From a singular past that includes the story of one woman’s path from slave to slave owner, Jacksonville’s Kingsley Plantation now welcomes visitors to a place of solitude, retreat and reflection.

The two-mile-long, sandy dirt lane that leads visitors to the Kingsley Plantation is framed by towering cabbage palms, oaks and cypress trees. Squat scrub palms and wild brush creep close to the road.

But this dusty path isn’t just the route to a destination. It’s an invitation for a visitor to turn the car stereo down and the cell phone off – and reflect on what life was once like on this patch of land on Fort George Island in Jacksonville.

Today, the Kingsley Plantation consists of a waterfront plantation house on the St. Johns River, a kitchen house, a barn and a quarter-acre garden planted with the types of crops once grown on the 1,000-acre island by Kingsley’s 60 or so slaves.

But the most striking buildings on the property are the remains of 23 slave quarters, each built from a material called tabby – a crude cement mixture that is made from sand, water and lime derived from oyster shells, then poured into molds to harden. The tabby slave quarters were fireproof and creamy white, allowing them to stand for 200 years now, the sun glinting off shell fragments still baked into their walls.

Kingsley Plantation is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, a 46,000-acre tract that also includes hiking and kayaking opportunities and a national memorial to Fort Caroline, which recognizes the brief presence of the French in 16th century Florida. All that nature, though, means that a visit to Kingsley Plantation puts you a decent distance from civilization.

One possible side trip: to nearby Fernandina Beach, with a quaint coastal shopping district and local eateries.

The story of Kingsley Plantation begins in Spanish Florida, a place that – like the young United States – benefited from the brutality of slave labor. But the slave culture in Florida was somewhat different: Slaves could buy their freedom, own property and even sue in court. Interracial marriage was more common than in the United States – and more accepted.

Zephaniah Kingsley was born in England to parents who moved to South Carolina in 1773, then left for Canada after the Revolutionary War because they were British Loyalists. Those beginnings hint at the dichotomy of a man that Phillips would become: He was a slave owner who married a slave. He wrote intellectual papers about how vital slave labor was to a plantation’s success, yet when Florida became an American colony, he feared so much for his African-born wife and their children that he arranged for their safe travel to Cuba. (In fact, Kingsley married four different slaves, though when he died, his will listed only one of them as his wife.)

Kingsley moved to St. Augustine in 1803 and soon became a citizen of Spanish Florida. He began acquiring land along the northeast Florida coast and, in 1806, traveled to Havana, Cuba, where he purchased as his slave a teenaged girl from the Jolof region of Senegal in West Africa.

The girl’s name was Anta Majigeen Ndiaye, and she is believed to have come from a distinguished African family. But after arriving on the shores of Florida, she became known as Anna Kingsley – Zephaniah’s wife and, within a few years, the mother of his children. In 1811, when she was 18, Kingsley signed her “manumission” papers, securing his wife’s freedom.

After that point, Mrs. Kingsley’s life – which she began, scholars think, as an African princess whose family owned slaves – came full circle. She became her husband’s plantation manager and directed slave tasks. She petitioned the Spanish government for land, and was granted five acres across the St. Johns River from her husband’s plantation. And then she made perhaps the most surprising transition of all: She bought slaves of her own.

At the Kingsley Plantation, visitors can step inside the kitchen house, where Mrs. Kingsley lived in the shadow of the plantation house. This living arrangement followed the tradition of her African village, where wives and husbands lived separately.

An African influence also can be found among the slaves’ tabby cabins. They are positioned not in straight lines, but in a semi-circle, reminiscent of how villages are designed in some areas of West Africa.

In the slaves’ homeland, the chief’s home would have been the focal point of the crescent shape. At Kingsley, the plantation house holds that spot.

If You Go

From Jacksonville, take State Road 9A North over the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge (also known as the Dames Point). After crossing the bridge, take the first exit and turn east onto Heckscher Drive. Travel nine miles and turn left onto Fort George Island. Follow the signs to be guided down the mystical, tree-canopied dirt road and into the Kingsley Plantation parking lot. Kingsley Plantation is open 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., seven days a week, excluding major holidays. Admission is free. Reservations are recommended for tours of the plantation house, which is open only on weekend days. For more information, visit the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve at nps.gov/timu.

Amy Wimmer Schwarb for VISIT FLORIDA

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Amy Wimmer Schwarb for VISIT FLORIDA