Prayers Answered
In St. Augustine, enslaved people were declared free by the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in late September 1862, three months prior to the final Executive Order of January 1. 1863.
There are two eyewitness accounts of this initial proclamation of freedom.
Go to the National Archives and see the transcript from the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862 https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/transcript_preliminary_emancipation.html
First, a letter from an anonymous soldier in the New Hampshire Volunteers was published in a New York newspaper in late October 1862.
“The day after my arrival, Gen. Saxton, with his staff and a missionary to the contraband, a Methodist Clergyman, came to the city and called a meeting of blacks, telling them that by an act of Congress they were free, and must serve their pretended owners no longer. This made them wild with joy, and settled in my mind that ghost of an argument that the slaves do not desire their freedom. I saw they longed to be free.” He continued, “With the owners of the slaves, this announcement of Freedom created the greatest excitement, for they felt the consequences. They had subsisted upon the earnings of the slaves, and it was a serious matter to them that their riches should take legs and run away.”
Mary Ann Murray
The other eyewitness to recall that momentous day was eighty-five year old Mary Ann Murray when interviewed by the St. Augustine Record in 1934. She and her mother had been enslaved by the de Medici family but they were sold to Philip Gomez when Mary was one year old. Thus she was known as Mary Gomez for many years.
The Reporter Recounts:
“When Mary Gomez was a young girl, word of the emancipation proclamation reached here, and she said, all the slaveholders were ordered to release their slaves and allow them to gather in a large vacant lot west of the St. Joseph’s Academy, where they were officially freed. When her bonds were struck off, Mary took the name of her parents instead of that of her master, as many did, and called herself Mary Ann Murray.”