Kingsley Plantation

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Kingsley Plantation
IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape)
Location	Duval County, Florida, USA
Nearest city	Jacksonville, Florida
Area	60 acres
Established	September 29, 1970
Governing body	National Park Service

Kingsley Plantation (also known as the Zephaniah Kingsley Plantation Home and Buildings) is a historic plantation in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. 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. Previously, it was a state park within the Florida Park Service. It was transferred to the National Park Service in 1989. On September 29, 1970, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The plantation was originally 1,000 acres (4.0 km²), most of which has been taken over by forest; the structures and grounds of the park now comprise approximately 60 acres.^[1] The park has a unique historic significance: the plantation house is the oldest still standing in the state of Florida,^[2] and the remains of the slave quarters are a rare remnant from Antebellum American life.

Contents 1 History 2 Slavery at Kingsley Plantation 3 Activities 3.1 The Kingsley Heritage Celebration 4 Park structural work 5 External links 6 References

[edit] History

In 1793, American Revolution veteran John McQueen was lured to Ft. George Island from South Carolina by the Spanish government, who rewarded McQueen with the island. McQueen settled with 300 slaves and constructed the Cracker-style house in 1793. McQueen was soon bankrupt due to misfortunes, and the possession of the plantation turned over to John McIntosh from Georgia who revived it. McIntosh, however, took part in the Patriot Rebellion, an attempt to hand north Florida over to the United States. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and McIntosh fled back into Georgia to escape punishment from the Spanish.^[3]

Zephaniah Kingsley settled on Ft. George Island in 1814 after leasing it from McIntosh. He purchased the land and buildings for $7,000 US in 1817.^[4] The plantation grew Sea Island cotton, citrus, corn, sugar cane, beans and potatoes worked by approximately sixty slaves. The slaves and the plantation were managed by Kingsley's wife, Anna Magjinine Jai, an enslaved Wolof woman from what is now Senegal whom he had purchased in Cuba and eventually freed.^[5] They had four children together, and Zephaniah freed her in 1811. He also married two other formerly enslaved women, Flora H. Kingsley and Sarah M. Kingsley who also bore him children, although Anna Jai remained the matriarch.^[6]

While Kingsley prospered on Ft. George Island, Florida was under the control of Spain, a country with more liberal attitudes towards race and marriage. In 1821 however, control of Florida was given over to the United States, a country that considered interracial marriage illegal. Despite his marriage to slaves, Kingsley was an advocate of slavery as an institution, and published a defense of it in 1828, rationalizing it as "a necessary evil"^[5] beneficial to owner and slave alike, as well as to the overall economy. It was released again in 1834,^[6] and even though Kingsley did not think slavery should be based on skin color, nor a permanent, hereditary condition,^[4] the treatise was used to defend slavery in debates prior to the Civil War.^[5] To avoid difficulties with the new government in what he termed “spirit of intolerant prejudice,” Kingsley sent his wives, children, and a few slaves to Haiti and sold the plantation to his nephew, Kingsley Beatty Gibbs. However, before Zephaniah could join his family in Haiti, he died in 1843, while in New York City working on a land deal. Anna returned in 1860 to settle an inheritance dispute with some of her husband's white relatives; the court ruled in her favor and control of the Kingsley Plantation remained with her and her descendants.

[edit] Slavery at Kingsley Plantation

Slaves at Kingsley Plantation were African or first generation African-American. Records and archaeological information show they were Ibo and Calabari from Nigeria, an others from the area around what is today Guinea, and a few from Zanzibar. Archeologist Charles H. Fairbanks described Kingsley as "an unusually permissive slave owner",^[7] and indeed, he wrote about the physical superiority of Africans to Europeans, armed his slaves for protection, and gave them padlocks for their cabins^[8]. Artifacts from the slave cabins have been excavated to discover the tools the slaves were using. In one cabin an intact sacrificed chicken on top of an egg was unearthed, adding evidence to the idea that African slaves kept many of their traditions alive in North America. Archaeologists 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.^[7]

Labor at Kingsley Plantation was carried out by the task system: each slave was given an assigned set of tasks for the day, and when those were completed, they were free to do as they chose. Grinding 20 - 30 lb (14 kg). of cotton was a daily task, or constructing three barrels a day for a slave who was a cooper.

Kingsley Beatty Gibbs (Zephaniah's nephew) 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."^[9]

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. ^[10]

The slave houses were constructed out of tabby and built by the slaves. Tabby is a mixture of burned oyster shells left over from Timucuan middens, dirt, sand, lime, and water. The slave quarters at Kingsley Plantation are widely considered some of the best surviving examples of the use of this building material. Shells were burned by the barrelfull in open pits or kilns, then pounded into lime particles. The lime was mixed with water, sand, and whole oyster or clam shells, then made into bricks or poured into foundations, or used for floors. 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.^[11] The layouts of the houses can still be seen today. Each cabin consisted of a room and a sleeping loft, and were used by slaves and freedmen until the 1890s. When new owners took the site in 1922 to build a nearby country club, the cabins served as tourist attractions. The archaeological 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.

[edit] Activities

Kingsley Plantation currently showcases the remains of 23 slave houses out of 32 original cabins, located approximately a quarter of a mile from the main owner's house laid out in a semi-circular pattern similar to African villages,^[12] There is also an attached kitchen and walkway, barn and garden. One of the slave houses has been restored to appear as it did in the early 19th century.

Anna Jai Kingsley lived in the smaller house attached to the kitchen that was called "Ma'am Anna House", as was custom of married Senegalese women and men.^[13] The planter's house is unfurnished and currently closed for structural rehabilitation. The original tabby barn, as well as one room of the kitchen house, is open daily and contains historical exhibits.

[edit] The Kingsley Heritage Celebration

From 1998 to 2006, Kingsley Plantation hosted an annual one-day event in October called the Kingsley Heritage Celebration. Starting in 2008 and coinciding with Black History Month, the Kingsley Heritage Celebration will be expanded to every Saturday in February to include music, storytelling, a descendants' reunion and ranger-led talks about history and archeology.^[14]

[edit] Park structural work

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 termites and humidity.^[15] The kitchen was rehabilitated 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.^[12] 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. The other room of the kitchen house is slated to open in 2008.

[edit] External links

• Kingsley Plantation National Historic Site, official site
• Duval County listings at National Register of Historic Places
• The papers of Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley at the State Archives of Florida
• Florida's Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
• Duval County listings
• Duval County markers
• Kingsley Plantation

[edit] References