Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley

by Schafer, Daniel L.

• ISBN13: 9780813026169
• ISBN10: 0813026164
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

Anna Kingsley's life story adds a dramatic chapter to histories of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora. Working from surprisingly extensive records, including information and photographs from extended-family members and descendants, Daniel Shafer reconstructs and documents one slave's remarkable story. Both an American slave and a slaveowner--and possibly an African princess--Anna was a teenager when she was captured in her homeland of Senegal in 1806 and sold into slavery. Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a planter and slave trader from Spanish East Florida, bought her in Havana, Cuba, and took her to his St. Johns River plantation in northeast Florida, where she soon became his household manager, his wife, and eventually the mother of four of his children. Her husband formally emancipated her in 1811, and she became the owner of her own farm and twelve slaves the following year. For 25 years, life on her farm and at the Kingsley plantation on Fort George Island was relatively tranquil. But when Florida passed from Spanish to American control, an

Author Biography

Daniel L. Schafer is professor of history at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville.

Table of Contents

List of Maps & Photographs	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1	(3)
Senegal: Anta Majigeen Ndiaye	4	(16)
Havana: Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr.	20	(7)
Laurel Grove: Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley	27	(8)
The Patriot War	35	(10)
Fort George Island	45	(21)
Refuge in Haiti and Return to Florida	66	(11)
A Free Black Community in a Time of Race Hysteria	77	(24)
Final Flight: The American Civil War	101	(10)
Final Years	111	(11)
A Personal Postscript	122	(7)
Appendix: The Last Will and Testament of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley	129	(4)
Notes	133	(22)
Bibliography	155	(14)
Index	169