View Full Version : Researching in Jamaica......
Research for a friend so nothing to add to BK6 from this thread
......without a plane ticket!
I'm trying to help a friend with her research, but am struggling.
Her ancestor, Nancy Stuart was born in Jamaica in about 1820 (census records 1851-1891 inc).
We know plenty about Nancy after she married her husband, Alexander McNaughton, banker, in Moulin, Perthshire in 1844.
Recently we discovered the name of Nancy's father from her death notice in the newspaper in 1894 - Robert Stuart dec'd of Stuart Castle, Jamaica.
We then found a newspaper notice for the death of a Robert Stuart of Stuart Castle, St James, Jamaica on 1st March 1833 (presumably in Jamaica as it took more than a couple of months for the newspaper notice to be entered.)
It would seem Robert had land in St James Parish in Jamaica. A Robert Stuart appears in Ancestry's Slave Registers and various Almanac's in Jamaica (JamaicaFamilySearch website) from about 1817 until his death.
I have been studying the images of Jamaican PRs on Family Search, initially to try and find Robert's burial in the hope it would show his age at death.
Having had no luck with that at all (As well as checking the parish of St James I tried Kingston, St Catherine, Trelawny, Westmorland, Hanover, St Elizabeth, Portland, Clarendon, St George, St Ann, St John, Vere, St Dorothy, St Thomas the Vale and St Andrew. I have not been able to check St David, Manchester, Port Royal, St Mary or St Thomas the East as images for those parishes were not available.
Having had no luck with Robert's burial I turned my attention to Nancy Stuart's baptism. I have only found one even remotely likely entry anywhere in Jamaica and that one is in St James parish 3rd Feb 1821 for a child named Nancy Stewart aged 15 months, which at first seemed extremely likely to be her.
The first issue is that this Nancy seems to have been illegitimate - there are no parents named which seems to be the common practice in these registers for illegitimate babies. The other difficult bit is that it says "of Col" after her name, which I at first thought must be a place name, but later I wondered if it meant "of colour" as some of the other abreviations on the page seem to refer to the ethnicity of the individual. As far as we know Nancy had two white parents, but obviously that might be incorrect, but we would like the opinion of others on this baptism and whether it may be a red herring.
This is the page with Nancy's entry at the bottom:
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m13/merry_monty_montgomery/Other%20Research/NancyStewart1_zps90940633.jpg (http://s100.photobucket.com/user/merry_monty_montgomery/media/Other%20Research/NancyStewart1_zps90940633.jpg.html)
And here is the opposite page which shows some legitimate children being baptised:
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m13/merry_monty_montgomery/Other%20Research/NancyStewart2_zps88c81f83.jpg (http://s100.photobucket.com/user/merry_monty_montgomery/media/Other%20Research/NancyStewart2_zps88c81f83.jpg.html)
Oooh, I knew there was something else! Here is the newspaper notice about Robert's death. What is the name of the place his father is said to be from?
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m13/merry_monty_montgomery/Other%20Research/CaledonianMercury_zps44cb9513.jpg (http://s100.photobucket.com/user/merry_monty_montgomery/media/Other%20Research/CaledonianMercury_zps44cb9513.jpg.html)
kiterunner
07-07-13, 09:24
Looks like Stank. If you search for Stank on the Scotland's Places website, there are a few places: Stank, Stromness, Orkney; Stank Brae, Bothwell, Lanarkshire; Stank Burn, Latheron, Caithness; Stank House, Birnie, Morayshire.
kiterunner
07-07-13, 09:25
Also are you sure it says "of Col" in that register or is it "f Col" with f being short for father? And I'm sure Col is short for Coloured.
kiterunner
07-07-13, 09:32
On Scotland's People if you search in the Wills and Testaments for the surname Stuart and variations with the word Stank, it comes up with a few Stewarts of Stank in the parish of Callander, Perthshire. I don't think the actual entries would be much help as they are all Stewarts and the dates are 1860 onwards, but it is another possibility for the place name.
kiterunner
07-07-13, 09:37
Stank is a terrible place name to Google for!!
kiterunner
07-07-13, 09:39
But this looks useful, especially Robert in the West Indies:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rykbrown/glenogle.htm#2 Line - The Stewarts in Stank
Edit - ooh, and Robert is the third son listed on there!
