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152-401: The plantation originally occupied the entirety of Fort George Island, described variously as occupying 713, 720, or "750 acres [300 ha] more or less". According to park literature, most of it has been taken back over by forest; the structures and grounds of the park now comprise approximately 60 acres (24 ha). Evidence of pre-Columbian Timucua life is on the island, as are the remains of

304-416: A butter churn . Once firm enough to separate out, but soft enough to stick together, the butter was taken out of the churn, washed in very cold water, and salted. The churning process also produced buttermilk as a by-product. It was the remaining liquid after the butter was removed from the churn. All of the products of this process would have been stored in the spring house or ice house . The smokehouse

456-406: A courtyard to the rear of the main house known as the kitchen yard. They included a cookhouse (separate kitchen building), pantry , washhouse ( laundry ), smokehouse , chicken house , spring house or ice house , milkhouse ( dairy ), covered well , and cistern . The privies would have been located some distance away from the plantation house and kitchen yard. The cookhouse or kitchen

608-451: A primer , and a hornbook . As the children grew older their schooling began to prepare them for their adult roles on the plantation. Boys studied academic subjects, proper social etiquette , and plantation management, while girls learned art , music , French , and the domestic skills suited to the mistress of a plantation. Most plantation owners maintained an office for keeping records, transacting business, writing correspondence, and

760-556: A vacuum pan , where it was boiled until the sugar in the syrup was crystallized. The crystallized sugar was then cooled and separated from any remaining molasses in a process known as purging. The final step was packing the sugar into hogshead barrels for transport to market. Cotton plantations, the most common type of plantation in the South prior to the Civil War, were the last type of plantation to fully develop. Cotton production

912-475: 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 . The principal business at

1064-572: A building raised roughly a story off of the ground on posts, was used to separate the lighter chaff and dust from the rice. Sugar plantations were most commonly found in Louisiana. In fact, Louisiana produced almost all of the sugar grown in the United States during the prewar period. From one-quarter to one-half of all sugar consumed in the United States came from Louisiana sugar plantations. Plantations grew sugarcane from Louisiana's colonial era onward, but large scale production did not begin until

1216-527: A corrugated wash board until clean. By the 1850s, they would have been passed through a mangle . Prior to that time, wringing out the items was done by hand. The items would then be ready to be hung out to dry or, in inclement weather, placed on a drying rack . Ironing would have been done with a metal flat iron , often heated in the fireplace, and various other devices. The milkhouse would have been used by enslaved people to make milk into cream , butter , and buttermilk . The process started with separating

1368-402: A display about slavery on the island, and the garden is also on display. 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 . The kitchen building was restored in 2006, but work is ongoing for the owner's house. As of March 2017,

1520-452: A flat surface of still lower land, with a silver thread of water curling through it, extended, Holland-like, to the horizon. Usually at as great a distance as a quarter of a mile from the road, and from a half mile to a mile apart, were the residences of the planters – large white houses, with groves of evergreen trees about them; and between these and the road were little villages of slave-cabins ... The cottages were framed buildings, boarded on

1672-590: A fleet of slave schooners, some built at a shipyard on the plantation, using white artisans that Kingsley hired for the purpose. We know the name of only one, his schooner "North Carolina". There is a widow's walk on the house. They would discharge their African cargos at the plantation, openly until Florida became American in 1821, clandestinely afterwards. To increase their value and salability, newly-arrived slaves were taught some English and trained in agricultural tasks, and then they were marketed at premium prices to planters. "Kingsley niggers" were widely recognized as

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1824-574: A great extent by its long established tourism industry but also by its position as a gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America . As of 2024, Texas and Florida are the second and third most populous states in the nation, respectively. Other areas of the Gulf Coast have benefited less, though economic development fueled by tourism has greatly increased property values along the coast, and is now

1976-404: 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 (46 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

2128-430: A largely agrarian to an industrial society , plantations and their building complexes became obsolete. Although the majority have been destroyed, the most common structures to have survived are the plantation houses . As is true of buildings in general, the more substantially built and architecturally interesting buildings have tended to be the ones that survived into the modern age and are better documented than many of

2280-785: 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. Born in Bristol, England and educated in London after his family moved to colonial South Carolina , 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

2432-410: A main house on site. Just as vital and arguably more important to the complex were the many structures built for the processing and storage of crops, food preparation and storage, sheltering equipment and animals, and various other domestic and agricultural purposes. The value of the plantation came from its land and the enslaved people who toiled on it to produce crops for sale. These same people produced

2584-596: 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

2736-409: 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. In

2888-548: A more accurate image of what life was like for slaves and slave owners", The Washington Post wrote in 2019. Hannah Knowles in The Washington Post wrote, "The changes have begun to draw people long alienated by the sites' whitewashing of the past and to satisfy what staff call a hunger for real history, as plantations add slavery-focused tours, rebuild cabins and reconstruct the lives of the enslaved with help from their descendants." However, some white visitors to

3040-460: A place for the hired tutor or governess to educate the planter's children, and sometimes even those of other planters in the area. On most plantations, however, a room in the main house was sufficient for schooling, rather than a separate dedicated building. Paper was precious, so the children often recited their lessons until they memorized them. The usual texts in the beginning were the Bible ,

