Charles Ellis has heard Fort Mose visitors ask ‘So, where’s the fort?’ toward the end of their trip to the state park for years — like a missing puzzle piece.
Today, 30 years and $3.1 million after the idea was first floated, the life-sized, historically accurate reconstruction of the 1738 fort of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, or Fort Mose (pronounced “MOH-say”), opened this month on the original 40-acre waterfront site in St. Augustine.
Ellis, president of the Fort Mose Historical Society, said the addition will complete the fort’s inspirational experience. With muskets perched on the wall, small wooden bowls filled with musket balls on a window ledge, card games and dominoes sprawled across a table and satchels of fake oranges and corn in corners, Fort Mose allows guests to imagine what life would have been like through the food, games and guns.
The military and residential community of Fort Mose in St. Augustine, established in 1738, was the first legally-sanctioned free Black settlement for nearly 100 Africans escaping English enslavement.
Dorothy “Deeh” Israel, member of the Fort Mose Historical Society and founder of The Women of Mose, said the fort is a symbol of the fight for freedom nearly 250 years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.
“The first Black settlement wasn’t Jamestown — it’s here,” Israel said. “We need to know where we came from. This is American history that was hidden. We should take pride that people fought for their freedom. This says it all the fort is the last beacon of what took place for freedom. It’s about survival today.”
To keep their newfound freedom, the people declared themselves Catholics and pledged allegiance to King Charles III of Spain. Men of Fort Mose served in an all-Black militia that was the first line of defense against the British, playing a vital role in the fight for America between England and Spain.
In 1763, when the Spanish ceded to England and the fort’s citizens were faced with enslavement again, its inhabitants escaped to Cuba and the fort was abandoned.
After withstanding a war and the rising levels of St. Augustine’s swamp waters, it was destroyed by the passage of time.
Julia Woodward, CEO of the Florida State Parks Foundation, said the reconstructed fort is the largest project in the state parks’ 90-year history, making it a “historic moment for the state, the nation and everyone who believes in the preservation of freedom.”
“This is a special project that has been a labor of love,” Woodward said. “Telling the story of Fort Mose is one of our biggest objectives. Having the tangible fort will allow the history about the brave men and women who risked their lives for freedom to be told better. The courage and freedom is the lasting impact and legacy that we are so proud to be apart of. I’ve said to everyone that this will be the best ribbon cutting that the Florida State Parks has had in our 90-year history.”
Kathleen Breenan, president of the Florida State Parks Foundation, said the reconstruction has “far exceeded our expectations” and that she “believes this will inspire visitors from all over the world to experience what can only be seen here.”
Lessons about Fort Mose are taught in Florida’s fourth grade social studies classes, with many students in St. Johns county taking field trips to the historic state park. The society’s Learning Resources Team works to improve school curriculum and textbooks in tandem with state standards to ensure the history of Fort Mose is taught in schools.
Woodward said there is already proof Fort Mose interests students of all ages.
“We have evidence that (Fort Mose can have life-long inspiration and impact) from looking back to the 1989 excavation led by Dr. Kathleen Deagan and then grad student Jane Landers, who is now a professor at Vanderbilt,” she said. “That experience led Jane to dedicate rest of her career and dedicating her life to finding descendants of Fort Mose. We are so grateful for their involvement and accurate findings.”
When she was just a student and had yet to discover the fort’s actual existence more than 50 years ago, Kathleen Deagan never imagined having the physical fort behind her as a reality. Today, as distinguished research curator of archaeology and adjunct professor of anthropology and history at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History, she is proud to have participated in both initially finding the fort and the process to make the reconstruction historically-accurate.
“Some may ask ‘How did you know what it looked like when that was so long ago?’” Deagan said. “I’m proud to be able to say, (the fort) is as authentic as we can make it be at this point in time. This is not just Black history or Spanish history, it’s our history.”
Jane Landers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt professor of history and director of Slave Societies Digital Archive, said the course she took with Deagan as a graduate student changed her life and the fort’s completion is a “dream come true.”
“It started with Kathy. I will continue to dedicate the rest of my career to finding out what I can for you all,” said Landers, who researches the African origins of Fort Mose residents and information about their descendants.
She said she was grateful for the work the historical society does to make Fort Mose’s history comprehensible for all who visit, saying “the work (the society does) reaches the public more than my academic work.”
Focusing on pivotal moments throughout the fort’s existence, the Fort Mose Historic Society hosts historical reenactment programs events throughout the year, including the Flight to Freedom, showing the journey enslaved people took on the Underground Railroad to make it to the fort.
During the Battle of Bloody Mose, which is on June 28, reenactors reenact the Fort Militia working with Yamassee Indians to defeat British troops after the English captured Spanish Forts in 1740.
Head Chief Se’Khu Hadjo of the Yamassee Indian Tribe of Seminoles has participated in the event for several years, along with other members of the tribe. Hadjo said the historical society is one of the rare groups that accurately tells the story of Black and Indian people working together.
“There were Indians that didn’t look like the Western Indian,” Hadjo said. “The Yamassee Indians had darker skin, so it was easy for (the English) to enslave and erase our identity rather than go overseas to get people from Africa.”
After the War of 1715, a two-year war in South Carolina between the Yamassee Indians and British settlers, Yamassee Indians living in Florida would travel back and forth rescuing the Yamassee people who were being kidnapped and enslaved in South Carolina. The Yamassee escaping enslavement were called “Seminoli” (Seminole), meaning runaway.
“We were originally here and know the land,” Hadjo said. “Harriett (Tubman) learned the Underground Railroad from the Yamassee Indians and other Indian tribes. Fort Mose tells the story of those who dared to do something difficult and the truth about what that looks like.”
Woodward said there is still more to be done.
“There is more work to be done to make sure the story is told across the state and nation,” she said. “We hope that one day this story of the erected fort will make it into the Smithsonian for our efforts.”
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