UCL

Adams Castle

Barbados | Christ Church

Estate Details

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Associated People (5)

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
- 1806 [LA] → Owner
Thomas Maxwell Adams
1750 [EA] - → Owner
Thomas Maxwell Adams the elder

Thomas Adams 'of Adams Castle', the father of Thomas Maxwell Adams the elder, was buried at St Michael's Barbados 04/09/1764. Hughes Queree shows that Adams Castle passed to Thomas Maxwell Adams the elder from his great-aunt Elizabeth Maxwell in 1750.

1817 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Executrix
Anne St John Maxwell Adams (née Trefusis)
1823 [EA] - 1823 [LA] → Attorney
Robert Reece
1826 [EA] - 1829 [LA] → Attorney
Edward Thomas

Probably this Edward Thomas.

Associated Claims (1)

Barbados 3301 (Adams Castle)
£4,400 8S 7D

Notes

According to Hughes-Queree, the plantation was established by Sir Robert Hackett between 1674 and 1679. Under his will of 1679, his wife, Dame Frances Hackett was to have ‘sole possession & management’ for life of the plantation of 400 acres. She re-married in 1679 to Thomas Walrond, who became the owner of the 340 acres. By 1715 the plantation was reduced to 246 acres. Walrond died in 1694. His heirs included Frances and Elizabeth. Frances married William Adams. Their grandson, Thomas Maxwell Adams, inherited the plantation from his great aunt, Elizabeth Maxwell neé Walrond in 1750.

According to the Adams Castle Development Inc. website (2015), "The first recorded history of Adams Castle Estate was in 1674 as seen on Forde’s map of Barbados, only 47 years after the first English settlement on the island. It was then called Hackett’s Plantation and owned by Sir Robert Hackett, who left the 400 acre plantation to his wife Dame Frances Hackett in 1679 with instructions that it would go to his son William Hackett on her death. Unfortunately for William, Frances remarried in that same year to Thomas Walrond and the plantation passed to her husband and was renamed Walrond’s Plantation.

Frances and Thomas had two daughters, Frances and Elizabeth. The elder, Frances, married William Adams and inherited the property in 1694 upon the death of Frances Walrond formerly Hackett. Frances and William Adams had a son, Thomas Adams who later married Margaret Maxwell. They in turn had a son named Thomas Maxwell Adams. On the death of her first husband Frances Adams remarried to the Honourable George Graeme, owner of Graeme Hall, and the estate became his. The younger sister, Elizabeth Walrond, married James Elliot and in 1715 he began a seven year process which resulted in his ownership of the estate.

On his death James Elliott bequeathed the property to his wife Elizabeth who, although remarrying to Thomas Maxwell, had no children to whom to pass the estate. Hence, on her death in 1750, Elizabeth bequeathed Walrond’s Plantation to her great-nephew Thomas Maxwell Adams and at that time its name changed to Adams Castle.

The Estate remained in the Adams family until the 1850s after which it changed hands many times among some of the leading families in Barbados including the Gills, Ashbys, Inces, Wards and Deanes."

Sources

Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations; Adams Castle Development website, accessed 27 January 2015.

Estate Information (6)

What is this?

1817
[Number of enslaved people] 188(Tot) 155(F) 73(M)  
 

Return of Mrs Anne St John Adams, Executrix, the property of the late Thomas Maxwell Adams.

 
T71/521 1-5
1823
[Number of enslaved people] 186(Tot)  
 

Return of Robert Reece, Attorney to Ann St John Adams, Executrix, of the property of Thomas Maxwell Adams, deceased (the husband of Anne Adams). Previously 194 enslaved.

 
T71/529 645-6
1826
[Number of enslaved people] 191(Tot)  
[Name] [No name given]  
 

Return of Edward Thomas, Attorney to Anne Adams, Executrix, of the property of T. M. Adams, deceased (the husband of Anne Adams).

 
T71/536 3
1829
[Number of enslaved people] 207(Tot)  
[Name] [No name given]  
 

Return of Edward Thomas, Attorney to Anne Adams, Executrix, of the property of T. M. Adams, deceased (the husband of Anne Adams).

 
T71/544 5
1832
[Number of enslaved people] 214(Tot)  
 

Return of Anne Adams, Executrix, of the property of T. M. Adams, deceased (the husband of Anne Adams).

The association between the Adams Castle estate and the 1832 evolution record - from the Barbados 1832 Slave Register - is probable. The Register does not name the return as being for Adams Castle but the numbers of the enslaved and the notes on the claim (Barbados 3301) suggest that it must be. (This note also applies to previous evolution records.)

 
T71/549 2-3
1913
[Name] Adams Castle  
[Size] 287  
 

Listed in Christ Church, property of Ward.

 
Barbados 1913 list from the Hughes-Quere indexes transcribed at https://creolelinks.com/1913-barbados-plantation-owners-names.html.