3192-422: A plantation is that it typically had 500 to 1,000 acres (2.0 to 4.0 km ) or more of land and produced one or two cash crops for sale. Other scholars have attempted to define it by the number of enslaved persons. The vast majority of plantations did not have grand mansions centered on a huge acreage. These large estates did exist, but represented only a small percentage of the plantations that once existed in

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3344-456: A planter who died perhaps while constructing it. It was apparently the last tabby structure built on the island. Kingsley Plantation currently showcases the remains of 23 slave houses out of 32 original cabins, located approximately 1,000 feet (305 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

3496-473: 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

3648-408: A strainer to be collected into a tank. From there the juice went through a process that removed impurities from the liquid and thickened it through evaporation. It was steam-heated in vats where additional impurities were removed by adding lime to the syrup and then the mixture was strained. At this point the liquid had been transformed into molasses . It was then placed into a closed vessel known as

3800-524: A then undergraduate student at University of Florida . As a result, six graves thought to contain enslaved Africans were unearthed by University of Florida archaeologists. The bodies ranged in age from infants to an elderly woman; three were adults who were probably born in West Africa. A 2006 excavation sponsored by the University of Florida uncovered artifacts from the slave cabins, such as

3952-526: A village-like grouping along an avenue away from the main house, but sometimes were scattered around the plantation on the edges of the fields where the enslaved people toiled, like most of the sharecropper cabins that were to come later. Houses for enslaved people were often of the most basic construction. Meant for little more than sleeping, they were usually rough log or frame one-room cabins; early examples often had chimneys made of clay and sticks. Hall and parlor houses (two rooms) were also represented on

4104-550: A visit to plantations along the Georgia coast in 1855: In the afternoon, I left the main road, and, towards night, reached a much more cultivated district. The forest of pines extended uninterruptedly on one side of the way, but on the other was a continued succession of very large fields, or rich dark soil – evidently reclaimed swamp-land – which had been cultivated the previous year, in Sea Island cotton, or maize. Beyond them,

4256-426: A white elite . Today, as was also true in the past, there is a wide range of opinion as to what differentiated a plantation from a farm . Typically, the focus of a farm was subsistence agriculture . In contrast, the primary focus of a plantation was the production of cash crops , with enough staple food crops produced to feed the population of the estate and the livestock. A common definition of what constituted

4408-573: 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

4560-662: The Atlantic seaboard and the fourth largest in the U.S. overall. Two major events were turning points in the earlier history of the Gulf Coast region. The first was the American Civil War , which caused severe damage to some economic sectors in the South , including the Gulf Coast. The second event was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 . At the end of the 19th century Galveston was, with New Orleans, one of

4712-555: The Episcopal denomination. Early records indicate that at Faunsdale Plantation the mistress of the estate, Louisa Harrison, gave regular instruction to her slaves by reading the services of the church and teaching the Episcopal catechism to their children. Following the death of her first husband, she had a large Carpenter Gothic church built, St. Michael's Church. She latter remarried to Rev. William A. Stickney, who served as

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4864-540: 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 middens or shell mounds filled with discarded food byproducts. On Fort George Island,

5016-506: The Gulf States . The economy of the Gulf Coast area is dominated by industries related to energy, petrochemicals, fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The large cities of the region are (from west to east) Brownsville , Corpus Christi , Houston , Galveston , Beaumont , Lake Charles , Lafayette , Baton Rouge , New Orleans , Gulfport , Biloxi , Mobile , Pensacola , Panama City , St. Petersburg , and Tampa . All are

5168-705: The National Park Service 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. Kingsley's plantations, first at Laurel Grove and then at Fort George, were the headquarters of his slave trading business. Kingsley owned

5320-465: The Port of Houston are two of the ten busiest ports in the world by cargo volume. As of 2004, seven of the top ten busiest ports in the U.S. are on the Gulf Coast. The discovery of oil and gas deposits along the coast and offshore, combined with easy access to shipping, have made the Gulf Coast the heart of the U.S. petrochemical industry . The coast contains nearly 4,000 oil platforms . Besides

5472-558: 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

5624-558: The South Carolina Lowcountry . Until the 19th century, rice was threshed from the stalks and the husk was pounded from the grain by hand, a very labor-intensive endeavor. Steam-powered rice pounding mills had become common by the 1830s. They were used to thresh the grain from the inedible chaff . A separate chimney, required for the fires powering the steam engine, was adjacent to the pounding mill and often connected by an underground system. The winnowing barn ,

5776-479: The U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). The foundations of the house, kitchen, barn, and the slave quarters were constructed of durable tabby concrete . 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

5928-582: The forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the Southern United States , particularly before the American Civil War . The mild temperate climate , plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the Southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for

6080-539: 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. 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

6232-537: The "great house" and extended family. Novels, often adapted into films , presented a romantic , sanitized view of plantation life and ignored or glorified white supremacy . The most popular of these were The Birth of a Nation (1916), based on Thomas Dixon Jr. ,'s best-selling novel The Clansman (1905), and Gone with the Wind (1939), based on the best-selling novel of the same name (1936) by Margaret Mitchell . On larger plantations an overseer represented

