Kingsley Plantation - Kingsley's House and Other Structures

Kingsley's House and Other Structures

The main residence of the Fort George plantation is a unique two-story house that was probably constructed between 1797 and 1798 by John McQueen, who indicated in a letter at the time that he had built a comfortable house for himself. The house—resembling 17th century British gentry homes—has a large center room and four one-story pavilions at each corner that allowed air to circulate through them to keep them cooler in the summer; each was a bedroom that had a fireplace to heat more efficiently in the winter. The second story of the house has two large rooms. On the roof is a deck and the house faces Fort George Inlet and features two porches on the front and rear of the house. A brick walkway joined the back porch to a wharf on the inlet while Kingsley was in residence. The Florida Division of Historical Resources indicates it may be the oldest plantation house in the state.

The main house protected John McQueen's family and neighbors during attacks from invading Creeks in 1802; he wrote that at one time 26 people took refuge there. Following raids from Americans during the Patriot Rebellion in 1813, the house was gutted and vandalized. Plantations as far south as New Smyrna were destroyed by rebels fleeing into Georgia. When Kingsley arrived, there were no metal fixtures in the doors and the wooden slave quarters had been burned down. John Rollins added sections to the east and west sides of the house in between the pavilions in the 1890s and removed at least three of the fireplace chimneys from the pavilions. One of the clubs that owned the island in the 1920s added electricity.

Next to the main house was a two-story kitchen house that was called "Ma'am Anna House" while Anna Jai was on Fort George Island. It was probably built in the 1820s and doubled as a center for food preparation on the ground floor and Anna Jai's residence with her children on the second. In West Africa, polygamy was not uncommon, and wives often lived in separate quarters from their husbands. Kingsley's nephew and his wife also lived on the grounds and Gibbs probably used a part of the second floor for an office. The main house and Ma'am Anna House were surrounded by a grove of orange, lemon, and banana trees with occasional ornamental crepe myrtles. Between 1869 and 1877 Rollins built a roof over the walkway between the kitchen house and the main house.

A barn constructed of tabby sits 150 feet (46 m) from the owner's house. Two wells have survived since Kingsley's ownership and two tombs of unknown origin constructed of tabby before Kingsley came to own the island are also located near the plantation. Ruins of another tabby house sits near the entrance of Palmetto Avenue. Its origins are unclear. It has been called the Munsilna McGundo House for Kingsley's fourth wife, as oral history related that it was left to her and her daughter Fatima in Kingsley's will. More recently it has been referred to as Thomson Tabby House named for a planter who died perhaps while constructing it.