Kingsley Plantation
Encyclopedia
Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate in Jacksonville, Florida
, that was named for an early owner, Zephaniah Kingsley
, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island
at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
managed by the U.S. National Park Service
.
The plantation
was originally 1000 acres (4 km²), most of which has been taken over by forest; the structures and grounds of the park now comprise approximately 60 acres (242,811.6 m²). Evidence of Pre-Columbian Timucua
life is on the island, as are the remains of a Spanish mission
named San Juan del Puerto. Under British rule in 1765, a plantation was established that cycled through several owners while Florida was transferred back to Spain and then the United States. The longest span of ownership was under Kingsley and his family, a polygamous
and multiracial
household controlled by and resistant to the issues of race and slavery
.
Free blacks and several private owners lived at the plantation until it was transferred to the State of Florida in 1955. It was acquired by the National Park Service in 1991. The most prominent features of Kingsley Plantation are the owner's house—a structure of architectural significance built probably between 1797 and 1798 that is cited as being the oldest surviving plantation house in the state—and an attached kitchen house, barn, and remains of 25 anthropologically
valuable slave cabins that endured beyond the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). The foundations of the house, kitchen, barn and the slave quarters were constructed of cement tabby, making them notably durable. Archeological evidence found in and around the slave cabins has given researchers insight into African traditions among slaves who had recently arrived in North America.
Zephaniah Kingsley wrote a defense of slavery and the three-tier social system that acknowledged the rights of free people of color that existed in Florida under Spanish rule. Kingsley briefly served on the Florida Territorial Council, planning the transition when Florida was annexed by the United States. During his time on the council, he attempted to influence Florida lawmakers to recognize free people of color and allow mixed-race children to inherit property. In addition to the architectural qualities, the site is significant as his home and that of his unique family.
Fort George Island is located in Duval County
, several miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville
. It is a marsh
island at the mouth of the St. Johns River
, surrounded by tidal estuaries
, Little Talbot Island, and the Nassau River. The north Atlantic coast of Florida had been inhabited for approximately 12,000 years when Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León
landed near Cape Canaveral
in 1513. The Spanish met the Saturiwa, a Timucua
tribe, who were the largest group of indigenous people
in the region, numbering about 14,000. Bands of Timucua extended into central Florida and south Georgia
. An estimated 35 chiefdoms existed in the territory, and their societies were complex with large villages sustained by fishing, hunting, and agriculture, but they frequently warred with each other and unrelated groups of Native Americans. The Spanish concentrated their efforts of exploration and settlement on the Gulf Coast of Florida
. By 1562, Jean Ribault
led French explorers to the mouth of the St. Johns River where they built a garrison in 1564, calling it Fort Caroline
. Within 200 years the population of the indigenous people of Florida was decimated by disease and constant fighting. They left behind evidence of their existence in massive midden
s or shell mounds filled with discarded food byproducts. On Fort George Island, the shells were primarily oysters.
Ownership of Florida transferred to the United Kingdom in 1763. Spanish settlers had established missions—including one on Fort George Island named San Juan del Puerto that eventually gave the nearby St. Johns River its name—but their frequent battles with the Timucua and a decline in mission activity curbed development. When the British controlled Florida, they established several plantations in the region. Richard Hazard owned the first plantation on Fort George Island in 1765, harvesting indigo
with several dozen enslaved Africans. Spain regained ownership of Florida in 1783 after the American Revolution
and recruited new Americans with promises of free land.
In 1793, American Revolution veteran John "Lightning" McQueen (1751–1807) was lured to Fort George Island from South Carolina
by the Spanish government, which rewarded McQueen with the island. McQueen settled with 300 slaves and constructed a large house in a unique architectural style exhibiting four corner pavilions surrounding a great room. McQueen was soon bankrupt due to misfortunes, and the possession of the plantation turned over to John McIntosh (1773–1836) from Georgia who revived it in 1804. McIntosh, however, took a leading role in the Patriot Rebellion, an insurgency by Americans to hasten the annexation of Florida to the United States. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and McIntosh fled back into Georgia to escape punishment from the Spanish.
, Zephaniah Kingsley
(1765–1843) established his career as a slave trader and shipping magnate, which allowed him to travel widely. He settled on Fort George Island in 1814 after leasing it from McIntosh. He purchased the land and buildings for $7,000 in 1817 ($ in 2009). Kingsley owned several plantations around the lower St. Johns River in what is today Jacksonville, and Drayton Island
in central Florida; two of them may have been managed part-time by his wife, a former slave named Anna Madgigine Jai
(1793–1870). Kingsley married Anna in 1806 when she was 13 years old, recently arrived in Cuba from West Africa. He freed her in 1811 and charged her with running his Laurel Grove plantation at Doctors Lake
in modern-day Orange Park
. His legal emancipation submitted to the Spanish colonial government read
Marriages between white plantation owners and African women were common in East Florida. The Spanish government provided for a separate class of free people of color
, and encouraged slaves to purchase their freedom. Slavery under Spain in Florida was not considered a lifelong condition, and free blacks were involved in the economic development of the region, many of them owning their own slaves. Anna oversaw 60 slaves at Fort George Island which grew sea island cotton
, citrus
, corn, sugarcane
, beans, and potatoes. John Maxwell, the fourth child, was born in 1824 when Kingsley and Anna lived on Fort George Island. Kingsley also maintained relationships with three other African women who acted as co-wives or concubines: Flora H., Sarah M.; and Munsilna McGundo. Anna Jai remained the matriarch in the polygamous family. Historian Daniel Schafer posits that Anna Jai would have been familiar with the concepts of polygamy and marrying a slave master to acquire one's freedom.Kingsley was often away on business, during which Anna Jai would assume management responsibilities for the plantation. Anna Jai befriended a white woman named Susan L'Engle, who came from Fernandina
to visit Kingsley on business, and spent time with Anna Jai. Kingsley's absence and his time spent with his other wives gave L'Engle the impression that Anna Jai was lonely at Fort George Island, despite all her responsibilities. Susan L'Engle told her stories to her great granddaughter, children's author Madeleine L'Engle
, who wrote them in her book Summer of the Great Grandmother. Anna Jai is referred to as "the African Princess" in the book; there is some belief that Anna Jai may have been the daughter of a ruling family in West Africa. (Schafer, pp. 5, 15–18, 58.) Visitors to the plantation were invited to a dinner table where Kingsley displayed his multi-racial children with pride. He provided them with the best education he could afford, and considered them a shield from any potential racial uprising.
