Bradenton park recognized as a stop on escaped slaves’ ‘underground railroad’ to freedom

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- by Bradenton Herald.com

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From Bradenton Herald. com, March 19, 2019

Mineral Springs Park is officially part of the National Park Services’ National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom for its historical ties to escaped slaves.

Fresh water was life for anybody trying to survive in Bradenton. Mineral Springs is long known to have supported that life from the time of early Native Americans to Spanish explorers to British traders to early settlers. Now it is known to have been the temporary home of escaped slaves and suspected site of a lost slave settlement known as Angola.

A year ago this week, the process began to declare Mineral Springs Park as part of the national Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. With significant evidence showing that Mineral Springs was part of the Angola settlement of escaped slaves, the announcement was expected to come quick, but the lengthy government shutdown delayed the inevitable.

…..Uzi Baram, professor of anthropology at the New College of Florida and also a speaker at the March 30 event, had long suspected the site was the missing location of Angola. In 2007. Excavations began and over time, more evidence surfaced.
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