INVESTIGATING A TABBY SLAVE CABIN

Discover the past through evidence from an archaeological site at Kinglsey Plantation in Florida!
In this investigation students will use geography, history, and archaeology to learn about a Florida cabin and the enslaved people who lived in it. Investigating a Tabby Slave Cabin teaches students about a cabin at Kingsley Plantation in northeastern Florida used by enslaved people in the early 1800s and about the descendants of the people who lived there, through authentic archaeological and historical inquiry.  To understand the history of the United States of America it is important to understand the period of time when slavery existed. Slavery was filled with incidents of brutality, punctuated here and there by moments when individuals reached across the barriers of race, gender and class to be decent to each other. Kingsley Plantation offers the opportunity to encounter this doubled-faced reality in the complex lives of Anta Majigeen Ndiaye (Anna Kingsley) and Zephaniah Kingsley.

Examine historic photographs, primary source documents, artifacts, and maps of a Tabby Slave Cabin shelter. Students meet Mrs. Deborah Bartley-Wallace, a descendant of a slave family at Kingsley Plantation, through reading her biography. Then they “uncover” a real archaeological site, classify artifacts, and infer how the geographic area of Florida shaped the slave cabin.  Explore the history of slavery in the United States and engage students in a debate on a current civic dilemma involving archaeology and preservation.