We just did the tourist thing around Amelia Island today.
We visited the Kingsley Plantation which was started in the 18th century and was a slave plantation growing cotton and produce until the Civil War. It is actually a national park, run by the National Park Service, however it is poorly funded and the main house is in such bad shape due to termite damage and decades of neglect that it can not be entered safely. The attached kitchen house has been restored, but it was closed today. Obviously, the old cotton fields are now overgrown with scrub palms and hardwood forest, so there's nothing to see there either.
However, one of the more interesting features was the slave quarters, which surrounded the plantation house on one side in a semi-circle. They were built out of "tabby" which is an early form of concrete made from homemade lime cement and oyster shells. This was then plastered over to protect it from decomposing. The one restored house with a roof in the picture above was the slave manager's quarters which was more spacious than the slave quarters. The slave quarters were simple two room houses with a fireplace, a common room and a sleeping room. There were about 15 houses for the 50 to 60 slaves on the plantation. They weren't much, but they were huge compared to the even more meager slave quarters we have seen elsewhere. The plantation owner married one of his slaves and later gave her her freedom, after which she moved to the Dominican Republic with their children.
In a related story..... we read in the paper this morning from some local genius whom wrote to the Jacksonville newspaper Letters To The Editor that "April is Confederacy Month" and how the slave system actually helped the local populace. Then the editors used his letter as a headline "April is Confederacy Month". What a joke! Maybe I'm just a Yankee spirited Northerner, but it's a chapter in our history that should be understood with dismay and certainly not celebrated. Yet pride in the Confederacy continues in the South.
This afternoon, we visited Ft. Clinch on Amelia Island. It was a fort begun in the 18th century as an earthworks fortification protecting the channel inlet to the Amelia River. In the early 19th century is was improved to a brick and stone fort with very large cannons that could sink any ships in the inlet and channel. However, it was never fully completed, although it was operational and had over 30 cannons. It was a Union fort in the Civil War, even though it was in Florida.
While we were standing on the fort's gun emplacements, a US Navy submarine came through the channel to reach the sub base here.
There are 6 Navy submarines based here and today just happened to be a day when one of them came in. I hope there are none when we go through there tomorrow in Nonchalance, because we'd have to wait while the submarine is in the area. There were two small Coast Guard boats with machine guns on them patrolling the area at the same time.
We visited the Kingsley Plantation which was started in the 18th century and was a slave plantation growing cotton and produce until the Civil War. It is actually a national park, run by the National Park Service, however it is poorly funded and the main house is in such bad shape due to termite damage and decades of neglect that it can not be entered safely. The attached kitchen house has been restored, but it was closed today. Obviously, the old cotton fields are now overgrown with scrub palms and hardwood forest, so there's nothing to see there either. However, one of the more interesting features was the slave quarters, which surrounded the plantation house on one side in a semi-circle. They were built out of "tabby" which is an early form of concrete made from homemade lime cement and oyster shells. This was then plastered over to protect it from decomposing. The one restored house with a roof in the picture above was the slave manager's quarters which was more spacious than the slave quarters. The slave quarters were simple two room houses with a fireplace, a common room and a sleeping room. There were about 15 houses for the 50 to 60 slaves on the plantation. They weren't much, but they were huge compared to the even more meager slave quarters we have seen elsewhere. The plantation owner married one of his slaves and later gave her her freedom, after which she moved to the Dominican Republic with their children.In a related story..... we read in the paper this morning from some local genius whom wrote to the Jacksonville newspaper Letters To The Editor that "April is Confederacy Month" and how the slave system actually helped the local populace. Then the editors used his letter as a headline "April is Confederacy Month". What a joke! Maybe I'm just a Yankee spirited Northerner, but it's a chapter in our history that should be understood with dismay and certainly not celebrated. Yet pride in the Confederacy continues in the South.
This afternoon, we visited Ft. Clinch on Amelia Island. It was a fort begun in the 18th century as an earthworks fortification protecting the channel inlet to the Amelia River. In the early 19th century is was improved to a brick and stone fort with very large cannons that could sink any ships in the inlet and channel. However, it was never fully completed, although it was operational and had over 30 cannons. It was a Union fort in the Civil War, even though it was in Florida.While we were standing on the fort's gun emplacements, a US Navy submarine came through the channel to reach the sub base here.
There are 6 Navy submarines based here and today just happened to be a day when one of them came in. I hope there are none when we go through there tomorrow in Nonchalance, because we'd have to wait while the submarine is in the area. There were two small Coast Guard boats with machine guns on them patrolling the area at the same time.
There is a substantial shrimp boat fleet here at Amelia Island. I love this picture....it ought'a go on a postcard. There is also an old-time seafood market tha sells very fresh shrimp and fish off the boats and also sells fresh fish caught by local rod and reel fisherman. They had sheepshead and a large triggerfish caught on the jetties locally. We didn't get any because we already ate dinner this afternoon and we're leaving early tomorrow morning.
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