Mandarin is a neighborhood located in the southernmost portion of Jacksonville, in Duval County, Florida, United States. It is located on the eastern banks of the St. Johns River, across from Orange Park. It is a short drive south of Jacksonville's city center, and is bordered by Beauclerc to the north, Julington Creek to the south and St. John's River to the west.
Once called "a tropical paradise" by author and notable resident Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mandarin is known for its history, ancient oak trees draped with Spanish moss, parks, marinas and water views.
The area was established by the British in the 1760s, including the 10,000-acre plantation created by Francis Levett Sr. [1] The Levetts cultivated a variety of crops and used enslaved people for this operation. The Treaty of Paris returned the area to Spain in 1783. Many other plantations were established under the Spanish, including the notable Kingsley Plantation. [2]
In 1830, Mandarin was named after the mandarin orange by Calvin Reed, a prominent resident of the area. [3] In the 19th century, Mandarin was a small farming village that shipped oranges, grapefruit, lemons and other fruits and vegetables to Jacksonville and points north on the steamships that traveled the St. Johns River. Zephaniah Kingsley purchased land in the area in 1814, and brought with him his enslaved wife, Anna Kingsley. "She actively participated in plantation management, acquiring her own land and slaves when freed by Kingsley in 1811." [4]
In 1864, the Union steamship Maple Leaf hit a Confederate mine and sank just off Mandarin Point. [5]
In the post-Reconstruction period, the majority of the residents, according to the censuses of 1870 and 1880, were African American. [6] Three churches were established in the area, including the Philip R Cousin AME Church, founded in 1886. The majority of the land was planted with orange trees for many years, but a freeze in the early 1890s destroyed a lot of the crop. Orange farmers decided not to replant their destroyed trees; instead, they sold off former groveland to developers.
In 1867, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin , bought a cottage in Mandarin. For the next seventeen winters, she welcomed tourists debarking from the steamers along the St. Johns River. [7]
Although best known for her novel about the cruelty of slavery, Stowe also wrote about Florida. She had promised her Boston publisher another novel, but was so taken with northeast Florida that she produced instead a series of sketches of the land and the people. She submitted it in 1872 under the title Palmetto Leaves . Her second book did not outsell her first novel, but did have the effect of drawing rich and fashionable tourists to visit her.
In Palmetto Leaves, Stowe describes life in Florida in the latter half of the 19th century; "a tumble-down, wild, panicky kind of life—this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida inculcates." Her idyllic sketches of picnicking, sailing, and river-touring expeditions; and simple stories of events and people in this tropical "winter summer" land became the first unsolicited promotional writing to interest northern tourists in Florida. [8] A small chapel in Mandarin is dedicated to the author.
In 1968, the city of Jacksonville and most of Duval County formed a consolidated municipal unit. As part of this process, Mandarin ceased to exist as a political entity, and became part of the city of Jacksonville. [9]
In 1990, with the rapid growth of Mandarin, a new public high school was opened in the area. Several prominent citizens in Jacksonville urged that the new school be named Harriet Beecher Stowe High School, but the proposal did not receive widespread acceptance. The school was named Mandarin High School. An historical museum was founded in 1989, called The Mandarin Museum & Historical Society. It restored the Mandarin Historic Post Office and Walter Jones General Store. [10] In 2000, the city opened the Walter Jones Historical Park, a 10-acre park, on the site. "The Mandarin Museum & Historical Society also acquired other historic structures to add to the park. These include an early 20th-century saw mill and a late 19th-century log cabin belonging to the Losco family, which was part of the largest wine operation in Northeast Florida". [11] The 1898 St. Joseph's Mission Schoolhouse for African-American Children was moved to the museum property and opened to the public in 2016. [12] The displays in the schoolhouse reflect the African American and Gullah Geechee heritage in Mandarin. [13] In 2020, Mandarin had a population of approximately 9,000 residents and 3,800 households. [14]
Mandarin is located at 30°09′37″N81°39′34″W / 30.1603°N 81.6594°W (30.1603, -81.6594). [15]
The Lofton Cemetery, with marked headstones dated as far back as 1891, is in zip code 32223. [16] The Mandarin Cemetery is situated on a site once part of the Seminole Wars. It also contains many historically important gravestones, going back to the 1800s.
Clay County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida along the west bank of the St. Johns River. As of 2020, the population was 218,245 and in 2023, that number increased to 232,439, making it the third largest county in the Jacksonville metropolitan area. While most of the county is unincorporated, there are 4 municipalities with Green Cove Springs being the county seat and the unincorporated Lakeside CDP being the largest place. It is named in honor of Henry Clay, a famous American statesman, member of the United States Senate from Kentucky, and United States Secretary of State in the 19th century.
