My husband semi-retired this year so we have been exploring more of Florida. This week we spent about an hour at the Gamble Plantation, took the tour and walked the grounds. The history of the mansion was very interesting and the antiques impressive. Marvin was our ranger guide and he did a great job.

It's great that they restored the plantation and offer an educational historic tour. However a vitally important story of the plantation is glossed over completely and we found that unforgivable. Although the word slave is mentioned, and there is a list of all the slaves Gamble sold to pay off debt, there is no information in the tour of how the slaves lived or how they were treated or who they were. Although I understand no original slave quarters exist, a replica should be built on property and the tour should discuss their lives. At the end of the tour I asked what happened to them when they were sold (meaning did families get to stay together?), and if there was any information on them personally. I was just given a curt no by the guide as though he was either annoyed by the question, or told to not discuss the slaves at all. Most other plantations we have visited have added these important details to their tours. This one falls short and more research should be done about the slaves and their stories must be told.

If you are in the neighborhood, perhaps shopping at nearby Ellenton Premium Outlets, you are encouraged to visit the Gamble Plantation Historic State Park at 3708 Patten Avenue and U.S. Route 301 in Ellenton, Florida. The park consists of the antebellum mansion developed by its first owner, Major Robert Gamble, a 40,000-gallon cistern to provide the household with fresh water and 16 acres of the former sugarcane plantation that, at its peak, numbered 3,500 acres and more than 200 enslaved people. The mansion, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, features columns and two-foot-thick walls constructed of tabby, a regional material developed as a substitute for brick. First used by Spanish and English settlers on the Atlantic coast and Sea Islands as an alternative to clay bricks, tabby was created by mixing lime, crushed oysters shells, sand and water. The park also includes the ruins of the plantation's sugar mill, one of the largest in the antebellum era, which was destroy by Union raiders in 1864. Also the restored wood-frame, two-story, Victorian-style Patten House, built in 1872. During the Civil War, the mansion was occupied by a famous Confederate blockade runner, Captain Archibald McNeill, the Rhett Butler of his time. Judah Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, took refuge in the mansion during May, 1865, while making his escape from Union troops following the defeat of the Confederacy. He had been accused of arranging for President Abraham Lincoln's assassination and feared being unable to get a fair trial after the war. McNeill aided Benjamin in escaping to the Bahamas. From there, Benjamin sailed to England, established a distinguished legal career and was selected as Queen Victoria's counsel. The park is open daily from 8 to sundown and guided tours of the mansion are available.

If you are interested in the history of slavery, then you will not be disappointed visiting this plantation. Although it is nowhere near as impressive as plantations such as Boone Hall, it is still worth dropping by. Booking a $6 guided tour will get the most of the visit. The guide we had was very knowlegeable and gave a lot of interesting details that we surely would have missed, had we wandered the premise ourselves.

Well kept and great tour guide but it lacks a full narrative. Enslavement is not mentioned anywhere and in turn glorifies the confederacy. We are walking on grounds that empowered the darkest sin of our country and the presentation would rather ignore it than empower our current generations to learn about redemption and renewal of human evolution.