Not too long ago, my family and I went to Kingsley Plantation, a former estate and currently part of Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Northeast Florida. We brought our dog along to enjoy the weather and run through the grass. It had been a few years since I last visited this park, and we decided to make a day of it.

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Located on Fort George Island, Kingsley Plantation was once a slave plantation consisting of more than 1,000 acres. With a grand 18th-century white house at the center of the property overlooking the water, visitors can still see remnants of the 23 slave houses and 32 original cabins just down the road from the house. The stark contrast in not only size but quality of the cabins compared to the main house is hard to overlook.

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It’s hard to believe such a peaceful place with great oak trees and calm waters could have such a long and horrible history of slavery, but the park has done an excellent job in not only preserving the history but also educating visitors on the area’s past.

While the house isn’t currently open to the public, visitors can go on a guided tour through the grounds to learn more about the plantation and its lengthy history. Visitors can see the kitchens as well as the neighboring barn. Fort George Island mostly grew citrus, sugarcane, sea island cotton and corn, and slaves worked by the task system on the plantation.

The owner of the plantation, Zephaniah Kingsley, was an interesting man in his own right in that he was a slave-owning Quaker who married a former slave, Anna. Despite being a proponent for interracial marriages, Kingsley continued to own slaves and take slave women as concubines or common-law wives. He abided by the Spanish laws of slavery in that he let his slaves be hired out or purchase their freedom, but when Florida was acquired by the United States, interracial marriage was outlawed. As a result, Kingsley sent his wives and children to Haiti and eventually sold the plantation to his nephew.

Aside from the plantation, Fort George Island is a wonderful place to see some of Florida’s wildlife and to visit the not-so-far site of Fort Caroline. The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve was named after the Timucua Indians who inhabited the region. Archaeologists have found artifacts in the region date to 2500 B.C., showing just how far back in history this area goes.

— Aoife O’Riordan, associate editor