This week on the Florida History Podcast, we discuss the first African-American free settlement in what is now the United States, Fort Mose.

In 1738, Fort Mose was established two miles north of St Augustine – A village to defend St Augustine that also was operated by free blacks – by 1740 the town had a population of 100 within its walls and was governed by a European of African descent. Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free African settlement in what would become the US.

In 1739, the War of Jenkins Ear which was essentially the North American theater of the War of Austrian Succession broke out. By 1740, Britain (England and Scotland were formally united by the Act of Union in 1707) felt they could knock Spain out of the American part of the war by capturing St Augustine. So in 1740 James Oglethorpe the founder of Georgia seven years earlier, and the colonies Governor led an overland invasion force into Spanish Florida. The establishment of the Georgia Colony by Oglethorpe had given the British a beachhead from which to invade Florida.

On his way to St Augustine, Oglethorpe captured Fort Mose. The residents had mostly been runaway slaves from the British colonies. When the British captured Fort Mose, the free black residents fled to St Augustine where they played a critical role in the city defense.

Oglethorpe and his British forces began the siege of St Augustine on June 13th, 1740. The Spanish decided while St Augustine was under siege to launch a counter-offensive aimed at Fort Mose where the British had left behind a garrison. The Spanish and free black forces liberated Fort Mose and within weeks a Spanish fleet from Havana had reached St Augustine prompting a British withdrawal back to Savannah.

In 1742, Spanish forces numbering about 5,000 invaded Georgia from Florida and marched toward Savannah. This month in 1742- 250 years ago, the Spanish were defeated at St Simons Island. In the subsequent peace treaty the Florida-Georgia border was fixed to St Mary’s River where it remains today.

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