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Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. (December 4, 1765 – September 14, 1843) was a plantation owner, slave trader, and merchant who built several plantations in the Spanish colony of Florida in what is now Jacksonville. He served on the Florida Territorial Council after Florida was acquired by the United States in 1821. A plantation that he owned and lived at for 25 years is preserved as Kingsley Plantation, part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve that is run by the United States National Park Service. Kingsley was a relatively lenient slave owner who gave his slaves the opportunity to earn their freedom. He married a total of four slave women, practicing polygamy. His first wife, Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, was a 13-year-old slave when Kingsley purchased her. He took her as his common-law wife and later trusted her with running his plantation when he was away on business. He had a total of nine mixed-race children with his wives. He educated his children and worked to settle his estate on them and his wives. His interracial family and his business interests caused Kingsley to be heavily invested in the Spanish system of slavery and society. Like the French colonies, it provided for certain rights to a class of free people of color and allowed multiracial children to inherit property. Kingsley became involved in politics when control of the Florida colony passed from Spain to the United States in 1821. He tried to persuade the new territorial government to maintain the special status of the free black population. Unsuccessful, in 1828 he published a treatise that defended a system of slavery that would allow slaves to purchase their freedom and give rights to free blacks and free people of color. Faced with American laws that forbade interracial marriage, Kingsley relocated his large family to Haiti between 1835 and 1837. After his death, his estate in Florida was the subject of dispute between his widow Anna Jai and other members of Kingsley's family. ==Early life and education== Kingsley was born in Bristol, England, the second of eight children, to Zephaniah Kingsley, Sr., a Quaker from London, and Isabella Johnstone of Scotland.〔Fleszar, p. 9.〕 The elder Kingsley moved his family to the Colony of South Carolina in 1770. His son was educated in London during the 1780s; Zephaniah Kingsley, Sr. purchased a rice plantation near Savannah, Georgia, and several other properties throughout the colonies and Caribbean islands. In total, he owned probably around 200 slaves in all.〔Fleszar, pp. 17–18.〕 Like other British loyalists, Kingsley, Sr. was forced to leave South Carolina with his family; he relocated to New Brunswick, Canada in 1782 following the American Revolutionary War, where the Crown provided him some land in compensation for his losses.〔May, Philip S. (January 1945). "Zephaniah Kingsley, Nonconformist", ''The Florida Historical Quarterly'' 23 (3), pp. 145–159.〕〔Fleszar, p. 23.〕 His son Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. returned to Charleston, South Carolina in 1793, swore his allegiance to the United States, and began a career as a shipping merchant. His first ventures were in Haiti, during the Haitian Revolution, where coffee was his main interest as an export crop.〔Stowell, p. 2.〕 He lived in Haiti for a brief period while the fledgling nation was working to create a society based on former slaves transitioning as free citizens. Kingsley traveled frequently, prompted by recurring political unrest among the Caribbean islands.〔Fleszar, pp. 35–39.〕 The instability affected his business interests, but development of the Deep South in the United States sharply increased the demand for slaves. Kingsley began to travel to West Africa to procure Africans to be traded as slaves between America, Brazil, and the West Indies.〔Fleszar, pp. 40–44.〕 In 1798 he became a Danish citizen in the Danish West Indies;〔Schafer, p. 21.〕 He continued to make his living trading slaves and shipping other goods into the 19th century, although the US prohibited the African slave trade in 1807, effective in 1808. Kingsley became a citizen of Spanish Florida in 1803, and many slaves were smuggled into there and into the US.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zephaniah Kingsley」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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