One of the most remarkable and powerful women in the history of Florida was actually pure African. In 1806, as a 13-year-old girl, Madgigine Jai was kidnapped from her home in Senegal and transported to Cuba on a Danish slave ship, where she was to be auctioned off in Havana. A wealthy white 41-year-old Quaker named Zephaniah Kingsley saw Anna at the slave market, was instantly enamored by her, and bought her for himself.
The idea of a middle aged white man buying a barely-teenage slave for a bride may seem shocking and disgusting from a modern persepctive, but what was scandalous in their day was the deep respect and high status Zephaniah gave his Black wife.
He made sure when they arrived in St. Augustine that she was registered as property with Spanish authorities so that, by enslaving her officially, he could legally free her at age 18. He also freed all three of their children.
Anna and Zephaniah led the familiar life of Southern aristocrats and the slave trade was the foundation of their wealth. She became as adept at running their plantation near Jacksonville & trading slaves as her husband was. However, both she and her husband had radically different philosophies concerning slavery than the racist, oppressive ideology prevailed at the time.
The Kingsleys believed slavery should be an evolving condition where skin color was irrelevant, and that interracial friendship (inevitably leading to sex, love, and reproduction) would eradicate racial hatred.
After a generation or two of tutelage, they foresaw that most of their slaves were freed. Slaves were assigned specific tasks in the manner of modern employment, and allowed to produce their own crops and handicrafts in their own time, which they could sell for a profit.
Any slave was allowed to save and buy his own freedom for half the prevailing price, and they oversaw that the slaves learned useful trades so they would be self-reliant as freedmen.
When the US began invading Spanish Florida and raiding plantations, 18 year old Anna gave the bold, calculated command for her slaves to carry what they could burn down her personal plantation rather than lose everything to the Americans.
You can still visit the Kingsley plantation today. Formerly 1000 acres, much of the plantation is now covered by woods.nThe most prominent features of Kingsley Plantation are the owner’s house, a structure of architectural significance built probably before 1798 that is cited as being the oldest surviving plantation house in Florida, an attached kitchen house, barn, and remains of 25 slave cabins. The foundations were constructed of cement tabby. An interesting fact about the slave cabins is that they were arranged in a manner similar to an African village.
Another example of this cultural adoption by the Kingsleys was that Anna lived in a separate house from her husband, the Ma’am Anna House, as was traditional in West Africa. In addition to practicing other African traditions like polygamy, Zephaniah Kingsley had radical ideas for his time about slavery and the rights of people of color, and attempted to influence Florida lawmakers to recognize free people of color to allow mixed-race children to inherit property.
After the U.S. took control of Spanish Florida, he refused to adopt American racial policies, which would have demoted Anna from his wife to concubine and made it illegal for his children to inherit property.
They sailed away to the Dominican Republic with 50 of their slaves, inspired by Haiti’s recent slave revolt, hoping to find a human paradise—but never found it. Zephaniah died in 1843 and Anna returned to Florida, where she faced legal challenges to her right to own property due to her race. However, she managed to prevail and was critical in the defense of allowing free Blacks born before 1822 to enjoy the privileges they had under Spanish rule.
Anna passed away at the age of 77 in 1870.
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