Anna Kingsley - Early Years

Early Years

Daniel L. Schafer, the biographer of Anna Kingsley, has based his account of her early life on conjecture given his research into the history of the area. Anna Kingsley was born Anta Majigeen Ndiaye in 1793, in a portion of West Africa that was rent by a fierce war between the majority Wolof people and the minority Fula. Slave raids were frequent occurrences during incessant violence that left many small villages deserted, as people were abducted to be sold into slavery or they fled in fear for their lives. Following an intensifying of the crisis in 1790, Anta was captured in 1806 when she was about 13 years old, probably by Tyeddo raiders from the Fouta Tooro. Wolof tradition holds that a mythological figure named Njaajaan Ndiaye established the Jolof Kingdom that existed between 1200 and 1550. Through her father, Anta was a Ndiaye descendant and carried that name. Her mother also had ancestors who had held the title of the Buurba Jolof, or king, of the Wolofs. Although lineages are disputed, there is a belief that Anta may have been the daughter of a still ruling as opposed to formerly ruling branch of the royal family.

Schafer suggests that Anta may have been sent to Gorée Island, a slave debarkation point from the West African coast to the Americas. She sailed to Havana, Cuba; the name of the ship she was aboard is unknown. When Africans arrived in the Western Hemisphere to be sold into slavery, slave traders did not record their given names, but only their age, sex, and sometimes ethnicity, which were most important to buyers. In September or October 1806, Anta was displayed for sale and bought by a slave trader, merchant, and resident of Spanish Florida named Zephaniah Kingsley, who was 30 years older than she.