Authors of an ethnological study of slavery at Kingsley Plantation characterized Kingsley as a man of complex paradoxes, defiantly proud of his success as a slaveholder, yet dedicated to his multiracial family. Kingsley published a defense of slavery in 1828, identifying himself only as "An Inhabitant of Florida". He rationalized the institution as a necessary condition for any society, beneficial to owner and slave alike, and to the overall economy. He did not consider race the only factor that should determine servitude status, writing, "Few, I think will deny that color and condition, if properly considered, are two very separate qualities ... our legislators ... have mistaken the shadow for the substance, and confounded together two very different things; thereby substantiating by law a dangerous and inconvenient antipathy, which can have no better foundation than prejudice." In 1823 President James Monroe
appointed Kingsley to Florida's Territorial Council, where he tried to persuade them to define the rights of free people of color. When it became apparent to him that they could not, he resigned. The council passed laws that increasingly restricted the rights which free blacks enjoyed under Spanish control. The treatise was Kingsley's response to these restrictions; he favored the Spanish three-tier system of white landowners, black slaves, and freed blacks. The pamphlet was reprinted again in 1834, and Southerners used its arguments to defend slavery in debates leading to the Civil War.
The Florida Territorial Council passed laws forbidding interracial marriage
and the right of free blacks or mixed race descendants to inherit property. To avoid difficulties with the new government in what he termed its "spirit of intolerant prejudice", Kingsley sent his wives, children, and a few slaves to Haiti
, by that time free black republic. His two daughters had already each married white planters and remained in Florida. He sold the plantation to his nephew, Kingsley Beatty Gibbs in 1839, and transferred some of the slaves to his plantation in San Jose, now a neighborhood in Jacksonville.Kingsley Beatty Gibbs established and gave the name to the fishing community that is now known as Mayport, Florida. (Fretwell, p. 5.) Kingsley started a plantation in Haiti that was worked by former Fort George Island slaves, who had become indentured servant
s; slavery was not allowed in Haiti. They were to earn their freedom in nine years. In 1842 Kingsley gave an interview to the abolitionist Lydia Child
. When she asked him if he was aware that his occupation as a slave trader might be perceived as being akin to piracy, he responded "Yes; and I am glad of it. They will look upon a slaveholder just so, by and by. Slave trading was a very respectable business when I was young. The first merchants in England and America were engaged in it. Some people hide things which they think other people don’t like. I never conceal anything."
He went on to exhibit considerable pride in the Haitian plantation built with the help of his sons:
Kingsley died in the next year, while en route to New York City
to work on a land deal. Anna returned to Florida in 1846 to settle an inheritance dispute with some of her husband's white relatives; because the will had been made under Spanish law, when inheritance by free blacks was legal, the court ruled in her favor and control of the Kingsley's holdings in Florida remained with her and her children for several years. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs sold the Fort George Island plantation in 1852 and moved to St Augustine
.
Anna Jai moved with about 70 former slaves to the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville to live out her remaining years. The ownership of the island and farms immediately following its sale by Gibbs is unknown, but after the American Civil War
, the Freedman's Bureau managed the island and recently emancipated freedmen lived in the former slave quarters and farmed the land. A New Hampshire farmer named John Rollins purchased the island in 1869 and, finding agriculture in Florida not as successful as he wished, transitioned the island into a tourist resort, building a large luxury hotel and attracting celebrities such as banker William Astor
and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe
. The slave quarters were displayed as tourist attractions. After the hotel burned down in 1888, the Rollins family successfully cultivated citrus until a freeze in 1894 destroyed their crop. Rollins' daughter's family was the last to live in the main house; she sold the island to private investors in 1923.
Two clubs were constructed on the island for wealthy Jacksonville residents. One used the plantation house as a headquarters until they constructed their own building. Private clubs were popular until the Great Depression
and they subsequently went out of fashion during World War II
. The Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island in 1955, including the plantation houses, barn, and slave quarters, calling it the Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. An effort to restore the property to its appearance while the Kingsley family was in residence began in 1967. The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
was created by the National Park Service
and established under President Ronald Reagan
in 1988. Several sites, including Fort Caroline and other ecologically significant properties in Jacksonville, are under the management of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. Kingsley Plantation was transferred to the National Park Service in 1991.
. When the day's jobs were completed, slaves were free to do as they chose. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs described the task system in his journal:
This task system of slavery was common among sea island plantations in the Southeastern United States. In contrast, cotton and tobacco plantations in Virginia
and other parts of the South
practiced the gang system, where an overseer who was also a slave drove slaves to work the entire day.
Slaves on Fort George Island were African or first generation African-American. Records and archeological information show they were Igbo
and Calabar
i from Nigeria
, and others from the area around what is today Guinea
, and a few from Zanzibar
. Archeologist Charles H. Fairbanks
received a Florida Park Service grant to study artifacts found at the slave quarters. His findings, published in 1968, initiated further interest and research in African American archeology in the U.S. Concentrating on two particular cabins bordering on Palmetto Avenue, Fairbanks found cooking pots used in fireplaces, animal bones—fish, pigs, raccoons, and turtles—discarded as food byproducts, and musket balls and fishing weights.
