Vol. 41, No. 1 Winter 2026
The Last Africans
By Charles A. Tingley
There have been several studies of the earliest Africans to set foot on the North American Continent. Juan Garrido and several other free Africans who participated in the 1513 voyage of Juan Ponce de Leon are often credited as the first.1 Other unnamed Africans came to La Florida with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526 and they largely escaped to join the Native Americans.2 Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors of the 1527 expedition of Panfilo de Narváez, recounts the language and healing skills of Estivanico, an enslaved Moroccan.3 Hernando de Soto had many
enslaved Africans on his 1539 ill-fated journey in the American Southeast.4 Still more Africans arrived at Pensacola with Tristan de Luna in 1559.5 Even the French in 1564
brought enslaved Africans to their short-lived colony at Fort Caroline.6 Pedro Menendez de Aviles had Africans with him when he established St. Augustine in 1565. His daughter-in-law, Doña Mayor de Arango, held in bondage Francisco in 1578.7 Possibly the first Black in St. Augustine that is known by name was Juanillo, who was shipwrecked near here prior to 1565. Menendez captured him from Chief Saturiba, an ally of the French at Fort Caroline. Juanillo could speak the Timucuan language and became a valued interpreter for the Spanish.8 Acting as go-betweens for Europeans and Native Americans was a lasting trend in the African American history of Florida as late
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1 Kokomoor, Kevin, La Florida: Catholics, Conquistadores, and Other American Origin Stories, Latham, Maryland: Pineapple Press, 2023, 125-125.
2 Kokomoor, Kevin, 127.
3 Colburn, David R. and Landers, Jane L., The African American Heritage of Florida, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995, 18-19.
4 Kokomoor, Kevin, 126-127.
5 Lowery, Woodbury, The Spanish Settlements: within the present limits of the Unites States, New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959, 357.
6 Bennett, Charles E., Laudonniere & Fort Caroline, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964, 89.
7 Connor, Jeanette Thrurber, Colonial Records of Spanish Florida, Volume II, Deland, Florida: Florida State Historical Society, 1930, 325.
8 Francis, J. Michael, A Story of Unbroken History & Enduring Spirit, Strasbourg, France: Éditions du Signe, 2015, 120-121.
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as the Seminole Wars of the 19th century.9 In the 16th century, another Black St. Augustinian was called Juan Fernández. He was probably free and a soldier who, with
others, was sent to harass the English camp on Anastasia Island at night during Sir
Francis Drake’s attack in 1586.10 In 1595, baptisms and marriages of Africans first
appear in the Roman Catholic Church records. This is the first year such data was
collected.11 St. Augustine is truly the oldest location with permanent settlement of
Africans north of the Rio Grande.
Long before Dr. J. Michael Francis and Dr. Jane Landers created websites which make the Roman Catholic Church Records of Spanish Florida available to all, Christopher Beats wrote his master’s thesis using the translations of the church records that Emily Wilson, the Librarian of the St. Augustine Historical Society, completed in the 1930s. His African Religious Integration in Florida During the First Spanish Period was completed in 2007.12 A more recent (2021) Harvard University study: The King of Spain’s
Slaves in St. Augustine, Florida (1580-1618) by Javier Á. Cancio-Donlebún, illuminates the
lives of the enslaved African laborers who built St. Augustine prior to the much-overblown arrival of a few Africans in Virginia in 1619.13
This essay will examine the last surviving Africans to suffer the horrors of the Middle Passage.14 The Atlantic Slave Trade is known as the “Triangular Trade” because ships sailed three voyages. First, ships sailed from England to West Africa with manufactured goods, which were traded for enslaved Africans. The second leg of the voyage (The Middle Passage), took the kidnapped Africans to the West Indies or North America to be sold as slaves. Thirdly, sugar from the Caribbean or tobacco and cotton from North America were shipped back to England, completing the triangle.15 In addition to horribly cramped conditions below deck, scurvy, and diarrhea, the mental state of the kidnapped Africans led to not eating, inconsolable melancholy, and wishing to die. As early as 1729, a doctor recommended that the enslaved be forced to dance in
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9 Amos, Alcione M., The Life of Luis Fatio Pacheco: Last Survivor of Dade’s Battle, Dade City, Florida: Seminole Wars Historic Foundation, 2006.
