Kingsley Plantation is the site of a plantation in Jacksonville, Florida, named for the original owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern end of Fort George Island in Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecology and History Preservation run by the U.S. National Park Service.
The plantation was originally 1,000 acres (4.0 km 2 ), largely taken over by forests; the structure and base of the garden now consists of about 60 acres (242,811,385 m 2 ). Proof of Pre-Columbus Timucua's life is on the island, as are the remnants of a Spanish mission named San Juan del Puerto . Under British rule in 1765, an established plantation was pedaling a bicycle through several owners while Florida moved back to Spain and then the United States. The longest possession range is under Kingsley and his family, polygamous and multiracial households that are controlled and resistant to race and slavery issues.
Free blacks and some private owners lived on the estate until they were transferred to the State of Florida in 1955. It was acquired by the National Park Service in 1991. The most prominent feature of Kingsley Plantation is the owner's home - an architectural structure of significance built probably between 1797 and 1798 is referred to as the oldest plantation house still alive in the state - and the attached kitchen house, barns, and remnants of 25 precious anthropological slave cabins that survived beyond the US Civil War (1861-1865). The foundations of houses, kitchens, barns and slaves are built from tabby cement, making it very durable. Archaeological evidence found in and around the slave cabin has given insight researchers into African tradition among slaves who have just arrived in North America.
Zephaniah Kingsley wrote a defense against slavery and a three-tier social system that recognizes the right of color-free people in Florida under Spanish rule. Kingsley briefly served in the Florida Territorial Council, planning a transition when Florida was annexed by the United States. During his time on the board, he sought to influence Florida lawmakers to recognize free colored people and let mixed race children inherit property. In addition to architectural quality, this site is important as its home and also its unique family.
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History
Pre-Columbian settlement and colonization
Fort George Island is located in Duval County, a few miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville. This is a swamp island at the mouth of the River St. Johns, surrounded by tidal estuaries, Talbot Kecil Island, and the Nassau River. The North Atlantic coast of Florida has been inhabited for about 12,000 years when the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de LeÃÆ'³n landed near Cape Canaveral in 1513. The Spaniards met with Saturiwa, the Timucua tribe, which is the largest group of native inhabitants in the region, numbering around 14,000. The Timucua bands expanded to central Florida and southern Georgia. It is estimated that there are 35 tribal chiefs in the area, and their communities are complexes with large villages supported by fishing, hunting, and farming, but they often fight each other and unrelated Native American groups. The Spaniards focused their exploration and settlement efforts on the Gulf Coast of Florida. In 1562, Jean Ribault led the French explorer to the mouth of St. Johns where they built a garrison in 1564, calling it Fort Caroline. In 200 years the native Florida population was destroyed by disease and continuous battles. They leave evidence of their existence in a large pile or mound of shell filled with food by-products that are discarded. At Fort George Island, the shells were mainly oysters.
Florida's ownership was transferred to England in 1763. Spanish settlers have formed missions - including one on Fort George Island named San Juan del Puerto which eventually gave the name St. Johns River is nearby - but their frequent battles with Timucua and a decrease in mission activity hamper development. When the British occupied Florida, they established several plantations in the area. Richard Hazard owned the first plantation at Fort George Island in 1765, harvesting tilapia with several enslaved African slaves. Spain regained Florida ownership in 1783 after the American Revolution and recruited new Americans with promises of free land.
In 1793, veteran of the American Revolution John "Lightning" McQueen (1751-1807) was persuaded to Fort George Island of South Carolina by the Spanish government, who rewarded McQueen with the island. McQueen settled with 300 slaves and built a large house with a unique architectural style that showcased four pavilions around a large room. McQueen soon went bankrupt because of misfortune, and estate ownership was handed over to John McIntosh (1773-1836) from Georgia who revived in 1804. McIntosh, however, took a leading role in the Patriot Uprising, an American uprising to accelerate Florida's annexation to the United States. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and McIntosh fled to Georgia to escape punishment from Spain. Kingsley's_family "> Kingsley's Family Born in Bristol, England and educated in London after his family moved to colonial South Carolina, Zephaniah Kingsley (1765-1843) founded his career as a slave trader and a traveling monarch, allowing him to travel widely. He settled at Fort George Island in 1814 after hiring him from McIntosh. He bought land and buildings for $ 7,000 in 1817 ($ 94,019 in 2009). Kingsley has several plantations around the St. Lower Johns in what is now 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 arriving in Cuba from West Africa. He released it in 1811 and commissioned it by managing his Laurel Grove plantation on the Doctor's Lake in modern Orange Park. His legal emancipation was left to the Spanish colonial government
Let it be known that I... had the slave of a black woman named Anna, around the age of eighteen, purchased as a bozal [newly imported from Africa] in Havana port of slave cargo, with permission from the government introduced here; the black woman has given birth to three mulatto children: George, about 3 years and 9 months, Martha, 20 months, Mary, one month old. And with respect to the good qualities shown by the black woman, the harmony and loyalty she showed me, and for other reasons, I have decided to release her... and her three children.
