A Portrait for the Pastor:
A brief summary of the life and heritage of Carl Emanuel Francis of St. John
By David W. Knight, 2005

Ebony in complexion, brash and aristocratic in deportment, zealous and public spirited by nature, outspoken, and often controversial, Carl Epolite Emanuel Francis dedicated much of his life to community service and the betterment of the people of St. John. The son of a former slave, Carl Francis was born May 13, 1867, in the rural hinterlands of Denmark’s West Indies colony. His rise to prominence in a period of declining fortunes and harsh social injustice is an intriguing story from any perspective. But, to fully grasp the breadth of his character, one must first explore the historical context of his development and the roots of his heritage [Holdridge, 1936; Knight, 2001; Moolenaar, 1992].

The early half of the nineteenth century was marked by increasing unrest amongst the enslaved laborers on plantations throughout the Danish West Indies. Nowhere in the colony was this situation so apparent as on the isolated estates of St. John, where one or two hired overseers were generally responsible for controlling large enslaved populations that often outnumbered them more than fifty to one. Under such conditions tensions ran high and during this period one overseer on the Annaberg sugar plantation was poisoned, while another died under suspicious circumstances. Force, therefore, was often seen as a necessary deterrent, and punishments such as detainment or restraint in the properties' stocks were dealt out liberally by the overseers. For more serious offenses, the local judge (Landfoged) was empowered, and indeed mandated by law, to take harsher measures [SJLD, 1828-56; SJPJ, 1829-55].

It was amidst these turbulent and uncertain times that a young man by the name of George Francis made the awkward transition into manhood in a sprawling slave village below the imposing windmill tower of the Annaberg plantation. Already a widower by age nineteen, George worked diligently to gain the respect of his fellow workers, as well as his influential master, Hans H. Berg. By the time the 1846 census was compiled, Francis was among the most trusted of the estates’ enslaved laborers [SJR, 1835 & 1846]

Emancipation, declared in the Danish West Indies in 1848, seems to have had little immediate effect on the isolated plantations of St. John. Limited opportunity and a strict contract labor code forced most formerly enslaved individuals to remain on the estates under rapidly declining conditions. This was the case with George Francis, who by 1850 had gained the position of ‘driver’ (the leader of the work-gangs). Sometime in or about 1845, George Francis married Hester Dalinda, a young woman who had been born enslaved on the neighboring Munsbury plantation, where she had lived all of her life. Secure in his new position as driver, Francis felt confident that a request to allow his wife to leave Munsbury and join him at Annaberg would not be refused. And indeed, a short time later Hester and her children, Peggy and Johannes, were all reported to be living at Annaberg [SJR, 1835, 1846, 1850, & 1855; Carstensen, 1897; SJLUC, 1850].

Over the course of the succeeding decades, George Francis encountered opportunities that in his youth must have seemed unimaginable. In the 1860 census for Annaberg, Francis’s position was listed as estate “overseer,” and two years later he received clear and outright title to a two-acre parcel of land on Mary’s Point by the will of his former master, Hans H. Berg. But, George Francis’s ambitions did not stop there. Through hard work and frugality he managed to save enough money for a down payment on the remainder of the Mary’s Point property when it came up for auction during Hans Berg’s probate reconciliation [SJR, 1860; STEP, 1862; SJA, 1850 — 1865; Carstensen, 1897].

George Frances’s wife, Hester, died only a short time after their purchase of the Mary’s Point estate. The couple’s possessions, itemized in Hester’s probate inventory compiled on September 29, 1864, display the relative wealth the Francis family had attained by that date:

18 Head of Cattle	1 Row Boat
40 Sheep	2 Beadsteads with Bedding
3 Asses	2 Tables
2 Horses	1 Press
1 Decked Boat ‘The Ester of St. John. ’	18 Chairs
1 doz. Plates, Knives, Forks, Spoons and Glasses

[SJCP, 1864]

A year after Hester’s death George Francis married for a third time to Lucy Ann Blydon. Together the couple lived on and worked the Mary’s Point property, and in the 1870 census for the estate, Francis had the gratification of listing his profession as “Planter” [SJA, 1864 — 1870; SJR, 1870].

