JessButtery
We are at the Gamble Plantation Mansion in the Gamble State Park in Ellenton (Palmetto), Florida. Here is the last of the peninsular Florida plantations. It was lived in and used as a 3500 acre sugarcane plantation before the Civil War. They shipped out sugar and molasses on the Manatee River to New Orleans via schooners and steam boats. The slave made mansion had a very large cistern on its side that looked like a swimming pool containing 40,000 gallons. Drain pipes came down from the roof into the holding tank and it was all covered by a wood shingled low roof. To keep the water “clean” they had fish swimming in the tank to eat insects and algae. The grounds of the plantation now have large Live Oak trees shading the mansion and tall palm trees have sprung up. Mr Gamble kept the sugarcane plantation going until the late 1850’s. Judah P. Benjamin, a famous lawyer, state legislator and Secretary of State for the Confederate states hid here following the Civil War in 1865. He was accused of aiding in the assassination plot of Abraham Lincoln so he fled to the Bahamas and then to England where he had a flourishing career.
