The History of Saint Augustine You Never Knew

St. Augustine, Florida, is beautiful, at least the historic district. It has a seedy side like most cities, but that isn’t today’s topic; maybe I’ll get back to it another time. St. Augustine is the longest, continually inhabited European-founded city in the United States — it markets itself as the “Nation’s Oldest City.” With all respect to the Pulitzer Prize-winning series by the New York Times, the 1619 Project. Slavery in America didn’t begin with twenty slaves landing in coastal Virginia. Florida was getting busy with enslaved people long before that. When Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded St. Augustine in 1565, he brought slaves with him.

I live in Orlando, Florida, just over one hundred miles from St. Augustine. I’d been there previously a few times but without taking a serious interest in the history of enslaved people. I’d been planning a trip to some history-rich sites in Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia that got derailed by COVID-19. I decided to take a day trip to St. Augustine to see what the nation’s oldest city was saying about its history.

My first stop was the Oldest House Museum, which technically is the oldest surviving Spanish Colonial dwelling. The St. Augustine Historical Society runs it. The complex includes the Gonzalez-Alvarez House, the Manucy Museum of local history, and the Edwards Gallery. One would usually take a guided tour through the grounds, but social distancing required some changes. I went to the Gonzalez-Alvarez House, where I met John, an energetic elderly white man who provided information about the home and its history and answered questions. He didn’t walk me through the home as would have occurred pre-COVID-19 but stood in a doorway or in a window to assist.

Spaniards in 1565 must have been relatively short given the low ceilings. Each room was decorated the way it might have been when inhabited by the various families that had resided there. John was there to describe the daily life of the residents. He referred a few times to the “young boys” who ran out to gather firewood or catch fish. Given the focus on the Spaniards and English who had alternately lived in the home, one could get the impression the “young boys” were the families’ children. On the way out, I asked John, “the young boys, they were slaves, weren’t they?”

John didn’t miss a beat, “The Spanish had both free and enslaved black people with them, and the houseboys were indeed slaves.” He transitioned into describing a place I should visit, Fort Mose, which played an important part in the Spanish defense from the English who would come from the north. Black people, free and enslaved, inhabited fort Mose. One of its military leaders whose name he couldn’t recall offhand had demonstrated great prowess in fighting off the Brits. John helped provide walking directions to the Slave Market. However, they “didn’t sell many slaves there,” though another site was a couple of blocks away with more transactions. On the map I was given, the Slave Market location was shown as the “Old Market,” with no regard for its former purpose.

The St Augustine Slave Market gets no results on Google Maps. While the city heavily promotes its Spanish heritage, even its Native American history, slavery, while not omitted, takes a back burner. The slave market is an open-air pavilion at the intersection of King Street and the scenic State Road A1A, which runs along the coast. It might easily be mistaken as a picnic area rather than where people bid on human cargo unloaded from ships after checking their teeth and evaluating the Black women for their projected breeding capacity. Some people deny that it was ever used for the sale of slaves.

“I have seen the legend of the old slave market. I want to state that this is a fabrication, to pander to the morbid tastes of a certain class that come or came down to our section with the hope and desire to see only the revolting and objectional side of the picture. This market when I knew it stood near the plaza if my memory serves me, and only fish meats and vegetables were sold there.” — J. Gardner in a 1914 Letter to the Editor of the St. Augustine Record

In the 1880s and 1890s, the market was heavily promoted in flyers and postcards so people could “come to see” where enslaved people were sold. It was a tourist attraction, a nostalgic relic. Indeed, the market was originally used for the sale of meats, vegetables, and fish. The slave ships arrived irregularly while people ate every day. It would be inaccurate to depict the location as a place where only slaves were sold. It is inauthentic to pretend it never happened as well. Today, the site remains unmarketed and mostly unexplained. In the 1960s, civil rights protests were held there by Martin Luther King, Jr and Andrew Young. A monument to the Civil Rights Movement was placed there in 2011, though slavery is generally unmentioned. It’s now a place for civic festivals and picnics.