Fairbanks described Kingsley as "an unusually permissive slave owner" who wrote about the physical superiority of Africans to Europeans, armed his slaves for protection, and gave them padlocks for their cabins. Historian Daniel Stowell suggests that the cabins and Kingsley's hands-off approach to slave management was intended to prevent the slaves from running away. Kingsley himself wrote about not interfering in his slaves' family lives and "encouraged as much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday morning were dedicated ... they were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared quite happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had occasion to apply other correction than shaming them."
Kingsley used the plantation as his slave trading headquarters, training slaves for specific tasks to increase their value at sale. He developed them as skilled artisans and educated them about agriculture and planting. Those who had been trained by Kingsley fetched a much higher price at sale, on average 50 percent higher than market price.Depending on the condition, training, age, and quality of the slave, a price could range from 50 to 400 peso
s in early 19th century Spanish Florida. Pesos were roughly equivalent to dollars. In 2009 the range would be from $ to $ (Landers, p. 140, 177). A 2006 excavation sponsored by the University of Florida
uncovered artifacts from the slave cabins, such as the tools the slaves used. In one cabin an intact sacrificed chicken
on top of an egg was unearthed, adding evidence to the hypothesis that African slaves kept many of their traditions alive in North America. Archeologists also discovered evidence of an added-on porch to one of the cabins facing away from the main house, an atypical feature for a slave cabin, as owners and overseers constructed quarters to be within their view at all times.
The slave houses were constructed out of tabby
and built by the slaves probably in the 1820s or 1830s, although evidence exists that indicates two of them were inhabited by 1814. Tabby was constructed of shells left over from Timucua middens, burned by the barrel-full in open pits or kilns, then pounded into lime particles, mixed with water, sand, and whole oyster or clam shells, then poured into wooden foundations about 1 foot (0.3048 m) high, and set to dry. The process was repeated and stacked until the desired height of the wall was reached. The floors of the kitchen house and the basement of the owner's house were also constructed of tabby. The material made the houses remarkably durable, resistant to weather and insects, better insulated than wood, and the ingredients were accessible and cheap, although labor-intensive. The slave quarters at Kingsley Plantation are widely considered some of the best surviving examples of the use of this building material.
Each cabin consisted of a room, fireplace, and sleeping loft. The arrangement of the quarters is distinctive: there were originally 32 cabins laid out in a semicircular arc interrupted by the main thoroughfare to the plantation, Palmetto Avenue. This formation is unique in plantations in the antebellum U.S. Historian Daniel Stowell surmises that it may have given slave families a modicum of privacy, although he also suggests overseers and slave managers may have arranged the quarters to be able to watch all the slaves from the owner's house at the same time. Author Daniel Schafer, however, suggests that Anna Jai may have been responsible for this layout. West African villages were commonly constructed in a circular pattern with the king or ruling family living in the center.
John Rollins deconstructed several of the slave cabins to build a boat house and dock in the 1890s. The archeological significance of the site is considerable in light of the fact that the majority of slave quarters in the Southern United States were not built with quality materials, and most quarters were destroyed after emancipation
. Six graves thought to contain slaves were unearthed in 2011 by archeologists from the University of Florida
. The bodies ranged in age from infants to an elderly woman; three were adults who were probably born in West Africa.
The main residence of the Fort George plantation is a unique two-story house that was probably constructed between 1797 and 1798 by John McQueen, who indicated in a letter at the time that he had built a comfortable house for himself. The house—resembling 17th century British gentry
homes—has a large center room and four one-story pavilions
at each corner that allowed air to circulate through them to keep them cooler in the summer; each was a bedroom that had a fireplace to heat more efficiently in the winter. The second story of the house has two large rooms. On the roof is a deck and the house faces Fort George Inlet and features two porches on the front and rear of the house. A brick walkway joined the back porch to a wharf on the inlet while Kingsley was in residence. The Florida Division of Historical Resources indicates it may be the oldest plantation house in the state.
The main house protected John McQueen's family and neighbors during attacks from invading Creeks in 1802; he wrote that at one time 26 people took refuge there. Following raids from Americans during the Patriot Rebellion in 1813, the house was gutted and vandalized. Plantations as far south as New Smyrna were destroyed by rebels fleeing into Georgia. When Kingsley arrived, there were no metal fixtures in the doors and the wooden slave quarters had been burned down. John Rollins added sections to the east and west sides of the house in between the pavilions in the 1890s and removed at least three of the fireplace chimneys from the pavilions. One of the clubs that owned the island in the 1920s added electricity.
Next to the main house was a two-story kitchen house that was called "Ma'am Anna House" while Anna Jai was on Fort George Island. It was probably built in the 1820s and doubled as a center for food preparation on the ground floor and Anna Jai's residence with her children on the second. In West Africa, polygamy was not uncommon, and wives often lived in separate quarters from their husbands. Kingsley's nephew and his wife also lived on the grounds and Gibbs probably used a part of the second floor for an office. The main house and Ma'am Anna House were surrounded by a grove of orange, lemon, and banana trees with occasional ornamental crepe myrtles. Between 1869 and 1877 Rollins built a roof over the walkway between the kitchen house and the main house.
