Rediscovering Fort Mose

New research and a new fort bring new life to the story of America’s first free Black community.

By Janet Scherberger

More than 50 years ago, archaeologists began the painstaking work of uncovering the mystery of Fort Mose. Those efforts culminated last year with two milestones: the opening of a replica of the fort and, a few months later, the release of the second edition of Fort Mose: Colonial America’s Black Fortress of Freedom, 30 years after its first printing.

“It is a happy coincidence that the University Press of Florida folks recognized it had been 30 years and it was a good opportunity to re-release the book,” says Kathleen Deagan, co-author and emerita professor and archaeologist at the University of Florida, “and then the state Parks Service happened to be opening the fort. The timing was perfect.”

The 200-page edition is packed with illustrations and insights into the history and archeology of Fort Mose (pronounced Mow-ZAY). Located about two miles north of St. Augustine, the fort was built by the Spanish in 1738 as a first line of defense against the British. It was garrisoned by formerly enslaved people who had escaped British plantations and earned their freedom in exchange for converting to Catholicism and fighting for the Spanish crown. It is recognized as the first free Black settlement in the United States.

Deagan started exploring the fort’s origins in 1971 when a UF professor whose research focused on plantations sought to study a community of free Blacks instead. Funding was limited, but his research got a shot in the arm in 1984 when state lawmakers on a trolley tour of St. Augustine heard about the fort and decided  to fund deeper research. That allowed researchers to travel to Spain, where they found documents that directed excavation to a small island and surrounding waters. Developers had previously dredged the area for fill dirt that now lies under Flagler College and Cordova Street, one of St. Augustine’s main thoroughfares.

The initial archaeological digs uncovered evidence of the moat and earthen walls.

“One of the most important things we had to do was convince people this was Fort Mose, because some people doubted it existed,” Deagan says. “Usually history provokes archaeology. In this case archaeology provoked history, which was even more important.”

Fort Mose was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994 and added to the National Register of Historic Places. Deagan published her book the following year.

More than 30 years of additional research went into the expanded second edition, co-authored by Darcie MacMahon, director emerita of exhibits and public programs at the Florida Museum of Natural History at UF, and Jane Landers, professor of history and director of the Slave Societies Digital Archive at Vanderbilt University.

The new edition has more imagery, and considers the meaning of the fort in the context of the present day.

“It’s a different book,” Deagan says. “A lot has changed.”

The Fort Mose Historical Society was created in 1996. The fort was listed on the Florida Black Heritage Trail in 2022, and work on the replica started in 2023. Deagan, her co-authors, and other archaeologists and historians collaborated with the Florida Park Service on the design.

“We had to cobble it together based on descriptions and military documents and other forts built at the same time, plus the little bit of archeological evidence that we had,” she says.

Those documents revealed the general shape of the fort, and accounts of a British defeat in battle there revealed that the moat was filled with prickly pear and Spanish bayonet.

“The Park Service was committed to getting it right—even to the point of replacing nails that weren’t historically accurate,” Deagan says.

Today, thanks to the combined impact of the replica, the Fort Mose Historical Society, media coverage, and events like the Fort Mose Jazz and Blues Series, the extraordinary story of the fort and the people who lived, fought, and died there is finally reaching a wider audience.