Petronella is estate 30 in St. Croix’s East End A Quarter. The name does not appear to derived from owners identified on historic maps. A windmill appears on Oxholm’s 1799 map and Parsons’ 1856 map. This mill was blocked to store water at some point and sits idled in good condition.
Petronella was not apparently inhabited during the French period. By 1750, Thomas Danael was cultivating cotton. None of the Beck printed maps, annotated prints, or manuscript copies indicate sugar cultivation. Interestingly, ownership indicated by William Stridiron’s heirs on all the other Beck versions is indicated by Stridiron with no heirs on the 1770 annotated print and Colbiornsen and Stridron on the 1790s copies. This may indicate a single Stridiron emerged from the heirs to take over the estate.
The 1799 Oxholm map indicates a windmill at Petronella with other structures to the south and an indication of cotton cultivation. In 1856, Parsons also indicates a windmill at Petronella with structures surrounding it except to the northeast.
The US topographical maps all indicate the ruins of a windmill at the southern end of a ridge at an elevation of approximately 160 feet. Other structures appear down the hill to the south and west.
The McGuire geographic dictionary of the Virgin Islands (p. 146) indicates that Petronella stretched southward to have a landing on Great Pond Bay. The mill description on a ridge extending from Carina mountain, place it 5/8 mile northwest of Great Pond.