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Excerpted from St. John Off The Beaten
Track ©
2006 Gerald Singer
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 into 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.
If you are coming from Cruz Bay via the North Shore Road, proceed
to Maho Bay where the
road leaves the shoreline and turns inland towards the right.
From here, continue about 1.5 miles where you will come to
an intersection with the Leinster
Bay Road that runs along
the Leinster Bay shoreline. Turn right when you get to the
water’s
edge. Go about a quarter mile to the end of the paved road
where you’ll find the parking
lot for the Annaberg Sugar Mill.
If you are arriving via Centerline Road, turn north on Route
20 near the Colombo Yogurt stand. Go down the hill and turn
right at the first intersection. This will take you to the
Leinster Bay shoreline where you will turn right and proceed
to the Annaberg parking area at the end of the paved road.
The slave quarters (called worker's quarters after Emancipation)
barely remain. However, archeologists have uncovered a wealth
of artifacts here. There were more than 16 buildings in this
area.
These structures were made of daub and wattle. Daub is a type
of mortar made of coral, lime and sand that were fired together
and then mixed with molasses and mud. Wattle is a woven structure
made of the wood from the false coffee bush.The mortar (daub)
was packed into the wattle walls like plaster. The roof was
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
titled, 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.
As you walk through the ruins you will notice the steep hills
behind the factory. This entire hillside was planted in sugarcane.
The natural vegetation was cut and burned and the hillsides
were terraced using the native stone. The cane was then brought
to the 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 onto carts, which were drawn by donkeys to
the sugar mill.
The slave's day began at 4:00 a.m. when the bomba (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. when there would be a short break for the morning
meal. 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 in the evening.
During crop time, the workday was extended further, and everyone
including women, children and even those who were ill, 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 allowed to tend
their gardens on Saturday afternoons as well.
On St. John, only the plantations at Annaberg, Carolina, Denis
Bay, Susannaberg, Cathrineberg and Caneel Bay used windmills.
The 40-foot-tall Annaberg windmill was built between 1810
and 1830. 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. The sugarcane had to be juiced
within 24 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.
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 an unfortunate
worker got his hand caught in the rollers. Then 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.
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 iron pots where it was boiled, using the
bagasse as fuel for the fires.
The thickened juice was then ladled into the neighboring pot
and boiled again 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 all 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 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 hillside.
The Danish colonization of St. John was characterized by the
establishment of plantations 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 these slaves
would be fed.
Ideally (for the slave owner) food would be purchased and
fed to the slaves. This would give the slave owner complete
control of his captives. On St. John, however, where plantations
were, at best, only marginally successful, estate owners did
not have the resources to buy food for their slaves.
Another possibility would be to produce food on the plantation
itself, under the supervision and control of the slave owner.
This was not practical on St. John either. Cleared and terraced
land came at too high a cost in time and labor to be devoted
to food crops.
The solution on St. John was to have slaves produce their
own food, on plots called provision grounds located on the
less productive areas of the plantation.
Although the additional responsibility of providing for their
own food was a great hardship for the already overworked slaves,
the system did provide them with certain hidden benefits.
Because the provision grounds were unsupervised, the slaves
were able to gather and interact out of 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 grounds. This spirit
is still evident on St. John even in these modern times, which
tend to be more orientated toward individualism and self-interest.
Slavery was abolished in the British Virgin Islands in 1840,
but continued in the Danish West Indies until 1848. Between
those years, the proximity of St. John to Tortola provided
slaves on St. John with a unique opportunity to achieve their
freedom. Tortola lay just across the Sir Francis Drake Channel.
From Annaberg this distance was only a little more than one
mile. In May of 1840, eleven slaves from the Annaberg Plantation
fled to Tortola. This was the first major slave escape occurring
during that period.
After emancipation, planters on St. John tried to keep their
slaves working on the plantation by enforcing 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 and a
tsunami 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 they were refused.
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 a (readily available natural material - it scrubbed
and deodorized as well). Sea fans were used as 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
had no roof, provided the necessary protection. (St. John did
not experience another major hurricane until Hurricane Hugo
in 1989.)
Mr. Francis raised cattle on the estate from the early 1900s
to about 1935. In 1935, he 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.
National Park interpreters and volunteers give demonstrations
and discussions on the local culture of the time including
baking, basket weaving, folk life and agricultural techniques.
For more information, contact the VI National Park online
at www.nps.gov/viis or call (340) 776-8811.
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