A barn constructed of tabby sits 150 feet (45.7 m) from the owner's house. Two wells have survived since Kingsley's ownership and two tombs of unknown origin constructed of tabby before Kingsley came to own the island are also located near the plantation. Ruins of another tabby house sits near the entrance of Palmetto Avenue. Its origins are unclear. It has been called the Munsilna McGundo House for Kingsley's fourth wife, as oral history related that it was left to her and her daughter Fatima in Kingsley's will. More recently it has been referred to as Thomson Tabby House named for a planter who died perhaps while constructing it.
s and humidity
. The kitchen building was restored in 2006, but work is ongoing for the owner's house. Despite the durability of the slave quarters, they are vulnerable to vandalism
, and each cabin shows evidence of damage. While there is no slated completion date for the rehabilitation of the owner's house, one room of the kitchen house is open and contains exhibits.
Since 1998 Kingsley Plantation has hosted an annual one-day event in October called the Kingsley Heritage Celebration that coincides with the Kingsley family reunion. Several relatives of Kingsley and Anna Jai are notable. Kingsley's youngest sister's daughter, Anna McNeill
, participated with her mother in attempting to block Anna Jai from inheriting Kingsley's property. McNeill served as the model for her son, the artist James Whistler, in his Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, popularly known as Whistler's Mother. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs' brother was George Couper Gibbs, a planter in St. Johns County
, south of Fort George Island near St. Augustine. Former governor of South Carolina Duncan Clinch Heyward
is descended from him.
Another branch of Kingsley descendants lives in the Dominican Republic
near where John Maxwell Kingsley lived in Haiti. Kingsley and Anna Jai are the great grandparents of Mary Kingsley Sammis, who married Abraham Lincoln Lewis
, one of Florida's first black millionaires and an original investor in the all-black American Beach. The Kingsley-Sammis-Lewis-Betsch family has been active in Jacksonville's black community for decades. Spelman College
's first black female president, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, is descended from Lewis and Sammis. The Heritage Celebration was moved to Black History Month
in February 2008; Cole was the keynote speaker of the 2009 Kingsley Heritage Celebration. Interpretive events such as music, storytelling, and ranger-led talks about history and archeology regularly occur during the Heritage Celebration.
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, that was named for an early owner, Zephaniah Kingsley
Zephaniah Kingsley
Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. was a plantation owner, slave trader, and merchant who built several plantations in the Spanish colony of Florida in what is now Jacksonville...
, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island
Fort George Island Cultural State Park
Fort George Island State Cultural Site is a Florida State Park located on Fort George Island, about three miles south of Little Talbot Island State Park on SR A1A, and near the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, in Jacksonville, Florida. It is the highest point along the Atlantic coast...
at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve is located in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, in the United States. The park was established in 1988, and covers 46,000 acres...
managed by the U.S. National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
.
The plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
was originally 1000 acres (4 km²), most of which has been taken over by forest; the structures and grounds of the park now comprise approximately 60 acres (242,811.6 m²). Evidence of Pre-Columbian Timucua
Timucua
The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The various groups of Timucua spoke several dialects of the...
life is on the island, as are the remains of a Spanish mission
Spanish missions in Florida
Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout la Florida in order to convert the Indians to Christianity, to facilitate control of the area, and to prevent its colonization by other countries, in particular, England and France...
named San Juan del Puerto. Under British rule in 1765, a plantation was established that cycled through several owners while Florida was transferred back to Spain and then the United States. The longest span of ownership was under Kingsley and his family, a polygamous
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
and multiracial
Multiracial
The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...
household controlled by and resistant to the issues of race and slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
.
Free blacks and several private owners lived at the plantation until it was transferred to the State of Florida in 1955. It was acquired by the National Park Service in 1991. The most prominent features of Kingsley Plantation are the owner's house—a structure of architectural significance built probably between 1797 and 1798 that is cited as being the oldest surviving plantation house in the state—and an attached kitchen house, barn, and remains of 25 anthropologically
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
valuable slave cabins that endured beyond the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). The foundations of the house, kitchen, barn and the slave quarters were constructed of cement tabby, making them notably durable. Archeological evidence found in and around the slave cabins has given researchers insight into African traditions among slaves who had recently arrived in North America.
Zephaniah Kingsley wrote a defense of slavery and the three-tier social system that acknowledged the rights of free people of color that existed in Florida under Spanish rule. Kingsley briefly served on the Florida Territorial Council, planning the transition when Florida was annexed by the United States. During his time on the council, he attempted to influence Florida lawmakers to recognize free people of color and allow mixed-race children to inherit property. In addition to the architectural qualities, the site is significant as his home and that of his unique family.
Pre-Columbian settlement and colonization
Duval County, Florida
Duval County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2010, the population was 864,263. Its county seat is Jacksonville, with which the Duval County government has been consolidated since 1968...
, several miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
. It is a marsh
Marsh
In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....
island at the mouth of the St. Johns River
St. Johns River
The St. Johns River is the longest river in the U.S. state of Florida and its most significant for commercial and recreational use. At long, it winds through or borders twelve counties, three of which are the state's largest. The drop in elevation from the headwaters to the mouth is less than ;...
, surrounded by tidal estuaries
Estuary
An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....
, Little Talbot Island, and the Nassau River. The north Atlantic coast of Florida had been inhabited for approximately 12,000 years when Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named...
landed near Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral, from the Spanish Cabo Cañaveral, is a headland in Brevard County, Florida, United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic coast. Known as Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated from it by the Banana River.It is part of a region known as the...
in 1513. The Spanish met the Saturiwa, a Timucua
Timucua
The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The various groups of Timucua spoke several dialects of the...
tribe, who were the largest group of indigenous people
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
in the region, numbering about 14,000. Bands of Timucua extended into central Florida and south Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
. An estimated 35 chiefdoms existed in the territory, and their societies were complex with large villages sustained by fishing, hunting, and agriculture, but they frequently warred with each other and unrelated groups of Native Americans. The Spanish concentrated their efforts of exploration and settlement on the Gulf Coast of Florida
Gulf Coast of the United States
The Gulf Coast of the United States, sometimes referred to as the Gulf South, South Coast, or 3rd Coast, comprises the coasts of American states that are on the Gulf of Mexico, which includes Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and are known as the Gulf States...
