The Museum of Florida History collects, preserves, exhibits, and interprets evidence of past and present cultures in Florida. As the state history museum, it focuses on artifacts unique to the role Florida has played in America's history.

Florida's First People exhibit depicts the life and environment of Florida's earliest inhabitants, and Seminole Portraits displays portraits of Seminole warriors and chiefs painted during the Seminole War period.

The 1700s Spanish Shipwrecks exhibit displays artifacts from the 1715 and 1733 Spanish plate fleet shipwrecks.

A permanent Civil War exhibit includes selected military arms, soldier's personal items, home front artifacts, and original Florida unit flags. Highlights include: the flag of the Apalachicola Guards made by women early in the war, uniforms worn by Florida officers, the sword from a Floridian killed at the Battle of Shiloh, a slave impressment document from Alachua County, a howitzer and mortar, the folding desk used by a Florida Union unit commander, a Confederate-made cavalry saber from Olustee, surgeons kits, a Union revolver found hidden in a wall of an old St. Augustine inn, and the flag of the 5th Florida Regiment carried at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Permanent exhibits also include information about Florida's African American history. Florida in the Civil War presents the story of African American troops who served in the Union Army and fought in the Battle of Olustee near Lake City in 1864, and at the Battle of Natural Bridge south of Tallahassee in 1865. Florida Remembers World War II recalls the more than 50,000 black Floridians who entered the military during World War II, and displays memorabilia of Lt. James Polkinghorne, a Tuskegee Airman from Pensacola who lost his life in Italy serving as a fighter pilot.

www.museumoffloridahistory.com

Information Provided by the Florida Division of Historical Resources and Visit Florida.