Condensed from “A History of Botany Bay” by David W. Knight (2001) Table of Contents The Prehistoric Presence at Botany Bay The Botany Bay Plantation Early European Settlement at Botany Bay The West End Plantation Consolidation on St. Thomas’s Far West End The Bathazar Caspar Busch Plantation, 1703 – 1745
Date Event 1728, Oct. 18 Deed to Lovango granted to William Gandy from the Danish West India & Guinea Company, with an 8-year tax amnesty to encourage plantation development. Gandy was a master carpenter who had worked for the DWI&GC in St. Thomas. He had previously been granted a waterfront
Compiled from David Knight’s Speaking Notes for the St. John Historical Society, February 2008 Date Event 1728 The property that would become known as Retreat is originally granted to Niles Anderson. c1755 The neighboring Mt. Pleasant estate, is formed by the merger of four early land grants (Pier Castan, 1725;
In 1853 the Annaberg Country School opened to provide free, compulsory education to the children of St. John’s rural Maho Bay Quarter. But, while the opening of the Annaberg facility is indeed a notable milestone in the history of St. John, the school was not the first of the “Country
(Led by David Knight, summarized by Robin Swank) Hardy SJHS members met for the last hike of the calendar year, to the south side estates of Sieben and Mollendahl. These estates are sheltered from the north wind by “Camel Mountain” (AKA: Camelberg), once thought to be the highest point on
Yawzi Point’s Great Lameshure Estate House Its rounded entry steps overlook the cotton magazine (By David Knight, summarized by Robin Swank) On Saturday, March 17th, a record 78 hikers met at VIERS to join SJHS President David Knight for a tour of the physical remains of three contiguous estates (Great Lamesure,
(By David Knight, summarized by Robin Swank) If you want to learn something new, take a hike!!! Many of the hikers who joined President David Knight on January 13th had visited Brown Bay, but only a few were previously aware of the Hermitage or Lieven Marche Estates, or of the
(By David Knight, summarized by Robin Swank) SJHS President David Knight welcomed about thirty members to our December hike on Mary’s Point. We met at the Francis Boiling House on what was once the Betty’s Hope plantation, which straddles a strategic isthmus separating Mary’s Creek and Francis Bay. At the
Under considerable pressure from both home and abroad, in 1847 King Christian VIII of Denmark took the first cautious steps toward emancipation in the Danish West Indies islands of St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix. On July 28th, he proclaimed that all children born into slavery would from that
The ruins of the Annaberg School at Mary’s Creek are among the most significant historic sites on St. John. Not only are they a wonderful example of uniquely Danish-colonial architecture in the neoclassical style, but they are also a physical representation of the first effort to institute compulsory education throughout
(Editor’s Note: On March 25th, Society President, David Knight and Mr. Reggie Callwood will help us explore the ruins at Cinnamon Bay and review restoration work and techniques used by Mr. Callwood in the 1960s and 70s to stabilize and preserve historic sites throughout the National Park on St. John.
On the night of May 24, 1840, estates Annaberg and Leinster Bay were the scenes of one of the largest mass desertions of enslaved laborers on St. John since the outbreak of the 1733 slave insurrection more than a century before. In all, eight men (Charles Bryan, James Jacob, Adam