Mulroy, Kevin, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas, Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1993, 19.
10 Manucy, Albert C., “Coming of the Corsair.” El Escribano, No. 26 (1989): 54.
11 Gannon, Michael V., The Cross in the Sand, The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1965, 44.
12 Beats, Christopher, “African Religious Integration in Florida During the First Spanish Period,” UCF STARS, University of Central Florida, Accessed October 9, 2025, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/3076/.
13 Cancio-Donlebún, Javier A., “The King of Spain’s Slaves in St. Augustine, Florida (1580-1618),” Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies, Instituto Cervantes at the Faculty of Arts & Sciences of Harvard University, accessed August 10, 2025,
https://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/74_en_the_kings_slaves_in_st._augustine.pdf.
14 Gershon, Livia, “The Unbearable Middle Passage.” In JSTOR Daily, accessed January 15, 2026. https://daily.jstor.org/the-unbearable-middle-passage/.
15 Sullivan, George, Slave Ship, the Story of the Henrietta Marie. Port Salerno, Florida: Florida Classics Library, 2001, 9-44.
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an attempt to divert their minds from their plight.16 After arrival in Florida, Africans
withstood the oppression of chattel slavery in the American South or escaped to
maroon communities deep in the Florida wilds. These villages of “Black Seminoles”
allied themselves under the protection of a Seminole chiefs. For example, Abraham,
whose village was near modern Wildwood, Florida. He was associated with Chief
Micanopy, the Principal Chief of the Seminole Nation. Abraham was Micanopy’s
translator and eventually negotiated the surrender of many Seminoles to the U. S.
Army.17 John Caesar was the Black Seminole leader of the attacks on plantations along
the St. Johns River from 1835 -1837. The turbulence of the Seminole Wars brought many challenges for Black Seminoles during this time. Many migrated westwards with their
Seminole masters to Indian Territory (Oklahoma today), while some went as far as
Mexico or the Bahamas to be free.18
[Image: Decks of a Slave Ship | Engraving of the typical crowded conditions during the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade. The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, by W. O. Blake, published by J. & H. Miller, Columbus, Ohio, 1858, plate opposite page 305.
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16 Gershon, Livia, “The Unbearable Middle Passage.”
17 Dixon, Anthony E., Florida’s Negro War, Black Seminoles and the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. Cheyenne, Wyoming: URLink Print and Media, 2022, 85-87.
18 Mulroy, Kevin, 57-89. Goggin, John M., “The Seminole Negroes of Andros Island, Bahamas.” Florida Historical Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3, (1947), 201-206.
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During the Civil War, there was significant migration over the St. Johns River, which was the nominal boundary between areas of Union and Confederate control. As
documented by the list of persons receiving rations from the U. S. Army in St.
Augustine in 1864, most of the able-bodied Black men of St. Augustine had been
removed to the interior where the Confederate forces held sway.19 Yet many Blacks took advantage of the Union gunboats patrolling the river to escape to Union controlled St. Augustine and Jacksonville.20
For the state as a whole, there were 59 Blacks recorded in the 1870 U. S. Census as natives of Africa: 28 men and 31 women. Only 16 of the 39 counties in Florida recorded at least one native African. Jefferson County, with its county seat being Monticello, had the most with eleven. There were a couple of Whites who cited Africa as their birthplace but they are not included in this essay.21 In 1870, one would have had to have been at least 51 years of age to have been “imported” legally into Spanish Florida.
The age breakdown is as follows.
100 years old or more: five persons
90 – 99 years old: five persons
80 – 89 years old: twelve
70 – 79 years old: seventeen persons
60 – 69 years old: five persons
Under 60 years old: 15 persons
The oldest individual was John Bryant of Leon County, age 115. There were four youthful anomalies: Ema Harrison (35); James Pershey (35); Sally Smith (23); and Lucy Evens (18). It is well known that census enumerators often guessed at the age of an individual and many African Americans did not know their own age. Women of all races often hid their true age. There is a case of a woman in this study who only aged five years between the 1870 and 1880 censuses! Harrison, Pershey, Smith, and Evens must have been illegally smuggled into the United States or else the census taker made a mistake.
