ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Q: What have you rarely (if ever) heard in the Lincolnville neighborhood in St. Augustine?
A: The sound of a tour trolley bell, indicating a stop.
This week, Old Town Trolley, one of the tour trolley companies in St. Augustine, announced it is adding a stop to its citywide tour. It will be in Lincolnville, a place that traditionally, tourists don’t usually go.
Historic Tours of America, which owns the Old Town Trolley in St. Augustine, has chosen to create the first trolley tour stop in the historic Black neighborhood of Lincolnville.
The stop will be right next to the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center.
"It means so many things," Museum director Regina Gayle Phillips said. "It’s a lifeline for the museum. It’s going to bring people to our front door that wouldn’t have come to our front door before because they may have not known it was here."
Lincolnville, while chock full of history and historical markers, is not on the beaten path that the millions of tourists to St. Augustine see.
David Chatterton is the Old Town Trolley General Manager in St. Augustine. He said, "Coming through historic Lincolnville, it’s so different from the rest of the trolley route."
The trolley stop in Lincolnville will be officially added to the citywide tour route this month.
"This is an area of history, I think we'd all agree, that is very important but has not been covered as much or spoken about as much," Chatterton noted.
There are some people who live in Lincolnville who are not wild about trolleys on their streets. However, the company that runs the trolleys has created quiet zones so the tour guide is not always talking through this residential area.
The Lincolnville Museum tells about the community’s and the city's prominence in Black history.
These stories include the one about Fort Mose which was the first sanctioned free black community in what is now the United State. In addition, after the Civil War, the Catholic Church sent sisters to St. Augustine to teach newly freed Black children. Dr. Martin Luther King rallied civil rights marchers in Lincolnville, and he was arrested in St. Augustine. Ray Charles attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, where he played the piano.
"All of that has become an important part of the history of the United States and that’s our business, telling the stories of the United States," Edwin Swift III noted. He is the Founder of Historic Tours of America.
Many of these stories have received less of the spotlight. However, now the sound of a trolley bell -- along with the newest trolley stop -- might just be the way to share more of America's story.