. Residents adopted Spanish names and Catholic practices while sustaining African and Indigenous influences in daily life. The community is believed to have helped inspire the Stono Rebellion of 1739, when some rebels tried to reach Spanish Florida.

War and rebuilding

During the War of Jenkins’ Ear, an eighteenth-century conflict between Britain and Spain that included fighting in southeastern North America, British forces under Georgia governor James Oglethorpe attacked Fort Mose in 1740 and briefly occupied it. Menéndez’s militia, Spanish troops, and Indigenous allies counterattacked and retook the fort. Fighting badly damaged and destroyed it. Montiano then ordered the settlement abandoned and its residents moved to St. Augustine, after Indigenous allies of the British had killed some residents. Fort Mose inhabitants also joined Spain’s unsuccessful counterattack into Georgia in 1742.

Spain rebuilt the fort at a nearby location in 1752. Governor Fulgencio García de Solís ordered the work and the return of most free Black residents from St. Augustine. A 1759 census counted 37 men, 15 women, seven boys, and eight girls. Residents grew crops, while men guarded the fort or patrolled the frontier, and a priest served the community.

Transfer and later conflict

In 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Britain under the Treaty of Paris. About 400 enslaved and free Black inhabitants left for Cuba with the departing Spanish settlers, and the British refurbished the fort after the evacuation. Spain returned to Florida in 1784 and used the site again as a military outpost. The Florida Patriots, who sought to bring Florida under United States control, later occupied it. In 1812, a Spanish and Indigenous alliance destroyed the fort in an ambush.

Research and preservation

Historian Carter G. Woodson encouraged research into Fort Mose in the 1920s. At his request, Irene Aloha Wright gathered archival material in Seville, and in 1927 he sent Zora Neale Hurston to examine collections held by a local historical society. In 1968, local historian and amateur archaeologist Jack Williams used an old map to identify the fort’s general location, bought the property, and campaigned for excavation. Research in 1986–88 led by Kathleen Deagan, Jane Landers, and John Marron examined the site and clarified the community’s part in colonial conflicts. Further investigations took place from 2019 to 2024.

Florida acquired the land and developed it as a state park after the initial excavations. In 1994, Fort Mose was added to the National Register of Historic Places, the federal list of historic properties, and designated a National Historic Landmark, a status for properties of exceptional national importance. The Fort Mose Historical Society, founded in 1996, helped promote the site. In 2009, the National Park Service recognized Fort Mose as a precursor site in its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, a program connected with the network that helped enslaved people escape before the Civil War. Fort Mose is also recognized as a leading site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail, which highlights places associated with African American history in the state. Research has identified rising sea levels and shoreline erosion as threats to deposits on land and underwater, prompting recommendations for monitoring and mitigation.

Remains

The 24-acre park occupies elevated ground beside a salt marsh on the western side of the waterway separating the mainland from the coastal barrier islands. The settlement developed beside a creek, and its defenses changed when the Spanish rebuilt the fort nearby. The later fort combined earthen and wooden construction with the creek as part of its defensive boundary.

Setting and first settlement

The original settlement stood beside Mose Creek, now generally called Robinson Creek. The waterway gave residents access to tidal flats, oyster bars, salt marshes, and the waterways of the Tolomato River estuary, the coastal area where river water meets seawater. These waters provided food. The 1738 settlement had a defensive wall around its dwellings, a church, and an earthen fort.

The rebuilt fort and settlement

At the replacement fort, three defensive walls and a moat worked with Mose Creek, which formed the fourth defensive line. Excavations uncovered clay-daubed earthen walls and wooden structures inside the enclosure. A 1759 census described 22 palm-thatched huts. The settlement also had a wooden chapel where the priest lived, with cultivated fields around the community.

Food remains and artifacts

Animal remains indicate that residents relied heavily on marine foods and wild resources, with a diet similar to that of nearby Indigenous communities. Spanish provisions initially included corn, biscuits, and beef; residents later grew crops and became less dependent on government supplies. Excavated objects include gunflints, lead shot, metal buckles and hardware, pipestems, thimbles, nails, ceramics, bottle glass, burnt seeds, animal bone, jewelry, and other personal adornments. Investigations on land and underwater in nearby creeks also recovered domestic and military objects and food remains associated with the 1752–63 militia and other periods of occupation.

Displays and replicas

A visitor center and museum display artifacts, and interpretive panels present the site’s history. Installed replicas include a cooking hut, a small historic garden, and a Spanish flat-bottomed boat. A full-scale replica of the 1738 fort, intended to represent the original fortification accurately, was completed and opened in May 2025.