Item #11125 Plano della Citta, e Porto di Sant. Agostino. Giovanni Tommaso MASI, e Compagni.
Shows the Earliest, Legally-Sanctioned African-American Community
In North America
St. Augustine, Florida/ African American History.
[Livorno, 1763]

Plano della Citta, e Porto di Sant. Agostino.

8 x 11 ¼ inches, Fine hand color; excellent condition.

 An attractive, scarce map focusing on St. Augustine, the major Spanish settlement in East Florida.  Seen to the right of the plan of St. Augustine here is a small, fortified area called “Fuerte Negro,” which was Fort Mose, the first legally sanctioned African-American community in what is now the United States.  Founded in 1738, it was the destination of the original Underground Railroad that led runaway slaves not to the north but south to Spanish-held Florida.  Most were escapees from Charleston, South Carolina, the major port for the importation of slaves on the east coast, and from Alabama and Georgia.  Upon reaching Florida, escaped slaves were granted freedom if they converted to Catholicism and swore allegiance to the Spanish Crown. See the web links below for more on this fascinating chapter in African American history.  However, once Florida was acquired by United States from Spain the 1819, African Americans lost their freedom, especially as the plantation system dependent on slave labor spread to Florida.

The map was based on a rare work by Thomas Jefferys published in 1762 in his A Description of the Spanish Islands. This edition by Masi appeared in his Gazzettiere Americano.

http://www.fortmose.org/; http://www.floridamemory.com/blog/2013/02/18/floridas-underground-railroad-part-two/.

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