Well done for finding that website, Kate.
I have come to realise that Stuart/Stewart are completely interchangeable, having read a PCC will that uses both spellings throughout.
I see the surname Wight appears a couple of times on that site and this is another surname my friend has been trying to tie into her tree for years. There would probably have to be another link further back (unless Robert married a Wight), but we know that the Stuarts and Wights (and some other names) seemed to have multiple connections.
I'm going to spend a bit of time looking at that site later, but I can't read it in our sunny garden because the background colour doesn't give enough contrast (and I'm not going inside for anything! lol)
Thanks again Kate.
Olde Crone
07-07-13, 11:09
Completely useless to your search Merry, but here on my desk, on the top of a pile of bits of paper to be entered onto my tree, is a mini tree of the WIGHT family of Monymusk!
OC
lol! Does it have Arthur Cleghorn Wight included??!!!
Olde Crone
07-07-13, 13:09
No, sorry!
I've remembered why this family is in the "waiting" pile - it reduced me to tears the last time I tried to do anything with them.
OC
*passes tissues*
Kate, that website must surely be the right family and that must surely be the right Robert!!
On the website Roberts elder brother, John, married Ann Brown Wight.
Ann Brown Wight's elder brother was James Wight and he was the father of Arthur Cleghorn Wight who is the person my friend has been trying to connect to her tree!!
So, Robert's sister-in-law's nephew is Arthur! Yeh!!! Thanks you so much.
That website has so much on it it could take forever to digest even part of it!
No time right now.....but you come across any Ariels can you let me know before you get drunk....lol
David Ariel would be really nice....
lol Libby!
*no hangover here*
Who is David Ariel?
lol Libby!
*no hangover here*
Who is David Ariel?
Why.....missing Agatha's brother, of course...lol
I do have him sorted. He died in Barbados in 1838 but they went to Jamaica as well..I suppose he's buried in West Indies as well.
Coming a little late to this forum, but hope the following may help, regarding the colour classifictions.
White
Negro
Mulatto - 1 negro and 1 white parent
Sambo - 3/4 negro; 1 mulatto parent and 1 white parent
Quadroon - 1/4 negro
Octoroon/Mustee/Mestee/Mistee - 1/8th negro
Mestizo - white and Amerindian parentage
Meesteefeena - child of a mestee parents and a white parent - 1/16th negro.
Not all people with black ancestry at the time in Jamaica were slaves. When the British arrived, there were already 'free negroes' on the island - many were Maroons, African slaves freed by the Spanish. On the other hand, some white people were indentured servants and therefore not 'free'.
'f col' may mean that Nancy had some black ancestry (less than 1/8th or 1/16th?), but could it mean that her father was a 'colonial' (in other words, white?).
Another possibility is that it may be short for 'coolie' - someone from India or with Indian heritage. Most Indian immigrants came after emancipation, though.
And yes, Stuart and Stewart are totally interchangeable!
kiterunner
08-07-13, 11:54
Oh yes, maybe "f" is short for free? Some of the entries say "free" in full but it could be it was abbreviated in Nancy's entry.
but could it mean that her father was a 'colonial'
That's something I'd not thought of, Shona!
Having looked at some other pages of baptisms it had occurred to me that two black parents = negro and I knew most of the other descriptive words you listed, but I hadn't made the leap to think that "coloured" doesn't fit in to the descriptions list at a time when such specific terms were used.
So, if this is the right Nancy and she was illegitimate, are we ever going to discover who here mother was? We can't find Nancy on the 1841 census (we don't know when she moved from Jamaica to Scotland except that it was between her birth and 1844. It seems that Robert didn't write a will (I checked various online indexes of Jamaican probate entries, plus ScotlandsPeople and TNA).