. By 1562, Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault was a French naval officer, navigator, and a colonizer of what would become the southeastern United States. He was a major figure in the French attempts to colonize Florida...
led French explorers to the mouth of the St. Johns River where they built a garrison in 1564, calling it Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated by the...
. Within 200 years the population of the indigenous people of Florida was decimated by disease and constant fighting. They left behind evidence of their existence in massive midden
Midden
A midden, is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, vermin, shells, sherds, lithics , and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation...
s or shell mounds filled with discarded food byproducts. On Fort George Island, the shells were primarily oysters.
Ownership of Florida transferred to the United Kingdom in 1763. Spanish settlers had established missions—including one on Fort George Island named San Juan del Puerto that eventually gave the nearby St. Johns River its name—but their frequent battles with the Timucua and a decline in mission activity curbed development. When the British controlled Florida, they established several plantations in the region. Richard Hazard owned the first plantation on Fort George Island in 1765, harvesting indigo
Indigo dye
Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color . Historically, indigo was a natural dye extracted from plants, and this process was important economically because blue dyes were once rare. Nearly all indigo dye produced today — several thousand tons each year — is synthetic...
with several dozen enslaved Africans. Spain regained ownership of Florida in 1783 after the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and recruited new Americans with promises of free land.
In 1793, American Revolution veteran John "Lightning" McQueen (1751–1807) was lured to Fort George Island from South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
by the Spanish government, which rewarded McQueen with the island. McQueen settled with 300 slaves and constructed a large house in a unique architectural style exhibiting four corner pavilions surrounding a great room. McQueen was soon bankrupt due to misfortunes, and the possession of the plantation turned over to John McIntosh (1773–1836) from Georgia who revived it in 1804. McIntosh, however, took a leading role in the Patriot Rebellion, an insurgency by Americans to hasten the annexation of Florida to the United States. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and McIntosh fled back into Georgia to escape punishment from the Spanish.
Kingsley's family
Born in Bristol, England and educated in London after his family moved to colonial South CarolinaColonial period of South Carolina
The history of the colonial period of South Carolina focuses on the English colonization that created one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Major settlement began after 1712 as the northern half of the British colony of Carolina attracted frontiersmen from Pennsylvania and Virginia, while the...
, Zephaniah Kingsley
Zephaniah Kingsley
Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. was a plantation owner, slave trader, and merchant who built several plantations in the Spanish colony of Florida in what is now Jacksonville...
(1765–1843) established his career as a slave trader and shipping magnate, which allowed him to travel widely. He settled on Fort George Island in 1814 after leasing it from McIntosh. He purchased the land and buildings for $7,000 in 1817 ($ in 2009). Kingsley owned several plantations around the lower St. Johns River in what is today Jacksonville, and Drayton Island
Drayton Island
Drayton Island is a privately owned heavily wooded island at the northern end of Lake George on the west side of the Saint Johns River's main channel in Putnam County, Florida, United States....
in central Florida; two of them may have been managed part-time by his wife, a former slave named Anna Madgigine Jai
Anna Kingsley
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley was a West African slave turned slaveholder and plantation owner in early 19th century Florida. At 13 years old, she was captured and sent to Cuba where she was purchased by and married to Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and plantation owner. They had four children...
(1793–1870). Kingsley married Anna in 1806 when she was 13 years old, recently arrived in Cuba from West Africa. He freed her in 1811 and charged her with running his Laurel Grove plantation at Doctors Lake
Doctors Lake
Doctors Lake is a body of water located off the St. Johns River in Clay County, Florida. Despite its name, it is not a true lake, as it is actually an inlet, openly connected to the St. Johns. Because of the estuarine nature of the St. Johns, Doctor's Lake is itself somewhat brackish.Many docks...
in modern-day Orange Park
Orange Park, Florida
Orange Park is a town in Clay County, Florida, USA, and a suburb of Jacksonville. The population was 8,412 at the 2010 census. The name "Orange Park" is additionally applied to a wider area of northern Clay County outside the town limits, covering such communities as Fleming Island, Lakeside, and...
. His legal emancipation submitted to the Spanish colonial government read
Let is be known that I ... possessed as a slave a black woman called Anna, around eighteen years of age, bought as a bozal [newly imported African] in the port of Havana from a slave cargo, who with the permission of the government was introduced here; the said black woman has given birth to three mulattoMulattoMulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
children: George, about 3 years 9 months, Martha, 20 months old, an Mary, one month old. And regarding the good qualities shown by the said black woman, the nicety and fidelity which she has shown me, and for other reasons, I have resolved to set her free ... and the same to her three children.
Free people of color
A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved...
, and encouraged slaves to purchase their freedom. Slavery under Spain in Florida was not considered a lifelong condition, and free blacks were involved in the economic development of the region, many of them owning their own slaves. Anna oversaw 60 slaves at Fort George Island which grew sea island cotton
Gossypium barbadense
Gossypium barbadense, also known as extra long staple cotton as it generally has a staple of at least 1 3/8" or longer, is a species of cotton plant. Some types of ELS cotton are American Pima, Egyptian Giza, Indian Suvin, Chinese Xiniang, Sudanese Barakat, and Russian Tonkovoloknistyi...
, citrus
Citrus
Citrus is a common term and genus of flowering plants in the rue family, Rutaceae. Citrus is believed to have originated in the part of Southeast Asia bordered by Northeastern India, Myanmar and the Yunnan province of China...