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6384-401: The 1810s and 1820s. A successful sugar plantation required a skilled retinue of hired labor and enslaved people. The most specialized structure on a sugar plantation was the sugar mill (sugar house), where, by the 1830s, the steam-powered mill crushed the sugarcane stalks between rollers. This squeezed the juice from the stalks and the cane juice would run out the bottom of the mill through

6536-400: 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 (0.3 m) high, and set to dry. The process

6688-436: The 1890s John Rollins tore down several of the slave cabins so as to build a boathouse and dock using the tabby slabs. The archeological significance of the site is considerable as the majority of slave quarters in the Southern United States were not built with quality materials, and most quarters were destroyed after emancipation . In 2010, the plantation's cemetery was discovered by historical archaeologist Dr. Brittany Brown,

6840-690: The Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom , suggests that the minimum requirement for planter status was twenty people enslaved, especially since a Southern planter could exempt Confederate duty for one white male per twenty people owned. In his study of Black Belt counties in Alabama, Jonathan Weiner defines planters by ownership of real property, rather than of slaves. A planter, for Weiner, owned at least $ 10,000 worth of real estate in 1850 and $ 32,000 worth in 1860, equivalent to about

6992-634: The Episcopal minister of St. Michael's and was later appointed by Bishop Richard Wilmer as a "Missionary to the Negroes," after which Louisa joined him as an unofficial fellow minister among the African Americans of the Black Belt . Most plantation churches were of wood-frame construction, although some were built in brick, often stuccoed . Early examples tended towards the vernacular or neoclassicism, but later examples were almost always in

7144-596: 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, where she lived 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 Freedmen's Bureau managed the island and recently emancipated freedmen lived in

7296-473: The Fort George plantation is a unique two-story house that was 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

7448-987: The Gothic Revival style. A few rivaled those built by southern town congregations. Two of the most elaborate extant examples in the Deep South are the Chapel of the Cross at Annandale Plantation and St. Mary's Chapel at Laurel Hill Plantation , both Episcopalian structures in Mississippi. In both cases the original plantation houses have been destroyed, but the quality and design of the churches can give some insight into how elaborate some plantation complexes and their buildings could be. St. Mary Chapel, in Natchez, dates to 1839, built in stuccoed brick with large Gothic and Tudor arch windows, hood mouldings over

7600-555: The Gulf Coast from Houston, Texas , eastward, extreme rainfall events are a significant threat, commonly from tropical weather systems, which can bring 4 to 10 or more inches of rain in a single day. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the central Texas coast, then migrated to and stalled over the greater Houston area for several days, producing extreme, unprecedented rainfall totals of over 40 inches (1,000 mm) in many areas, unleashing widespread flooding. Climate scientists predict more hurricanes for Florida and

7752-477: The Gulf Coast has a summer precipitation maximum, with July or August commonly the wettest month due to the combination of frequent summer thunderstorms produced by relentless heat and humidity, and tropical weather systems, including tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes , while winter and early spring rainfall also can be heavy. This pattern is evident in southern cites as Houston , New Orleans , Mobile, Alabama , and Pensacola, Florida . However,

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7904-524: The Gulf Coast was a natural magnet in the South providing access to shipping lanes and both national and international commerce. The development of sugar and cotton production (enabled by slavery ) allowed the South to prosper. By the mid-19th century the city of New Orleans , being situated as a key to commerce on the Mississippi River and in the Gulf, had become the largest U.S. city not on

8056-683: The Gulf Coast was struck by a catastrophic hurricane. Due to its immense size, Hurricane Ike caused devastation from the Louisiana coastline all the way to the Kenedy County, Texas , region near Corpus Christi . In addition, Ike caused flooding and significant damage along the Mississippi coastline and the Florida Panhandle Ike killed 112 people and left upwards of 300 people missing, never to be found. Hurricane Ike

8208-444: The Gulf Coast, predominantly Florida, is dotted with many bays and inlets. The Gulf Coast climate is humid subtropical, although Southwest Florida features a tropical climate. Much of the year is warm to hot along the Gulf Coast, while the three winter months bring periods of cool (or rarely, cold) weather mixed with mild temperatures. The area is highly vulnerable to hurricanes as well as floods and severe thunderstorms . Much of

8360-663: The Gulf Coast. In 2008 floods in Iowa destroyed the local Flood Museum which held materials from the Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 . Before European settlers arrived in the region, the Gulf Coast was home to several pre-Columbian kingdoms which had extensive trade networks with empires such as the Aztecs and the Mississippi Mound Builders. Shark and alligator teeth and shells from

8512-665: The Gulf have been found as far north as Ohio, in the mounds of the Hopewell culture. The first Europeans to settle the Gulf Coast were primarily the French and the Spanish . The Louisiana Purchase (1803), Adams–Onís Treaty (1819) and the Texas Revolution (1835–1836) made the Gulf Coast a part of the United States during the first half of the 19th century. As the U.S. population continued to expand its frontiers westward,

8664-559: 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;

8816-636: The Heritage Celebration. Plantations in the American South Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock . Until the abolition of slavery , such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on

