Small St. George Island nestles between others and the golden marshes of Florida's Northeast coastline. Birds call out in the deep forest, which has choked out the remains of the vast cotton fields and the neat rows of palms once lovingly tended along the lane. Stillness replaces the sound of workers singing in the hot sun, but Spanish moss still drips from the ancient oaks marking field boundaries with shade.
The long abandoned sea island plantation home of the Kingsleys' is suitably unique. Four square corner rooms around a central hallway form the first floor of the clapboard house. Tall windows frame lush tropical plants and a grassy knoll extends to spiked reeds swaying in sparkling aqua water.
The house is simple, plain by Carolina standards, and yet Anna Kingsley felt more comfortable in rooms detached from the main house above the plantation kitchen. It is here the story of the island lives. For Anna was once a slave.
Captured in Senegal, West Africa, Anna (Anta) Madgigine Jai sailed to Cuba on the Sally in 1806, and was sold to Zephaniah Kingsley. He married her and at thirteen, pregnant with their first child, she arrived in Spanish Florida.
She adjusted to her new life quickly, managing her husband's plantation when he was away with his shipping line. Kingsley freed her five years later. She acquired ten acres of her own and twelve slaves. Working with them, she built herself and her children a home near Jephaniah's Plantation.
Two years later, American Patriots invaded the islands of Northern Florida. Jephaniah Kingsley's plantation was destroyed. Anna secreted her family, slaves and a few possessions in the forest before she burned her newly created home to avoid its capture.
The Spanish rewarded Anna's efforts with a land grant. In 1814, when the fighting ceased, Anna and Zephaniah moved their family to a portion of the granted land, Ft. George Island.
Together they made it their own. Sixty slaves hacked fields out of the underbrush to produce Sea Island cotton, citrus, sugar cane and corn. Immense shell middens, left by the Alimacani Indians centuries earlier, provided the base for tabby building material. Gardens were planted and a channel dug for shipping. Anna nurtured the land and her children who grew and prospered.
When the U.S. purchased Florida from Spain in 1821, the Kingsleys feared America's oppressive racial laws. Initially, the lifestyle of those on the Sea Islands did not change. Zephaniah became politically active to preserve the slavery task system, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom. Finally in 1837, to protect Anna and their mulatto children, Zephaniah moved them to Haiti.
Walking the grounds and gardens amidst the buzz of insects it is easy to feel Anna's presence and her love for the plantation home she was forced to leave. What remains is the main home, "Anna's House," and 23 tabby slave homes arranged in a neat semi-circle holding back a determined tropical forest's attempts to cover it, too. Tenacious and resilient, the buildings and grounds offer insights to a woman's life and a time unique to the tiny island plantations of Northern Florida.