_._.- UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I LIBRARY NEGOTIATING FREEDOM IN ST. JOHNS COUNTY, FLORIDA, 1812-1862 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY AUGUST 2003 By Frank Marotti, Jr. Dissertation Committee: LA. Newby, Chairperson Marcus Daniel Margot Henriksen Robert McGlone Miles Jackson Copyright © 2003 by Frank Marotti, Jr. All rights reserved 111 To the victims ofabortion IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the course ofthe decade during which I researched and wrote this dissertation, many people made special efforts to assist me. lowe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. LA. Newby, the chair ofmy dissertation committee, for devoting a great deal ofhis retirement time to help me see the forest through the trees. The other members ofmy committee interrupted their summer breaks to allow me to defend in a timely manner. My students at Cheyney University, the first institution in the United States devoted to the post-secondary education ofAfrican Americans, taught me to persevere and led me to view my subject matter in a different light. All ofthe descendants ofthe extended Clarke family were exceptional in their hospitality. Dr. W. Clinton Pettus, the President ofCheyney University, generously supported my research, as did the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Pennsylvania State System ofHigher Education. William T. Abare, the President ofFlagler College, graciously permitted me to make Flagler my home away from home. Dr. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, now at the University ofNorth Carolina-Chapel Hill, made me a part ofthe community at the University ofFlorida when he chaired the History Department in Gainesville. Wayne T. De Cesar ofthe National Archives at College Park, Maryland, took part ofhis afternoon offto allow me to check some leads, which resulted in my discovery ofapproximately 200 Patriot War claims cases scattered throughout Record Group 217. Mary Herron, formerly ofthe St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library, was instrumental in guiding me through the City of St. Augustine Papers. The Library's director, Charles Tingley, and his assistant, Leslie Wilson, always cheerfully gave me the benefit oftheir considerable expertise. St. Augustine historian David Nolan, besides sharing sources with me, served as a powerful source ofencouragement. Dr. Joe Knetsch, ofthe Florida Bureau ofSurvey and Mapping, did the same. Sandra Carter, ofthe Heritage Quest Research Library in Sumner, Washington, helped meto make connections between antebellum St. Johns County blacks and the Pacific coast. Dr. Sherry Johnson ofFlorida International University gave me much useful advice concerning marriage customs in Spanish Florida. Dr. Warren N. Holmes ofCheyney University gave timely advice regarding Liberia. Dr. Edward J. Tassinari ofSUNY-Maritime was oftremendous assistance in guiding me to the location ofJack Smith's autobiography at the New York Historical Society. Dr. Whittington B. Johnson ofthe University ofMiami gave me some much­ needed advice on several occasions when I encountered major obstacles to obtaining materials. Independent scholar Michael Finkelman was a constant source ofcounsel. Dr. John Hope Franklin encouraged me very early in my research by two kind letters. Dr. Jian Liang ofUH and Ron Breggia provided computer expertise that I sorely needed at critical times. Dr. John "Clyde" Engler ofIndiana University of Pennsylvania, Chris-Tez "Sonny the Bear" Cortese, Jerry "the Pearl" Moore, and Michael "the Condor" Paletta, offered their friendship and advice throughout the decade. My father, Frank Marotti, Sr., urged me to complete this dissertation in the last conversation that I had with him before he died ofcancer. My mother, cancer survivor Catherine Marotti, continued to exhort me to "get that Ph.D." v ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the agency ofAfrican Americans in crafting race relations in St. Augustine, Florida, and its vicinity in the antebellum era. Citing Spanish cultural influences as a major causal factor, historians have traditionally characterized those relations as relatively tolerant by the standards ofboth Florida and the old South as a whole. The focus is the half-century before the Union capture ofSt. Augustine in 1862. The dissertation devotes particular attention to the impact of African American memories ofthe Patriot War of 1812-1813, and to black resistance to the imposition ofan American-style slave society upon a formerly Spanish society with slaves. The study utilizes numerous, previously-unknown records ofPatriot War claims in the National Archives to assess the effect ofthese memories on African American life in antebellum St. Johns County, including African American