The marriage between white plantation owners and African women is common in East Florida. The Spanish government provides free class of colored people, and encourages slaves to buy their freedom. Slavery under Spain in Florida is not considered a lifetime condition, and blacks are free to engage in regional economic development, many of whom have their own slaves. Anna watched 60 slaves on Fort George Island planting cottons of sea islands, oranges, corn, sugarcane, peanuts, 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 served as co-wives or concubines: Flora H., Sarah M.; and Munsilna McGundo. Anna Jai ​​remains a mother in polygamous family. Historian Daniel Schafer argues that Anna Jai ​​is already familiar with the concept of polygamy and marries a slave master to gain one's freedom. Visitors to the plantation were invited to the dining table where Kingsley displayed her multi-racial children proudly. He gave them the best education he could afford, and regarded them as a shield from any potential racial uprising.
The author of an ethnology study of slavery at Kingsley Plantation marks Kingsley as a man of complex paradoxes, proudly boasting of his success as a slave owner, but dedicated to his multiracial family. Kingsley published the defense of slavery in 1828, identifying himself only as "The In Florida Inhabitant". He rationalized the institution as a necessary condition for any society, beneficial to owners and slaves, and to the economy as a whole. He does not consider race the only factor that should determine the status of slavery, writes, "Some, I think will deny that the colors and conditions, if properly considered, are two very separate qualities... our legislators... have mistakenly shadowed for substance, and messing together two very different things, thus substantiating by dangerous and uncomfortable antipathy laws, which can have a better ground than prejudice. "In 1823 President James Monroe appointed Kingsley to the Florida Regional Council, where he tried to persuade them to determine the rights of colored people. When it became clear to him that they could not, he resigned. The Council passed a law increasingly limiting the rights that blacks freely enjoyed under Spanish control. The treatise was Kingsley's answer to this restriction; he liked the three-tier system of white landowners, black slaves, and liberated blacks. The pamphlet was reprinted again in 1834, and the South used his argument to defend slavery in the debate that led to the Civil War.
The Florida Territorial Council passed a law prohibiting interracial marriage and the right of free blacks or mixed race ancestry to inherit property. To avoid difficulties with the new government in what he calls "the spirit of intolerant prejudice", Kingsley sent his wives, children, and some slaves to Haiti, by which time the black republic was free. Her two daughters had married white growers and remained in Florida. He sold the plantation to his nephew Kingsley Beatty Gibbs in 1839, and transferred some slaves to his plantation in San Jose, now a neighborhood in Jacksonville. Kingsley started a plantation in Haiti done by former Fort George Island slaves, who served as contract workers; slavery is not allowed in Haiti. They get their freedom in nine years. In 1842 Kingsley gave an interview to Lydia Child an abolitionist. When he asks if he realizes that his job as a slave merchant may be considered the same as piracy, he replied "Yes, and I am glad of it, they will look upon a slave owner just by, by and by, slave trading is a very respectable business when I was young, the first merchants in Britain and America were involved in it, some people hid things they thought others did not like, I never hid anything. "
He went on to show great pride in the Haitian plantation built with the help of his sons:
I hope you will go there. [Anna] will give you the best at home. You must go, to see how happy the human race is. It was a nice, rich valley, about thirty miles from Port Platte; filled with mahogany; well watered; the flowers are very beautiful; fruits are abundant, so delicious that you can not stop yourself to stop eating, until you can not eat anymore. My sons have built a good road, and built bridges and factories; people are improving, and all are prosperous.
Kingsley died the following 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 is made under Spanish law, when the inheritance by the free blacks is valid, the court decides to support and control Kingsley's ownership in Florida with him and his children for several years. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs sold the Fort George Island plantation in 1852 and moved to St Augustine.