In 1871 George Frances encountered what was perhaps his greatest opportunity. After the buildings and crops on the Annaberg and Leinster Bay plantations were destroyed in the devastating back-to-back hurricane and earthquakes of 1867, the owner of the estates, Thomas Letsom Loyd, fell heavily into debt and could not afford to rebuild the properties. After enduring years of pressure from his creditors, Loyd finally “quit” the colony to evade his obligations. Upon his departure, Loyd signed over title to both Annaberg and Leinster Bay to his former property manager, George Francis, for the sum of $100 [SJA, 1865-1875; STM, 1871].

George Frances died on St. John in 1875. At the time of his death he had recently completed the construction of a small sugar factory at Mary’s Point, and was endeavoring to reintroduce sugar cane cultivation on his properties. The burden of managing and maintaining George Francis’ vast holdings now fell to his wife Lucy and their five children: their oldest son, Carl, was only eight years old at the time [STSJCP, 1875; SJA, 1872-1875; STR, 1870].

After George’s death the Francis family valiantly struggled to maintain the quality of life they had worked so long to achieve, but with labor difficulties, diminishing revenues, and mounting debts, they soon began to feel the sting of poverty. As young men, Carl and his brother Fritz were forced to leave St. John in search of economic opportunity. As was the case with so many Virgin Islanders of the time, Carl emigrated to the Dominican Republic where he found work in that country’s active agricultural sector. For twelve years he diligently toiled, sending money home and saving whatever he could [STSJCP, 1875; SJCP, 1909; Moolenaar, 1992; Jadan, 2001].

By 1900, while still residing in the Dominican Republic, Carl Francis had accumulated enough capital to secure, or reacquire, much of his family’s property on St. John. —including Estate Annaberg, which had been put up for auction due to nonpayment of taxes. After his mother’s death in 1901, Carl returned to St. John and took up his rightful place as head of household in the Francis home at Mary’s Point. With strength and conviction he vigorously set out to redevelop the family’s long-neglected land holdings. According to oral sources, Carl first attempted to convert much of the property to mixed agriculture, but after his fruit crops yielded inferior results he made the decision to concentrate on animal husbandry [SJCP, 1900; STM, 1900; SJA, 1899-1905; Near (Edwards), 2000; Lightbourn, 1921].

It was during this period that Carl Francis became increasingly concerned over the worsening economic conditions and oppressive disparities that plagued his homeland. Never a man to stand idly by, Carl’s energetic and authoritative demeanor naturally led him to the role of community activist, for which he soon garnered the attention, and respect, of Danish West Indies authorities. One of the prominent individuals Carl Francis met and befriended was the Minister of the Lutheran Church on St. Thomas, Christian Krag, whose duties included overseeing the small Lutheran congregation on St. John. Pastor Krag served the Lutheran Church in the Danish West Indies from 1897 though 1904. Immediately prior to his return to Denmark, Krag paid one last visit to his friend Carl Francis, who had regularly assisted with church affairs on St. John. At that meeting, Carl presented the Pastor with a small photo portrait of himself, on the back of which he inscribed: “Carl E. Francis Present to Rev’d Krag. Febr 14/05 Mary’s Point St. John. ”—it is this photograph, which was given over to the National Museum by Pastor Krag’s daughter-in-law in 1971. (Picture at right.) [Larsen, 1950; Per Nielsen (personal correspondence 08/02/05].

A well established and prosperous cattle dealer by 1909, Carl Francis married Amy Elizabeth Penn in the Emmaus Moravian Church in Coral Bay, after which, the couple took up residence in a house Carl had built amidst the ruins of the former Annaberg sugar factory. In October of the following year Amy gave birth to the first of their two children, a son, Earl [Moolenaar, 1992; Jadan, 2001; VIC, (1917) 1920].

Throughout these years Carl continued to be active in community affairs. While as a younger man he attended the Moravian Church and stated his religion as Moravian in the 1911 census, he later served for fifteen years as clerk and lay reader to the Lutheran Congregation on St. John. For many years Francis held the title of Maho Bay Quarter Officer, a position that carried broad responsibilities for a large section of the island, and in 1913 he was honored by Governor Helweg-Larsen with an appointment to the colony’s governing body, the Colonial Council, in which he served for two decades. As St. John’s highest ranking representative, it was Carl Francis who was chosen to hoist the first American Flag over government headquarters on St. John during that island’s formal ceremony of the transfer of the Danish West Indies to the United States on April 15, 1917. It has been stated by one eyewitness to the occasion that Francis was “in his glee” [Moolenaar, 1992; Jadan, 2001; Larsen, 1950; Larsen, 1940; Lightbourn, 1921; Low & Valls, 1985].

