Anna Kingsley

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Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (1793 – July 1870) was a Senegalese slave turned slaveholder and plantation owner in early 19th century Florida. She was married to Zephaniah Kingsley, her former master, and owned and managed the Kingsley Plantation in what is now Jacksonville.

Anna or Anta was born to a distinguished Wolof family north of the kingdom of Cayor in modern Senegal; there is some suggestion she may have been a princess in her own land. In 1806, when she was about 13, Anna was captured by the king's Tyeddo warriors and sold into slavery at Gorée Island. She was brought to Havana, Cuba, then under Spanish control, and there she was bought by the slave trader and seaman Zephaniah Kingsley. Kingsley took her to his home in Spanish Florida and she bore their first child the following year; he subsequently took her as one of his several wives and officially freed her in 1811. The couple had three children and bought the land which now bears their name, the Kingsley Plantation, in 1813. The plantation operated under a "task" system, which allowed slaves to work for themselves once a day's job had been completed. Anna proved herself a capable businesswoman and became the primary manager of the estate soon afterwords. Zephaniah once remarked his wife "could carry on all the affairs of the plantation in my absence as well as I could myself."

After Spain handed control of Florida over to the United States in 1819, the new government enacted stricter laws separating the races. As citizens of Spanish Florida Zephaniah and the children were protected from these new regulations, but Anna, a foreigner, was not, and neither was their fourth child, born after the treaty. The Kingsleys transferred all their holdings to the three older children and moved to Haiti in 1837. Anna and their youngest son remained in Haiti after Zephaniah died in 1842; she returned to Jacksonville in 1860 to settle an inheritance dispute with some of her husband's white relatives, and became a Union sympathizer when the American Civil War broke out the following year. She and other free blacks were evacuated by Union forces when they captured Jacksonville in 1862. She returned home the following year, and died in 1870 at the age of 77.