Jan Loison took up the plantation at Leinster Bay in 1721. He was a French refugee, who came to the Danish West Indies as a result of the revocation of the Edict of Mann, which had previously protected Protestants known as Huguenots against persecution.

Loison, unlike many plantation owners of the time, did live on the property. He married a woman named Maria Thoma. Jan Loison died in 1724 just three years after starting up the plantation. The widow Maria married Lt. Peter Froling who was the commander of Frederiksvaern, the fort in Coral Bay. Peter Froling was one of the characters in the historical novel by John Anderson, The Night of the Silent Drums.

According to old tax records, by 1728, the plantation was growing sugarcane, and within a year, a sugar works had been established. The plantation was destroyed in the slave rebellion of 1733-1734.

In 1818, at Leinster Bay Plantation, a slave was punished so severely that he died as a result. Forty-seven slaves subsequently ran away and hid in the bush. Officials came to the plantation and tried to make the slaves go back to work. They were stoned and forced to flee. It took a force of thirty soldiers sent by the governor to end this rebellion.

In 1822, Hans Berg, a prominent and wealthy Dane and former governor of the Danish West Indies purchased Leinster Bay. Berg also owned the Annaberg Plantation and several estates on St. Thomas.

In 1840, slaves from the Leinster Bay plantation crossed the Sir Francis Drake Channel and escaped to Tortola, where slavery had been abolished .

In 1863, Thomas Lloyd became the owner of the Leinster Bay Plantation, as well as the Annaberg Estate. In October of 1867, there was a devastating hurricane which was followed about ten days later by a severe earthquake. Most of the remaining sugar plantations on St. John ceased to operate after that. Leinster Bay and Annaberg were devastated by the twin disasters.

Lloyd gave up any hope of restoring the property and left for Tortola without making any provisions for the future of the plantation or the workers. He left two hundred employees with no means of support whatsoever.

After emancipation in the Danish islands, the former slaves became employees. Their status, however, was not much better than it was under slavery. The laborers asked the authorities if they could stay on and work the plantation on their own. The complexity of the labor laws left them in a state of limbo. They could not leave the island without a passport and permission, nor could they simply leave and work elsewhere. Furthermore, the authorities refused to let them farm the abandoned estate. This incident, however, helped to point out, and eventually change, these archaic laws which were designed to maintain the plantation system and keep the former slaves tied to their estates.

In 1874, George Francis bought Leinster Bay after he returned from the Dominican Republic. He died shortly thereafter, and his widow sold it to the Danish policeman Henry Clen, who married a member of the Francis family.

In 1914, a man named Jorgeson bought Leinster Bay, and in 1920 it was sold to Herbert E. Lockhart of the prominent St. Thomas Lockhart family. He owned the estate until 1972, when it was acquired by the United States government as part of the National Park.

The Lockharts used the property for cattle production. Members of the Samuels family from Coral Bay looked after the estate and the cattle for Lockharts.