Post-Kingsley residents
Anna Jai ​​moved with about 70 former slaves to the Arlington neighborhood in Jacksonville to live out the rest of her years. The ownership of the island and agriculture immediately after its sale by Gibbs is unknown, but after the American Civil War, the Freedmen Bureau manages the island and was recently freed to live in former slaves and cultivate the land. A New Hampshire farmer named John Rollins bought the island in 1869 and, finding the farm in Florida not as successful as he wanted, turned the island into a tourist resort, built a large luxury hotel and attracted celebrities such as banker William Astor and author Harriet Beecher. Stowe. Places of slaves are displayed as tourist attractions. After the hotel was burned in 1888, the Rollins family managed to grow oranges until freezing in 1894 destroyed their crops. The family of Rollins daughters was the last to live in the main house; he sold the island to private investors in 1923.
Two clubs were built on the island for the wealthy people of Jacksonville. One used the plantation home as headquarters until they built their own building. Private clubs were popular until the Great Depression and they then went out of fashion during World War II. The Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island in 1955, including plantation houses, warehouses, and slave sites, calling it the Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. Attempts to restore the property to its appearance while the Kingsley family lived in began in 1967. The preservation of Ecology and History of Timucuan was created by the National Park Service and was founded under President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Several sites, including Fort Caroline and other significant ecological properties at Jacksonville, is under the management of Preservation of Timeshuan's Ecology and History. Kingsley Plantation was transferred to the National Park Service in 1991.
Maps Kingsley Plantation
Slavery at Fort George Island
Workers at the Kingsley Plantation are carried out by a task system: every slave is assigned a task for that day, such as processing 20-30 pounds (9-14 kg) of cotton or building three barrels for a slave who is a cooper. When the day's work is over, the slaves are free to do what they choose. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs describes the task system in his journal:
October 5, 1841 - No work is done today, because everyone has it to collect their own crops - This is the rule we have, to give all nigots a day in spring to plant, and one day in autumn to reap, and because there are rules on the Sea Island plantation that fix the daily required tasks to do, it happens, during the long days of summer, that the hands generally do their work at 2 pm, often faster, so they have plenty of time to work their own crops, fish, etc., etc.
This slavery task system is common among Southeast Asian plantations. On the contrary, cotton and tobacco plantations in Virginia and other parts of the South are practicing gang systems, where a supervisor who is also a slave encourages slaves to work throughout the day.
Slaves on Fort George Island are African or African-American first generation. Archaeological records and information show that they are Igbo and Calabari from Nigeria, and others from the surrounding area that is now Guinea, and some from Zanzibar. Archaeologist Charles H. Fairbanks received a Florida Park Service grant to study artefacts found in places of slavery. His discovery, published in 1968, began further interest and research in African-American archeology in the US. Concentrating on two special cabins bordering Palmetto Avenue, Fairbanks finds cooking pots used in fireplaces, animal bones - fish, pigs, raccoons, and turtles. --discarded as a by-product of food, and ball ball and fishing weights.
Fairbanks describes Kingsley as a "very permissive slave owner" who writes about Africa's physical superiority to Europeans, arms their slaves for protection, and gives them a padlock for their cabin. Historian Daniel Stowell states that cabin and Kingsley's approach to slave management is meant to prevent slaves from escaping. Kingsley himself wrote about not interfering in the life of his slave family and "pushing as much dancing, excitement and clothing as possible, which is Saturday afternoon and night, and Sunday morning dedicated... they are very honest and obedient, and appear quite happy , have no fear except to offend me, and I almost never have a chance to apply any correction other than to embarrass them. "
Kingsley used the plantation as his slave trade base, training slaves for special tasks to increase his value during the sale. He develops them as skilled craftsmen and educates them about farming and planting. Those who have been trained by Kingsley take a much higher price on sales, averaging 50 percent higher than the market price. The 2006 excavations sponsored by the University of Florida found artefacts from slave cabins, such as the tools used by slaves. In one cabin a chicken that is sacrificed intact on top of the dug eggs, adds evidence to the hypothesis that African slaves kept many of their traditions living in North America. The archaeologists also found evidence of a porch added to one of the cabins facing away from the main house, an atypical feature for a slave cabin, since owners and supervisors build a place to be in their view at all times.
The slave houses were built from tabby and built by possible slaves in the 1820s or 1830s, although there is evidence to suggest two of them were inhabited by 1814. Tabby was built from the remaining shells of the Timucua middens, burned by a full barrel at open pit or kiln, then pounded into lime particles, mixed with water, sand, and oyster shells or whole shells, then poured into the wooden foundation about 1 foot (0.3 m) high, and set to dry. The process is repeated and stacked until the desired wall height is reached. The floor of the kitchen house and the basement of the owner's house is also built of cats. This material makes the houses very durable, resistant to weather and insects, better insulated from wood, and its materials accessible and inexpensive, albeit labor-intensive. The slave quarters at Kingsley Plantation are widely regarded as the best examples of the use of these building materials.
