Bonus Content: Florida Emancipation Day Speech at Chinsegut Hill
In 2025, we celebrate the 160th anniversary of Emancipation Day in Florida. Elizabeth Robins Diary Podcast host Natalie Kahler provided the keynote address at the event. The speech is included here with relevant photos from Chinsegut Hill, courtesy of Natalie Kahler as well as New York University and University of Florida Special Collections.
This year marks the 160th anniversary of Florida Emancipation Day. We know the day the proclamation was read in Tallahassee and Tampa. We don’t know when it was read in Brooksville, so why are we here?
Why are we on THIS hill and at THIS house?
And why are we here AT ALL looking backwards into the past?
I’m going to answer my second question first - why do we bother looking at the past? I had written my own answer but two days ago came across a hundred year old letter from Chinsegut owner Elizabeth Robins that I’d never read before. She writes much better than I do, so I scrapped my speech and will read her words instead:
“Men who have time to look back as well as forward, see the bearing of the past on the present. But for memory, each generation would have had to start fresh. Six thousand years ago, before the Chaldeans of Ur impressed their achievements on clay tablets - men had realized that Memory is the handrail up the steep stairs of civilization.”
To summarize in my own simple words, a wise person will look at the past to help them decide what they want their future to look like. We look to the past to be inspired, challenged, and when we are made uncomfortable, to figure out why!
So today we look 160 years back to Emancipation. But why on This Hill and at This House?
Chinsegut Hill is one of the very best places in this nation to celebrate Emancipation Day. Two of the four private owners of this property brought enslaved people with them to work the land. And within that same generation, formerly enslaved people who had lived and worked on this hill became owners of some of the land on which they had been enslaved. While other places tried to resist change through segregation and Jim Crow laws, on THIS hill, the Robins family created a different culture. Church services, meals and parties were integrated, and members of staff were hired for jobs based on their skill sets and not on the color of their skin.
We do know SOME things about how Emancipation affected this Hill.
We know Francis Ederington had 30 enslaved people working on the hill in the household and on the farm.
We know Francis stood at the northwest corner of this house to make the announcement that Emancipation had come and that the formerly enslaved people were told they had the right to leave or to stay on as employees. We know many chose to become employees and worked for the Ederingtons, as well as for the next two owners: Charlotte Ederington Snow and Elizabeth Robins.
We know a yearly Emancipation celebration was held somewhere in Brooksville and that the staff at Chinsegut would take the day off work to go participate.
We know all these things because of a woman named Elizabeth Carr Washington. I’m going to call her Lizzie for the rest of my talk because that’s what she was called in her lifetime and to help lessen confusion between my reference to her and to Elizabeth Robins. Lizzie was born into slavery in South Carolina, came here at age 7 to work in the household. She was 17 years old when she stood at the northwest corner of this house to hear Francis announce her emancipation. We know everything I mentioned because Lizzie told about these events to her children, grandchildren and employers and they passed on those stories in letters. When speaking of Emancipation, she called it, “The Day Freedom Came” and in the 83 years she lived on this hill, she went from being enslaved, to owning some of this property, to owning one of the community’s first cars, and to working as a midwife for more families than we can track.
We are honoring Lizzie today for the knowledge she has provided us with a special event. The Brooksville Woman’s Club has commissioned local artist Johan Casadiego to commemorate Mrs. Washington’s life in a painting. Be sure to stop by his tent to watch him creating this painting right in front of us!
We are also on THIS hill and at THIS house because stories of Chinsegut give great insight into life in Florida - from an archeological dig performed just to the west of the house we know Native Americans came here to trade. Archeologists found trading beads, a scale, weights, and a clay pipe.
From carefully preserved letters and documents we know brave settlers and European immigrants sacrificed easy lives in their homelands for the promise of opportunity here. The unusually rich soil, an entrepreneurial spirit, hurricanes, freezes and stock market crashes meant fortunes were sometimes made and sometimes lost. Stories of Chinsegut reveal the best and the worst things human beings are capable of. After 10 years of researching the people of this Hill, I continue to find new stories that challenge and inspire me.
We also gather on this hill because descendents of people who lived and work here still live in this community today. They have been part of the stories of Hernando County for 175 years and have helped form, and re-form, and reform it.
