Sammis House/Arlington Bluff House

John S. Sammis was born in 1807 in New York. In the 1820s, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to work on the plantation of Zephaniah Kingsley and his wife, Anna Jai Kingsley. Around 1830, Sammis married the Kingsley’s youngest daughter, Mary, before leaving the plantation in 1837 to manage a lumbermill owned by his brother-in-law, Francis Richard, Jr. In 1817, Richard had acquired land through a Spanish land grant, at which time he dammed the Strawberry and Red Bay Branch creeks, creating a mill pond to power a sawmill, grist mill, sugar mill, cotton gin, and brick yard. When Richard died in 1838 or 1839, Sammis purchased the land, which included what was then the Fishc amp Bluff property on which the Sammis House is currently located.

On those 8,000 acres, Sammis created the Strawberry Mills and Plantation, which produced Sea Island cotton, rice, and provisions crops, and had summer and winter ranges for cattle and sheep. Additionally, many of the antebellum-style buildings in the area were constructed of brick from the plantation. It also provided access to fish in rivers and creeks, as well as forests of live oak, cedar, and pine, and contained a mineral spring and bathhouse. Although there is not an exact date recorded of when the Sammis House was built, it is believed to have been constructed in the 1850s, when a Jacksonville 1850 census measured Sammis’s property cash value at $20,000, including the mill and one house. However, there are also estimates that it was built as early as 1838, when it was allegedly owned by Oran Baxter, a relative of Sammis.

The house was built in a Classical Revival style and is two and a half stories high, with a two-story portico. It has four monumental Ionic columns, and has had at least three additions put on the house and has undergone several renovations, including the 1890s when the original porch on the façade was enclosed and again in 1909 when the portico was added. The back of the house also contains the Sammis Cemetery, now known as the Clifton Cemetery, where both Kingsley and Sammis family members were buried. Eventually, Sammis freed some of the people he enslaved while selling others who end up being sent to slave markets in New Orleans. It is important to note that Sammis’s wife, Mary, was a descendent of enslaved people as her mother Anna Jai had been purchased from Africa and married by Zephaniah Kingsley before he eventually freed her. Sammis moved to Baldwin, Florida in 1860, but kept a portion of his Jacksonville property, including the house. That year, his real and personal property value was estimated at $120,000.

In 1862, Sammis had moved back to Jacksonville. Although he had been a prominent slave owner, he was also a Southern Unionist and remained an outspoken advocate of reconciliation and reunification during the war. While Florida had seceded from the Union during the Civil War, Sammis was not alone in his views and when he moved back to Jacksonville he assisted other northern settlers in establishing a Florida government opposed to the secession. Threatened with violence and death by Confederate extremists, he was forced to flee Jacksonville that same year and moved to New York. In 1863 while living in New York, he was appointed as a member of the Direct Tax Commission for Florida. He carried out his post in Fernandina, following the mission to implement the Direct Tax Law for the assessment and taxing of properties in areas under Federal control. Later that year, he resigned due to disputes with another member who had helped with Sammis’s appointment, Lyman D. Stickney.

In April of 1864, Sammis was able to return to Jacksonville after the Union regained control of the city, where he became one of the Florida delegates to the Republican Convention in Baltimore, which renominated Abraham Lincoln for president. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, in 1868, he was one of the founding officers of the Jacksonville and St. Augustine Railroad. In 1870, Sammis moved to Mandarin, Florida, and by 1873, sold the plantation to the Florida Winter Home Association. The Sammis House was turned into a boarding house for potential buyers and winter tourists, but developments in the area soon failed, and the organization was renamed to the Arlington Bluff Association. After its collapse, the title to the property went to the corporation’s principals, Issac Ward and William Matthews. Matthews’s heirs remained in the house until 1977, but even after Sammis no longer owned the property, his family continued to be interred in the cemetery there.

Sammis died on February 26, 1884 at 77 years old, and his wife, Mary, died the following year, in 1885. They are both buried in the present-day Clifton Cemetery, which was established in 1841 and continued with interments until 1942. On July 10, 1979, the house was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It is currently privately owned and not open for tours. A marker for the Strawberry Mill and Plantation was erected nearby in 2009 by Old Arlington Inc.

1. Florida Civil War Heritage Trail, Department of State. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://dos.myflorida.com/media/32357/civilwarheritagetrail.pdf.
2. National Register of Historic Places Inventory, National Park Service. July 10th 1979. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/d38db149-78fd-4683-802d-da3b01980efe.
3. Sammis, John S., House - Jacksonville, FL, Waymarking. September 6th 2008. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm4M83_Sammis_John_S_House_Jacksonville_FL.
4. Five plantation houses in Jacksonville, The Jaxson Magazine. April 1st 2020. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/five-plantation-houses-in-jacksonville-page-2/.
5. Cross, Brandon D.. Historic Strawberry Plantation, Historical Marker Database. September 9th 2019. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=139252.
6. Historic Strawberry Plantation - Jacksonville, FL, Waymarking. November 2nd 2015. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMPX5V_Historic_Strawberry_Plantation_Jacksonville_FL.
7. Thursby, Erin. OLD ARLINGTON: History Revealed, EU Jacksonville. February 5th 2015. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://eujacksonville.com/2015/02/05/neighborhood-old-arlington-history-revealed/.
8. Clifton Cemetery - Jacksonville, FL, Waymarking. November 2nd 2015. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMPX5Q_Clifton_Cemetery_Jacksonville_FL.
9. Arlington Historic Neighborhood Tour, Visit Jacksonville. Accessed October 20th 2020. https://www.visitjacksonville.com/travel-tools/local-self-guided-tours/neighborhood-tours/arlington-historic-neighborhood-tour/.