The case of Mercedes Pas is particularly unusual since she appears to have been
taken from Africa to Spanish Cuba. By 1870, at age 58, she was part of a wave of Cuban
immigrants to the United States after the Civil War associated with the cigar industry in
Key West.22
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19 Florida State Genealogical Society, “Census” Department of the South, November, 1864, Bowie, Maryland:
Heritage Books, Inc., 2002.
20 Schafer, Daniel L., Thunder on the River, The Civil War in Northeast Florida, Gainesville, Florida: 2010, 81-87.
21 U. S. Census of Florida, 1870.
22 1870 U. S. Census of Key West, Monroe County, Florida, 102.
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Spain made a treaty with Great Britain in 1819 abandoning the direct importation of slaves from Africa. The United States had made the African slave trade illegal in 1808 and along with Great Britain actively had their navies suppress it. Several well documented illegal introductions of kidnapped Africans occurred after the legal suppression of the slave trade, however.23 Famously, The Clotilda arrived at Mobile Bay in 1860 and is considered the last slave ship to successfully land hundreds of victims of the Middle Passage in the United States.24 The Wanderer landed approximately 400 kidnapped Africans in 1858 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The perpetrators of that heist
of humans were put on trial in Savannah but were not convicted by a jury of slave
owners.25 In Glynn County, Georgia where The Wanderer unloaded, there were 35
persons of African birth in 1870.26
In the spring of 1859, the U. S. Navy while patrolling the Florida Straits for slavers captured the Wildfire with 507 kidnapped Africans and the Bogota with 420. 101
individuals died while the Wildfire sailed the Middle Passage. Survivors from both ships
were brought to Key West. The U. S. Marshall tried his best for the Africans, but many
died and were buried on the beach. In 2002, Monroe County fenced off a portion of the
beach where graves were discovered in the 1940s.27 Another slave ship, El Guerrero, was
run aground in 1827 on a Florida reef by the British Navy. With the assistance of the
infamous wreckers of the Florida Keys, 520 Africans were saved from drowning only to
have some of the Spaniards from El Guerrero take over a wrecker’s ship with 398 of the
surviving Africans aboard before sailing to Havana to sell them. The remaining 120
were taken to Key West, and were eventually sent to Liberia.28 These are just a few
examples of the violations of the anti-slavery legislation of the United States, the United
Kingdom, and the Spanish Empire.
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23 Landers, Jane, Black Society in Spanish Florida, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 179-181.
24 Hurston, Zora Neale, Barracoon: the story of the last “Black Cargo,” New York: Amistad Press, Harper & Collins, 2018, 5-16.
25 Wells, Tom Henderson, “Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar: Gentleman and Slave Trader,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, Volume XLVII, Number 2, June 1963, 158-168.
26 1870 U. S. Census of Glynn County Georgia, 1-139.
27 Jenkins, Robert N., “Freed, Then Forgotten,” Tampa Bay Times, December 26, 2003, 49-50.
28 “HMS Nimble (1826),” Wikipedia, accessed October 11, 2025,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Nimble_(1826).
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African American naming practices during this timeframe are a fascinating subject as well. Names that enslavers imposed frequently have Hebrew or GrecoRoman pagan origins. Some of the most common men’s names were Abraham, Jacob, and Moses (from the Old Testament) and Pompey, Scipio, Caesar, and Hercules (from Classical literature). For women, Sarah, Hannah, and Rachel derive from the Old Testament while Venus, Cleopatra, and Dido are derived from the pagan Mediterranean.29 Added to this naming pattern imposed by Anglo enslavers was the demand of the Roman Catholic Church that upon baptism each individual must have a Christian saint’s name. This results in numerous Marys, Marias, Johns, and Peters.30 There are a few names of truly African origin found in the 1870 U. S. Census of Florida. Amongst the Akan people of modern Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo, using the days of
[Image: Historic marker, Higgs Beach Cemetery, Key West, Florida]
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29 Wegner, Susan, “Classical Names and Concepts Used in the Service of Slavery,” Antiquity & America, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, accessed September 12, 2025, https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/classical-names-andconcepts-used-in-the-service-of-slavery/. Mulroy, Kevin, 177.
