SANDS OF TIME: American Beach nears 80-year anniversary

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Slavery, United States on 2014-10-15 01:24Z by Steven

SANDS OF TIME: American Beach nears 80-year anniversary

The Florida Times-Union
Jacksonville, Florida
2014-10-13

Alec Newell

The extended family of Zephaniah Kingsley, Anna Jai, and their descendants have been major players in shaping the history of Northeast Florida during three colonial periods, American territorial times, Florida statehood and on into the 20th century.

Between Lake George and the St. Marys River, the fingerprints they left seem to be everywhere.

Most of us are familiar with the story of how slave trader Zepheniah Kingsley bought a 13-year-old “African princess” — Anna Madgigine Jai — in Cuba and brought her back to his Laurel Grove Plantation in what is now Orange Park. The couple produced four children, and Zephaniah never wavered in his acknowledgement of Anna as his wife.

Anna, later as a freed woman of color, would own her own slaves, plantation property, and live at various other family residences along the lower St. Johns River. These properties included Mandarin (later owned by Harriet Beecher Stowe), Kingsley Plantation (Ft. George Island), Chesterfield (part of the Jacksonville University Campus), Floral Bluff (Arlington), and Strawberry Plantation (Arlington Bluff), where she was buried. Probably less well-known is the Kingsley connection to the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and American Beach

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