{"id":851,"slug":"fort-mose-florida","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Fort Mose was the Underground Railroad that ran south. In 1738, Spanish Florida's governor chartered Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose — a fortified free Black town two miles north of St. Augustine — for the Africans who'd escaped Carolina slavery and reached Spanish ground. Freedom came with two conditions: allegiance to Spain and the Catholic Church. About a hundred escapees made Mose home — the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what became the United States, a century before the better-known railroad ran the other way.","The town was a strategic bet for both sides — Spain got a militia of men who knew the English colonies and hated them; the freedpeople got legal freedom and land. Captain Francisco Menéndez — the Mandinga leader who'd escaped slavery twice — commanded the Black militia; when Oglethorpe's Georgians invaded in 1740, Mose's men fought in the defense of St. Augustine, and when the town was overrun, they took it back in the 1752 'Battle of Bloody Mose.'","The settlement ended with Florida itself — when Spain ceded the colony to Britain in 1763, the people of Mose left for Cuba rather than return to slavery's reach. The site was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1980s and made a National Historic Landmark — the ground where freedom ran south, under the marsh where the first free Black town in America stood.","Fort Mose is the archive's southbound file — the 1738 free Black town north of St. Augustine where escaping slaves found legal freedom under Spain, the first sanctioned free African settlement in what's now the United States."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Fort Mose is the archive's first-free file — Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the 1738 Spanish-chartered town of escaped slaves north of St. Augustine, the first legally free Black community in the future United States.","A town that ran freedom south keeps its marsh — the file's suggestion being that Mose's hold is the direction: the Underground Railroad that went to Florida, and the fort where a hundred self-freed people held it."]}],"name":"Fort Mose","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SITE","type_label":"Historic Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD","FORT"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","full_desc":"A historic site in St. Augustine, Florida, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Fort Mose is filed here for what the record attaches to it. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. HauntHunt files it with dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.","address":"Fort Mose Historic State Park","city":"St. Augustine","county":"St. Johns","state":"Florida","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":29.896152,"lon":-81.311128,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":"NPS public listing access field: Yes. This is a listing snapshot; current arrangements still require confirmation.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 17FL01, source row 346. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Fort Mose is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic site; verify hours and access with the managing agency before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","incoming_value":"The first free Black town—Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"historic_designation","existing_value":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","incoming_value":"NPS Network to Freedom","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 17FL01, source row 346. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","incoming_value":"UGRR enrichment wave 4; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Fort Mose","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mose","desc":"United States historic place","extract":"Fort Mose is a former Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1738, the governor of Spanish Florida, Manuel de Montiano, had the fort established as a free black settlement, the first to be legally sanctioned in what would become the territory of the United States. The original fort was briefly abandoned after the Battle of Bloody Mose in 1740, but was rebuilt at a nearby location and again occupied by free Africans from 1752 to 1763. It was designated a US National Historic Landmark on October 12, 1994.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/St_Aug_Fort_Mose01.jpg/330px-St_Aug_Fort_Mose01.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":93,"lat":29.92777778,"lon":-81.32527778},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}