30 “Naming Culture in the Book of Negroes,” The Loyalist Collection, University of New Brunswick, February 21, 2018, accessed September 5, 2025, https://loyalist.lib.unb.ca/atlantic-loyalist-connections/naming-culture-booknegroes
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the week as a name is common.31 An example from Jefferson County was Randolph
Monday. July Seaton was an 80-year-old cook in Nassau County. There are two men who proudly used African names. Tom Ebo proclaims his origin in the Ebo (aka Igbo)
people of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea. Africa Smart lived in Columbia
County.
From the so-called Department of the South Census (1864), we find four Africans registered to receive rations from the U. S. Army in St. Augustine.
1. Philis Fontinia, [aka Felicia Fontaine]: age 65; status, Contraband; former owner,
Fontinia; old resident; p. 228.
2. Jack Smith: age 75; status, Contraband; former owner Buck Smith [aka Thomas
Buckingham Smith]; old resident; receives one ration.
3. Frank Travise [sic Travis]: age 50; status, Contraband; former owner Joseph
Pacetty; old resident; receives one ration.
4. Judy Smith: age 80; status, Contraband; former owner Burmingham Smith (sic
Thomas Buckingham Smith); old resident.32
From the 1870 U.S. Census of St. Johns County, Florida
5. Felicia Fontaine: age 70, mulatto, illiterate [lives with Antonio Fontaine aka Tony
Welters]
6. Lucy King: age 64, Black, laundress, illiterate
7. Mary Alonzo: age 65, Black, laundress, illiterate
8. Sally Samis [aka Sammis]: age 85, Black, keeping house, illiterate, lives with
Mary Samis [sic]
9. Ignacio Traiy [aka Triay]: age 68, Black, laborer, literate, $100 value of real estate
10. India Smith: age 70, Black, keeping house, illiterate
11. Lucinda Darling: age 55, Black, keeping house, blind, lives with Venus Adams
12. Mary Adams: age 107, Black, illiterate, lives with Miles Hancock33
From the 1880 US Census of St. Johns County, Florida:
13. Maria Mickler: age 89, at home, illiterate
14. Ignacio Triay: age 70, no occupation, lives with Jacob Wilson, a friend [same as entry 5]
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31 “Names And Naming, African,” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, accessed September 12, 2025, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-andmaps/names-and-naming-african
32 Florida State Genealogical Society, “Census” Department of the South, November, 1864, Bowie, Maryland:
Heritage Books, Inc., 2002.
33 1870 U. S. Census of St. Johns County, Florida, 1-44.
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15. Jack Smith: age 90, retired Methodist Episcopal preacher (aka Sitiki) (same as
entry 2)
16. Phillis Fontaine: age 90, at home, illiterate (same as entry 1)
The following live at the Buckingham Smith Nursing Home:
17. Patty Hernandez: age 96, Black
18. Sally Powe [?]: age 96, Black
19. Frank Travis: age 78, Mulatto [same as entry 3]
20. Seilla [Cellia] Darley: age 80, Black, blind
21. Judy Smith: age 92, Black, insane [Jack Smith’s wife and same as entry 4]34
Upon the death of Thomas Buckingham Smith in 1871, his will directed his executors to care for his former slaves like Jack and Judy Smith
and to use the remainder of his estate “for the use of the Black people of St. Augustine.” In 1873, they created the Buckingham Smith Benevolent Association which is the oldest nonprofit charity in the state. By 1874, a
nursing home for elderly and disabled
Blacks was open with additional support
provided by Dr. Oliver Bronson, Dr.
Andrew Anderson, John L. Wilson, and
others.35
[Image: Some of the "Inmates of the Colored Home" aka Buckingham Smith Nursing Home circa 1875. It stood where the Flagler College Gymnasium is today.]
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34 1880 U. S. Census of St. Johns County, Florida, 1-93.
35 Upchurch, Tracy W., “Special Gifts and Acts of Charity,” El Escribano, Volume 47 (2010): 71-92.
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In the 1885 Florida State Census of St. Johns County, there was no one who was born
in Africa. Two persons say that their father was born in Africa.
1. Mariano Martin: age 70 who lived in the Oldest House in the 1870s and 1880s says his father was born in Africa. According to the Roman Catholic Baptism records his name simply as Bosoum.36
2. Mary Westley: age 58, says her father was born in Africa
[Image: Rev. Jack Smith sitting is the door of his home near current corner of Cordova and Valencia Streets: ca. 1880.