When you take a tour of the museum, you’ll hear some of those stories. But right now I’m going to focus on one man - Fielder Harris. Fielder was born in South Carolina on a plantation where his mother was enslaved. He was enslaved as well until age 15 when Emancipation came. He moved to Brooksville when he was 31 and worked as a farmhand in Lake Lindsay that is now Ahhochee Hill Sanctuary Audubon Preserve.
It was at Ahhochee Hill where Fielder met a 10 year old Raymond Robins. Raymond was a cousin of Fielder’s employer and had been sent to live at the farm with the hope the climate would improve his health. The young boy followed Fielder like a shadow, fascinated with farm life and the depths of Fielder’s knowledge. Many years later, Raymond would write, “A wise fisherman and a mighty hunter…Fielder was the best axman, oarsman, runner, wrestler, and jumper in the county. He was the master of horsemanship; broke the wildest of mules, tamed range cattle and was altogether my ideal for those seven years.”
In his autobiography, Raymond wrote, “Fielder was a wise man. He would say, “Now Raymond, if you’ve got a hard job to do, you look that job over and see how you can take the advantage.” In all tasks Fielder had a notion that there was a right way and a wrong way, and he was right about it. He taught me how to handle myself, how to handle stock, how to deal with all the questions that came up in a practical and efficient way. He’d listen respectfully to people talking - but when we’d get out of earshot he’d say, ‘Raymond, that hot air is alright, but it takes cornmeal to make hot cakes.’ At that point I began to sense the difference between talk and production.”
In return for Raymond’s admiration, Fielder loved Raymond like a son and throughout his lifetime called Raymond, ‘my boy,’ even when the gray hair and wrinkled faces of both men revealed boyhood was long gone.
After the disastrous freeze that wiped out Citrus groves all over Florida in 1895, a teenage Raymond left to make his fortune and Fielder eventually joined the staff of Henry Plant’s spectacular Tampa Bay Hotel. With a $2 million dollar pricetag (equivalent to over $67 million today), Fielder helped landscape and maintain the hotel’s 150 acres.
Raymond and his eldest sister Elizabeth decided to set up a home together which they would name Chinsegut. It was to be their place of sanctuary from the stressful and chaotic lives they led. Elizabeth financed the purchase and Raymond was tasked with finding the right spot. He searched all over the United States and decided to set up Chinsegut on this hill.
After the purchase, Raymond focused his efforts on finding Fielder and bringing him back to Brooksville. Fielder gladly returned and was placed in charge of the management of the estate. Fielder’s knowledge and experience made him the logical choice for the position. But Black Code and Jim Crow laws in place at the time meant Fielder was NOT the logical choice! Putting Fielder in authority flew in the face of policies intended to separate and subjugate men like Fielder. This was the first step in making Chinsegut a hill like no other. You can find out much more about that by listening to our podcast episode on Fielder that features an interview with Tampa Bay History Center’s Fred Hearns who organized today’s event. You can find out how to access the podcast by visiting the Chinsegut gift shop or visiting my tent later today.
For now suffice it to say Fielder was put in charge and he quickly became the heart and soul of Chinsegut Hill. He helped in the renovation of the manor house, which was on the brink of being demolished. He oversaw the initial landscaping as well as agricultural production. And when Raymond and Elizabeth weren’t here, he slept in the manor house. To be clear, that was the VAST MAJORITY of the time in the first 20 years she owned the place. Elizabeth spent most of her time in London and Raymond’s primary home was in Chicago. The siblings visited Chinsegut usually once a year for a few weeks or maybe a month, but otherwise Fielder was in charge and living in the house.
In that time he turned what had become a fairly barren hill into a tropical paradise. When you take your house tour, you’ll be able to view pictures of the remarkable difference from 1905 to a decade later. Now it is important to say not all Fielder’s projects were successful. Raymond ordered what in today’s money would be $80,000 worth of St. Augustine grass. Fielder irrigated it poorly and much of the grass died. Considering Elizabeth only spent a little more than double that actually buying this property, the loss of the grass was a fairly large failure.
Fielder also had a very strained relationship with his mother-in-law. He had married Lizzie’s daughter and though we don’t know some of the specifics, we can surmise possible issues based on what we do know:
They were both adults who had spent their childhoods enslaved and knew how costly freedom had been.
They both risked much, suffered much and worked hard to carve out a new life for themselves and their descendents.
They both had positions of authority, strong opinions and had become used to being listened to! It’s really kinda normal in-law stuff.
