Annaberg

Excerpted from St. John Off The Beaten Track

The Virgin Islands National Park Service has prepared a self-guided tour of the historic Annaberg sugar mill ruins. The walk through this partially restored old sugar factory provides a great deal of insight to the history and culture of St. John during the plantation and post-emancipation eras.

Annaberg was named for Anna, the baby daughter of the absentee owner of the plantation, Christopher William Gottschalk. Translated from Danish, Annaberg means Anna's Hill. The plantation was first established in 1718.

Most of the Annaberg ruins that you see today were built in the nineteenth century. The wall of the horsemill and the slave house, however, date back to the eighteenth century.

Housing
The slave quarters (called worker's quarters after emancipation) barely remain. However, archaeologists have uncovered a wealth of artifacts here. There were more than 16 buildings in this area. They were made of daub and wattle. Wattle is a woven structure made of the wood from the false coffee bush. Daub is a type of mortar made of coral, lime and sand that were fired together and then mixed with molasses and mud. This mortar was packed into the wattle walls like plaster. The roofs were thatched with sugarcane leaves or palm fronds.

The Moravian missionary, C.G.A. Oldendorp, wrote a report on the progress of the Moravian Church in the Danish West Indies entitled, A History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brethren, published in 1777. In the following excerpt Oldendorp describes a typical slave dwelling:

The layout and the foundation of their houses rest on four stakes, which are driven into the ground. Fork-shaped on the top end and shaped in such a manner as to form a square; these stakes are linked together at the top by an equal number of horizontal boards. On these rest the rafters of the roof which come together in a crest. A few more vertical stakes are placed between the corner posts, and pliable branches are woven among these. The latter are covered with quicklime and plastered with cow dung. Once the roof rafters have been covered with sugarcane leaves, the entire house is complete. The entryway is so low that a man can not pass through it without bending down. The doorway and a few small openings in the walls allow only a little light to flow into the dwelling during the day. The floor is the bare earth, and the two inclined sides of the roof, which extend almost down to the ground on the outside, make up the ceiling. An interior wall divides the house into two rooms of unequal size, the smaller one serving as a bedroom.

Sugarcane Planting
As you walk through the ruins you will notice the steep hills behind the factory. This entire hillside was planted in sugarcane. First the land was slashed and burned. It was then terraced using the native stone as retaining walls. The cane was brought to the prepared fields and planted. Water had to be hauled to the sugarcane plants by hand. When it was time to harvest the cane, the slaves worked 18-20 hours a day. They cut the cane and loaded it into carts, which were drawn by donkeys to the sugar mill.

A Typical Day
The slave's day began at 4:00 a.m. when the bomba, or overseer, sounded the tutu (a conch shell with one end cut off). The slaves would get up and feed the livestock before reporting to work in the field at 5:00 a.m. They would work until the 8:00 a.m. break for rest and breakfast. Those slaves without food would eat sugarcane, when available. Work continued until noon. Between noon and 12:30 p.m. grass was gathered to feed the cattle. After the grass was collected there was an hour and a half break for lunch. Slaves with families would go home. Slaves without families generally stayed in the fields during the lunch break.

After lunch the slaves worked the fields until sunset. During the dead season, July to November, when there were no sugarcane crops, the animals were fed again, and the slaves could return home for the evening meal and the preparation of the next day's lunch. At times there would be additional work called "donker work". This was night work, such as hauling manure and water or cleaning up the master's yard. This work could last from about 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.

During crop time the workday was extended further, and women, and even the sick, were put to work cutting cane and bringing it to the mills.

The kaminas, or field slaves, were not given clothes by their masters, and many of them had to perform the laborious fieldwork naked in the heat of the tropical sun. They worked six days a week. On Sundays the slaves tended their garden plots called provision grounds. On some plantations the slaves were also allowed to tend their gardens on Saturday afternoon.