[Image: Book cover of his 2009 autobiography edited by Dr. Patricia C. Griffin.
The best known of the last Africans in St. Augustine was Sitiki, whose slave-name was Jack Smith. This remarkable man left an account of his long life in his own voice
with the assistance of his former master Thomas Buckingham Smith. For the complete
text see: The Odyssey of an African Slave by Sitiki, edited by Patricia C. Griffin. He was
born in the interior of West Africa and was thought to be 95 years old when he died in
St. Augustine on September 3, 1882. He was initially kidnapped circa 1801 and then
worked as an enslaved shepherd. Sitiki was taken to the coast and sold to British
merchants who around 1807 sold him to Captain Brown. His Middle Passage voyage
was unusually gentle. He became a cabin-boy for the captain of the slave ship, where he
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36 Black Baptisms Book Three, Cathedral Parish of St. Augustine Florida, 141.
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slept in the captain’s berth. Sitiki noted that he “treated me as a son.” He mentions the
rations and states that only two captive people died during the voyage.37
He first landed in Charleston, South Carolina, but he continued with Captain Brown to Savannah, Georgia. Brown needed to go to sea again so he reluctantly sold Sitiki to a
merchant because he didn’t want him to have the harsh life of a field worker on a cotton
plantation. That merchant was Josiah Smith, whose wife Hannah and later his son
Thomas Buckingham enslaved him until the Civil War brought emancipation. Josiah
Smith renamed him Jaques. The Smiths and their slaves briefly moved to Connecticut,
but returned to Georgia in 1809. While living on Cumberland Island, Jack Smith was
captured by British forces under Admiral George Cockburn. He was offered his
freedom but decided to stay with the Smiths, who in 1817 moved to St. Augustine.
He was baptized in 1823 into the Methodist
Church by Rev. Joshua Glenn, one of the first
Methodist missionaries in Florida. In 1868, he
became a fully credentialed minister of that church. In his final years, Jack Smith became a bit of a tourist attraction with the reputation of being the oldest man in St. Augustine. He was even featured in an article in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.38 The author advised that in the Ancient City, “You must
see Old Uncle Jack.” A unique window was opened into the life of last kidnapped Africans by Rev. Jack Smith telling the story of his long life.
[Image: Death notice of Father Jack Smith from the St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library Holmes Ammidown Collection: MC16.55 published in September 1882 in an unknown newspaper.]
OLD FATHER JACK DEAD.
Old Father Jack is gone! He passed away this morning at 4 o’clock, He was as well as common last evening and old age and chronic complaint bore him off in the ripe time of probably 105 years.
His history is bound up with that of St. Augustine, Fla. He was a native of Africa, brought to America when perhaps 13 years old, and at the time of his death weighed 135 pounds, and was about 5 feet high. He was imported by a captain of a trading vessel, and was sold to the late Buckingham Smith’s father before the latter was born. He lived in Savannah, Charleston, Fernandina and St. Augustine. He was taken prisoner during the war of 1812, but upon the plea of his master he was released. He was a very devout man, and for upward of fifty years he was a minister of the gospel of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was known far and near, and tens of thousands of people all over the North will be pained to hear of “Father Jack’s” death. His burning zeal knew no rank, but to high and low he spoke the glowing words of love and life. His influence was exerted and successfully in collecting means to build an excellent house of worship on St. George street, and it was ever known as “Father Jack’s church.” Collections were sent from Savannah and many other places.
At the church this 5 p.m., his body was borne in a neat wooden coflln with neat ornaments and plated handles, and on it was placed some cuttings from a date palm which he planted years upon years ago. Over three hundred friends gathered to hear the simple and heartfelt expressions for his memory and honor. The long procession that followed his remains showed how greatly he was respected in the city. At sunset was laid to rest the ashes of a man whose skin was black, but whose hopes were as bright as those of any mortal that ever lived or died. ‘‘His life in its beauty and its duty, was one of lofty purpose and sincere reality. ” Videx.
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37 Sitiki, The Odyssey of an African Slave (Gainesville: Florida, University Press of Florida, 2009), 16-17.
38 Woolson, Constance Fennimore, “The Ancient City, Part 2,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume L, Number CCXCVI (January 1875): 169-170.