Fort Mose

Fort Mose, or Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, was a fortified settlement north of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida, founded in 1738 for Africans who had escaped slavery in the British Carolinas and accepted Catholicism. Led by the militia captain Francisco Menéndez, it was the first legally sanctioned free Black town in what became the United States. Damaged in the British attack of 1740 and rebuilt, it was abandoned when Spain ceded Florida in 1763.