My next stop was Fort Mose Historic State Park. The park encompasses forty acres and includes birding, canoeing and kayaking, and geo-seeking for lost treasures. There is no cost except for touring the Visitor Center. I was greeted by a youngish white woman who collected the two-dollar fee. She started the video, which during busier times, runs every fifteen minutes. In studying the history of Black people coming to St. Augustine, it’s critical to know that enslaved people had been fleeing to Florida since the late 1600s. St. Augustine had an all-Black militia as early as 1683. In 1693, King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who escaped to Florida, accepted conversion to Catholicism, and was baptized. I’ll be coming back to that.

That “freedom” promised slaves fleeing to Florida was not exactly what comes to mind when you imagine the word free. Black people were able to marry and own property. On the other hand, they did almost all the manual labor and were under white people’s supervision. None of these conditions were mentioned in the video.

There was a curfew for Black people, and they were often conscripted to military service. Fort Mose was strategically located to help protect Spanish treasure ships but, more importantly, to be the first casualties when attacked by British forces, which happened relatively often. While the pledge of “freedom” was generally honored to a degree by the Spanish. In 1729, Florida Governor Antonio de Benavides sold many of the newcomers at public auction for reparations to their original owners in the Carolinas. British forces had threatened to recover their losses by force, so paying the owners for their loss was the compromise.

Many of the re-enslaved men were veterans of the Yamassee War, which ran from 1715–1717 in South Carolina. There was no Georgia at the time, so South Carolina bordered Florida. Enslaved people and the Yamassee tribe battled British forces who were aligned with different tribes. With the battle faring poorly, Black people and many of the Yamassee tribe fled south to Florida’s refuge. Prominent citizens of St. Augustine mostly owned the re-enslaved men though some were sent to Cuba. One of those re-enslaved men, Francisco Menendez, was appointed to command a slave militia in 1726. That militia defended St Augustine against a British invasion in 1728. Despite earning numerous accolades for their service, they remained slaves.

After the failed British invasion, Florida sent canoes of the Yamassee War veterans into South Carolina to kill the British and bring back additional slaves. While the Black and Native American forces were defending St. Augustine, Governor Benavides had been profiting from selling slaves to Cuba. Two new edicts came from the Spanish crown. No more reparations to the British and making the sale of slaves to private citizens illegal. Those who served loyally against the British could earn their freedom after four more years of royal service. The still enslaved people petitioned the governor and the auxiliary bishop of Cuba, but their pleas were unheeded.

In 1738, a new governor, Manuel de Montiano, granted unconditional freedom to the petitioners. He established a new town, two miles north of St. Augustine, called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The city was surrounded by fertile land for the freedmen to farm. Until the first harvest, they were provided with food from government stores. Most importantly, the town was at the intersection of Mose Creek, several trails north leading to the north, and overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. These were all the routes by which the British would come, and what would become Fort Mose was the first line of defense.

Despite the order of “unconditional freedom,” freedom at Fort Mose came with a student priest to instruct the freedmen in doctrine and good customs. They were governed by a Spanish officer who governed the militia for over forty years. At the same time, Florida was offering varying degrees of freedom to runaways in the British colonies. Slave revolts were going on, including the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, which sent shock waves through plantation owners in the British colonies. The rebellious enslaved people who’d killed to obtain their freedom were headed south to Florida to exercise their freedom before being captured and made an example of.

The British grew tired of Florida’s raids and the mounting number of escapes and revolts of those seeking their freedom. The original Underground Railroad ran south, not north. By now, Georgia was a thing, and their governor, James Oglethorpe, commissioned a Florida raid. He captured forts west of St. Augustine and began amassing an attack force. After holding out bravely against superior numbers. The somewhat free citizens of Fort Mose had to retreat to St. Augustine proper. There they continued to fight, holding out until Cuban reinforcements arrived. Oglethorpe’s forces returned to Georgia.

Francisco Menendez was singled out for his heroism. Governor Montiano offered effusive praise, and Menendez again petitioned the king. He cited the;

“loyalty, zeal, and love I have always demonstrated in the royal service, in the encounters with the enemies, as well as in the effort and care with which I have worked to repair two bastions on the defense line of this plaza, being pleased to do it, although it advanced my poverty, and I have been continually at arms, and assisted in the maintenance of the bastions, without the least royal expense, despite the scarcity in which this presidio always exists, especially in this occasion.”

