Mary Point Great House Ruins

The Mary Point Great House is a partly standing estate house of stone walls in brush near the start of the Francis Bay Trail. It is a fragmentary historic stop, not a restored building with rooms to walk through. The trail begins at parking by the Francis Bay Boiling House, but that chimney and stone building are a separate ruin. Stay outside the standing walls: the house has been described as unstable, and its rough spur is different from the accessible boardwalk beside the salt pond.

The land's documented history reaches at least a deed dated August 20, 1738, when Franz Claasen received property after helping the van Stell family during the 1733 uprising. Claasen was one of St. John's early free-colored plantation owners. Probate records at his death in 1780 list nine enslaved people on the estate, a reminder that this landscape's story includes forced labor as well as landholding and agriculture.

The standing remains appear to be a later home used by the Creque family, built over an earlier plantation house shown on an 1780 survey and an 1800 map. The later house had a timber-framed upper story and a roofed gallery; its tile floor and concrete railing were among the better-preserved details. An attached cookhouse had five ovens beneath a stone hood, with a freshwater well behind the gallery. Look for the gallery floor and room openings from a safe distance. Framing one opening against another wall helps show the house's layered layout without entering the unstable masonry.