La Grande Princesse is an unnumbered estate in St. Croix’s Company’s Quarter. Based on appearances on historic maps, the first windmill was likely built in the 1740s and the second in the 1760s. The windmill was incorporated into a dwelling. Translated from French, the estate name means Great Princess. One windmill tower is in good condition and the other reduced to a foundation. Photos are currently only available for the windmill tower that remains standing. The windmill reduced to a foundation is obscured by bush, reducing the information value of photographs.
Since La Grande Princess started in the Danish period as the company’s plantation, it is not surprising that sugar cultivation came early, with structures including a windmill and an animal mill depicted on the 1750 map. The Beck printings include a single windmill at Plantagien Princessen. The annotated Beck maps add a second windmill, with three of them adding it to the left or west of the printed windmill and one annotated map plus the two manuscript copies configuring them with the added windmill to the right or east of the original windmill.
The 1778 and 1799 Oxholm maps both depict two windmills at La Princesse. The 1856 Parsons map also depicts two windmills at Great Princess. The 1919 topographic sheet depicts a stone fan mill at Great Princess, while the later topographic maps show no ruins identifiable as a windmill at La Grande Princesse.
The maps until 1770 only indicate ownership as Plantagien Princessen. In 1770, Baron von Schimmelmann receives ownership attribution. Ownership in 1790 also attributed to Count Schimmelmann.
McGuire geographic dictionary of the Virgin Islands (p.85, 109, 150) suggests that Princess Quarter, coterminous with Prinzess plantage, or Princess Estate… presumably was administered directly, like a quarter. While this estate had its root in company ownership, an early owner identified as house of Schimmelman of Copenhagen.