Our last day of vacation was finally here. It was really hard to top the Kennedy Space Center of the day before. Rather than going to see the dregs of St. Augustine tourist traps, we drove to see the nearby Kingsley Plantation and Fort Caroline to learn more about the local history.
Kingsley Plantation was different from the plantations we saw on previous trips in South Carolina and Georgia, where slavery meant lifelong difficulty for the people under perpetual servitude. In Spanish-owned Florida, the Spanish government allowed slaves to obtain freedom; it was not considered a lifelong condition. Slaves were able to purchase their freedom, or to be freed, and there was an allowance for a separate class of free people of color. Zephaniah Kingsley, who owned the plantation, was a slave trader and shipping magnate. He ended up marrying one of his slaves, Anna Madgigine Jai, who arrived in Cuba from West Africa. Apparently it was common for white plantation owners to marry African women in East Florida. They had several children, and Anna was the matriarch, even running the plantation. It’s worth reading about Kingsley's contradictory life. After Florida became a territory of the United States in the 1820s, the Florida Territorial Council passed restrictive laws forbidding interrracial marrage and the right of free blacks or mixed race descendants to inherit property. Kingsley sent most of his family to live in free Haiti. After his death, his wife and children luckily managed to retain ownership of the property, confirmed by the courts, because the will was made under Spanish law. It was very interesting to hear about the differences between Spanish and English (US) law and attitudes on these matters.
Kingsley plantation slave quarters, with one house rebuilt
Ruined slave quarters
Colby, Denali, and Wayne
We also visited Fort Caroline, an attempted French colonial settlement in Florida, supposedly a safe haven for Huguenots. The people who lived there were eventually attacked and massacred by the Spanish. There wasn’t much to see — the fort was actually a reproduction — but it was a nice place for a walk.
Colby and Denali at Fort Caroline
Denali at Fort Carolina. This fort is actually a replica built in 1964; the original site is not exactly known.
Another viewpoint from the triangle-shaped fort
Look up - Spanish moss
Walking along the path under the Spanish moss
Christy and Denali
Christy
And, the strange things you see along the way...
Thus ended our vacation in St. Augustine, Florida. We packed up the next day and headed home to rescue our cats from the kennel.