Prosperity is estate 36 in St. Croix’s West End Quarter. The windmill was likely built in the 1760s based on appearances on historic maps, when the estate was part of a 6-estate plantation. This windmill has been reduced to a foundation. Sugar cane is currently being cultivated on this estate.
The estate now known as Prosperity does not appear to have been settled in the French period. By 1750 sugar cultivation in the northeast quadrant of the estate also included an animal mill and other structures on either side of the road.
Both of the Beck printed maps of the 1750s include an animal mill in the northern extreme of estate 36, west of the road. All the annotated Beck maps and the manuscript copies of the 1760s depict the printed animal mill plus a hand-drawn windmill in the center of the estate. Similarly, Oxholm’s 1778 map of Frederiksted includes a windmill in the center of estate 36 with an animal mill north of it.
All of the annotated Beck maps and manuscript copies include Prosperity in a 6-estate block owned by John or Augustine Boyd or Isaac Markoe. The Kuffner map of 1767 also attributes ownership to John Boyd, an unusual use of familiar and surname to identify ownership on this map. The 1778 Oxholm map of Frederiksted indicates the same combination of estates owned by Isaac Markoe’s heirs.
The 1799 Oxholm map includes a windmill in the center of estate 36 to the west of a house at the end of a row of trees heading south to Mahogany Road, naming the area Prosperity. The 1856 Parsons map indicates a windmill and drive leading to a house in a similar location at Prosperity, and including a slave village and other structures to the west of the windmill.
The 1920s topographic map locates structures at Prosperity in a similar configuration to Parsons. Legibility limits the identification of a windmill. The 1958 and 1982 topographic maps indicate ruins but none suggesting a windmill at Prosperity. Field reconnaissance found a windmill foundation.
As the McGuire geographic dictionary of the Virgin Islands (p. 151) describes, sugar cane was still cultivated here in the 1920s with a mahogany grove to the east. The chimney and house were considered prominent objects on the Hydrographic Office chart 1409.