Part III

From the Turn of the Nineteenth Century to Emancipation, 1800 - 1848

Soon after the turn of the nineteenth century the format used to record the yearly tax obligations of the colony's plantations was radically altered. Beginning in 1802, the size of plantations was no longer measured by width and length in feet, but converted to area in Danish acres. Further, after 1803, each property was broken down into four categories of land usage: acres in sugar, acres in cotton, acres in pasture or other crops, and acres unused or in bush. These changes, along with an increase in documentation regarding the enslaved population, prompted by the cessation of the Danish transatlantic slave trade in January of the same year,¹ allow for a more concise interpretation of the physical and demographic changes that took place on the Cinnamon Bay plantation throughout most of the remainder of the Danish colonial period (see Appendix I, charts 1 & 2; also, Appendix II, Table B).

Madam Mary Cronenberg and her heirs, 1805 - 1830

Hans Cronenberg died August 1, 1805, on the Cinnamon Bay plantation [SJLRA, 1805]. As provided for in the Cronenbergs' joint last will and testament, dated March 15, 1800 and amended by codicil in the Spring of 1803, the longest living of them was to remain in undivided possession of their estate. So it was, that upon the death of her third husband, Madam Mary (Shoy, Mc Lachlan, Dam,) Cronenberg once more became the recorded owner of her inherited plantation: a position which she could only continue to maintain so long as she did not remarry for a fourth time [DVS, 1800 & 1803].

In order to insure a proper disbursement of the estate's equity between Mary's children from her previous marriages to Lachlan Mc Lachlan (Mary Mc Lachlan) and Johannes Dam (John Dam Jr.), and her children born by Hans Cronenberg (Christian William, Anna Elizabeth, Carolina Augusta, and Louisa Friderica Cronenberg), a detailed appraisal of the Cinnamon Bay property was carried out during the course of Captain Cronenberg's probate proceedings [SJLRA, 1805]. From the Hans Cronenberg probate, and a special plantation report turned in to authorities only six months before his death, an unprecedented volume of material regarding the physical state of the Cinnamon Bay plantation at the dawning of the nineteenth century can be gleaned.

According to the 1805 tax rolls, the 300 acre Cinnamon Bay plantation had 105 acres planted in sugarcane, 48 acres in provision crops, and 147 acres unused or in bush. In the plantation's main residence resided one white woman with a son and daughter, presumably Madam Cronenberg with her two eldest children, Mary Mc Lachlan and John Dam Jr.² A single male overseer, possibly Fritz Weinmar, was the only other white person recorded as residing on the property in that year.³ As for the enslaved population, a total of 116 individuals were recorded: 66 taxable adult men and women, and 50 tax-free children or invalids (34 males and 16 females) [SJA, 1805].

The information in the tax records is largely supported by the plantation report, submitted to the authorities by Hans Cronenberg in February of the same year. But, the report offers even greater detail as to the breakdown of land use and the population of the estate:

By Cronenberg's own account, the property's 300 acres were broken down into 105 acres "in canes," 15 acres "fallow," 30 acres "in provisions," 147 acres in "pasture and uncultivated," and, 3 acres "laid out for Negro Houses." Regarding the enslaved population, Cronenberg reported that of the 116 slaves on the property there were 67 males and 49 females. Of these, 9 males and 9 females were under five years old, 1 male and 5 females were five to ten years, 10 males and 5 females were ten to twenty years, 25 males and 10 females were twenty to thirty years, 10 males and 8 females were thirty to forty years, 12 males and 4 females were forty to fifty years, 5 females were fifty to sixty years, and 3 females were above sixty years old. Among the estate's slaves there were 9 lawfully married couples who had produced only one child in the past year, and 4 common-law couples who had produced no children. Additionally, there were 13 individuals, 9 men and 4 women, who were reportedly married to persons enslaved on other estates. It was also recorded that only one individual had been baptized, and that the baptism had taken place in the "Moravian Brother's Church." No deaths were recorded to have taken place in the previous twelve months.

As for the daily activities of the labor force, 2 men were said to be employed as watchmen, 5 worked in the still or boiling house, 10 looked after the livestock, 1 was "in the sick-house," and 50 worked the fields.

