UCL

Seawells

Barbados | Christ Church

Estate Details

Associated People (7)

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
1783 [EA] - 1794 [LA] → Joint owner
Elizabeth Newton
1783 [EA] - 1794 [LA] → Joint owner
Dame Sarah Holte (née Newton)
1794 [EA] - 1824 [LA] → Owner
John Lane
1794 [EA] - 1794 [LA] → Owner
Elizabeth Newton

Elizabeth survived her co-owner and sister Dame Sarah Holte by a few months, and inherited her sister's interest in property in Britain, and (including property in people) in Barbados.

1817 [EA] - 1826 [LA] → Attorney
General Robert Haynes
1826 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Owner
John Newton Lane
1829 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Manager
Nathaniel Cave

Associated Claims (1)

Barbados 3204 (Seawells)
£4,746 1S 10D

Notes

In c. 1663 the land was in the possession of Samuel Newton but by 1674 was owned by the Hon. Richard Seawell (Attorney General, 1684). By 1680 he owned 550 acres in Christ Church. By 1712, Elizabeth Seawell, widow, had become the owner of at least a substantial part of this. In 1714 part of the Seawell plantation was sold to Edward Charnock who established Charnock’s plantation (q.v.). In c. 1745 ownership of the Seawell and Newton plantations moved to the Newton family.

This estate is among the four estates (Mount Vernon in the US; Newton and Seawells in Barbados; and Prospect in Portland Jamaica,) whose labour organisation and working methods are analysed in Justin Roberts, Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807 (Cambridge: CUP, 2013).

Sources

Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations.

Estate Information (7)

What is this?

1794
 

1794 Seawell owned jointly by John and Thomas Lane of London, heirs of the Newton family. By 1803 it seems to have been in the sole hands of John Lane.

 
Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations
1817
[Number of enslaved people] 174(Tot) 102(F) 72(M)  
[Name] Seawell  
 

Return of Robert Haynes, Attorney, the property of John Lane. Previously 182 enslaved.

 
T71/521 154-58
1823
[Number of enslaved people] 190(Tot)  
[Name] [no name given]  
 

Return of Robert Haynes, Attorney, the property of John Lane. Previously 182 enslaved. Though no estate name is given this is certainly Seawells.

 
T71/529 724
1826
[Number of enslaved people] 208(Tot)  
 

Return of The Hon. Robert Haynes, Attorney, the property of John Newton Lane.

 
T71/536 112-14
1829
[Number of enslaved people] 217(Tot)  
 

Return of Nathaniel Cave (Manager), the property of John Newton Lane.

 
T71/544 119-20
1832
[Number of enslaved people] 218(Tot)  
 

Return of Nathaniel Cave, Manager, the property of John Newton Lane.

 
T71/549 124
1913
[Name] Seawell  
[Size] 343  
 

Listed in Christ Church, property of Lane.

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