Last updated: April 30, 2024
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Freedom Seekers of Timucuan Preserve
Jacksonville Courier
Kingsley and the Guerrero Survivors
In 1814, Zephaniah Kingsley moved to Fort George Island and what is known today as the Kingsley Plantation. With an enslaved work force of about 60, the Fort George plantation produced Sea Island cotton, sugar cane, and corn. Zephiniah Kingsley continued to acquire property in north Florida and eventually possessed more than 32,000 acres, including four major plantation complexes and more than 200 enslaved people.
A diversified businessman, merchant, and slave trader, Kingsley also secured a contract with Colonel James Gadsden for $13,500 to improve the navigation between the St. Mary’s and the St. Johns rivers. By July 1829, he was employing a large force on the canal project and they completed it a year later.
The backwaters of the Timucuan Preserve were the location of this project in the current Intra-coastal waterway. This was backbreaking and dangerous labor, rather than risk the health and safety of his own enslaved men, Kingsley would employ hired Africans to dig the canal.Prior to this point 561 Africans, captured and forced on the Guerrero, a Spanish slave ship, wrecked in 1827 on a reef near the Florida Keys. Forty-one of the Africans drowned in the wreck. Guerrero had been engaged in a battle with a British anti-slavery patrol ship. The wreck, salvage, and possible surrender of the ship led to a questioned legal status of 121 Africans. The U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Florida, Waters Smith took custody of the group while their futures were decided in Washington D.C. Kingsley paid Smith, two dollars a month plus provisions to hire thirty-six African men who had been rescued off the Guerrero. After working at Fort George for over a year, the men most likely labored on the construction project, cutting a channel through oyster beds and digging a canal to connect Pine Island Creek and Amelia Sound. The Africans labored for Kingsley, unpaid and unable to leave until August 1829, when Smith recalled them for their transport to Liberia following a legal battle and the eventual appropriation of funds by the U.S. Congress. Kingsley’s overseer informed Smith that three of the men had run away. Eventually the freedom seekers were captured and all thirty-six men would be sent to Liberia, after performing unpaid labor for sixteen months to enhance the Florida economy.
While the dramatic legal battle over the Guerrero eventually determined these men to be free, they were treated as enslaved people during much of their time in Florida, and three of the shipwreck survivors sought to escape the forced labor under difficult conditions even as their fate was being decided in Washington. While that initial escape from Zephaniah Kingsley’s property was temporary, they would ultimately regain their autonomy in Liberia.
Romeo Murray
Zephaniah Kingsley began acquiring what became the San Jose Plantation in 1819 and it became his primary residence in Florida from 1839 when Fort George Island was sold, until his death in 1844. At San Jose, cotton, corn, and some cane were grown by 50 enslaved people, 25 workers and 25 children. Following Zephaniah’s death in 1844, his sister Martha Kingsley McNeill filed a petition to invalidate Zephaniah’s will on the basis that the primary recipients, Zephaniah’s wives and childrens ethnicities disqualified from any inheritance. In response, Anna (Kingsley's wife) and George Kingsley filed petitions to claim ownership of the enslaved listed on the 1844 inventory. After the court ruled in their favor, Anna then filed a petition regarding San Jose Plantation, seeking to remove Martha’s son Charles McNeill as overseer and rent out the plantation and enslaved instead.
This time however, the court ruled against Anna, arguing overwork, harsh treatment, and a decline in enslaved health would result, in addition to the suffering on enslaved felt my renting families apart. It is within the testimony collected for this petition where Romeo’s escape is recorded.