At the end of the plantation report, the owners or managers of each estate were encouraged to offer some comment concerning the situation on their property. In the case of Hans Cronenberg, the Captain took this opportunity to express his frustration over the recent banning of the importation of African slaves into the Danish West Indies colony. Cronenberg wrote: "A great deal of good land [on the Cinnamon Bay plantation is] in woods or uncultivated, which is for want of 80 able Negroes at least - 80 Negroes are destined for the field [but] a good part of them are too young to work at present and will not be able for several years" [PR, 1805] (see Appendix III, document 3 for complete report).

Supplementing and enhancing the already considerable volume of information concerning the Cinnamon Bay property in this time frame, is the estate appraisal concluded only thirty days after Hans Cronenberg's death on August 31, 1805. This document not only lists by name each of the 114 slaves on the property and their evaluations, but also provides detailed lists of buildings, livestock, and the household possessions of the planter and his family (see Appendix III, document 4 for complete appraisement):

From the considerable volume of information which can be extracted from the St. John tax rolls, the plantation report, and Hans Cronenberg's probate inventory, it is apparent that in 1805 the Cinnamon Bay plantation was a well established and thriving agro-industrial operation. Unfortunately no production figures for St. John plantations are available for this time period making it difficult to judge just how the Cronenbergs were faring in terms of output in relation to other sugar producing properties of the era. We can, however, form a general comparison of St. John sugar estates by the number of acres each property had planted in sugarcane and the number of slaves who worked the plantation.

According to tax records, there were sixty-nine individual agricultural land holdings, or "estates", on St. John in the year 1805. These properties ranged in size from the Schimmelman heirs' vast 1,687 acre Carolina plantation in Coral Bay, to a 2 acre parcel at Hansen's Point on East End owned by Margaret Hughs. The land area of most properties fell somewhere in-between these two extremes, and, when all St. John holdings are taken into account, the average size of a plantation calculates to just over 180 acres.

St. John's sugar estates were somewhat larger than the cotton or provision plantations of the era, being on an average 333 acres. But, this figure is unduly inflated by the inclusion of the huge Carolina plantation, which before 1755 had been the property of the Danish West Indies and Guinea Company. When the Carolina estate is excluded from the formula, a more realistic average size of 259 acres is reached -- still well above the overall average.

Only twenty-three of the sixty-nine estates on St. John were exclusively engaged in sugar cultivation: 7 in the Cruz Bay Quarter; 9 in the Maho Bay Quarter; 2 in the Coral Bay Quarter; and, 5 in the Reef Bay Quarter. On these properties the average acreage set aside solely for sugarcane cultivation was just under 78 acres. The Maho Bay Quarter, in which the Cinnamon Bay plantation was located, had the highest ratio of land area dedicated to sugar estates, with nine of the eleven properties engaged in that area of agriculture -- the least being the East End Quarter, where none of the eight properties were recorded as growing sugarcane. Over all, the twenty-three St. John sugar plantations were reported to have had 1,788 acres under sugarcane cultivation, a figure which represents 14% of the total recorded privately held land area on the island. By way of comparison, only 5% of St. John was said to have been under cultivation in crops other than sugarcane or utilized as pasture, meaning that 81% of the island was still standing in forest or bush in this time period. It is therefore safe to say that while sugar may have been the "king" of agricultural endeavors in this era, on St. John nature still prevailed -- a fact echoed by Captain Cronenberg's own words in the 1805 plantation report, where he stated: "A great deal of good land [is] in woods or uncultivated..." [SJA, 1805; PR, 1805].

Specifically regarding the Cinnamon Bay estate, while its total land area of 300 acres places it on the high side of average compared to other sugarcane plantations on St. John, it ranked only ninth among the ten largest sugar estates on the island. Its 105 acres in sugarcane, however, placed it tied for fifth largest of the sugar estates in terms of land area dedicated solely to that crop. The only properties which matched or exceeded Cinnamon's sugar fields were Carolina, with 136 acres in sugarcane; Annaberg, with 130; Catharinneberg & Jochemsdahl, with 120; Munsburry, with 116; and, Little Caneel, which also had 105.

