Story and photos by Deborah Holmes
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Kinglsey Plantation, a modest 18th century plantation, is a study of contrasts -- a seemingly simple place that tells a complex story.
Fort George Island on Northeast Florida's St. Johns River provides a serenely beautiful setting. Approachable only by ship in the year 1798, when Kingsley Plantation was built, the island provided a gentle climate, suitable to growing fine Sea Island cotton and citrus. Its isolation also afforded protection from invaders -- while effectively imprisoning the slaves that worked the plantation.
A sand and oyster shell road that now traverses miles of swamp and mangrove jungles, providing a land approach to the house as well as access to the Timucuan Ecological Preserve. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the river was the only approach to the island -- and the only exit -- virtually assuring that slaves could not escape.
The plantation house itself initially strikes one as simple and modest. But in contrast to the simple oyster shell and lime "tabby" cabins that housed the plantations slaves, the house is a mansion.
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Sitting on a coquina block foundation, the house consists of a rectangular great room with two fireplaces, and a large room attached at each of four corners. Porches run the length of the north and south sides of the house. An outside stairway leads up the second floor bedrooms and an attic. A trapdoor opens from the attic to the open-air observation deck.
A separate saltbox house and kitchen are attached to the main house. At the edge of the estate, ruins of 25 slave cabins can be seen. At one time, slave cabins were arranged in a semi-circle. Today only one cabin has been reconstructed by the National Park Service, which owns and maintains the plantation and the ecological reserve.
The cabins and main building foundations were built of tabby, a mixture of equal parts lime, water, sand and oyster shells. The shells, left in 4 foot high mounds by the Timucuan Indians, provided ample building material to expand the plantation buildings to include barns. The tabby mixture was poured into wood frame molds, hardened and used for exterior walls.
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(Click on any picture for a larger view) |
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