8968-688: 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

9120-553: The Kingsley Plantation represented a massive construction effort which attests to the apparent success of this innovation. 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

9272-407: The Kingsley Plantation was slaves: buying, selling, and training them. Kingsley's slaves commanded a premium in the market. Raising salable cotton was a secondary business. As they were very isolated they also had to raise their food, in small gardens. By the standards of the day Kingsley treated his slaves well—he married one—and they were loyal to him. Free blacks and several private owners lived at

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9424-678: The Rollins heirs by the Fort George Corporation, which then leased 58 acres, including the Kingsley Plantation buildings, to the Army and Navy Country Club of Florida. Renamed the Fort George Club in 1926, the club built a new clubhouse in 1927 adjacent to the plantation house, which was used as an annex for additional accommodations. The clubhouse burned in 1936, but was rebuilt in 1938, with the plantation house serving as

9576-444: The South. Although many Southern farmers did enslave people before emancipation in 1862, few enslaved more than five. These farmers tended to work the fields alongside the people they enslaved. Of the estimated 46,200 plantations existing in 1860, 20,700 had 20 to 30 enslaved people and 2,300 had a workforce of a hundred or more, with the rest somewhere in between. Many plantations were operated by absentee-landowners and never had

9728-452: The Spanish colonial government read Let it 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 mulatto children: George, about 3 years 9 months, Martha, 20 months old, an Mary, one month old. And regarding

9880-401: 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

10032-524: The Texas coastline in particular. Earthquakes are extremely rare to the area, but a 6.0 earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico on September 10, 2006, could be felt from the cities of New Orleans to Tampa. Due to the release of greenhouse gas emissions, glaciers and ice sheets are melting and expanding the oceans. The United States coastlines are projected to rise 1 foot in three decades or between 10 and 12 inches on average by 2050. The Gulf Coast will likely see

10184-526: The United States approximately $ 2.6 billion in relief efforts and caused at least seven deaths. By 2051, the cost of flood damage is expected to increase by 61%, or $ 32 billion. The Gulf Coast is a major center of economic activity. The marshlands along the Louisiana and Texas coasts provide breeding grounds and nurseries for ocean life that drive the fishing and shrimping industries. The Port of South Louisiana ( Metropolitan New Orleans in Laplace ) and

10336-567: The Visitor Center for Fort George Island . 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

10488-476: The above, the region features other important industries including aerospace and biomedical research , as well as older industries such as agriculture and — especially since the development of the Gulf Coast beginning in the 1920s and the increase in wealth throughout the United States ;— tourism . Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita have destroyed a number of museums and archives in

10640-573: 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

10792-693: 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

10944-618: The bale was secured with twine. An individual who owned a plantation was known as a planter . Historians of the prewar South have generally defined "planter" most precisely as a person owning property (real estate) and keeping 20 or more people enslaved . In the " Black Belt " counties of Alabama and Mississippi , the terms "planter" and "farmer" were often synonymous. The historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman define large planters as those who enslaved over 50 people, and medium planters as those who enslaved between 16 and 50 people. Historian David Williams, in A People's History of

11096-455: 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. The historian Daniel Stowell surmises that it may have given slave families

11248-448: The best. The production of agricultural products that could be sold was a welcome side venture. 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 20–30 lb (9–14 kg) of cotton or constructing three barrels for a slave who was a cooper . When the day's jobs were completed, slaves were free to do as they chose. Kingsley Beatty Gibbs described

11400-866: The biggest change, with sea levels expected to rise between 14 and 18 inches. The Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Report predicted more frequent, major and destructive high tide flooding events along with taller storm surges by 2050 after scientists determined high tide flooding has been "increasingly common" over the past few years due to the rising sea levels. The impacts are expected to be dramatic. Low-lying coastal areas are expected to experience multiple factors, including increased levels of flooding, accelerated erosion, loss of wetlands and low-lying terrestrial ecosystems, and seawater intrusion into freshwater sources. Rising sea level and erosion will also imperil critical habitats for many commercially important fisheries that depend on inshore waters for either permanent residence or nursery area. In 2021 alone rising sea levels cost

11552-426: The built environment: the main house for the plantation owner, the slave cabins , barns, and other structures of the complex. The materials for a plantation's buildings, for the most part, came from the lands of the estate. Lumber was obtained from the forested areas of the property. Depending on its intended use, it was either split, hewn , or sawn. Bricks were most often produced onsite from sand and clay that

11704-492: The centers or major cities of their respective metropolitan areas and many of which contain large ports . The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets , bays , and lagoons . The coast is intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River . Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland . Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain , which reaches from Southern Texas to

11856-463: The central and southern Florida peninsula and South Texas has a pronounced winter dry season, as at Tampa and Fort Myers . On the central and southern Texas coast, winter, early spring and mid-summer are markedly drier, and September is the wettest month on average at Corpus Christi and Brownsville, Texas . Tornadoes are infrequent at the coast but do occur; however, they occur more frequently in inland portions of Gulf Coast states. Over most of

12008-532: The clubhouse in the meantime. Financial difficulties due to the Depression, along with an aging membership, however, caused the club to decline, and in 1948 the club ceased operations and put its real estate on the market. The clubhouse has been torn down. The Ribault Club , built in 1928 and restored in 2003, is on the National Register of Historic Sites and is today run by the state of Florida as

