The Story of Old Red Eyes

12/4/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Zephaniah Kingsley (1765-1843), a Charleston merchant born in England to a Quaker family, acquired a plantation in 1814 from John McIntosh. Many strange stories grew around this two hundred year old property known as the Kingsley Plantation, but none more disturbing than the demon spirit of Old Red Eyes.

Notice of Old Jamaica and West India rum for sale at Zephaniah Kingsley's father's shop in South Carolina c.1777

Before Zephaniah Kingsley settled on the land, John McQueen emigrated from South Carolina in 1791, and in 1793, he was rewarded with St. George Island (originally known as Fort Georgia Island), that is located northeast of Jacksonville, Florida at the mouth of the St. John’s River. He was the first occupant of the island after the Timucuan Indians.

By 1797, he completed the house later to become known as Kingsley Plantation. On it he grew cotton, sugar cane, citrus and corn. Five years later he sold the property to John McIntosh who farmed it successfully.

Zephaniah Kingsley was an unusual man for those times. In 1803, seeking lands, he immigrated to Florida and took the Oath of Allegiance to Spain. He was granted tracts of land and established a plantation known as Laurel Groves. He knew an African language used by many of his slaves. He established a "task system" in which once a slave finished their tasks, they were allowed to take care of their own business and keep the profits. They could also buy their freedom.

He took a Senegalese slave named Ana in a common-law marriage. The union produced four children. She went on to gain her own freedom, and become a landholder in her own right. He had other bi-racial children with other women.

On March 1, 1811, Kingsley signed a manumission which insured Ana's freedom, and in 1813, the Spanish government granted her five acres on the St. Johns River close to Laurel Grove. She became a slaveholder herself, buying and selling slaves, and she learned how to farm the land.

During those years, there was conflict between Spain and the American government, and Laurel Grove plantation was destroyed as a result of several skirmishes.

Zephaniah Kingsley

In 1814, Zephaniah moved his household and slaves to Fort George Island, and he rented the abandoned homestead from McIntosh. He bought it in 1817, and it became known as the Kingsley Plantation; until then it was called the John "Don Juan" McQueen house.

Ana lived in an upstairs room from where the kitchen was located with her three children; a fourth son was born on the plantation. She spent the next 23 years of her life there.

Zephaniah and Ana engaged in a polygamous marriage, and followed the common West African custom of wives living separately from their husband. Kingsley took three other wives, all slaves, while at Fort George Island. Two of them gave him children.

Through the years Zephaniah increased his holdings to include four major plantations.

In 1821, Florida came under the dominion of the United States. Kingsley who had been a loyalist against the Americans during the Revolutionary War did not agree with American laws concerning slavery. In 1823, he was one of the members of the Florida Territorial Council.

Ruins at Kingsley Plantation c.1981

In 1837, he moved his family to Haiti where they established their own community named Mayorasgo De Koka (presently located in the Dominican Republic).

Six years later, 78-year-old Zephaniah Kingsley died while visiting New York. He was buried in the Friends Quaker Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. He left the Fort George Island plantation, along with other property in the Carolinas to his nephew Major Kingsley Beatty Gibbs, who had fought in the Seminole Wars.

In 1846, George, Ana’s oldest son was lost at sea. She decided to return to Florida where her daughters lived in Jacksonville. Her son John stayed in charge of the plantation in Haiti. During the Civil War, the family moved to New York, eventually returning to Florida.

By 1866, the plantation no longer belonged to anyone in the Kingsley family. Ana died in 1870.

Gertrude Weston Rollins at the Kingsley Plantation c.1870s

A New Hampshire farmer named John Rollins purchased the island in 1869, and being unsuccessful in agriculture built a luxury tourist resort. New England socialites came to winter on Fort George Island at this hotel. The hotel burned down in 1888, then the Rollins family successfully cultivated citrus until a freeze in 1894, destroyed their crop.

Rollins' daughter's family was the last to live in the main house; she sold the island to private investors in 1923.

Two clubs were constructed on the island for wealthy Jacksonville residents. One used the plantation house as a headquarters. Private clubs were popular until the Great Depression, and they subsequently went out of fashion during World War II.

The Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island in 1955, including the plantation houses, barn, and slave quarters calling it the Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. The land was transferred to the National Park Service in 1991.

Unknown man at plantation house before it was renovated c.1970s

Present day, what is left of the Kingsley Plantation sits on 25 acres of what was once hundreds of acres of the original property.

This is the domain of Old Red Eyes. He is said to be the spirit of a slave that raped and killed several female slaves. Other slaves hung him on an oak tree close to the entrance of the plantation. There are also stories of a ghostly woman seen wearing a white dress, that appears only on photographs of the back porch of the main house. There are those who say this is the ghost of Ana, but in truth this could be the spirit of one of the countless and unnamed women who lived here, even after Zephaniah Kingsley left for Haiti.

However there is a twist to this ghost story. If you are a good-hearted person you see the specter of a woman in a white dress, however if there is darkness in your heart what you see is a wolf with red eyes.

A child who drowned in a well on the property is said to be heard screaming around the perimeter of the well. Though some point out these are peacocks that now inhabit the island.

Another sighting is a ghostly alligator that’s said to guard the bottom of a mysterious stairwell.

Frances Duncan, who worked there as a guide, several times found the bed moved in Zephaniah Kingsley's bedroom. Groups touring through the house have on occasion smelled gingerbread cooking from the detached kitchen.

Frances described where a park ranger and his wife were sleeping in the house, and he woke up to see a black man wearing a turban and ragged pants held by a piece of rope. He vanished before his wife was able to see it.

What is left is now a simple white frame house, a detached kitchen house, a barn and 23 slave cabins. There is a tradition among the park rangers never to say "Goodnight Mr. Kingsley", since for some reason this agitates Zephaniah's ghost. So if you visit, you have been warned.