This well preserved little cottage in Pensacola was constructed in 1805 and was the home of Julee Panton, a free woman of color, well before the Civil War.Little has been written about Florida's antebellum population of free African Americans, yet they represented an important part of the state's black history.
More common in seaport communities like Pensacola than in the interior farming counties, free African Americans worked in a variety of trades. They worked as sailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, seamstresses and in a variety of other occupations. Most of their homes, like the Julee Cottage seen here, were simple, but so too were the homes of the vast majority of the state's white residents prior to the war. The number of people involved in operating large plantations or who held slaves was actually very small in comparison to the total population of the state.
Free people of color in Florida before the Civil War also included little known Native American communities that dotted the landscape, especially across Northwest Florida, along with the few remaining Seminoles hidden deep in the swamps of South Florida. Census records for the Northwest portion of the state often identify these Native Americans as "mulattos," but others avoided the census taker or concealed their race out of fear they would be forced from the state. More on that over coming days.
The Julee Cottage is preserved as part of the Historic Pensacola Village complex in downtown Pensacola. For information, visit their website at: http://www.historicpensacola.org.
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