Orange Park is a town in Clay County, Florida, United States. As a suburb of Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, it is formally a part of the Jacksonville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 9,089 at the 2020 census, up from 8,412 from the 2010 census. while the Town of Orange Park is only 5.32 sq mi large, Orange Park is the designated city on all adresses for all homes and businesses within the 32073 ZIP code, which includes Lakeside, Bellair-Meadowbrook Terrace and Oakleaf Plantation.
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
The Gullah are a subgroup of the African American ethnic group, who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and culture have preserved a significant influence of Africanisms as a result of their historical geographic isolation and the community's relation to its shared history and identity.
The Sea Islands are a chain of over a hundred tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the Southeastern United States, between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns rivers along South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The largest is Johns Island, South Carolina. Sapelo Island is home to the Gullah people. All of the islands are acutely threatened by sea level rise due to climate change.
The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. The region includes significant salt marshes and other coastal waterways, making it an important source of biodiversity in South Carolina.
Marquetta L. Goodwine is a non-sovereign, elected monarch who serves as Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah Geechee Nation. She is an author, preservationist, and performance artist.
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, born Anta Madjiguène Ndiaye, also known as Anna Kingsley, 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.
There are more than 500 neighborhoods within the area of Jacksonville, Florida, the largest city in the contiguous United States by area. These include Downtown Jacksonville and surrounding neighborhoods. Additionally, greater Jacksonville is traditionally divided into several major sections with amorphous boundaries: Northside, Westside, Southside, and Arlington, as well as the Jacksonville Beaches.
Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, that was named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."
McLeod Plantation is a former slave plantation located on James Island, South Carolina, near the intersection of Folly and Maybank roads at Wappoo Creek, which flows into the Ashley River. The plantation is considered an important Gullah heritage site, preserved in recognition of its cultural and historical significance to African-American and European-American cultures.
Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. was an English-born planter, merchant and slave trader who moved as a child with his family to the Province of South Carolina and enjoyed a successful mercantile career. He built four plantations in the Spanish colony of Florida near what is now Jacksonville, Florida. He served on the Florida Territorial Council after Florida was acquired by the United States in 1821. Kingsley Plantation, which he owned and where he lived for 25 years, has been preserved as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, run by the United States National Park Service. Finding his large and complicated family progressively more insecure in Florida, he moved them to a vanished plantation, Mayorasgo de Koka, in what was then Haiti but soon became part of the Dominican Republic.
Lucius Augustus Tarquinses Hardee was born on March 24, 1828, in St. Marys, Georgia. He was the nephew of Lieutenant General William Joseph Hardee. He spent most of his life in Florida. He lived on a plantation home in Duval County, and married Esther Ann Crews Haddock in 1853.
The Church of Our Saviour is an Episcopal church in the Mandarin area of Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. It is located on the St. Johns River at 12236 Mandarin Road. The congregation was founded in 1880 by a group Episcopalians, Church of England members and those from other denominations who wanted to start a new church in the Anglican mode. These people had gathered for Bible readings with Professor Calvin E. Stowe and his famous wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe for many years. They constructed a small but sound church building designed by Ellis and McClure in 1883, which stood until 1964 when Hurricane Dora's winds broke off part of a giant Live Oak and sent it crashing through the church's roof. The Stowe Memorial stained glass window, created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, was completely destroyed. The congregation built a new church in a similar design; it remains an active parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida.
Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida.
The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a federal National Heritage Area in the United States along its southeastern coast, stretching from North Carolina to Florida. The intent of the designation is to help preserve and interpret the traditional cultural practices, sites, and resources associated with Gullah-Geechee people. Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and the federal Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission established to oversee it, were designated by an act of Congress on October 12, 2006, through the National Heritage Areas Act of 2006.
Julington Creek is a waterway in Duval County, Florida widening out into the St. Johns River in the southern part of Jacksonville. Durbin Creek is a tributary. Julington Creek feeds into the St Johns River widening out into Old Bull Bay by the border of Duval and St. Johns County, Florida. It is navigable by paddlecraft and there are boat launches and a marina.
Griffin Lotson is an African-American historian, born in Crescent, Georgia. He is a seventh-generation Gullah Geechee. He serves as a councilman and the mayor pro-tem in Darien, Georgia. He also manages the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters. He is the national Federal Government vice-chairman and former treasurer of the federal Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission.
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