, corn, sugarcane
Sugarcane
Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...
, beans, and potatoes. John Maxwell, the fourth child, was born in 1824 when Kingsley and Anna lived on Fort George Island. Kingsley also maintained relationships with three other African women who acted as co-wives or concubines: Flora H., Sarah M.; and Munsilna McGundo. Anna Jai remained the matriarch in the polygamous family. Historian Daniel Schafer posits that Anna Jai would have been familiar with the concepts of polygamy and marrying a slave master to acquire one's freedom.Kingsley was often away on business, during which Anna Jai would assume management responsibilities for the plantation. Anna Jai befriended a white woman named Susan L'Engle, who came from Fernandina
Fernandina Beach, Florida
Fernandina Beach is a city in Nassau County in the state of Florida in the United States of America and on Amelia Island. It is a part of Greater Jacksonville and is among Florida's northernmost cities. The area was first inhabited by the Timucuan Indian tribe...
to visit Kingsley on business, and spent time with Anna Jai. Kingsley's absence and his time spent with his other wives gave L'Engle the impression that Anna Jai was lonely at Fort George Island, despite all her responsibilities. Susan L'Engle told her stories to her great granddaughter, children's author Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
, who wrote them in her book Summer of the Great Grandmother. Anna Jai is referred to as "the African Princess" in the book; there is some belief that Anna Jai may have been the daughter of a ruling family in West Africa. (Schafer, pp. 5, 15–18, 58.) Visitors to the plantation were invited to a dinner table where Kingsley displayed his multi-racial children with pride. He provided them with the best education he could afford, and considered them a shield from any potential racial uprising.
Authors of an ethnological study of slavery at Kingsley Plantation characterized Kingsley as a man of complex paradoxes, defiantly proud of his success as a slaveholder, yet dedicated to his multiracial family. Kingsley published a defense of slavery in 1828, identifying himself only as "An Inhabitant of Florida". He rationalized the institution as a necessary condition for any society, beneficial to owner and slave alike, and to the overall economy. He did not consider race the only factor that should determine servitude status, writing, "Few, I think will deny that color and condition, if properly considered, are two very separate qualities ... our legislators ... have mistaken the shadow for the substance, and confounded together two very different things; thereby substantiating by law a dangerous and inconvenient antipathy, which can have no better foundation than prejudice." In 1823 President James Monroe
James Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
appointed Kingsley to Florida's Territorial Council, where he tried to persuade them to define the rights of free people of color. When it became apparent to him that they could not, he resigned. The council passed laws that increasingly restricted the rights which free blacks enjoyed under Spanish control. The treatise was Kingsley's response to these restrictions; he favored the Spanish three-tier system of white landowners, black slaves, and freed blacks. The pamphlet was reprinted again in 1834, and Southerners used its arguments to defend slavery in debates leading to the Civil War.
The Florida Territorial Council passed laws forbidding interracial marriage
Interracial marriage
Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations...
and the right of free blacks or mixed race descendants to inherit property. To avoid difficulties with the new government in what he termed its "spirit of intolerant prejudice", Kingsley sent his wives, children, and a few slaves to Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, by that time free black republic. His two daughters had already each married white planters and remained in Florida. He sold the plantation to his nephew, Kingsley Beatty Gibbs in 1839, and transferred some of the slaves to his plantation in San Jose, now a neighborhood in Jacksonville.Kingsley Beatty Gibbs established and gave the name to the fishing community that is now known as Mayport, Florida. (Fretwell, p. 5.) Kingsley started a plantation in Haiti that was worked by former Fort George Island slaves, who had become indentured servant
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
s; slavery was not allowed in Haiti. They were to earn their freedom in nine years. In 1842 Kingsley gave an interview to the abolitionist Lydia Child
Lydia Child
Lydia Maria Child was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist and Unitarian....
. When she asked him if he was aware that his occupation as a slave trader might be perceived as being akin to piracy, he responded "Yes; and I am glad of it. They will look upon a slaveholder just so, by and by. Slave trading was a very respectable business when I was young. The first merchants in England and America were engaged in it. Some people hide things which they think other people don’t like. I never conceal anything."
He went on to exhibit considerable pride in the Haitian plantation built with the help of his sons:
I wish you would go there. [Anna] would give you the best in the house. You ought to go, to see how happy the human race can be. It is a fine, rich valley, about thirty miles from Port Platte; heavily timbered with mahogany all round; well watered; flowers so beautiful; fruits in abundance, so delicious that you could not refrain from stopping to eat, till you could eat no more. My sons have laid out good roads, and built bridges and mills; the people are improving, and everything is prosperous.
Kingsley died in the next year, while en route to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to work on a land deal. Anna returned to Florida in 1846 to settle an inheritance dispute with some of her husband's white relatives; because the will had been made under Spanish law, when inheritance by free blacks was legal, the court ruled in her favor and control of the Kingsley's holdings in Florida remained with her and her children for several years. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs sold the Fort George Island plantation in 1852 and moved to St Augustine
St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United...
.
Post-Kingsley inhabitants
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the Freedman's Bureau managed the island and recently emancipated freedmen lived in the former slave quarters and farmed the land. A New Hampshire farmer named John Rollins purchased the island in 1869 and, finding agriculture in Florida not as successful as he wished, transitioned the island into a tourist resort, building a large luxury hotel and attracting celebrities such as banker William Astor
William Backhouse Astor, Sr.
William Backhouse Astor, Sr. was an American businessman and member of the Astor family.-Origins and schooling:...
and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
. The slave quarters were displayed as tourist attractions. After the hotel burned down in 1888, the Rollins family successfully cultivated citrus until a freeze in 1894 destroyed their crop. Rollins' daughter's family was the last to live in the main house; she sold the island to private investors in 1923.
