A thick canopy of oak and cypress trees covers the half-mile stretch of narrow dirt road that leads an intermittent flow of visitors to a sweeping semicircle of 200-year-old slave quarters. These cabins confirm your arrival to the Kingsley Plantation - the only remaining visual connection to slavery in Florida.

The plantation site is on the northern tip of Fort George Island, southernmost in the chain of Sea Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, near Jacksonville. The site is located within the 46,000-acre Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, which is a haven for the endangered wood stork, the painted bunting and 340 other bird species.

Visitors here often feel like they are going back in time. The historic buildings on the site - the plantation house, the kitchen (a separate structure), the barn and slave cabins - were built by slaves in the late 1700s and the early 1800s. Zephaniah Kingsley, after whom the plantation is named, was the owner who stayed at the site the longest. Kingsley had married a 13-year-old Senegalese slave, Anta Madgigine Jai, whom he had purchased in Havana, Cuba. The two moved to Fort George Island in 1814. In Florida, Anta was known as "Anna Kingsley."
Now, nearly 200 years later, the two-story plantation house is still standing, facing the banks of the Fort George River, which flows into the Atlantic one mile away.

Under Spanish rule, Anta, who had been freed by Kingsley, was able to own her own land and slaves, and contribute to the plantation's management. However, when Spain lost control of the land to the United States, legislators reduced the civil liberties of free blacks. Zephaniah, who wanted to ensure that his wife and children would not become slaves after he died, moved in 1837 with Anta and his two sons to Haiti, a free black republic. His two daughters, wives of wealthy white men, remained in Jacksonville.

Now, nearly 200 years later, the two-story plantation house is still standing, facing the banks of the Fort George River, which flows into the Atlantic one mile away. There's a constant chanting, humming and buzzing of cicadas and chirping of birds. Both the main house and the kitchen contain some of Kingsley's original pieces of furniture and china.

The durability of the barn and the remains of the slave quarters - 32 small buildings that housed 60 to 80 slaves - is due to tabby, a mixture of oyster shells crushed into lime, sand, water and whole oyster shells. Tabby is said to be a blend of West African, Spanish and Native American technology. After the tabby hardened, the walls were covered with lime stucco to make them smooth. The buildings have endured 200 years of use and exposure and are considered to be some of the finest examples of tabby in the country.

Kingsley believed in slavery, but it is said that he was a more humanitarian slave-owner than most, and that he was more sensitive than other slave-owners to the needs of his slaves. Under him, the plantation operated on the "task system," which meant the land was divided into one-quarter-acre sections, where each slave was assigned a specific task such as planting, hoeing or picking. When the slaves completed their tasks, there was time left to take care of the needs of their own families. On rainy days, the slaves took shelter in the barn where they swapped stories, sang and perhaps held meetings.

Also on the site is an interpretive garden, which duplicates the crops originally grown on the plantation. Sorghum, sugar cane, broomcorn, lemon trees, peanuts, pumpkins, okra and Sea Island cotton occupy nearly a quarter acre. Some 200 years ago, working on certain crops, like indigo (which contains a cancer-causing agent) and rice significantly abbreviated the lifetime expectancy of the slaves.

The Kingsley Plantation is much more than a historical attraction, especially for African Americans. The site provides a connection to the past and becomes a source of pride upon realizing that the work of their ancestors still stands as proof of exceptional skill, courage and endurance.