Under United States rule, Carl Francis carried on his efforts to bring improved services and broader economic opportunity to the residents of St. John. Although in his later years he became notorious for openly expressing his frustration over the “laziness” of the islands’ inhabitants, it is clear that he saw their malaise as a symptom of larger sociopolitical ills, rather than an inherent tendency [Lightbourn, 1921; Frank, 1920; Holdridge, 1937].

To the end Carl Francis remained a staunch advocate for improved inter-island communications, an expanded and accessible educational system, and the establishment of an agricultural bank that would make affordable loans available to small farmers and encourage self-sufficiency. Due to failing health he retired from public service in 1933, and died on the island of St. Thomas at the age of eighty-nine on October 26, 1936 [Frank, 1920; Moolenaar, 1992].

Even today, Carl Francis’s name is spoken with reverence and respect on the island of St. John: a very remarkable man indeed.

Primary Sources
• [SJA] Central Management Archives, West Indies Audit Registers for St. John, 1755 - 1915 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [SJCP] Record Group 55, Entry 720, Case Papers Before the St. John Probate Court, 1849 - 1909 (U. S. National Archives II, College Park, Maryland).
• [SJLD] West Indies Local Archives, St. John Landfoged, Diverse Correspondence, 1828 - 1856 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [SJLUC] West Indies Local Archives, St. John Landfoged, Unarranged Correspondence, 1851 - 1875 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [SJPJ] West Indies Local Archives, St. John. Landfoged, Police Journals, 1829 - 1892 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [SJR] Central Management Archives, Registers [Censuses] for St. John., 1835 - 1911 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [STEP] West Indies Local Archive, St. Thomas Byfoged, Executors’ Probates, 1778 - 1868 (Rigsarkivet, Denmark).
• [STM] St. Thomas / St. John Mortgage & Deed Registers, NA (Office of the Recorder of Deeds, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands).
• [STSJCP] Record Group 55, Entry 647, Case Papers Before the St. Thomas and St. John Probate Court, 1870 — 1917 (U. S. National Archives II, College Park, Maryland).
• [VIC] Department of Commerce, Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of Census 1920, Virgin Islands [compiled in 1917] (U. S. National Archives, Washington, DC).

Published Sources
• A Riis Carstensen, Over Viden Strand; Livs og Rejseskildringer (København, Forlagt Af Universitetsboghandler G. E. C. Gad, Thieles Bogtrykkeri, 1897).
• Harry A. Franck, Roaming Through The West Indies (New York, Blue Ribbon Books, 1920).
• Desmond Holdridge, Escape To The Tropics (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937).
• David W. Knight, Annaberg, An Updated Survey of the Annaberg Factory Complex, Virgin Islands National Park, St. John. USVI, With Overviews of Contributing Sites Within The Annaberg Historic District (USVI, Virgin Islands Historical & Genealogical Resource Center [for the Virgin Islands National Park], 2001).
• Jens Larsen, Virgin Islands Story, A History of the Lutheran State Church, Other Churches, Slavery, Education, and Culture in the Danish West Indies, now the Virgin Islands (Philadelphia, Muhlenberg Press, 1950).
• Kay Larsen, Guvernører Residenter, Kommandanter og Chefer (Copenhagen, Denmark, Arthur Jensen Forlag, 1940).
• Alberic G. Lightbourn, Lightbourn’s Annual and Commercial Directory of the Virgin Islands of the United States for 1921 (St. Thomas, Alberic Lightbourn, 1921).
• Ruth Hull Low & Rafael Valls, St. John. Backtime, Eyewitness Accounts from 1718 to 1956 (St. John, U. S. Virgin Islands, Eden Hill Press, 1985).
• Doris Jadan, “Carl Francis Family Epitomizes St. Johnians’ Leadership, Service,” St. John Tradewinds, March 5-11, 2001 [St. John, Thomas A. Oat, Editor and Publisher, 2001).
• Ruth Moolenaar, Profiles Of Outstanding Virgin Islanders, Third Edition (USVI, Department of Education, 1992).
• Don Near, “100 Years at Annaberg Plantation,” St. John Times, November 2000 [St. John, June Bell Barlas, Editor and Publisher, 2000]. Note: This article relies exclusively upon information from an unpublished report written by St. John historian Steve Edwards.