It is within systematic abuses on San Jose Plantation that Romeo found himself in and responded to by running away. According to John Sammis, Zephaniah Kingsley’s son-in-law who owned a plantation downriver from San Jose, McNeill had “some trouble” after Zephaniah’s death. In the “fall of [18]43or winter [18]44,” the enslaved “refused to obey his orders.” Joshua Coffee agrees, testifying that “there have been difficulties among the negroes twice, there has been once a rebellion among them.” Details of this “rebellion” are not expanded upon and could mean anything from a refusal to obey orders like Sammis notes, or something greater. During one of these difficulties, Sammis notes that “some of them ran away,” however, no exact number is given, but later in the testimony he says “two of the negroes ran away. One of the negroes had [been] flogged.” One of these runaways was Romeo, who McNeill offered a “$20 reward dead or alive” for, and employed a neighbor named George Hagins to hunt Romeo “with bulldogs.” Sammis was away at the time, but when he returned, he visited McNeill “and told him I could have the negro brought to him if he would not beat him cruelly and I would ask him no reward if he would punish the boy in my presence.” However, on the cross examination, Sammis testifies that “Romeo was taken by Hagins but not by the bull dogs.” To better contextualize Romeo’s situation and escape, we must further interrogate this sparse testimony. The fact that McNeill put out a reward for Romeo’s capture suggests that Romeo may have been one of the two leaders of the “rebellion,” possibly with another Driver named Sam whose behavior is also discussed throughout testimony. What is also unique about Romeo’s story is that Sammis and Coffee do not place blame on Romeo for running away. Instead, what is discussed is McNeill’s mismanagement and abuses of the task system at San Jose. Again, this needs to be placed in the context of the family dispute between Anna Kingsley and Martha McNeill because Sammis also had a vested interest that Anna’s petition is ruled in favor of because while Anna was living in Haiti, he represented her interests in Florida. What is also unique about Romeo’s escape is Sammis’ actions after his return to Jacksonville. Upon arrival, Sammis went directly to McNeill to tell him that he could return Romeo to San Jose, suggesting that Sammis already knew where Romeo was. According to the testimony regarding San Jose, Charles McNeill, and Romeo’s escape, it appears that McNeill’s abuses of the task system at the plantation may have factored into the enslaved ‘rebellions’ at the plantation, including Romeo’s escape. Once Sammis restored order to San Jose, Romeo returned, where he worked and lived until 1848 when he self-purchased his freedom and adopted the surname Murray. He continued to work as a river pilot before joining the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War and piloting the Maple Leaf, a Union supply vessel, before striking a Confederate torpedo and sinking. He then lived out his days in the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville with his family.
Freedom Seekers from British St. Johns Town
Also protected by the NPS located near Fort Caroline National Memorial, is portion of land on which a late 18th century British settlement known as St. Johns Town that only existed for a few years serving as a residential and commercial safe haven for British Loyalist evacuees fleeing the southward trajectory of the American Revolutionary War. The 300-acre heavily wooded hillside parcel along the St. Johns River originally known as Hester’s Bluff was situated advantageously for both trading and strategic military defense as it was right at the mouth of the St. Johns River with the confluence of several smaller waterways merging the Atlantic Ocean nearby to the east. William Hester purchased the land in 1768 with the intent to cultivate provisions and indigo. In 1772, Hester had a the land surveyed to lay out roads and lots for a township, due to an increase in river traffic. When he died in 1773, his son, Jesse, operated a modest farm on the property and then eventually began selling off a few small parcels as building properties. As the American Revolution intensified, the colonial patriot southern advance created major upheaval. Thousands of southern British Loyalists from cities such as Charleston and Savannah sought refuge in East Florida which had been British controlled territory since the Spanish had evacuated for Cuba in 1763. They brought with them multitudes of enslaved individuals. During the peak of population of this period of British occupation between 1782-83, it is estimated that there were over 11,000 enslaved in the East Florida territory. In addition to accounts of enslaved individuals self-manumitting during these tumultuous times, there were also bands of scoundrels (labeled “banditti “by the Spanish) who took advantage of the confusion and scoured the East Florida countryside in search of whatever booty they could carry off, which frequently included both horses and enslaved individuals.
In 1782, as armed conflict intensified in the South, East Florida resident Thomas Williamson purchased the expanse still known as Hester’s Bluff, anticipating an enterprising opportunity to resell the land to an onslaught of British Loyalists refugees. He renamed it St. Johns Town and platted out a town with roads and 230 lots both residential and commercial. Eventually, between 100-300 dwellings were built. In addition to the relocating refugee residents hoping to establish plantations, these plots were mostly sold to merchants, carpenters, mariners, shipbuilders, and innkeepers. St. Johns Town quickly became the second most populated settlement in the province and, over time, featured a wheelwright, butcher, and blacksmith. After the war, formerly British-occupied lands in Florida were ceded back to the Spanish who had assisted the patriot cause, and many British again sought refuge back to their homeland or in British-held Nova Scotia. As St. Johns Town’s founder, Thomas Williamson had built two large two-story houses on the hillside facing the St. Johns River and purchased 223 acres just beside the town and cleared and planted a small section. In 1784 after the province was ceded, a disgruntled Williamson dismantled the house he had inhabited and shipped it to Jamaica to be sold. He reported to Parliament that the 172 British pounds he received for the sale of the home was his “sole satisfaction or compensation” for his losses of personal property and the enterprising town he had founded. British records of Loyalist property loss submitted to Parliament’s East Florida Claims Commission provide unique insight into the variety of trades, commodities, and services that once existed in the town. The University of North Florida’s Florida History Online under Dr. Daniel Schaffer lists several townspeople including some who had enslaved individuals who absconded. Several of note are included below with brief descriptions of their vocations and survival strategies.
