page_title: Anna Kingsley
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Anna Kingsley / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: Kinglsey Plantation Sunset (Photo by Manuel Lebrón), a descendant of Zephaniah Kingsley and Anna Madgigine Jai's youngest son John Maxwell Kingsley
context_page_description: Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, born Anta Madjiguene Ndiaye, was a West African from present-day Senegal who was enslaved and sold in Cuba. She became the wife of plantation owner and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley, and then a planter and slaveholder in her own right as a free black in early 19th-century Florida.
  She was born in 1793 as a princess of the Wolof people. When she was 13 years old, she was captured and sent to Cuba, where she was purchased by, impregnated by, and married to Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and plantation owner. They had four children together. Kingsley freed Anna Jai in 1811, when she turned 18, and gave her responsibilities for his plantations in East Florida, then under Spanish colonial rule. For 25 years, Kingsley's unusual family lived on Fort George Island. Anna Jai managed a large and successful planting operation. After gaining freedom, she was given a Spanish land grant for 5 acres and held 12 slaves. After defending their property against invading Americans, she was awarded a land grant of 350 acres by the Spanish government.
context_section_description: Daniel L. Schafer, the biographer of Anna Kingsley, has based his account of her early life on conjecture based on his research into the history of the area. She was born Anta Majigueen Ndiaye in 1793 in present-day Senegal, in a portion of West Africa that was disrupted by a fierce war between the majority Wolof people and the minority Fula. Slave raids were frequent occurrences during incessant violence that left many small villages deserted, as people were abducted to be sold into slavery or they fled in fear for their lives. Following an intensifying of the crisis in 1790, Anta was captured in 1806 when she was about 13 years old, probably by Tyeddo raiders from the Futa Toro. Wolof tradition holds that a mythological figure named Njaajaan Ndiaye established the Jolof Kingdom that existed between 1200 and 1550. Through her father, Anta was a Ndiaye descendant and carried that name. Her mother also had ancestors who had held the title of the Buurba Jolof, or king of the Wolofs. Although lineages are disputed, there is a belief that Anta may have been the daughter of a still ruling (as opposed to formerly ruling) branch of the royal family.
  Schafer suggests that Anta may have been sent to Gorée Island, a slave debarkation point from the West African coast to the Americas. She was transported to Havana, Cuba; the name of the ship she was aboard is unknown. When Africans arrived in the Western Hemisphere to be sold into slavery, slave traders generally did not record their given names, but only their age, sex, and sometimes ethnicity, which were most important to buyers. In September or October 1806, Anta was displayed for sale and bought by Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader, merchant, and resident of Spanish Florida, who was 30 years older than the 13 year-old girl. While Kingsley said later that they were married "in a traditional ceremony"—no further information, much less documentation, on this marriage has emerged.
caption: The owner's house at Kingsley Plantation
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