12160-417: The cookhouse or a storehouse and would have secured items such as barrels of salt , sugar , flour , cornmeal and the like. The washhouse is where clothes, tablecloths, and bed-covers were cleaned and ironed. It also sometimes had living quarters for the laundrywoman . Cleaning laundry in this period was labor-intensive for the domestic slaves that performed it. It required various gadgets to accomplish

12312-463: The crop. Tobacco plantations were most common in certain parts of Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia. The first agricultural plantations in Virginia were founded on the growing of tobacco. Tobacco production on plantations was very labor-intensive. It required the entire year to gather seeds, start them growing in cold frames , and then transplant

12464-422: The doors and the wooden slave quarters had been burned down. John Rollins later 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

12616-573: The doors and windows, buttresses , a crenelated roof-line, and a small Gothic spire crowning the whole. Although construction records are very sketchy, the Chapel of the Cross, built from 1850 to 1852 near Madison, may be attributable to Frank Wills or Richard Upjohn , both of whom designed almost identical churches in the North during the same time period that the Chapel of the Cross was built. Another secondary structure on many plantations during

12768-428: The fields. A few enslavers went further in providing housing for the household servants. When Waldwic in Alabama was remodeled in the Gothic Revival style in the 1852, the enslaved people serving the household were provided with larger accommodations that matched the architecture of the main house. This model, however, was exceedingly rare. Famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted had this recollection of

12920-403: The financial panics of 1819 and 1837, when demand by British mills for cotton dropped, many small planters went bankrupt and their land and slaves were bought by larger plantations. As cotton-producing estates grew in size, so did the number of slaveholders and the average number of enslaved people held. A cotton plantation normally had a cotton gin house, where the cotton gin was used to remove

13072-719: The food staples and equipment that they relied on for their existence. This type of debt bondage , for blacks and poor whites, led to a populist movement in the late 19th century that began to bring blacks and whites together for a common cause. This early populist movement is largely credited with helping to cause state governments in the South, mostly controlled by the planter elite, to enact various laws that disenfranchised poor whites and blacks, through grandfather clauses , literacy tests , poll taxes , and various other laws. The agricultural structures on plantations had some basic structures in common and others that varied widely. They depended on what crops and animals were raised on

13224-427: The form of monumental towers set near the main house. The pigeons were raised to be eaten as a delicacy and their droppings were used as fertilizer. Few functions could take place on a plantation without a reliable water supply. Every plantation had at least one, and sometimes several, wells . These were usually roofed and often partially enclosed by latticework to exclude animals. Since the well water in many areas

13376-503: The former Hermitage Plantation in Georgia and Boone Hall in South Carolina, even those who worked in the fields were provided with brick cabins. More fortunate in their accommodations were those who served in the enslavers' houses or were skilled laborers. They usually resided either in a part of the main house or in their own houses, which were normally more comfortable dwellings than those of their counterparts who worked in

13528-690: The former slave quarters and farmed the land. A New Hampshire farmer named John Rollins (1835–1905) purchased the island in 1869 and made extensive changes to the plantation house, which had been vacant. Finding agriculture in Florida not as successful as he wished, he transitioned the island into a tourist resort, building a large luxury hotel, the Fort George Hotel (1875), and attracting celebrities such as banker William Astor and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe . The slave quarters were displayed as tourist attractions. The hotel burned down in 1888 and

13680-503: 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. 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

13832-455: The height of the sharecropping -era was the plantation store or commissary. Although some prewar plantations had a commissary that distributed food and supplies to enslaved people, the plantation store was essentially a postwar addition to the plantation complex. In addition to the share of their crop already owed to the plantation owner for the use of his or her land, tenants and sharecroppers purchased, usually on credit against their next crop,

13984-445: The inheriting of property by free blacks or mixed race descendants. 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 a free black republic. His two daughters had already married white planters and remained in Florida. He sold the plantation to his nephew, Kingsley Beatty Gibbs , in 1839, and transferred some of

14136-482: The inlet. It is the oldest surviving 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

14288-686: The island are also located near the plantation; according to Pleasant Gold in her History of Duval County , 1928, inscriptions subsequently destroyed stated that they were the 1808 tombs of a daughter and sister of John McIntosh, who owned the plantation before Kingsley. Ruins of another tabby house sit near the entrance of Palmetto Avenue. According to park literature, it is called the Munsilna McGundo House for Kingsley's fourth wife, as Kingsley, referring to it as "her house", left it to her and her daughter Fatima in his will. More recently it has been referred to as Thomson Tabby House, named for

14440-643: The land and buildings for $ 7,000 in 1817 (equivalent to $ 133,525 in 2023). 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

14592-498: The like. Although it, like the schoolroom, was most often within the main house or another structure, it was not at all rare for a complex to have a separate plantation office. John C. Calhoun used his plantation office at his Fort Hill plantation in Clemson, South Carolina as a private sanctuary of sorts, with it utilized as both study and library during his twenty-five year residency. Another structure found on some estates

