I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the intention of the Park Service as condescension, and support their efforts to make the study of the UGRR more inclusive of lesser known time periods. As researchers of African American history, we have always known that the term "underground railroad" is problematic. It invites visual imagery of tunnels and other subterranean hideaways, when most stopping points were above ground and often outside. It implies an inner structure similar to an actual railroad company, with timetables, official maps, regular routes and a ruthless efficiency of operation (Conrail excepted), when in most cases, routes, personnel, and procedures changed regularly. The term also limits itself to the technological era of the railroads, but there are examples of the phenomenon being referred to as the "underground ROAD," and predating railroads.

You have hit on one of the key debates among UGRR scholars, and that is whether to limit scholarship to the time period traditionally alloted to the systematic aid to freedom seekers by abolitionist minded operatives, or to expand the study to include the entire period of escape from slavery in the Americas. I believe both viewpoints have advantages and disadvantages, but I tend to fall in with the broader definition, which allows study of slave escape as far back as the seventeenth century, and includes the Caribbean and South America as well as North America.

The disadvantages of the broader study are obvious. It allows the inclusion of sites such as Fort Mose, which as you point out, seem unrelated or incidental to the central study. It also potentially paves the way for abuse of the term by commercial interests, however I believe the Park Service program has built-in safeguards in the form of rigorous standards for inclusion in the program. The advantage of the broader defiinition of the UGRR is that it allows us to study freedom seekers from earlier time periods, and the aid that they received.

As a researcher of Pennsylvania African American history, I have found numerous documented instances of freedom seekers receiving aid in the decades prior to the Revolution. These early incidents, although limited in geographic area, were neither the work of isolated individuals nor one-time occurences, giving credence to the theory that a crude system, operated by African Americans, existed in colonial America.

The advantage of defining the study of the UGRR as the period of active involvement by organized abolitionist groups with established routes and stations is that it would enable us to focus resources on a vastly misunderstood and still little-known operation. The disadvantage of such a close focus is that it excludes the instances I described above.

You can read the NPS' definition of what they consider to be appropriate study of the UGRR on their Network to Freedom Website:

http://209.10.16.21/TEMPLATE/FrontEnd/learn.cfm