The Community of Cosmo

The Community of Cosmo. . , Before Cosmo , The land where Cosmo was built was originally home to Indigenous peoples. Colonial records show that it was near a Native American village named Homoula. Europeans began arriving in Northeast Florida in the 1500s. They brought with them free and enslaved Africans. Several plantations were established nearby including the Kingsley, Strawberry Mills, Greenfield and New Castle plantations. White plantation owners used enslaved African labor to produce rice, indigo, oranges, and pine tree products and to support a local shipbuilding industry., Founding Cosmo , Cosmo was established after the end of the U.S. Civil War by newly-freed Black families. Many of them moved here from other parts of coastal Florida and South Carolina. These freedmen settled here along the banks of the St. Johns River near other African American and White homesteaders from Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Settler James Bartley and his wife Polly purchased 40 acres of land in Cosmo in 1877 and they are recognized as the first African American landowners in Cosmo., Oral histories describe the community as a series of small, wooden pastel-colored homes adjoining an unpaved road. That road is known today as Fort Caroline Road. There was no electricity, running water, or phone service for most of the early part of the century. The people of Cosmo made a living by hunting, farming, mullet fishing, crabbing, and harvesting oysters well into the mid-20th century., The Jacksonville, Mayport and Pablo Railway Company operated a train station at Cosmo from 1888 to 1897. Cosmo was also home to two churches, a school, a "juke joint", a saw mill, a post office, and an oyster and crab processing business. The community also established the Palm Springs cemetery and several generations of the descendants of the founding families are buried there. The Palm Springs cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. The people of Cosmo were able to preserve and sustain their Gullah Geechee culture and traditions because of the relative isolation of their community from the city of Jacksonville., Development and Loss of Family Land , The construction of the Matthews Bridge in the 1950s opened the Cosmo area to suburban development as Jacksonville grew. This has resulted in the loss of Gullah Geechee land ownership in Cosmo. The landscape along Fort Caroline road has also changed dramatically. The churches, cemetery and homes of the original families that remain in the Cosmo community are a reminder of the Gullah Geechee freedmen and women who first settled this loving and peaceful community. The Cosmo Historical Preservation Corporation is dedicated to raising awareness about this historic Gullah Geechee community and the threats to its continued survival., (captions) , Early view of Cosmo settlement in Mill Cove 1898. (Library of Congress), The Cosmo school around 1930. (State Archives of Florida), Roland Seafood workers heading shrimp in Mayport in 1986. Many Cosmo residents were employed in seafood processing facilities in Cosmo, Fulton and Mayport. (State Archives of Florida), Cosmo youth photo taken in front of old sugar cane mill at McCormick Farm (McCormick/Rowan Family Archive)., Crew of Cosmo community members working on a bridge on Fort Caroline Rd. (Demps Family Archive), Amanda Williams poses with her son Emory at the log cabin that served as a family home and juke joint. (Photo Rocco Morabito, Jacksonville Journal, 1976)