If that were hard to follow, I’d translate:

I’ve worked my ass off for a long time, risking my life in the process, and all I ended up was broke. I never even got a dime, and it’s time for you to hook a brother up.

Menendez added;

“My sole object was to defend the Holy Evangel and the sovereignty of the Crown.”

Menendez asked for the free Black militia’s proprietorship and a salary to allow him to live decently. I suspect Menendez was the Black military leader John from the Oldest House Museum was trying to recall. There is no evidence the Spanish government acknowledged his petition or that Menendez ever received any payment.

The Spanish hadn’t gotten over how British forces ravaged their territory, and just because they went back home didn’t mean the battles were over. Oglethorpe conducted two additional though less successful raids and the Spanish authorized corsair raids (think pirates acting with the government’s support). Volunteers staffed those ships, many of them the same Black people who once manned Fort Mose and local Native Americans.

“Without those of ‘broken color,’ I do not know if we could arm a single corsair solely with Spaniards.”

I ask the rhetorical question because I know the answer. When was the last time you saw a movie, documentary, or school book featuring boatloads of Black and Native American pirates roaming the Florida coast?

In July 1741, the British ship Revenge captured a Spanish-controlled vessel. Onboard was “Signior Capitano Francisco,” who we’ve already met as Francisco Menendez. Under threat of castration, he acknowledged he had led the forces at Fort Mose, though denied being part of the atrocities committed against British soldiers he said were carried out by their Native American allies. Others of the captured confirmed his story. Instead of being castrated, he was given two hundred lashes and turned over to a doctor for care. The Revenge landed at New Providence in the Bahamas a month later, where Menendez was sold as a slave. There is no record of how it was accomplished, whether by ransom or escape, but by 1752, Menendez was back in command at Fort Mose.

You might be understandably confused as to how Menendez returned to the fort. Not only how he made good his return but that there was a Fort Mose to return to? When I last wrote of Fort Mose, it had been demolished, burned down by the British. Black people and Native Americans had relocated to St. Augustine or into the woods and swamp, depending on their complexion. There was a complex caste system in St. Augustine. The Black people were reluctantly accepted. Native Americans were not at all.

St. Augustine now had what is considered a new problem, too many Black people. Fort Mose was ordered rebuilt (by its future inhabitants) so that St. Augustine would be rid of its Black people. The first line of defense to its north could be reestablished.

The enslaved people that initially escaped from South Carolina and elsewhere seeking freedom in Florida were disproportionately male. When they arrived, they took mates from the available supply of women, especially Native Americans. Interracial marriage between peoples of color was common. Black people and Native Americans co-mingled and often took from the cultures of each other. Native American and Black villages resembled each other. Much of the history told at the Fort Mose visitor center is of those with combined heritage. At the museum, there is a passage on display.

My name is Juan Antonio, and I was born at Fort Mose shortly after it was reoccupied in 1752. I am seven years old now. Every day I have chores to do. Sometimes I help my uncle patrol the area around the fort. I also farm the land and gather food from the forest. But fishing is my favorite thing to do. Last week, I caught enough fish to feed my mother, uncle, grandparents, younger brother, and sister for an entire week. I go to Father Andres de Vilches school, where I learn about the Catholic faith.

I have no idea of the conditions under which young Juan Antonio wrote this note, whether it was a school assignment, diary, or whatever. He seemed thrilled about his workload, much like the “young boys” who happily ran errands for their masters and the grinning soldiers at Fort Mose pictured in the reenactment photo above. The overall message I felt was conveyed during my St. Augustine trip was that slavery was a thing. Still, everyone was thrilled to be of service, and many/most of them were sort of free, so it was a good thing.

All of the people I interacted with telling the stories were white. They were politically correct in their descriptions and pamphlets, referring to “enslaved people” rather than slaves in all their media. They were all super friendly, perhaps not realizing their version of history differs from the facts. I was a little taken aback to be greeted by a white person at Fort Mose. Maybe on another day, it would be a black person telling the story, highlighting the freedom but leaving out the curfew and supervision I discovered on my own. In America, particularly in the South, history is all around. What version you get generally depends on who dictates the telling of it. My recent travels included Lumpkin’s Slave Jail in Richmond, Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Their stories deviate from the facts as well. The truth must and will be told.

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This post was previously published on Black History Month 365.

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