Inside the Kingsley Plantation: The Untold Florida Story of Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley

By Joe Marzo

Hidden among the moss-draped oaks of Fort George Island near Jacksonville stands one of Florida’s most haunting historic sites, the Kingsley Plantation. Its quiet ruins tell a story that defies easy explanation. This was the home of Zephaniah Kingsley, a British-born slave trader who became a Spanish planter, and Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, the African woman he enslaved, freed, and later empowered. Their lives together reveal a world where love, slavery, race, and power were tangled in ways that still challenge the imagination.

A Merchant of Empires

Zephaniah Kingsley was born in 1765 in Bristol, England, and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, during the American Revolution. His Loyalist family lost everything when the patriots won, and the setback pushed him toward a restless life at sea. By his twenties, Kingsley was moving between continents as a trader, merchant, and ship captain. He dealt in sugar, rum, timber, and enslaved people, traveling between Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

By 1803, he had made his way to Spanish Florida, where the laws surrounding race and slavery were more flexible than in the United States. He pledged allegiance to Spain and began to acquire land, first along the St. Johns River at a place called Laurel Grove, and later on Fort George Island. There he established the Kingsley Plantation, a sprawling estate worked by more than sixty enslaved laborers.

Anna’s Journey from Captivity to Power

Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley was born around 1793 in West Africa, probably among the Wolof people of present-day Senegal. She was captured as a child during a tribal conflict and sold into slavery. By 1806, she had been transported to Havana, Cuba, where Kingsley purchased her. She was only thirteen years old.

Kingsley claimed that he and Anna were married in an African ceremony soon after, and within a few years he granted her legal freedom. She became not only his wife but also a partner in running his plantations. When Zephaniah was away on business, Anna managed daily operations, oversaw workers, and handled trade. Under Spanish law, free Black people could own property, and Anna eventually acquired land, enslaved workers, and livestock in her own name.

Their relationship would have been unthinkable in most parts of the United States, but in Spanish Florida, the racial order was more fluid. Kingsley and Anna had four children, all legally recognized as free. For a time, it seemed that the family had found a way to exist in a world built on contradictions.

A System Built on Contradictions

Kingsley Plantation was different from most in the American South. Zephaniah used the “task system,” in which enslaved people completed a set amount of work each day and then could use the rest of their time to farm, fish, or trade. He allowed some to earn money toward their own freedom. These practices were unusual, but they did not make Kingsley a reformer in the modern sense. He still believed in slavery as a necessary institution, even as he argued that free people of color were vital to a stable society.

In 1828, Kingsley published A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Co-operative System of Society. In it, he defended slavery but called for laws that protected mixed-race families and property rights for free Black people. His views were complex and often self-serving, but they revealed a man who saw the old world of Spain and the new laws of America pulling Florida in very different directions.

The Fall of Spanish Florida

Everything changed in 1821 when the United States took control of Florida. Under Spanish rule, free people of color had been recognized as a separate class with certain rights. Under American rule, that middle ground disappeared. Territorial laws began to strip away freedoms, outlaw interracial marriage, and forbid free Black people from inheriting property.

Kingsley watched as the society he understood collapsed. His children, once free and secure, would soon be considered second-class citizens under American law. Desperate to protect them, he began moving his wealth and family to a safer place.

Exile and Legacy

In 1838, Kingsley and Anna relocated their family to the island of Hispaniola, in what is now the Dominican Republic. There he purchased land and founded the Mayorasgo de Koka plantation, hoping to give his mixed-race family a future in a country that recognized equality among races.

Zephaniah Kingsley died in 1843 while sailing from the Caribbean to New York. His will carefully outlined provisions for Anna and their children, including protections for the enslaved families on his plantations. But white relatives in Florida challenged the will, setting off a series of legal battles.

Anna returned to Florida to defend her rights in court. Against long odds, she succeeded in securing part of the estate for herself and her children. Her strength and intelligence, once used to manage plantations, were now weapons in her fight for survival.

Today, the Kingsley Plantation still stands as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. The house, barn, and rows of slave cabins remain visible reminders of Florida’s tangled past. Visitors walk through a place where freedom and bondage, cruelty and compassion, coexisted in uneasy balance.

The story of Zephaniah and Anna Kingsley is one of paradox. He was a man who made his fortune through slavery yet argued for the rights of free Black citizens. She was a woman stolen from Africa who rose to become a landowner and matriarch in a hostile world. Together they created a life that defied the racial lines of their time and left behind a legacy that still challenges how Florida remembers its past.

Sources:

National Park Service

Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve; HistoryNet, “Zephaniah Kingsley: Champion of Free Blacks”; Florida Memory, Kingsley Family Papers; A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Co-operative System of Society (1828);

Wikipedia, “Zephaniah Kingsley,” “Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley”; Amelia Island Museum of History; National Parks Conservation Association.