UCL

Stapletons

St Kitts | St Peter Basseterre

Estate Details

Associated People (9)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

  • SD - Association Start Date
  • SY - Association Start Year
  • EA - Earliest Known Association
  • ED - Association End Date
  • EY - Association End Year
  • LA - Latest Known Association
- 1776 [LA] → Joint owner
Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton 5th Bart.

In 1776, Catherine Stapleton bought out the interests of Sir Robert Cotton and William Watkins in the Stapleton estates on St Kitts and Nevis for £18,000 each

- 1803 [EY] → Joint owner
Sir James Wright bart.

'His [Sir Thomas Stapleton 5th bart.'s] younger sister, Catherine (1732-1802), married James Wright (d. 1803) in 1754; Wright was later Resident Minister to the Republic of Venice, and was created baronet in 1772. Wright followed Sir Thomas's example and offered to sell his interest in the Fountain plantation to the Misses Stapleton for £4,800. However, negotiations over this transaction broke down, though they did purchase a fragmentary share of the personal estate (disputed between Wright and Sir Thomas) for £681. A one-eighth interest in the Fountain plantation remained in the Wright family until 1840, when it was sold to the major proprietor, Lord Combermere, for £3,500.'

1717 [SY] - 1722 [EY] → Attorney
Col. William McDowall I

Stuart M. Nisbet, 'Early Scottish sugar planters in the Leeward Islands, c. 1660-1740', in T. M. Devine, Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: the Caribbean Connection (2015) chapter 3.

1722 [SY] - 1729 [EY] → Attorney
James Milliken I

Stuart M. Nisbet, 'Early Scottish sugar planters in the Leeward Islands, c. 1660-1740', in T. M. Devine, Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: the Caribbean Connection (2015) chapter 3.

1743 [EA] - → Joint owner
Penelope Yonge (née Stapleton)
1776 [EA] - 1815 [EY] → Joint owner
Catherine Stapleton
1817 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Joint owner
Barbara Yonge
1817 [EA] - 1825 [LA] → Joint owner
Rev. William Davies Shipley
1822 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Joint owner
Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere

Associated Claims (1)

St Kitts 329 (Stapletons)
£3,739 7S 6D

Notes

The finding aid for the Bodrhyddan Estate Papers 58/1-143 includes considerable correspondence 1755-1802 from agents and merchants to the Yonge and Stapleton families concerning their estates on Nevis and St Kitts, https://archives.library.wales/downloads/bodrhyddan-estate-papers.pdf

Estate Information (8)

What is this?

1746
[Name] Stapleton's  
 

An unnamed estate but inferred to be Stapletons subject to legacies secured on it passed on the death of Lady Stapleton in 1746 to her 8 grandchildren, the five daughters of James Russell Stapleton and the three younger children of her other son Sir William Stapleton 4th bart. (1698-1740). This estate appears to be the same estate as the one referred to by J.R.V. Johnston as 'Fountain.'

Bangor University Stapleton-Cotton Manuscripts http://www.archiveswales.org.uk/anw/get_collection.php?inst_id=39&coll_id=10986&expand= [accessed 13/05/2016]; J.R.V. Johnston, 'The Stapleton sugar plantations in the Leeward Islands', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48 (1) (1965), pp. 175-206.

1817
[Number of enslaved people] 196(Tot)  
[Name] [no name given]  
 

Return of William Davis Shipley, Dean of St. Asapp, and Barbara Young, joint owners; returned by George Sanders Vaughan, attorney and manager.

 
T 71/253 080 - 085
1822
[Number of enslaved people] 220(Tot)  
[Name] Stapleton  
 

Return of the Right Honorable Lord Combermere and unnamed others, joint owners; returned by John Swindell, attorney and manager; 9 of the enslaved people listed on the increase list had been removed from the Stapleton Estate in Nevis.

 
T 71/255 24 -25
1825
[Number of enslaved people] 226(Tot)  
[Name] Stapleton  
 

Returned by John Swindell, attorney and manager of the estate of the Right Hon Lord Combermere, William Davis Shipley and Barbara Younge, joint owners.

 
T 71/256 93-94
1828
[Name] Stapletons  
[Size] 241  
[Crop] sugar  
 

Listed in St Peter Basseterre as an estate of 241 acres in William McMahon's 1828 map of St Kitts with 166 acres of caneland. Proprietor(s) Lord Combermere.

 
William McMahon, A New Topographical Map of the Island of Saint Christopher, West Indies... (1828)
1828
[Number of enslaved people] 226(Tot)  
[Name] Stapleton  
 

Returned by John Swindell, attorney of the estate of the Right Hon'ble Lord Combermere and others, joint owners. St. Peter, Basseterre

 
T 71/258 30-31
1831
[Number of enslaved people] 224(Tot)  
[Name] Stapleton  
 

Return of the Rt Hon Lord Combermere and others, owner; returned by John Swindell, attorney.

 
T 71/259 37-38
1834
[Number of enslaved people] 227(Tot)  
[Name] Stapleton Estate  
 

Return of Lord Combermere, owner; returned by Adam Stevens, attorney.

 
T 71/260 40 to 41