Oh, those State Park days...

Kingsley Plantation as part of Florida State Parks.
Image source: http://www.cowart.info/MyWeb_005.htm 

I came across these images of Kingsley Plantation while doing my usual Googling for all things Kingsley. They depict the main house and the remains of the slave cabins back when the site was under the stewardship of Florida State Parks.

When I first visited the house as a teenager, with my family, on our first pilgrimage to the Plantation, the site was still a state park. Those were the days when the house was furnished with antique furniture (some of which belonged to the Gibbs), when a peacock fan held sway over the dinning room and the tour guide would pull the string and swing the fan (which hung from the ceiling), all the while explaining how "that's how the servants would do it!" There was one carved mahogany chair that "could have belonged to Zephaniah Kingsley," I think it's no longer displayed so that myth was debunked, but if it had been Kingsley's it would certainly have been the only original Kingsley object at Kingsley Plantation. 

Kingsley Plantation as part of Florida State Parks.
Remains of the slave cabins.
Image source: http://www.cowart.info/MyWeb_005.htm 

Anyway, soon thereafter the plantation was transferred to the NPS and a more updated museography was installed which removed the furnishings and installed information panels, and the old quaint but outdated photocopied brochures (one of which I keep and hope to scan and post soonish) gave way to the amazing gridded NPS brochures designed in 1977 by the legendary graphic designer Massimo Vignelli, of the 1970s-NY-Subway-Map fame. The site was also incorporated, along with Fort Caroline, into Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.

Here' some official information from Florida Memory: Kingsley Plantation was a state park from the 1950s until 1989. Tours of the house, furnished with antiques purchased in the 1950s and 1960s, were offered by park staff. In 1989, U.S. Representative Charles Bennett negotiated the creation of the Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve, which would include national, state, and city properties and parks. As part of the negotiation, the State of Florida purchased Fort George Island to be used as a state park, but transferred Kingsley Plantation to the National Park Service.

River side of the Zephaniah Kingsley house at the Kingsley Plantation State Park on Fort George Island in Jacksonville, Florida in 1953. Photo: State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/30193