The Windmill
On St. John, only the plantations at Annaberg, Carolina, Denis Bay, Susannaberg, Cathrineberg and Caneel Bay used windmills. The Annaberg windmill was built between 1810 and 1830. It is about forty feet tall. The wind powered blades turned the rollers that crushed the sugarcane. While the horsemill could only crush about 50 cartloads of cane per day, the more efficient windmill could crush 75-100 cartloads per day. The sugarcane had to be juiced within twenty-four hours of being harvested to prevent spoilage. Slaves worked almost around the clock at harvest time. When it was windy both windmill and horsemill were operated simultaneously.

The Elaine Ione Sprauve Library and Museum in Cruz Bay has an excellent working model of a windmill. This is an extraordinary visual aid demonstrating the design and operation of the windmills used on St. John during the sugar era.
It took about ten slaves to work the windmill. Two of the men fed the bundles of sugarcane back and forth through the cane crushing rollers. An ax was kept nearby in case one of them got his hand caught in the rollers. If nearby workers acted fast enough, his arm would be chopped off before the rollers crushed his whole body.

When the horsemill was being used, horses, oxen or mules walked around the circular horsemill turning the three crushers. Four slaves were needed to run the animal mill. One drove the animals, two worked the rollers feeding the cane and one took away the left over sugarcane pulp called bagasse.

Sugar and rum production
The cane juice ran from the crushers down into the boiling room through wooden troughs. The bagasse was collected, dried, and taken to the storage shed. The cane juice then went into the first of five copper pots where it was boiled, using the bagasse as fuel for the fires. The thickened, boiled juice was then ladled into the neighboring pot and boiled to just the right consistency and then ladled into the succeeding pot. This was done, pot after pot, until a brown sugar, called muscavado, was produced. The workers in the boiling room had to be highly skilled. A mistake in timing would end up in the production of molasses, which was not nearly as valuable as sugar. The muscavado was then cooled and dried. The finished product was loaded into large wooden barrels called hogsheads containing about 1,000 pounds of sugar each. The barrels were brought to dories and then loaded onto larger vessels bound for Europe.

Rum was produced at the rum still. Sugarcane trash, cane juice drippings and molasses were fed into a fermentation cistern. The fermented liquid was then boiled in a copper still over a slow fire. The alcohol vapors rose up in copper coils that led into the cooling cistern. The cool water of the cistern caused the vapor to condense, and a harsh raw rum called kill devil was formed. More refined rum was produced by aging the kill devil in wooden barrels for several years.

Water Collection
Water was collected and stored in three cisterns, which were all connected by aqueducts. One cistern is located within the ruins at the mill. The remains of the others are higher up on the hill.

The Provision Ground
The Danish colonization of St. John was characterized by the establishment of a plantation economy dedicated to the production of sugar, cotton and other tropical products. Africans, forced into slavery, provided the labor for these plantations. Under such a system the slave owner had to decide how the slaves would be fed.

Ideally (for the slave owner) food would be brought in from outside the plantation, giving the slave owner complete control of his captives. This was not practical on St. John plantations, which were, at best, only marginally successful. The cost would have been too high for the owners to bear.

Another possibility would be to produce food on the plantation itself, under the supervision and control of the slave owner. On St. John, however, cleared and terraced land came at too high a cost in time and labor to be devoted to food crops.

On the other hand, St. John plantations did have a great deal of land on the periphery of the cultivated areas that, although not suitable for sugarcane production, was appropriate for food crop cultivation. This was the plantation owners' solution for feeding their slaves.

Thus, the slaves produced their own food, unsupervised by the slave masters, on garden plots called provision grounds located on the less productive areas of the plantation and tended these gardens when they were not working elsewhere on the estate.

The slaves were absolutely dependent on their ability to produce their own food. Statistics show that the slave population suffered significant declines after periods of prolonged drought indicating that many slaves must have died when they could not produce sufficient food to feed themselves.

Statistics also show an increase in marooning (slaves running away from their plantations) during prolonged dry spells. A severe drought in the early 1730s was one of the principal causes of the St. John slave rebellion. The drought was so long and so severe that there was widespread starvation among the slaves. Their situation was so desperate that many left the plantations to live in the bush as maroons, despite laws, which prescribed severe and horrible punishments for this offence. An armed insurrection followed in 1733.