Each cabin consists of rooms, fireplaces, and bedrooms. The composition of the residence is different: initially there are 32 cabins arranged in a semicircle that is interrupted by the main road to the plantation, Palmetto Avenue. This formation is unique in America's pre-war plantations. Historian Daniel Stowell suspects that it may have given the slave family a bit of privacy, though he also suggested the supervisors and slave managers might have arranged a place to be able to watch all the slaves from the owner's house at the same time. Writer Daniel Schafer, however, points out that Anna Jai ​​may be responsible for this layout. Villages in West Africa are generally built in a circular pattern with the king or the ruling family who live in the center.
In the 1890s John Rollins deconstructed several slave cabins to build houseboats and docks. The archaeological significance of the site is quite large as the majority of shelters in South America are not built with quality materials, and most are destroyed after emancipation. Six graves deemed to contain slaves were excavated in 2011 by archaeologists from the University of Florida. Bodies range from infant age to old woman; three adults who were probably born in West Africa.
Kingsley's Kingsley House and other structures
The main residence of the Fort George plantation is a unique two-story house that was probably built between 1797 and 1798 by John McQueen, shown in a letter at the time that he had built a comfortable home for himself. The house - resembling a 17th century British nobleman's house - has a large central room and four one-floor pavilions on every corner that allow air to circulate through them to keep them cool in summer; each is a bedroom that has a fireplace to heat up more efficiently in winter. The story of the two houses has two large rooms. On the roof is a deck and the house faces Fort George Inlet and has two porches at the front and back of the house. A brick road joined the back porch to the dock at the entrance while Kingsley was at the residence. Florida Historical Resource Division indicates this is probably the oldest plantation house in the state.
The main house protects John McQueen's family and neighbors during the raid's invasion of 1802; he wrote that at a time 26 people took shelter there. Following the American attack during the Patriot Uprising in 1813, the house was destroyed and destroyed. Plantations as far south as the New Smyrna were destroyed by rebels who fled to Georgia. When Kingsley arrived, there was no metal fixture on the door and the place where the wood slaves had been burned. John Rollins added sections to the east and west sides of the house among the pavilions in the 1890s and moved at least three of the fireplace chimneys from the pavilion. One of the clubs that owned the island in 1920 added electricity.
Next to the main house is a two-story kitchen house called "The House of Mrs Anna" while Anna Jai ​​is on Fort George Island. It was probably built in the 1820s and duplicated as a food preparation center on the ground floor and the residence of Anna Jai ​​with his sons in the second year. In West Africa, polygamy is unusual, and wives often live in separate places from their husbands. Kingsley nephew and his wife also live in the yard and Gibbs probably uses part of the second floor for the office. The main house and Mrs. Anna's house are surrounded by clumps of oranges, lemons, and banana trees with occasional ornamental flowers. Between 1869 and 1877 Rollins built a roof over the road between the kitchen house and the main house.
A barn built from tabby sits 150 feet (46 m) away from the owner's house. Two wells survived since the ownership of Kingsley and two unknown tombs originally built from tabby before Kingsley came to have the island also located near the plantation. The ruins of another cat house are near the entrance of Palmetto Avenue. Its origins are unclear. It has been called Munsilna McGundo House for Kingsley's fourth wife, due to an associated oral history that it submitted to her and her daughter Fatima in the will of Kingsley. Recently it has been referred to as the Thomson Tabby House named for a planter who died probably while building it.
Activity and recovery
Kingsley Plantation currently displays the remains of 23 slave houses of 32 original cabins, located approximately 1,000 feet (305 m) south of the main house owner. One of the slave houses has been restored to appear as it did in the early 19th century; others are in various conditions of repair or destruction. Kitchen houses display displays of slavery on the island, and gardens are also on display. Maintenance of historical structures is the most significant work done at Kingsley Plantation. The kitchen and the owner's house were closed in 2005 due to severe structural damage caused by termites and moisture. The kitchen building was restored in 2006, but work is underway for the owners home. Starting March 2017, the owner's home is open for a limited guided tour every weekend. The warehouse is being renovated and is now open. Despite the resilience of slave dwellings, they are vulnerable to vandalism, and every cabin shows evidence of damage. One room the kitchen house is open and contains exhibits.