Two clubs were constructed on the island for wealthy Jacksonville residents. One used the plantation house as a headquarters until they constructed their own building. Private clubs were popular until the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and they subsequently went out of fashion during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island in 1955, including the plantation houses, barn, and slave quarters, calling it the Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. An effort to restore the property to its appearance while the Kingsley family was in residence began in 1967. The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve
The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve is located in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, in the United States. The park was established in 1988, and covers 46,000 acres...
was created by the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
and established under President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
in 1988. Several sites, including Fort Caroline and other ecologically significant properties in Jacksonville, are under the management of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. Kingsley Plantation was transferred to the National Park Service in 1991.
Slavery on Fort George Island
Labor at Kingsley Plantation was carried out by the task system: each slave was given an assigned set of tasks for the day, such as processing 20 pound of cotton or constructing three barrels for a slave who was a cooperCooper (profession)
Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads...
. When the day's jobs were completed, slaves were free to do as they chose. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs described the task system in his journal:
October 5, 1841—No work was done today, as all the people have it to gather their own crop—It is a rule which we have, to give all the negroes one day in the spring to plant, and one day in the fall to reap, and as there is a rule on Sea Island plantations fixing the tasks required each day to be done, it occurs, during the long days of summer, that the hand is generally done his task by 2 p.m., often sooner, so they have abundance of time to work their own crop, fish, etc., etc.
This task system of slavery was common among sea island plantations in the Southeastern United States. In contrast, cotton and tobacco plantations in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and other parts of the South
South
South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.South is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.By convention, the bottom side of a map is south....
practiced the gang system, where an overseer who was also a slave drove slaves to work the entire day.
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
and Calabar
Calabar
Calabar is a city in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria. The original name for Calabar was Atakpa, from the Jukun language....
i from Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, and others from the area around what is today Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
, and a few from Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
. Archeologist Charles H. Fairbanks
Charles H. Fairbanks
Charles Herron Fairbanks was an archaeologist/anthropologist. He conducted archaeology at the Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon, Georgia where he developed rigorous, painstaking field methodology.-Biography:...
received a Florida Park Service grant to study artifacts found at the slave quarters. His findings, published in 1968, initiated further interest and research in African American archeology in the U.S. Concentrating on two particular cabins bordering on Palmetto Avenue, Fairbanks found cooking pots used in fireplaces, animal bones—fish, pigs, raccoons, and turtles—discarded as food byproducts, and musket balls and fishing weights.
Fairbanks described Kingsley as "an unusually permissive slave owner" who wrote about the physical superiority of Africans to Europeans, armed his slaves for protection, and gave them padlocks for their cabins. Historian Daniel Stowell suggests that the cabins and Kingsley's hands-off approach to slave management was intended to prevent the slaves from running away. Kingsley himself wrote about not interfering in his slaves' family lives and "encouraged as much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday morning were dedicated ... they were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared quite happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had occasion to apply other correction than shaming them."
Kingsley used the plantation as his slave trading headquarters, training slaves for specific tasks to increase their value at sale. He developed them as skilled artisans and educated them about agriculture and planting. Those who had been trained by Kingsley fetched a much higher price at sale, on average 50 percent higher than market price.Depending on the condition, training, age, and quality of the slave, a price could range from 50 to 400 peso
Peso
The word peso was the name of a coin that originated in Spain and became of immense importance internationally...
s in early 19th century Spanish Florida. Pesos were roughly equivalent to dollars. In 2009 the range would be from $ to $ (Landers, p. 140, 177). A 2006 excavation sponsored by the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
uncovered artifacts from the slave cabins, such as the tools the slaves used. In one cabin an intact sacrificed chicken
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
on top of an egg was unearthed, adding evidence to the hypothesis that African slaves kept many of their traditions alive in North America. Archeologists also discovered evidence of an added-on porch to one of the cabins facing away from the main house, an atypical feature for a slave cabin, as owners and overseers constructed quarters to be within their view at all times.
Tabby (cement)
Tabby is a building material consisting of lime, sand, water, and crushed oyster shells. It was developed and used by English colonists in Beaufort County and on the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina, in coastal Georgia, and in northern Florida in the Southern United States...
and built by the slaves probably in the 1820s or 1830s, although evidence exists that indicates two of them were inhabited by 1814. Tabby was constructed of shells left over from Timucua middens, burned by the barrel-full in open pits or kilns, then pounded into lime particles, mixed with water, sand, and whole oyster or clam shells, then poured into wooden foundations about 1 foot (0.3048 m) high, and set to dry. The process was repeated and stacked until the desired height of the wall was reached. The floors of the kitchen house and the basement of the owner's house were also constructed of tabby. The material made the houses remarkably durable, resistant to weather and insects, better insulated than wood, and the ingredients were accessible and cheap, although labor-intensive. The slave quarters at Kingsley Plantation are widely considered some of the best surviving examples of the use of this building material.
Each cabin consisted of a room, fireplace, and sleeping loft. The arrangement of the quarters is distinctive: there were originally 32 cabins laid out in a semicircular arc interrupted by the main thoroughfare to the plantation, Palmetto Avenue. This formation is unique in plantations in the antebellum U.S. Historian Daniel Stowell surmises that it may have given slave families a modicum of privacy, although he also suggests overseers and slave managers may have arranged the quarters to be able to watch all the slaves from the owner's house at the same time. Author Daniel Schafer, however, suggests that Anna Jai may have been responsible for this layout. West African villages were commonly constructed in a circular pattern with the king or ruling family living in the center.