After a long drought in the 1770s there were again reports of large population declines and as a result of the starvation caused by the failure of the slave's provision grounds, sixty slaves made the difficult and dangerous decision to run away from the Estate Carolina plantation in Coral Bay.

Although the additional responsibility of providing for their own food was a great hardship for the already overworked slaves, the system did provide the slaves with certain hidden benefits.

Because the provision grounds were unsupervised, the slaves were able to gather and interact out of the sight of their masters. Although often forbidden, slaves from different plantations could meet on the more remote provision grounds. On these occasions cultural traditions could be passed on, news could be disseminated, and conspiracies involving escape and resistance plans could be discussed.

Slaves often worked together on their plots and shared the harvest. Those who were strong and healthy supported the old, weak or infirm. On some plantations the slaves were able to produce a surplus of food, charcoal or crafts and a system of exchange developed along with an underground economy, which even provided some slaves with enough money to buy their freedom.

Moreover, the tradition of an agriculturally based society enabled the slaves to survive on St. John after the failure of the sugar industry and the end of slavery.

A tradition of independence, extended family, cooperation and sharing developed around the provision ground. This spirit is still evident on St. John even in these modern times, which tend to be more orientated toward individualism and self-interest.

Grand Maroonage (escape by sea)
During the years that slavery was abolished in the British Virgin Islands, but continued in the Danish West Indies (1840-1848), the proximity of St. John to Tortola provided a temptation for slaves seeking freedom. Tortola was just across the Sir Francis Drake Channel from Annaberg. In May of 1840, eleven slaves escaped from Annaberg and Leinster Bay to Tortola. This was the first major escape of slaves during the period following emancipation in the British Virgin Islands.

After Emancipation
Slavery was abolished in the Danish West Indies in 1848. Planters on St. John tried to keep the slaves working on the plantation by the use of labor laws designed to perpetuate the plantation system. Slaves, now known as workers, could not leave the plantations. Wages were kept artificially low and often were paid in the form of goods called an allowance.

After emancipation, slavery continued on St. John in practice, if not in theory. Other factors, besides legal proclamations, eventually ended this unofficial system of slavery. The price of sugar declined with increased competition from other areas that were better suited to produce sugar than the dry, rocky and steep hills of St. John. The sugar beet was introduced, putting further pressure on the industry. In addition, disgruntled workers began to offer resistance to the unjust labor laws. They brought their grievances to the Danish authorities, organized strikes and work stoppages, and often ran away to Tortola or St. Thomas.

In 1867 a major hurricane, followed by an earthquake, led to the abandonment of Annaberg by the owner. Two hundred laborers on the Annaberg and Leinster Bay Plantations were left to fend for themselves. They asked the authorities' permission to stay on and work the plantations on their own but were refused.

The Twentieth Century
The cookhouse at Annaberg was built in the early 20th Century by Carl Emanuel Francis. Food was baked in iron pots called coal pots. Charcoal was placed underneath the coal pot, which was then covered with galvanized steel. Additional charcoal could be placed on top.

Herbs for medicine and cooking were gathered from the bush or grown in the garden. Maran bush was used for brooms and pot scrubbing (it scrubbed and deodorized as well). Sea fans were used as a whisks and sifters. Baskets were made from hoop vine.

Mr. Francis also built a house on the site of the horsemill. It was rebuilt after the great hurricane in 1924. The family survived by taking refuge in the windmill, which, although it had no roof, provided the necessary protection. (St. John did not experience another major hurricane until Hurricane Hugo in 1989.)

Francis raised cattle on the estate from the early 1900s to about 1935. In 1935 Mr. Francis sold Annaberg to Herman Creque who left it to his wife Emily. In 1955 Annaberg was sold to the Rockefeller controlled Jackson Hole Preserve Inc. and donated to the National Park. When the National Park acquired the land in the 1950s, they dismantled the house. The cookhouse is all that remains.

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