When sharing my research, I believe it is important to include the struggles and failures as well as successes. Human nature wants to assign one label to a person and then discard or repress any information that doesn’t match our label. But that isn’t helpful and it makes us dishonest. Reality is that every day, every moment, we have the choice to be a hero or a villain. And every time we choose, we nudge ourselves closer to being defined as one or the other. Knowing everyone who went before us, like Fielder, Elizabeth, Lizzie, and Raymond, did the same should inspire us to press on and make heroic choices.
Life at Chinsegut was messy and its people were complicated - just like me and (don’t be insulted) just like you.
Lizzie sometimes undermined what the Robins were doing because her first loyalty was to the Snow family and she thought loyalty to one person meant being unkind to someone else. Elizabeth sometimes got WAY too much into her feelings and imagined people were being mean when in reality they were just being obliviously insensitive. Fielder sometimes left gates open which meant everyone had to stop work to go chase down cows. And Raymond sometimes spent his sister’s and wife’s money like it could never run out (and without their permission). It led to some difficult financial situations for everyone and he seems to have left it to the women to fix!
AT THE SAME TIME, Lizzie volunteered her time as a midwife and descendants of the Washington family have continued to serve this community in the medical field even today. Elizabeth helped women gain the right to vote, fought human trafficking, and mentored several of the next generation’s leaders. Fielder preserved this home and this gorgeous landscaping that we can still enjoy 101 years after his death. But he also served as the first pastor of a beautiful little church just down the hill on Broad Street that is still ministering to our community today and is now pastored by the honorable Bill Pope. Raymond gifted over 2000 acres of Chinsegut Hill Sanctuary to the Federal Government in 1932 as an agricultural educational research station, a wildlife preserve, and a community gathering space.
Isn’t that such a relief? Four imperfect people show us how to create lasting, impactful legacies. THEY did it. WE can do it.
Chinsegut Hill Sanctuary is proof that we don’t have to accept the world we are given. We are free to dream of a better world, a better Brooksville, a better Hill, a better US, and a better ME. Just like Fielder planted one bush at a time, dug one trench at a time, replaced one beam of wood at a time until ALL the bushes and trenches and beams were in place, we can look at our end goal and figure out what we can do today to move the goal closer.
Even more importantly than what Fielder did for Chinsegut Hill Sanctuary is what he did for a 10 year old foster boy who followed him around like a shadow for 7 years. Instead of shooing him away or giving him busy work to do, Fielder took on the hard work of mentoring an enthusiastic (and most likely annoying) young Raymond. By nurturing his gifts, satisfying his curiosity and bolstering his confidence, Fielder was essential in developing the man Raymond Robins would become.
Raymond would go on to serve as an advisor for SEVEN United States Presidents. He would privately negotiate with Vladamir Lenin on behalf of the United States government during WW1. Raymond would travel to Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa and to every state in our union while Fielder lived and worked on this hill. In fact Fielder never really traveled until he went with Raymond to Theodore Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill so Raymond could introduce his two mentors to one another.
You see, the ongoing legacy of Chinsegut Hill Sanctuary as we celebrate the 160th anniversary of Emancipation Day is that we can all follow in Fielder’s footsteps. We can give kindness and genuine love to those around us. There are 3 Bible verses on bronze plaques the Robins put here - one at their graveside at the Altar Oak to the east of the house, and two at the fountain on the FAMU side. I’m encouraging you to go see all three because they speak to the heart and spirit of this place. But I’m going to close by reading one of them.
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” That’s from the book of Isaiah, Chapter 35, verse 1. It’s in the Old King James, so here’s what it means in modern English -
“The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose.” (BEREAN)
When we look around this Sanctuary (especially in February when the roses and azaleas have blossomed) we see the physical blooming this verse speaks of.
When we look at the legacy of Fielder Harris, we see the more substantial blooming of how each of us can bless each other. May we honor Fielder by following his example.
After listening to the episode, check out our subscriber-only Patreon article which provides more fascinating photos and documents.
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Natalie Kahler (@kahlernat) / Twitter
Credits:
Web Design by Roots Creative Co
“Time is Whispering” Writer and Recording Artist Randi Olsen, Live Oak Theatre
Elizabeth Robins Papers housed at NYU’s Fales Library
University of Florida Smathers Library Margaret Dreier Robins Papers
Host Natalie Kahler Natalie Kahler | Facebook