14744-399: The main house, at least partially due to his social position. It was also part of an effort to keep the enslaved people compliant and prevent the beginnings of a slave rebellion, a very real fear in the minds of most plantation owners. Economic studies indicate that fewer than 30 percent of planters employed white supervisors for their slave labor. Some planters appointed a trusted slave as

14896-516: The major discoveries of oil in Texas and spurred on by further discoveries in the Gulf waters, has been a vehicle for development in the central and western Gulf which has spawned development on a variety of fronts in these regions. Texas in particular has benefited tremendously from this industry over the course of the 20th century and economic diversification has made the state a magnet for population and home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other U.S. state. Florida has grown as well, driven to

15048-442: The meat could also be stored there until it was consumed. The chicken house was a building where chickens were kept. Its design could vary, depending on whether the chickens were kept for egg production, meat, or both. If for eggs, there were often nest boxes for egg laying and perches on which the birds to sleep. Eggs were collected daily. Some plantations also had pigeonniers ( dovecotes ) that, in Louisiana, sometimes took

15200-417: The milk into skim milk and cream. It was done by pouring the whole milk into a container and allowing the cream to naturally rise to the top. This was collected into another container daily until several gallons had accumulated. During this time the cream would sour slightly through naturally occurring bacteria. This increased the efficiency of the churning to come. Churning was an arduous task performed with

15352-424: The most common and distinctive features of the plantation landscape, has largely disappeared in much of the South. Many of the structures were insubstantial to begin with. Only the better-built examples tended to survive, and then usually only if they were put to other uses after emancipation. The quarters could be next to the main house, well away from it, or both. On large plantations they were often arranged in

15504-483: The most developed cities in the region. The city had the third busiest port in the U.S. and its financial district was known as the "Wall Street of the South". Since then the Gulf Coast has been hit with numerous other hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane. It was the most damaging storm in the history of the United States, causing upwards of $ 80 billion in damages, and leaving over 1,800 dead. Again in 2008

15656-728: The museum houses presented an idyllic, dignified " lost cause " vision of the antebellum South . Recently, and to different degrees, some have begun to acknowledge the "horrors of slavery" which made that life possible. In late 2019, after contact initiated by Color of Change , "five major websites often used for wedding planning have pledged to cut back on promoting and romanticizing weddings at former slave plantations". The New York Times , earlier in 2019, "decided...to exclude couples who were being married on plantations from wedding announcements and other wedding coverage". "Many plantations, including George Washington 's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson 's Monticello , are working to present

15808-405: The outside, with shingle roofs and brick chimneys; they stood fifty feet apart, with gardens and pig-yards ... At the head of the settlement, in a garden looking down the street, was an overseer's house, and here the road divided, running each way at right angles; on one side to barns and a landing on the river, on the other toward the mansion ... A crucial residential structure on larger plantations

15960-504: The overseer, and in Louisiana free black overseers were also used. Another residential structure largely unique to plantation complexes was the garconnière or bachelors' quarters. Mostly built by Louisiana Creole people , but occasionally found in other parts of the Deep South formerly under the dominion of New France , they were structures that housed the adolescent or unmarried sons of plantation owners. At some plantations it

16112-477: The owner's house is open for guided tours on a limited basis each weekend. The barn is being renovated and is now open. Despite the durability of the slave quarters, they are vulnerable to vandalism , and each cabin shows evidence of damage. One room of the kitchen house is open and contains exhibits. Since 1998 Kingsley Plantation has hosted an annual one-day event, originally in October, later in February, called

16264-509: The people are improving, and everything is prosperous. 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

16416-513: 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." Kingsley used

16568-417: 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. The slave houses were constructed out of tabby and built by the slaves probably in

16720-406: The plantation landscape, offering a separate room for eating and sleeping. Sometimes dormitories and two-story dwellings were also used to house enslaved people. Earlier examples rested on the ground with a dirt floor, but later examples were usually raised on piers for ventilation. Most of these represent the dwellings constructed for enslaved people who worked in the fields. Rarely though, such as at

16872-525: The plantation until it was purchased by 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

17024-732: The plantation, used to house both horses and mules . These were usually separate, one for each type of animal. The mule stable was the most important on the vast majority of estates, since the mules did most of the work, pulling the plows and carts . Barns not involved in animal husbandry were most commonly the crib barn ( corn cribs or other types of granaries ), storage barns, or processing barns. Crib barns were typically built of unchinked logs , although they were sometimes covered with vertical wood siding. Storage barns often housed unprocessed crops or those awaiting consumption or transport to market. Processing barns were specialized structures that were necessary for helping to actually process

17176-599: The plantation. Common crops included corn , upland cotton , sea island cotton , rice , sugarcane , and tobacco . Besides those mentioned earlier, cattle , ducks , goats , hogs , and sheep were raised for their derived products and/or meat. All estates would have possessed various types of animal pens, stables , and a variety of barns . Many plantations utilized a number of specialized structures that were crop-specific and only found on that type of plantation. Plantation barns can be classified by function , depending on what type of crop and livestock were raised. In

17328-701: The plantations have pushed back against hearing about slavery. Gulf Coast of the United States The Gulf Coast of the United States , also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast , is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico . The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas , Louisiana , Mississippi , Alabama , and Florida , and these are known as