Since 1998 Kingsley Plantation has held a one-day annual event in October called Celebration of Kingsley Celebration which coincides with the Kingsley family reunion. Some relatives of Kingsley and Anna Jai ​​are famous. Kingsley's younger sister daughter, Anna McNeill, participates with her mother in an attempt to deter Anna Jai ​​from inheriting the Kingsley property. McNeill served as a model for his son, artist James Whistler, in his book Setting in Gray and Black: The Artist's Mother, known as Whistler's Mother. The brother of Kingsley Beatty Gibbs is George Couper Gibbs, a planter at St. John's. Johns County, south of Fort George Island near St. John's Augustine. Former South Carolina governor Duncan Clinch Heyward descended from him.
Another Kingsley offshoot lives in the Dominican Republic near where John Maxwell Kingsley lives in Haiti. Kingsley and Anna Jai ​​are great great-grandparents of Mary Kingsley Sammis, married to Abraham Lincoln Lewis, one of Florida's first black millionaires and a native investor in the all-black American Coast. The Kingsley-Sammis-Lewis-Betsch family has been active in the black community of Jacksonville for decades. Spelman College's first black woman president, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, is a descendant of Lewis and Sammis. The Heritage Festival was moved to Black History Month in February 2008; Cole is the keynote speaker of the 2009 Kingsley Heritage Celebrations. Interpretative events such as music, storytelling, and ranger-led talks on history and archeology regularly occur during the Heritage Celebration.
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Bibliography
- Fleszar, Mark (2009). "Atlantic Thought: Zephaniah Kingsley, Slavery, and Race Politics in the Atlantic World," Georgia State University (dissertation)
- Fretwell, Jacquiline K. (ed.) (1984). Kingsley Beatty Gibbs and Journal of 1840-1843 , Saint Augustine Historical Society.
- Gannon, Michael (ed.) (1996). New Florida History , Florida Press University. ISBNÃ, 0-8130-1415-8
- Jackson, Antoinette; Burns, Allan (January 2006). Ethnohistorical Study of the Kingsley Plantation Community , National Park Service.
- A Florida Resident (Kingsley, Zephaniah, Jr.). (1829). A Treatise on Civil Society Systems or Cooperatives like those in Several Governments, and Colonies in America, and the United States under Slavery Name with the Required Benefits, reprinted in 2005 by the National East.
- Landers, Jane (1999). Black Society in Spanish Florida , University of Illinois Press. ISBN: 0-252-02446-X
- Milanich, Jerald T. (2000) "The Timucua Indians in North Florida and South Georgia", in McEwan, Bonnie G. ed. (2000) Indians in the Southeast Region: Historical Archeology and Ethnohistory , Florida Press University. ISBNÃ, 0-8130-1778-5
- Schafer, Daniel L. (1997). Anna Kingsley , Saint Augustine Historical Society.
- Schafer, Daniel L. (2003). Anna Madgigine, Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Slaveowner, Slaveowner Plantation, , University Press Florida. ISBNÃ, 0-8130-2616-4
- Stowell, Daniel (October 1996). Preservation of Ecology and History Timucuan: Historic Resource Studies , National Park Services.
- Stowell, Daniel (ed.) (2000). Balancing Crimes Wisely: The Writings of Prosila in Zephaniah Kingsley , Florida Press University. ISBNÃ, 0-8130-2400-5
- Stowell, Daniel and Tilford, Kathy (1998). Kingsley Plantation: The History of Fort George Island Plantation , Eastern Region. ISBN: 188821323X
External links
- Media related to Kingsley Plantation on Wikimedia Commons
- Official website
- Papers of Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley in Florida State Archives
- Florida Office of Culture and History Office
- List of Duval County
- Duval County Markers
- American Historic Buildings Survey (HABS) No.Ã, FL-478, "Kingsley Plantation, 11676 Palmetto Avenue, Jacksonville, Duval County, FL", 92 photos, 1 color transparency, 4 scalable images, 5 page photo caption
- HABS No.Ã, FL-478-A, "Kingsley Plantation, Slave Quarters", 12 photos, 2 measurable images, 1 page caption
- HABS No.Ã, FL-478-B, "Kingsley Plantation, House", 43 photos, 1 color transparency, 10 scalable images, 3 pages of photo captions
- HABS No.Ã, FL-478-C, "Kingsley Plantation, Kitchen", 26 photos, 3 measurable images, 2 pages of photo captions
- HABS No.Ã, FL-478-D, "Kingsley Plantation, Barn", 23 photos, 2 measurable images, 2 pages photo caption
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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