Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, born Anta Madjiguène Ndiaye (18 June 1793 – April or May 1870), also known as Anta Majigeen Njaay or Anna Madgigine Jai, was a West African from present-day Senegal, who was enslaved and sold in Cuba, probably via the slave pens on Gorée Island. In Cuba she was purchased, as wife, by plantation owner and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley. After his death, she became a planter and slave owner in her own right, as a free Black woman in early 19th-century Florida.
Her early history is not known in detail. She was born among the Wolof people in 1793; her father was a leader, and she is sometimes referred to as a princess, though she never claimed such descent. When she was 13 years old, she was captured and sent to Cuba, where she was purchased by, impregnated by, and married, in a native ceremony, 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 (part of modern-day Jacksonville). Anna Jai managed a large and successful planting operation. After gaining freedom, she was given a Spanish land grant for and owned 12 slaves. After defending their property against invading Americans, she was awarded a land grant of by the Spanish government.
After the United States took control of Florida and American discriminatory laws threatened the multi-racial Kingsley family, most of them moved to Haiti. Kingsley died soon after, and Anna returned to Florida to dispute her husband's white relatives who were contesting Kingsley's will; they sought to exclude Anna and her children from their inheritance. The court honored a treaty between the United States and Spain, and Anna was successful in the court case, despite a political climate hostile toward Blacks. She settled in the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville, where she died in 1870 at 77 years old. The National Park Service protects Kingsley Plantation, where Anna and Kingsley lived on Fort George Island, as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.
Early years
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.
She was described later as "a very unusual 'native'—tall, dignified, with well formed features, and a commanding presence."
Marriage to Zephaniah Kingsley
The traditional story of the next chapter of Anta's life is that she was transported through the infamous middle passage to Havana, Cuba. There, as he himself testified, she was purchased, newly arrived (bozal), by planter and slave merchant Zephaniah Kingsley. He married her in "a foreign land", presumably Cuba, "celebrated and solemnized by her native African custom."
Schafer, who supports this version, suggests that Anta was sent to Gorée Island, a slave embarcation 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 43, while Anta was 13. While Kingsley said later that they were married in a traditional, non-Christian ceremony, no further information, much less documentation, on this marriage has emerged.