participation in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the Civil War. Examining another group ofunderutilized documents, records ofthe City ofSt. Augustine, the study explores the influence ofAfrican American oral traditions on resistance to the slave society. The dissertation also taps other little-used sources, Catholic parish registries, to determine how African Americans continued to exploit the institutions ofcompadrazgo (godparenthood) and sacramental marriage that they had previously taken advantage ofunder Spanish rule. Employing these and other documents, the study investigates the survival ofcoartaci6n (self-purchase), another Spanish-era institution that antebellum blacks harnessed in negotiating their freedom. The growing constrictions ofthe American slave society impelled many talented, ambitious African Americans to migrate from St. Johns County, east to Liberia, north VI to Philadelphia and New York, south to Key West and the Caribbean, and west to California and Washington Territory. This migration, like the acquisition ofland in Florida and elsewhere--not to mention the bequeathing ofthis land to heirs and the education ofthose heirs, demonstrated African American optimism and the determination to succeed despite the efforts ofwhite Floridians to marginalize blacks. Vll TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Abstract vi Preface viii Chapter1:Introduction 1 Chapter 2: The Patriot War and Its Aftermath .30 Chapter 3:Trickstering and Resistance 57 Chapter 4: Earning a Living 98 Chapter 5: Manumission 129 Chapter 6: Religion 162 Chapter 7: Family 191 Chapter 8: Land 220 Chapter 9: Epilogue 242 Bibliography 250 V111 PREFACE This dissertation is a study ofone group ofAfrican Americans who struggled to "make it" in an ethnically diverse slave-owning community. It is about agency, memory, and what one historian has called the "hidden transcript ofresistance" by oppressed people. It seeks to retrieve "previously suppressed versions ofthe past" by illuminating interior worlds ofthe "Inarticulate."} The locus is St. Johns County, Florida, the time the half-century prior to the American Civil War. That half-century began with the first American intrusion into Spanish East Florida in the so-called Patriot War of 1812-1813, and ended with the collapse ofslavery following the capture ofSt. Augustine by Union forces in 1862. My subjects are free people of African descent in the broad sense ofthe term "free," that is, not just those who were legally free, but all those who resisted the constraints oflegal bondage and otherwise asserted varying degrees ofcontrol over themselves and their circumstances. In antebellum St. Johns County, the line demarking freedom and servitude was blurred and fluid, especially during the first decades after 1812. Historians have long attributed the relatively flexible system ofrace relations in antebellum East Florida to the area's Spanish heritage? While acknowledging the I Gregg D. Kimball, "African, American, and Virginian: The Shaping ofBlack Memory in Antebellum Virginia, 1790-1860," and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, "No Deed but Memory," in Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity, ed. W. Fitzhugh Brundage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 58,22; Lee H. Warner, Free Men ofColor in An Age ofServitude: Three Generations ofa Black Family (Lexington: University ofKentucky Press, 1992), 1. 2 For examples see William W. Dewhurst, The History ofSt. Augustine. Florida (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1885; reprint, Rutland, Vermont: Academy Books, 1968), 149; David Y. Thomas, "The Free Negro in Florida before 1865," South Atlantic Quarterly 10 (October 1911): 336; Thomas Graham, The Awakening ofSt. Augustine: The Anderson Family and the Oldest City, 1821-1924 (St. Augustine: St. Augustine Historical Society, 1978), 19-21; David R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877-1980, Contemporary American History Series, ed. William E. IX importance ofthat heritage, this study gives more than the usual emphasis to the role ofAfrican American agency in exploiting the limited opportunities that heritage permitted. In other words, remnants ofSpanish rule presented blacks with institutions and customs that talented, ambitious and fortunate individuals might and did exploit. In doing so, they drew especially upon memories oflived experiences and cultural resources oftheir own. "Slavery, though imposed and maintained by violence," Ira Berlin has noted, was a "negotiated relationship." That was certainly the case in St. Johns County, and the "negotiators" included free blacks as well as slaves. As Berlin has also noted, Spanish Florida, unlike British South Carolina and Georgia, never made the transition from a "society