Gamble Plantation Historic State Park

Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park
Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park
Location	Ellenton, Florida, USA
Coordinates	27°32′N 82°32′W / 27.533°N 82.533°W
Governing body	Florida Department of Environmental Protection
	Robert Gamble House
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Built	1845–1850
Architectural style	Greek Revival Vernacular
NRHP reference No.	70000189
Added to NRHP	August 12, 1970

The Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, also known as the Gamble Mansion or Gamble Plantation, is a

Florida State Park, located in Ellenton, Florida, on 37th Avenue East and US 301. It is home to the Florida Division United Daughters of the Confederacy

(UDC).

The park consists of the

forced-labor farm included 3,500 acres, and Gamble likely enslaved

more than 200 people to work the property and process the sugarcane.

The mansion was listed on the

tabby

, a regional material developed as a substitute for brick.

The park also includes the restored wood-frame, two-story, Victorian-style Patten House, built in 1872 for owner George Patten.

In 1925, the mansion and grounds were purchased by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and donated to the state as a memorial to

Union

forces and sailing to England, where he had a second career.

The Gamble Mansion serves as home to the Florida Division UDC.[2] In 1937, the UDC installed a memorial plaque to Benjamin at the mansion. Also on the grounds is the Confederate Veterans Memorial Monument, erected October 10, 1937.^[3]

In 2002, the State of Florida acquired the property that holds the ruins of the plantation's

sugar mill, one of the South

's largest, and added it to the historic park complex.

On April 18, 2012, the AIA's Florida Chapter placed the Gamble Mansion #76 on its list, Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places.^[4]

History

The coastal area was inhabited for thousands of years by varying cultures of

Creek, Yamasee, and Seminole. (The Creek and Seminole were relative latecomers, after their lands farther north were taken by White

settlers.)

At the close of the

commodity crops downriver and across the Gulf of Mexico to the international port

.

The Gamble Mansion was built principally by enslaved people, both laborers and artisans, using local materials over the course of five to six years.

African-American people they enslaved. The workers created the material by mixing lime (extracted by burning crushed oyster shells), more crushed oyster shells, sand, and water. The mixture was poured into molds for hardening, and the finished product was used in the same manner as bricks. Ample supplies of oyster shells were found in middens present on the sites of former Native American

coastal villages.

Next to the house is a covered, 40,000-gallon

wood-shake roof

, which Gamble had built to supply the household's fresh water needs. Fish were kept in the cistern to eat insects and help keep the water clean.

Gamble lived in the mansion and used it as the headquarters of his extensive sugar plantation. By 1850, he had hired an overseer, 30-year-old David Lanner from

numerous outbuildings and slave quarters (also constructed of tabby), and the wharf from which sugar and molasses were shipped by schooner and steamboat. Likely more than 200 slaves lived and worked at the plantation at its productive peak. However, due to a declining sugar market and debts, Gamble had to sell the property in 1856. The Gamble Mansion is the only surviving plantation house in peninsular Florida.^[8]

During the

Queen's Counsel

.

The Gamble

raiders in 1864. The brick ruins are located one-half mile to the north on State Road 683. The State of Florida acquired the mill property in 2002; it has cleared overgrown vegetation at the site to make the mill ruins visible, while protecting them with a fence.^[8]

In 1895, the

postbellum owner, George Patten's youngest son Dudley Patten, built a wooden, two-story vernacular Victorian style house for his young family. (Patten's wife, Ada Melville Turner Patten is said to have demanded a modern home after the couple who were married in 1891, had been living for several years in the old mansion with Patten's widowed mother.) The state has restored the Patten House, which is also part of the plantation park complex.^[8] But, in 2014, termite and water damage proved to cause concern for visitor's safety, so the house was closed to the public. Talk of demolition caused community members to stand for renovation, which was approved and begun in 2016. By December 2017, the contractors realized damage was more extensive than once believed, and asked the State of Florida for more money. The decision was made, once more, to demolish the home.^[9] Fortunately, the community outcry once more appears to have saved the home from this permanent solution to a temporary problem.^[10] The Patten House was nominated and has been selected as one of Florida's 11 to Save for 2018 by the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. The announcement was made on May 17, 2018. The 11 to Save program is designed to increase the public's awareness of the urgent need to save Florida's historic resources, and to empower local preservationists and preservation groups in their efforts to preserve Florida's history.^[11]

Tabby is a less permanent construction material than brick; and by 1902, the house and columns were deteriorating badly. In 1923 the Judah P. Benjamin Chapter of the

Secretary of State

to President Jefferson Davis. Today, the mansion is furnished in the style of a successful mid-19th century plantation home.

In January 2010, Janet Snyder Matthews, a historian at the University of Florida and the former associate director of the National Park Service, led a working seminar at the plantation. Her goal was for students to develop scholarly documentation on the plantation and its occupants, with a goal of upgrading the plantation's historic designation to reflect its significance, perhaps to that of a National Historic Landmark.^[5]