John Rollins deconstructed several of the slave cabins to build a boat house and dock in the 1890s. The archeological significance of the site is considerable in light of the fact that the majority of slave quarters in the Southern United States were not built with quality materials, and most quarters were destroyed after emancipation
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
. Six graves thought to contain slaves were unearthed in 2011 by archeologists from the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
. The bodies ranged in age from infants to an elderly woman; three were adults who were probably born in West Africa.
Kingsley's house and other structures
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
homes—has a large center room and four one-story pavilions
Pavilion (structure)
In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...
at each corner that allowed air to circulate through them to keep them cooler in the summer; each was a bedroom that had a fireplace to heat more efficiently in the winter. The second story of the house has two large rooms. On the roof is a deck and the house faces Fort George Inlet and features two porches on the front and rear of the house. A brick walkway joined the back porch to a wharf on the inlet while Kingsley was in residence. The Florida Division of Historical Resources indicates it may be the oldest plantation house in the state.
The main house protected John McQueen's family and neighbors during attacks from invading Creeks in 1802; he wrote that at one time 26 people took refuge there. Following raids from Americans during the Patriot Rebellion in 1813, the house was gutted and vandalized. Plantations as far south as New Smyrna were destroyed by rebels fleeing into Georgia. When Kingsley arrived, there were no metal fixtures in the doors and the wooden slave quarters had been burned down. John Rollins added sections to the east and west sides of the house in between the pavilions in the 1890s and removed at least three of the fireplace chimneys from the pavilions. One of the clubs that owned the island in the 1920s added electricity.
A barn constructed of tabby sits 150 feet (45.7 m) from the owner's house. Two wells have survived since Kingsley's ownership and two tombs of unknown origin constructed of tabby before Kingsley came to own the island are also located near the plantation. Ruins of another tabby house sits near the entrance of Palmetto Avenue. Its origins are unclear. It has been called the Munsilna McGundo House for Kingsley's fourth wife, as oral history related that it was left to her and her daughter Fatima in Kingsley's will. More recently it has been referred to as Thomson Tabby House named for a planter who died perhaps while constructing it.
Activities and restoration
Kingsley Plantation currently showcases the remains of 23 slave houses out of 32 original cabins, located approximately 1000 feet (304.8 m) south of the main owner's house. One of the slave houses has been restored to appear as it did in the early 19th century; others are in various states of repair or ruin. The kitchen house features a display about slavery on the island, and the barn and garden are also on display. The planter's house is unfurnished and currently closed for structural rehabilitation. Maintenance of the historical structures is the most significant work being done at Kingsley Plantation. The kitchen and owner's house were closed in 2005 due to severe structural damage caused by termiteTermite
Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...
s and humidity
Humidity
Humidity is a term for the amount of water vapor in the air, and can refer to any one of several measurements of humidity. Formally, humid air is not "moist air" but a mixture of water vapor and other constituents of air, and humidity is defined in terms of the water content of this mixture,...
. The kitchen building was restored in 2006, but work is ongoing for the owner's house. Despite the durability of the slave quarters, they are vulnerable to vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
, and each cabin shows evidence of damage. While there is no slated completion date for the rehabilitation of the owner's house, one room of the kitchen house is open and contains exhibits.
Since 1998 Kingsley Plantation has hosted an annual one-day event in October called the Kingsley Heritage Celebration that coincides with the Kingsley family reunion. Several relatives of Kingsley and Anna Jai are notable. Kingsley's youngest sister's daughter, Anna McNeill
Anna McNeill Whistler
Anna Matilda Whistler was the mother of American-born, British-based painter, James McNeill Whistler, who made her the subject of his famous painting "Arrangement in Grey & Black", often titled, Whistler's Mother.-Biography:Anna McNeill Whistler was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the...
, participated with her mother in attempting to block Anna Jai from inheriting Kingsley's property. McNeill served as the model for her son, the artist James Whistler, in his Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, popularly known as Whistler's Mother. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs' brother was George Couper Gibbs, a planter in St. Johns County
St. Johns County, Florida
St. Johns County is a county located in northeastern Florida. As of the 2010 census, the population was 190,039. The county seat is St. Augustine. Due to the inclusion of Ponte Vedra Beach, it is one of the highest-income counties in the United States....
, south of Fort George Island near St. Augustine. Former governor of South Carolina Duncan Clinch Heyward
Duncan Clinch Heyward
Duncan Clinch Heyward was the 88th Governor of South Carolina from January 20, 1903, to January 15, 1907.Heyward was born in Richland County to Edward Barnwell Heyward and Catherine Maria Clinch after his parents moved from Colleton County to avoid the Union Army during the Civil War...
is descended from him.
Another branch of Kingsley descendants lives in the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
near where John Maxwell Kingsley lived in Haiti. Kingsley and Anna Jai are the great grandparents of Mary Kingsley Sammis, who married Abraham Lincoln Lewis
Abraham Lincoln Lewis
Abraham Lincoln Lewis was an American businessman. He founded the Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida, and became the state's first African American millionaire...
, one of Florida's first black millionaires and an original investor in the all-black American Beach. The Kingsley-Sammis-Lewis-Betsch family has been active in Jacksonville's black community for decades. Spelman College
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
's first black female president, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, is descended from Lewis and Sammis. The Heritage Celebration was moved to Black History Month
Black History Month
Black History Month is an observance of the history of the African diaspora in a number of countries outside of Africa. Since 1976, it is observed annually in the United States and Canada in February, while in the United Kingdom it is observed in October...
in February 2008; Cole was the keynote speaker of the 2009 Kingsley Heritage Celebration. Interpretive events such as music, storytelling, and ranger-led talks about history and archeology regularly occur during the Heritage Celebration.