Estate Belvedere

Belvedere includes estates 22 & 23 in St. Croix’s Northside B Quarter. Based on appearances on historic maps, the windmill was likely built in the late 18th century. The date 1763 over the main entrance is not original to the mill and was likely added when the windmill was incorporated into a dwelling to designate the original construction date.

Belvedere indicates how elevated locations in Northside B quarter delayed sugar cultivation. No settlement is indicated through the 1750s. In the 1760s, the annotated Beck maps and manuscript copies of the Beck map indicate an animal mill hand drawn into estate 22 except the 1770 annotated Beck map, a map that did not add any sugar machinery to the printed map.

Both the 1799 Oxholm and 1856 Parsons maps indicate a windmill at Belvedere and Belvidere, respectively. In estate 23. The 20th century topographic maps indicate windmill ruins at approximately 220 feet elevation at Belvedere.

The 1760s annotated and manuscript copies of the Beck map attribute ownership of estate 22 to Thomas Stritch and estate 23 to Warner Abraham Rogers heirs. The 1790s manuscript copies of Beck attribute ownership of both estates to McEvoy. The 1799 Oxholm map suggests single ownership of the two estates with a dotted line between them.

McGuire geographic dictionary of the Virgin Islands (p.33) notes later merger with Lavallee as Rotha sugar plantation.