"Forgotten" Labor in Northwest Florida: Investigating the 19th- and 20th-Century Maritime Workforce of Apalachicola

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Port of Call: Archaeologies of Labor and Movement through Ports", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Along Florida’s Panhandle, several small, coastal communities exist today as a reminder of an earlier period in the state’s history: a time when the movement of people, goods, and information relied on waterways. The town of Apalachicola, in particular, once supported enough commodities production and maritime industry along its waterfront to become a hub of Gulf of Mexico shipping in the 19th and 20th centuries. To explore maritime industrial development in Apalachicola during this period, this paper utilizes a community-level perspective by delving into the stories of the people involved in day-to-day labor. Documentary and archaeological evidence provide insight into several crucial aspects of maritime labor, including the “evolution” of the maritime workforce over time, the complicated relationships that laborers held with the community at large, and how gender, race, and ethnicity played roles in the division of work.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Port of Call: Archaeologies of Labor and Movement through Ports

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow