Catherineberg Sugar Mill Ruins

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The Catherineberg Sugar Mill Ruins is an historic site located in the Virgin Islands National Park. It's located about 500 feet north of Centerline Road on Highway 206, east of Cruz Bay on Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands. The ruins are an example of a sugar and rum factory from the 18th and 19th centuries. Visually, it's best known for its unusual windmill tower. Another ruin is a horse mill. It's also the site of one of the earliest and most significant slave revolts in the New World. Today, it's a protected area within Virgin Islands National Park. It's one of 17 areas of the park that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The area is open 24 hours a day

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Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

The Catherineberg Sugar Mill Ruins are also known as the Catherineberg-Jockumsdahl-Herman Farm. It was first parceled out in 1719. The 18th-to-19th-century farm is linked with many of the families associated with the early settlement of St. Thomas and St. Croix. The de Nully, Beverhout and Heyliger families were all important in the early development of the Virgin Islands. It was a thriving sugar plantation during the period of Dutch colonization.

After Christopher Columbus's voyages to the New World, the island of St. John was claimed by Spain, the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. However, there wasn't a permanent settlement there until 1719. That was when Danish Westindia & Guinea Co. acquired it. They had acquired St. Thomas half a century earlier and would acquire St. Croix in 1733.

St. John (Sankt Jan in Danish) was to be a sugar plantation that relied heavily on slave labor. The development of this plantation was slowed temporarily by a slave revolt in 1733. This was one of the first, and most significant, slave revolts in the New World. African slaves took over the whole of the island for six months. During the revolt, the farm was the headquarters of the Amina warriors. This revolt lasted into 1734, and nearly drove out the European settlers, but was eventually put down. The English and French assisted in putting down the revolt. At its peak, there were 2,600 slaves in St. John.

Development accelerated when the whole of the Danish Westindies became a crown colony in 1755. By 1780, most of the island was a plantation. Initially, most of what was planted was tobacco, dye woods and tropical produce. Later on, it became a sugar plantation, and the dryer areas grew cotton. In 1848, slavery was abolished in the Danish Westindies, and the plantation system collapsed with it. From the 1870s to the 1930s, the farm was used to graze cattle. In 1917, the U.S. purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark.

Among the most unusual features of the old plantation is the unusual windmill. This tower was probably built around 1800. The windmill tower is a 37.5-foot-high masonry truncated cone with an exterior diameter of 35 feet at the base and 22 feet at the crown. The mill had two additional levels that were supported on wood beams and a wood superstructure, the cap, that carried the vanes of the windmill and the driving gear. Today, only the masonry remains.

Sources

Catherineberg Sugar Mill Ruins, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed July 22nd 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/0083cfb3-d12f-489a-8815-32f9f57adc10.

The Catherineberg-Jockumsdahl-Herman Farm, National Park Service. Accessed July 22nd 2020. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/prvi/pr34.htm.

Virgin Islands National Park Multiple Resource Area, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed July 22nd 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64000886_text.