FA: Anna Kingsley, Freed Slave in Florida, TPB
Dr. John
Revised and Expanded Edition
by Daniel L. Schafer
An African teenager captured in a terrifying slave raid in 1806, Anta
Majigeen Ndiaye was sold in Cuba to a slave trader and Florida planter named
Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. By 1824, now living on the St. Johns River in
northeast Florida, she was Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, the wife of
Zephaniah Kingsley and the mother of four children. She had been emancipated
in 1811, only five years after being torn from her homeland, and soon became
a landowner and the master of slaves of her own. Far from family in Senegal,
Anna retained her African heritage under Spanish and American governments,
then moved with sons and grandchildren to the free black nation of Haiti in
1837, when anti-free black prejudice in Florida became intolerable. In 1860
Anna returned to Florida. Hardly resettled, she was caught in the titanic
struggle of the Civil War and was forced to flee to the North for safety.
When the fighting ended, she came back to the St. Johns River to live her
remaining years in peace, sheltered by the love of her family. She was in
her seventies by then, ill and feeble, but all who knew her were aware that
Anna Madgigine Jai had lived one of the most eventful lives in the history
of northeast Florida.
St. Augustine Historical Society, St. Augustine FL, 1997, revised and
expanded edition, 62 pages, 6" x 9", trade paperback with two-staple
binding, maps on inside covers, printing in brown ink on ecru paper with
sepia-toned illustrations.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=277&item=3503499819
Auction closes 3/4/03.