William Russell After evacuating Charleston, Russell, an auctioneer, and shopkeeper relocated to St. Johns Town where he sold lumber and naval stores, providing new settlers with much needed shingles and boards for new settlers to build their homes. He rented property and planned to stay in the province for several years, but instead left soon after the Spanish arrived in the area. Amidst the confusion during the exchange of possession of the province, two of Russell’s male slaves, one a carpenter and a cooper, absconded.
Patrick Licetti (also recorded as Lysett) was an Irishman who settled in St. Johns Town and purchased two lots with pr-existing homes. Although no occupation is recorded, it is believed that he cultivated a small farm during his time in the town. During the transition of power, it is documented that one of Licetti’s male slaves “left his service and ran away to the Spaniards.” He also lost six of his hogs who escaped into the woods. With these significant losses, Licetti left East Florida and headed to England after the Spanish resumed control of the province.
William Young arrived in St. Johns Town from Charleston in 1782 and acquired a lot and dwelling in town and a separate 500-acre tract along the nearby Pablo River populated by cypress and a variety of oaks. It was here six dwellings were constructed for his eight enslaved who cultivated rice and provisions crops until the British evacuated East Florida in 1784. Shortly before his departure, Young lost “six valuable Negroes, two being tradesman, one a cooper, one a carpenter, the whole American born; one of the men lost in the latter end of the year 1783 and the other five at the period of embarkation, when he also lost a valuable young horse which [he] was obliged to leave at St. Marys,(GA) for want of transportation.” Young then decided to return to London.
George Miller owned a 200-acre tract of land just outside of St. Johns Town but lived in town. He had Seventy acres cleared and planted in provisions by his forty-three enslaved. He utilized the rest for the production of naval stores. When he evacuated the province, his claims for losses submitted to Parliament included twenty-five barrels of turpentine, a tar kiln, 25,000 pine trees boxed for turpentine, and enough wooden staves to make 500 barrels and his enslaved human property, for a total loss of 3107 British pounds.
Though not yet substantiated, many historians and members of local descendant communities believe that some of these freedom seekers may have formed maroon communities along St. Johns Bluff. These communities may have been formed along with some of the Seminole peoples that are known to have had similar experiences with enslavement and freedom seeking in the region.
Cedar Point Plantation Dorcas and Charles
Further up the river beyond the bluff, another park site contains yet another account of escape. The current site of the “Fitzpatrick Ruins” is located on National Park Service property within the legislative boundary of Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve at the southern tip of Black Hammock Island. The area was named “Punta de las Sabinas” by the Spanish and is known today by the Anglicized “Cedar Point.” The first known evidence of enslavement on the property appears during the transition from the British administration of East Florida to the second Spanish period in 1783. The Joseph Mills family is listed in Spanish census records as farming two hundred acres at Cedar Point. According to those records, Joseph Mills listed four enslaved people as property. In 1794, Joseph Mills was named a rebel against the Spanish Government and fled to Camden County, Georgia. There is no record of the status of the enslaved people listed from the 1783 document. William Fitzpatrick occupied the Cedar Point property in 1795. According to the Swann family papers, he built the tabby structures which now lie in ruins “with the help of his slaves.” In 1808, Fitzpatrick was awarded a land grand of four hundred-forty acres at Cedar Point. The 1808 document lists the names and ages of the Fitzpatrick family, as well as the names and ages of fifteen enslaved people. Among the enslaved people listed is Charles, age 15, and among the Fitzpatrick family members listed is Dorcas, age 12.
Possession of Florida was ceded to the United States through the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819, and Florida became a United States Territory in 1821. With that, legal and societal understandings and practices of slavery, class, and race long practiced under Spanish rule transitioned into a new paradigm under American law. Rights previously granted to enslaved people under Spanish law which emphasized social class over race regarding citizenship, property ownership and inheritance, and self-emancipation eroded. By the 1830s, free people of color were forbidden to own property, inherit property, and had many of the mechanisms for legal self-emancipation stripped from them. William Fitzpatrick died in 1826 and the property at Cedar Point was divided among his sons and sons-in-law. One of Fitzpatrick’s daughters, Maria, married a man named H.W. Maxey and continued operations at the Fitzpatrick Plantation. On April 16, 1835, Henry W. Maxey placed an advertisement in the Jacksonville Courier offering a reward for the return of two self-emancipated enslaved people.
The advertisement reads: Ten Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, a Negro man named Charles, and a Negro woman named Dorcas. The man is about forty years old, and the woman is thirty-eight. The man is very black, about five feet nine inches in height, with the African marks on his face of his native country. The woman is about five feet nine inches, and rather thick set. Any person returning them shall receive the above reward. Henry W. Maxey, Cedar Point, March 4.
