Plantations – ArchaeologySRQ

The United States took Florida in 1821, but it took the 1842 Armed Occupation Act to bring Anglo-American pioneers to the region. One of the many settlers to our area created a plantation on the Manatee River. Major Robert Gamble, Jr., a lifelong bachelor from Virginia, had served in the Second Seminole War. He received 160 acres for homesteading, expanded to 3,500 acres. He enslaved nearly two hundred people to work the plantation. In 1845, Florida officially became a state.

Gamble lived at the plantation until 1856, when he sold it due to the decline of the sugar industry and other debts. The mansion is the only surviving example of antebellum architecture in the peninsula of Florida. It was occupied during the Civil War by a blockade runner, and a Confederate Secretary of State who was fleeing capture. The sugar mill was destroyed by Union raiders in 1864, but the mansion survived. In 1925, the house and 16 acres were saved by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and donated to the state. It is now a historic state park, furnished in the style of a successful mid-19th century plantation home.

Another of the area's early settlers who enslaved people to create and work a plantation was Dr. Joseph Braden. The town of Bradenton in Manatee County is named after the non-practicing doctor. Built around 1850, the big house became known locally as the Braden Castle.

They made their big houses out of tabby (a lime made of oyster shells) – painted and plastered over, the Gamble Mansion looks Greek Revival. Hundreds were enslaved to build and work on these two sugar plantations.

The plantations in Florida, mostly producing sugar, enslaved many people to clear the lands; plant, harvest and process sugarcane; and build the plantation houses, mills, and outbuildings.

The Gamble Mansion was built by enslaved people using local materials over the course of five to six years. The 1850 Census reports Gamble owning 19 slaves, but it's more likely over 200 worked the plantation at the height of production.

The mansion's columns and two-foot-thick walls are made of tabby, a unique type of concrete. Techniques for making tabby were brought to Florida by Europeans and the African-American people they enslaved. The workers created the material by mixing lime (extracted by burning crushed oyster shells), more crushed oyster shells, sand, and water.

The mixture was poured into molds for hardening, and the finished product was used in the same manner as bricks. Ample supplies of oyster shells were found in middens present on the sites of former Native American coastal villages.