Estates

Denmark purchased St. Croix from the French government for 750,000 livree in an agreement signed in Paris on May 13, 1733, and finalized in Copenhagen on June 15, 1733. The Danes structured the island into nine administrative districts or quarters: King, Queen, Prince, Westend, Northside A, Northside B, Company, Eastend A, and Eastend B, which were further divided into estates. These estates were established for agriculture, primarily the cultivation of sugar cane which thrived due to the island’s favorable climate and soil conditions. Estates were large agricultural units, including fields, sugar mills, and living quarters for both the plantation owners and enslaved Africans.

Frederik Christian Hals von Moth, who had served as Governor of St. Thomas and St. John, played a crucial role in advocating for the purchase of St. Croix. He was appointed as the first Governor of St Croix for the Danish West India–Guinea Company on November 12, 1733, with governance orders issued shortly thereafter. Moth, accompanied by a surveyor/engineer, initially landed in the west end near La Grange before sailing to Bassin. Despite the treacherous reefs, Moth saw the potential of the location and decided to establish Christiansted in the Bassin area, envisioning it to resemble Christiania in Norway (now Oslo), with boulevards, promenades, and elegant buildings. Moth is credited with organizing the island and laying out the towns of Christiansted and Frederiksted.

The Danish West India and Guinea Company was a privately chartered joint-stock company with significant royal and personal interests, established to oversee the operation of Denmark’s Caribbean interests. Without consideration for topography, the company determined that St. Croix should be divided into 300 lots of equal size, each measuring 3,000 Danish feet by 2,000 Danish feet. Surveyor Johann Cronenberg and cartographer Johann von Jaegersberg were dispatched to map the island and they created what is known as the Cronenberg map of St Croix, possibly building upon existing geographical knowledge from the French map by Du Tertre of 1671. The concept of division into 300 lots was arbitrary, and lacking cadastral survey information, less than two thirds of this number were actually established. As detailed in a post “A Measure of the Land“, the proposed size of the estates would be 150 Danish acres, but the irregularity of the terrain prohibited this goal. Over time, estates were merged and subdivided, to the point of confusion.

A later map created by surveyor Jens Michelsen Beck, likely based on the Cronenberg and Jaegersberg work, depicts the nine quarters and two districts of Christiansted and Frederiksted, and assigns estate boundaries with a numeric identity within the quarter. This map identifies a total of 366 land allocations, some too tiny to “swing a cat” (such as Queen-53), as well as the original French plantations of Estate La Grange and Estate La Grande Princesse, and the towns of Christiansted and Frederiksted. There is also a large area in Northside A that is undesignated and identified as U-optagne Grunde (un-recorded ground) that we now know as Maroon Ridge.

The delineation of quarters is not oriented to true or magnetic north but at an approximate angle of -17° to true north. A reference line known as Centerline Road (Queen Mary’s Highway), was established to square the island.

The Cronenberg map was conveyed to Copenhagen in 1750, but never published as it was highly detailed and colorized, unsuitable for engraving and reproduction. The uncolorized and significantly simpler Beck map was published in 1754, close to the time that the Danish West India-Guinea Company was dissolved. Due to the establishment of operational estates prior to a cadastral survey, many presumed boundaries had to be moved, resulting in Beck being dismissed from the company, being accused of “completely unlawful, artful, and willful dealings” with the Company’s land, and of having “taken or cut off a portion of valuable land from the one and given it to another”.

Estates were given names by the owner, but when they changed hands they were renamed, many changing names multiple times. Estates operated as businesses, and eventually paid taxes by business name, and when a remote estate was brought into the business and renamed to have a consistent tax name, duplicate names occurred, such as Anna’s Hope, Concordia, Orange Grove, and Prosperity, creating a degree of confusion even to this day. To example how remote, the distance (as the crow flies) between Estate Concordia at Salt River, and Estate Concordia in the West end is 7.5 statute miles, and between Estate Orange Grove outside Christiansted and Estate Orange Grove in the rain forest is 8.3 statute miles.

It is worth mentioning that under the previous French rule, St. Croix had been divided into six quarters: Fond de Monery (Monery Valley), Mestre de Camp (Camp Master), Riviere Salee (Salt River), Pointe de Sable (Sand Point), Nord (North), and Sud (South).