The comparison between the 1835 advertisement and 1808 Spanish land grant document raises some intriguing possibilities. The 1808 document lists a fifteen-year-old enslaved person named Charles, and a twelve-year-old member of the Fitzpatrick family named Dorcas. The 1835 advertisement names Charles, “about forty years old,” and Dorcas, age thirty-eight. Based on the 1808 document, Charles would have been forty-one or forty-two years old, and Dorcas would have been 38 or 39 years old in 1835. There is no further direct evidence to conclusively prove that Charles and Dorcas from the 1835 advertisement are the same Charles and Dorcas from the 1808 Spanish land grant document, but the names, ages, and place are remarkably consistent. Why would Dorcas be considered a Fitzpatrick family member in 1808 and a “Negro” enslaved woman in 1835? If we consider the possibility Dorcas was a mixed-race child fathered by William Fitzpatrick and an enslaved woman (something that occurred on slave plantations throughout the region, including neighboring Kingsley Plantation), perhaps she represented more “value” as a member of the planter class for the purposes of obtaining a land grant under a Spanish institution which viewed slavery through a class-based lens. By contrast, American laws in 1835 more closely associated slavery with race. A person of mixed-race birth would have likely been considered a “Negro” with very few citizenship, property, or inheritance rights. Unfortunately, there is no known evidence to determine what happened to Charles and Dorcas after 1835. All that is definitive is that on March 4, 1835, two people considered “Negros” by Henry W. Maxey illegally self-emancipated from the Fitzpatrick Plantation at Cedar Point.
Civil War Freedom Seekers
There are many accounts of people escaping enslavement within the legislative boundary of Timucuan but during the Civil War, Timucuan Preserve was not only a site of escape but it’s waterways provided the avenues of escape. Prior to the Civil War, an unknown number of enslaved persons gained their freedom by stowing away on ships passing through the St. Johns River, inspections specifically looking for these people were conducted near the southern tip of Fort George Island. During the war, the US Navy’s control of the river enabled freed people to access federal vessels that carried them to federally occupied areas and emancipation. The St. Johns River became a site of emancipation. Freed people reported locations of Confederate forces and stockpiles of cotton, sugar, bricks, lumber, corn, and numerous other commodities and proved a useful source of intelligence. The story of Civil War-era freedom seekers in Timucuan Preserve cannot be told without placing the park’s specific location within the broader geography and history of northeast Florida. The federal occupation of Fernandina, just north of the preserve had significant repercussions for enslaved persons held in bondage in and around the park and across the St. Johns River. Fernandina evolved into a gathering point for freedom seekers who gained liberation while in route to the city’s growing refugee camp. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, Fernandina transformed into a major Black soldier recruitment center that attracted hundreds of freedmen and their dependents from across northeast Florida. Many of the freed people who originated from areas in and around Timucuan’s legislative boundary took major strides toward securing emancipation by traveling through the park to Fernandina, either by the Kings Highway or using the waterways.
The journey from the park to Fernandina was made by Jame Eulin and his mother during this time. The life of James Eulin is a unique story of an enslaved individual who, after escaping slavery, served in the United States Navy, the federal army, and got married during his service. James Eulin was born around 1839 on Talbot Island, Florida, currently a state park site that lies within the legislative boundary of the NPS site. He lived his early life enslaved by John Houston. His mother, Pattie Smith, lived on Talbot Island and enslaved by the Houston family for much of, if not all of, her life. Not much is known about James’ father except his name, Sam Eulin. Two years after the start of the war, James and his mother gained their freedom.[xxviii] The exact circumstances surrounding their emancipation are unclear. It is possible that they self-emancipated when the Houston's abandoned their plantation as Union armies approached the area. Through the actions of self-emancipating Blacks, the US Naval outpost at Fernandina became a large contraband camp. The journey from Talbot Island to Fernandina is less than 20 miles; however, over that distance, there are numerous wetlands, the Nassau River, and other geographic obstacles. James and his mother may have escaped on foot using hidden trails used by other enslaved individuals; it is also possible that they managed to get aboard a passing U.S. vessel and sailed to Fernandina. Military service provided a potential avenue for stability for freedmen. Service in the military offered men the prospect of financial stability, valuable experience, an opportunity to overthrow slavery, among many others. However, as appealing as the decision to enlist could be, it did come with some drawbacks, namely the effect that a male provider leaving a family would have on the family’s situation. James and his mother experienced this drawback when James enlisted in the US Navy. The story of James and Pattie is just one example given in the recent scholarship commission on USCT and Timucuan Preserve.