MULBERRY GROVE PLANTATION

Although East Florida was under Spanish control from 1783 to 1821, English speaking settlers lived along the St. Johns River in the late eighteenth century. In 1787, the Spanish crown granted a large parcel of land to Timothy Hollingsworth, who named his plantation Mulberry Grove after trees native to the area. In 1805, Mulberry Grove was purchased by a Georgia planter named John H. McIntosh. In 1812, he became a leader in the so-called Patriot War, an attempt by U.S. citizens to seize East Florida from the Spanish. After these efforts failed, McIntosh returned to Georgia. During the next decades, cotton was grown on the plantation, which came to be owned by Joshua Hickman. Prior to the beginning of the Civil War, Arthur M. Reed, a Jacksonville businessman, purchased Mulberry Grove, and in 1862 took his family there to live when Union forces occupied the town. Oranges, cattle and many varieties of fruits and vegetables were produced on the plantation in the decades after the Civil War. The main house with an oak shaded avenue leading to the river was an attraction for excursionists travelling on the St. Johns. In 1939, the U.S. government acquired a portion of Mulberry Grove Plantation for the Jacksonville Naval Air Station.