Zephaniah Kingsley - Early Life

Early Life

Kingsley was born in Bristol, England, the second of eight children to Zephaniah Kingsley, Sr., a Quaker from London, and Isabella Johnstone of Scotland. The elder Kingsley moved his family to the Colony of South Carolina in 1770. His son was educated in London during the 1780s; Zephaniah Kingsley, Sr. purchased a rice plantation near Savannah, Georgia and several other properties throughout the colonies and Caribbean islands, owning probably around 200 slaves in all. Like other British loyalists, Kingsley, Sr. was forced to leave South Carolina without his family, for New Brunswick, Canada in 1782 following the American Revolutionary War.

Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. returned to Charleston, South Carolina in 1793, swore his allegiance to the United States, and began a career as a shipping merchant. His first ventures were in Haiti, during the Haitian Revolution where coffee dominated his interests. He lived in Haiti for a brief period while the fledgling nation was developing a social system of former slaves transitioning into free citizens. Kingsley traveled frequently, prompted by recurring political unrest among the Caribbean islands. The instability affected his business interests but a sharp increase in demand for slaves in the Southern U.S. occurred around the same time and Kingsley began to travel to West Africa to procure Africans to be traded as slaves between America, Brazil, and the West Indies. In 1798 he became a Danish citizen in the Danish West Indies; he continued to make his living trading slaves and shipping other goods into the 19th century. He became a citizen of Spanish Florida in 1803.