Fourth Annual Battle of Bloody Mose

On Saturday, June 22, 2013, Florida Living History, Inc., along with Fort Mose Historic State Park and the Fort Mose Historical Society, will host the Fourth Annual Battle of Bloody Mose Commemoration and Historic City News readers are invited to attend.

The historical re-enactment will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Fort Mose Historic State Park in St. Augustine. White, black, and Native American re-enactors and volunteers from across the state and from Georgia will participate in this heritage event.

In the early morning hours of June 26, 1740, the village of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (mo-SAY), the first, legally sanctioned free black settlement in the continental United States, became the site of the bloodiest battle in Florida’s part in the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

That day saw Florida’s Spanish soldiers, black militia, and native Yamassee auxiliaries locked in a “clash of empires” with invading English and Scottish troops from Georgia, a battle that culminated in desperate, hand-to-hand fighting as Fort Mose, St. Augustine’s northern-most defense, burned around them.

The decisive Spanish victory at “Bloody Mose” was one of the factors that ended British Georgia’s invasion of Spanish Florida.

The National Park Service and the Organization of American Historians have named the annual Battle of Bloody Mose Commemoration as a Member Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

Admission to this heritage Event is free and includes:

• authentic period weapons and tactics;
• authentic period foodways;
• a period theatrical presentation

There is a Museum admission fee of $2.00 per adult; children age 5 and younger are free. Refreshments will sold by St. Augustine’s Colonial Quarter and The Hyppo.

The Battle of Bloody Mose heritage Event is sponsored by the 501(c)(3) non-profit, educational Florida Living History, Inc., by Fort Mose Historic State Park, and by The Fort Mose Historical Society, in partnership with Viva Florida 500, the National Park Service, the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps St Augustine Battalion, and with the support of volunteers from the Fort Mose Militia and other historical re-enactment groups. Financial support for this Event is provided, in part, by the Florida Humanities Council, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the generosity of NTE Solutions.