Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. was a plantation owner, born in England, who moved as a child with his family to South Carolina, and became a planter, slave trader, and merchant. He built four plantations in the Spanish colony of Florida near what is now Jacksonville, Florida. He served on the Florida Territorial Council after Florida was acquired by the United States in 1821. Kingsley Plantation, which he owned and where he lived for 25 years, has been preserved as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, run by the United States National Park Service. Finding his large and complicated family progressively more insecure in Florida, he moved them to a vanished plantation, Mayorasgo de Koka, in what was then Haiti but soon became part of the Dominican Republic.
Ad for Zepheniah Kingsley Sr.'s store, Charleston, S.C., 1772
Main house, Kingsley Plantation
Maam Anna's apartments, now restored by the National Park Service, were above the kitchens. The rear of the main house is in the background.
Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, that was named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."
Kingsley Plantation
Shell mound left by Timucua inhabitants of Fort George Island was used as building material at Kingsley Plantation
Etching of the owner's house on Fort George Island, showing one of the unique pavilions
Fort George Island, showing Kingsley's and Ma'am Anna Houses on shore, 1878. Note outline of house roof is different, as it includes rooms removed during restoration.