Olde Crone
08-07-13, 12:33
Doesn't it seem cringingly embarrassing to see human beings described in such specific nuances of colour? (Yes, I know, that was then, this is now - but it still makes my toes curl, nevertheless).
OC
Langley Vale Sue
08-07-13, 13:12
Doesn't it seem cringingly embarrassing to see human beings described in such specific nuances of colour? (Yes, I know, that was then, this is now - but it still makes my toes curl, nevertheless).
OC
Less than 20 years ago my daughter had a boyfriend who was proud he was an 'octaroon'. If I remember rightly his father's great grandparents (or may have been his GG grandparents) were slaves in Jamaica and he was very proud of his heritage.
Robert died at Stuart Castle in Jamaica in 1833.
According to the link on post 7, James of Stank had five sons:
1 James, died in the West Indies
2 John, minister of Blair Atholl
3 Robert, making a fortune in the West Indies
4 Bruce, died in the East Indies
5 Walter, surgeon, died in the East Indies
6 Alexander, died at home
Pieced together various bits and pieces about Stuart Castle/Castle Stewart...
Stewart Castle, a fortress-like mansion, located on one of the largest sugar estates on the island, was built by James Stewart, a Scotsman, whose son, who was also called James, was Custos of Trelawny from 1812. Stewartown in Trelawny was established by the family.
The house is now a ruin.
In 1799, Stewart Castle comprised the mansion, a slave village housing 300 slaves and 1,200 acres of sugar plantation.
James's son, James Stewart II is described as a Scottish-Creole born in Jamaica. James was a anti-abolitionist and travelled to London to lobby for the retention of the slave trade.
The family had left Jamaica by the mid 19th century, probably as a result of the abolition of slavery and a collapse in the price of sugar.
In 1840, the estate was in the hands of the heirs of Robert Sheddon.
I couldn't decide if all those refs to Stewart/Stuart Castle referred to the same place as the ruins are in Trelawny Parish, but Robert's home seemed to be in St James (that is the nextdoor parish, so perhaps the land straddled the parish boundary?) As nearly all the plantations seemed to be called something castle and there were quite a few landowners called Stewart I did wonder if there were two properties of the same name. If there were 300 slaves at the end of the 18thC there were only about 40 in 1817 and this number remained pretty constant until Robert's death.
Shona, when you said:
James's son, James Stewart II is described as a Scottish-Creole born in Jamaica.
did you mean the son of this James?
1 James, died in the West Indies
Where did you read that (the Scottish-Creole bit), please?
I have the PCC will of James Stuart of the Parish of St James (think it's 1815 from memory, but is on my other computer!). I don't yet know who he is and though I can usually read this vintage of will easily, this one is a rubbish copy being extremely dark. I think he must be a fairly young man as he leaves things to his mother. I will try again later to read it, in case it helps!
There do seem to be a lot of James Stuarts/James Stewarts lurking around Jamaica - grr. I do think Castle Stewart and Stuart Castle are the same place, though.
The Creole ref is from a Google book snippet on the history of Trelawny parish.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6FRaHpZbQ3wC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=castle+stewart+creole+trelawney&source=bl&ots=ceJgiJMcpp&sig=P8u8sEuKL8NubMPdaoV1rLSmd4o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=su_aUfmmNKim0wWVp4CoBg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA
Ah yes, the land was in Trelawny, "then still part of old St James" (your Creole snippet). But those James Stewarts seems to have been out there a lot longer than Robert's line (if Robert was b in 1782 in Scotland) - could be cousins of some sort, or completely unconnected.
The will I have can't be for either of those James, so as you say, there do seem to be a lot of Stewarts in Jamaica (I keep thinking of Nancy travelling from Jamaica to Scotland -I hope she had warm underwear! lol)
or completely unconnected.
but not unconnected if they were living in the same property! lol :o
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