17480-602: The planter in matters of daily management. Usually perceived as uncouth, ill-educated, and low-class, he had the often despised task of meting out punishments in order to keep up discipline and secure the profit of his employer. Southern plantations depended upon slaves to do the agricultural work. "Honestly, 'plantation' and 'slavery' is one and the same," said an employee of the Whitney Plantation in 2019. Many manor houses survive, and in some cases former slave dwellings have been rebuilt or renovated. To pay for

17632-427: The plants to the fields once the soil had warmed. Then the enslaved people had to weed the fields all summer and remove the flowers from the tobacco plants in order to force more energy into the leaves. Harvesting was done by plucking individual leaves over several weeks as they ripened, or cutting entire tobacco plants and hanging them in vented tobacco barns to dry, called curing . Rice plantations were common in

17784-737: The postwar South. For example, James Battle Avirett , who grew up on the Avirett-Stephens Plantation in Onslow County, North Carolina , and served as an Episcopal chaplain in the Confederate States Army , published The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin before the War in 1901. Such memoirs often included descriptions of Christmas as the epitome of anti-modern order exemplified by

17936-477: 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

18088-558: The rights of free people of color that existed in Florida under Spanish rule. Kingsley briefly served on the Florida Territorial Council . Kingsley Plantation was not Kingsley's only or even his primary plantation. His plantation on Drayton Island has not been studied. "At the other end of Fort George, now Batten Island, he built himself a house of some size, which is now [1878] in ruins; there lived Flora, his black mistress. He divided his time about equally between

18240-431: 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 that forbade interracial marriage and

18392-444: The seeds from raw cotton. After ginning, the cotton had to be baled before it could be warehoused and transported to market. This was accomplished with a cotton press, an early type of baler that was usually powered by two mules walking in a circle with each attached to an overhead arm that turned a huge wooden screw. The downward action of this screw compressed the processed cotton into a uniform bale-shaped wooden enclosure, where

18544-413: The separation was to prevent the noise and smells of cooking activities from reaching the main house. Sometimes the cookhouse contained two rooms, one for the actual kitchen and the other to serve as the residence for the cook. Still other arrangements had the kitchen in one room, a laundry in the other, and a second story for servant quarters. The pantry could be in its own structure or in a cool part of

18696-485: 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

18848-614: 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

19000-526: The slaves to his plantation in San José, now a neighborhood in Jacksonville. Kingsley started a plantation in Haiti that was worked by former Fort George Island slaves, who had become indentured servants ; 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

19152-401: The smaller and simpler ones. Several plantation homes of important persons, including Mount Vernon , Monticello , and The Hermitage have also been preserved. Less common are intact examples of slave housing. The rarest survivors of all are the agricultural and lesser domestic structures, especially those dating from the pre-Civil War era. Housing for enslaved people, although once one of

19304-547: 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

19456-417: The task. The wash boiler was a cast iron or copper cauldron in which clothes or other fabrics and soapy water were heated over an open fire. The wash-stick was a wooden stick with a handle at its uppermost part and four to five prongs at its base. It was simultaneously pounded up and down and rotated in the washing tub to aerate the wash solution and loosen any dirt. The items would then be vigorously rubbed on

19608-483: The term dependency can be applied to these buildings. A few were common, such as the carriage house and blacksmith shop; but most varied widely among plantations and were largely a function of what the planter wanted, needed, or could afford to add to the complex. These buildings might include schoolhouses , offices , churches , commissary stores , gristmills , and sawmills . Found on some plantations in every Southern state, plantation schoolhouses served as

19760-478: 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 usually constructed quarters to be within their view at all times. The main residence of

19912-754: The top eight percent of landowners. In his study of southwest Georgia, Lee Formwalt defines planters in terms of size of land holdings rather than in terms of numbers of people enslaved. Formwalt's planters are in the top 4.5% of landowners, translating into real estate worth $ 6,000 or more in 1850, $ 24,000 or more in 1860, and $ 11,000 or more in 1870. In his study of Harrison County, Texas , Randolph B. Campbell classifies large planters as owners of 20 people, and small planters as owners of between 10 and 19 people. In Chicot and Phillips Counties, Arkansas, Carl H. Moneyhon defines large planters as owners of 20 or more people, and of 600 acres (240 ha) or more. Many nostalgic memoirs about plantation life were published in

20064-631: The two places." "In the 1830 census he owned only 39 slaves at the present Fort George site, but 188 at a little-known San José plantation, in Nassau County . In 1836 he moved his entire family from Florida, since Kingsley's free Blacks were ever more unwelcome and insecure, to a plantation called Mayorasgo de Koka , at the time in Haiti but from the 1840s in the Dominican Republic . Little remains of Mayorasgo de Koka. Fort George Island

20216-671: The upkeep, some, like the Monmouth Plantation in Natchez, Mississippi and the Lipscomb Plantation in Durham, North Carolina , have become small luxury hotels or bed and breakfasts . Not only Monticello and Mount Vernon but some 375 former plantation houses are museums that can be visited. There are examples in every Southern state. Centers of plantation life such as Natchez run plantation tours. Traditionally

