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Cultural Resources
Cultural Resources are non-renewable resources with intrinsic value tied to their connection to people, places, patterns, and lifeways. In this park, they include archaeological sites, historic buildings, structures, cultural landscapes, and resulting collections. State mandates require their identification, preservation, and protection.
Fish Island Significance
A 2001 investigation documented Fish Island's rich and diverse cultural heritage through archaeological and archival evidence. The site is sensitive due to the fragile nature of its physical artifacts and features. It is significant for telling the stories of Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and the demise of Jesse Fish’s plantation.
Ancestral Native American Homeland
Fish Island is a traditional homeland of the Timucuan people, whose ancestors lived here for millennia before European arrival.
Through disease and conflict, their lives were shattered, and their lands were lost to colonialism. Archaeological evidence, including pottery recovered, suggests indigenous groups lived here at least 4,000 years ago. Today, many living descendants consider their cultural heritage sacred, and state law protects all artifacts. Visitors must take only memories and leave artifacts undisturbed.
Native American Periods
Archaeologists define distinct time periods based on artifacts found:
| Orange Period (Starting ≈ 4,000 years ago): Marked by the first development of fiber-tempered ceramics (hand-molded pottery using plant fibers). | |
| St. Johns Period (Starting ≈ 1,000 years ago until European contact): Characterized by people engaging in fishing, hunting, and harvesting shellfish. Identified by remains of shells, animal bones, and chalky, plain, or later check-stamped St. Johns pottery. |
Jesse Fish, The "Orange Baron"
Fish Island is named after Jesse Fish, a prominent land speculator and Florida's first "Orange Baron."
Sent to St. Augustine in 1736 to learn Spanish language and customs, Fish was commissioned as an "Agent of Supplies" and became one of the largest importers and enslavers of African-born people in Spanish Florida. In the mid-1700s, he acquired the island and established his plantation, El Vergel (The Orchard). Enslaved individuals planted and harvested crops, mainly citrus, which were exported internationally. They also raised cattle and other crops.
The remains of his home, a blockhouse, a well, a wharf, and a boat basin are now ruined or gone, but represent the plantation era. Potential slave quarters may also remain. A channel is the only documented historic landscape feature. After Fish's death in 1790, many enslaved people were sold to pay his debts; their descendants may still live in Florida today.
Records from 1867 and 1874 describe the plantation site in ruins. In the 1920s, D.P. Davis connected the northern 15 acres of Fish Island to the mainland using sand dredged from the Matanzas River.
1867 Drawing of the Jesse Fish Plantation house, courtesy of the St. Augustine Historical Society. |
The Enslaved People of Fish Island
Slavery was central to the colonization of St. Augustine, and many people of African ancestry lived and died on Fish Island.
Between 1752 and 1768, Jesse Fish "imported" 133 enslaved African men, women, and children into Florida, representing 66% of all African-born enslaved people documented in St. Augustine during that time. Approximately 40% were age 12 or younger. The youngest, a five-year-old girl named Melchora and the oldest a forty-year-old man named Pedro, both Mandinka people from West Africa, were among those enslaved. Few details are known about their lives and deaths on the island.