In terms of Cinnamon Bay's enslaved population of 116 individuals, that number was not particularly high for a sugar property of this era (the average on St. John being 100.23); but, it was fairly low compared to other properties of its caliber. There were eleven St. John sugar plantations with larger slave populations than Cinnamon Bay in 1805; and, in the Maho Bay Quarter, only Brown's Bay held fewer laborers (70) [SJA, 1805].⁶

In the year after Captain Cronenberg's death a new overseer, Mr. Grafter, was brought out from Europe to help run the Cinnamon Bay estate. When he died on February 1, 1807, after only fourteen months on the island, no one was hired to replace him [Weinmar, 1779-1839; SJA, 1807]. It is likely that it was at this time that the now 22 year old heir apparent to the estate, John Dam Jr., first took on the responsibilities of overseeing the day to day operation of the plantation [SJA, 1807-08].

John Dam Jr.'s tenure as overseer was to coincide with a period of severe hardship throughout the Danish West Indies colony. Outbreaks of yellow fever and smallpox, a period of British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars (1807 - 1815), the failure of the estates to sustain their enslaved populations after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and, in Europe, the perfecting of the process to extract sugar from the sugar beet, all conspired to drive down the Danish West Indian economy.

After a half century of rising prosperity the fortunes of the Cinnamon Bay plantation had now begun to wane. Between 1807 and 1818, the number of acres under sugarcane cultivation slumped from one hundred and five to sixty acres. The number of acres in pasture or provision crops fell as well, from forty-eight to only fifteen acres. During this same time period, there were twenty-four deaths and only fourteen births reported among the enslaved population of the estate, figures which represent an attrition rate of one individual per year over an eleven year period (see Chart 1 on following page: also, Appendix II, Table B; and, Appendix I, Chart 1) [SJA, 1807-18].

Chart 1: Births and deaths on the Cinnamon Bay estate, 1807 - 1847

But for the Cronenberg family, the situation was about to turn from bad to worse. On September 21, 1819, the Danish West Indies were struck by one of the most devastating hurricanes ever recorded in the history of the colony. A description of the event is best left to the first hand account of the diligent chronicler on St. Thomas, John P. Nissen:

By all accounts the 1819 hurricane was clearly a devastating occurrence. Official government reports put the destruction on the colony's plantations alone at 400,000 Rigsdalers [Atlanten, 1905]. At Cinnamon Bay, Madam Cronenberg struggled to come to terms with a much greater loss than any damages to her crops and estate structures. Soon after the hurricane had passed it was reported to the office of the St. John Landfoged that Mary Cronenberg's son, John Dam Jr., had been killed in the storm.

On a Saturday, the 25th of September 1819, in a sick and bedridden condition, with her daughters Carolina Augusta and Ann Elizabeth at her side, the aging matriarch of the Cinnamon Bay estate testified before the St. John probate administrator pertaining to what if any effects may have been left behind by her deceased son. At that time, Mary explained that "she could not state the least of what belonged to her deceased son, as all house and what there was had been lost to the hurricane" [SJLPP, 1819].

With her younger son, Wilhem, residing in Scotland, and her oldest surviving child, Mary, now living on St. Croix, Madam Cronenberg and her two spinster daughters took on the responsibilities of managing of the Cinnamon Bay estate [SJLPP, 1819]. A new overseer was hired, and by the end of the year 1820 the land under sugarcane cultivation was brought back up from a post hurricane low of forty, to sixty acres. The amount of land planted in provision crops was also restored to the pre-storm level of 15 acres (see Appendix II, Table B) [SJA, 1819-20].

From Madam Cronenberg's brief probate, which was begun on September 7, 1822, it would appear that prior to her death she had seen to it that all of her worldly affairs were in proper order [SJLS, 1822]. When, by a deed from the auction court dated April 9, 1823, the Cinnamon Bay plantation passed into the hands of Madam Cronenberg's oldest daughter, Mary Mc Lachlan Lindberg, the property had once more become a stable and profitable estate (see Table B on following page; also, Appendix II, Table B) [STM, Book CC, 1823; SJA, 1819-23].

Table B: Ownership, crop, and population data for the Cinnamon Bay plantation, 1803 - 1847

While it is evident that in the final years of Madam Cronenberg's life considerable energies had been put forth to rebuild and enhance the productivity of the Cinnamon Bay property, prevailing social and economic conditions dictated that the value of the estate would never again attain the levels experienced in the years corresponding with the turn of the nineteenth century. An appraisal of the Cinnamon Bay property conducted in January of 1823, allows us to form a comparison between the physical state of the estate's development in its heyday and at the very close of Madam Cronenberg's tenure of ownership nearly a quarter of a century later (see Appendix II, Table C; and, Appendix III, documents 4 & 5 for copies of the complete appraisals):