20368-527: The upper South, like their counterparts in the North , barns had to provide basic shelter for the animals and storage of fodder . Unlike the upper regions, most plantations in the lower South did not have to provide substantial shelter to their animals during the winter. Animals were often kept in fattening pens with a simple shed for shelter, with the main barn or barns being utilized for crop storage or processing only. Stables were an essential type of barn on

20520-430: The western Florida Panhandle , while the western portions of the Gulf Coast are made up of many barrier islands and peninsulas , including the 130-mile (210 km) Padre Island along the Texas coast. These landforms protect numerous bays and inlets providing as a barrier to oncoming waves. The central part of the Gulf Coast, from eastern Texas through Louisiana, consists primarily of marshland. The eastern part of

20672-399: Was molded , dried, and then fired in a kiln . If a suitable stone was available, it was used. Tabby was often used on the southern Sea Islands . Few plantation structures have survived into the modern era, with the vast majority destroyed through natural disaster , neglect, or fire over the centuries. With the collapse of the plantation economy and subsequent Southern transition from

20824-491: 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

20976-405: Was a bedroom that had a fireplace to heat more efficiently in the winter. The second story of the house has two large rooms. In the cellar there were "secret, walled-up spaces"; on the roof is a widow's walk . The house faces Fort George Inlet and features separate porches on the front and rear of the house. When Kingsley owned the property, a brick walkway joined the porch to a now-vanished wharf on

21128-475: Was a free-standing structure and at others it was attached to the main house by side-wings. It developed from the Acadian tradition of using the loft of the house as a bedroom for young men. A variety of domestic and lesser agricultural structures surrounded the main house on all plantations. Most plantations possessed some, if not all, of these outbuildings , often called dependencies, commonly arranged around

21280-456: Was a plantation chapel or church. These were built for a variety of reasons. In many cases the planter built a church or chapel for the use of the plantation slaves, although they usually recruited a white minister to conduct the services. Some were built to exclusively serve the plantation family, but many more were built to serve the family and others in the area who shared the same faith. This seems to be especially true with planters within

21432-402: Was a very labor-intensive crop to harvest, with the fibers having to be hand-picked from the bolls . This was coupled with the equally laborious removal of seeds from fiber by hand. Following the invention of the cotton gin , cotton plantations sprang up all over the South and cotton production soared, along with the expansion of slavery. Cotton also caused plantations to grow in size. During

21584-428: Was almost always in a separate building in the South until modern times, sometimes connected to the main house by a covered walkway. This separation was partially due to the cooking fire generating heat all day long in an already hot and humid climate. It also reduced the risk of fire. Indeed, on many plantations the cookhouse was built of brick while when the main house was of wood-frame construction. Another reason for

21736-430: Was an overseer's house. The overseer was largely responsible for the success or failure of an estate, making sure that quotas were met and sometimes meting out punishment for infractions by the enslaved. The overseer was responsible for healthcare, with enslaved people and slave houses inspected routinely. He was also the record keeper of most crop inventories and held the keys to various storehouses. The overseer's house

21888-508: 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 Calabari from Nigeria , and others from

22040-450: Was distasteful due to mineral content, the potable water on many plantations came from cisterns that were supplied with rainwater by a pipe from a rooftop catchment. These could be huge aboveground wooden barrels capped by metal domes, such as was often seen in Louisiana and coastal areas of Mississippi, or underground brick masonry domes or vaults, common in other areas. Some structures on plantations provided subsidiary functions; again,

22192-545: 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, who 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

22344-477: Was not rebuilt; it would have had competition from the new Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine, accessible by railroad. The Rollins family turned to citrus cultivation until a freeze in 1894 destroyed their trees. 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 well-to-do Jacksonville residents. In 1923, 208 acres of Fort George Island were purchased from

22496-463: 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 common, 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

22648-420: Was repeated and stacked until the desired height of the wall was reached. In the construction of tabby buildings at the Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island, Florida, ...wooden or metal boxes with handles, that varied from twelve to thirty-six inches in height [0.3 – 0.9 m], were devised to take the place of forms which had to be dismantled and reassembled for each level. The twenty-four tabby slave houses at

22800-439: Was the third most damaging storm in the history of the United States, causing more than $ 25 billion in damage along the coast, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless, and sparking the largest search-and-rescue operation in U.S. history. Other than the hurricanes, the Gulf Coast has redeveloped dramatically over the course of the 20th century. The gulf coast is highly populated. The petrochemical industry, launched with

22952-430: Was usually a modest dwelling, not far from the cabins of the enslaved workers. The overseer and his family, even when white and southern, did not freely mingle with the planter and his family. They were in a different social stratum than that of the owner and were expected to know their place. In village-type slave quarters on plantations with overseers, his house was usually at the head of the slave village rather than near

23104-405: Was utilized to preserve meat, usually pork , beef , and mutton . It was commonly built of hewn logs or brick. Following the slaughter in the fall or early winter, salt and sugar were applied to the meat at the beginning of the curing process, and then the meat was slowly dried and smoked in the smokehouse by a fire that did not add any heat to the smokehouse itself. If it was cool enough,

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