Baxters

Estate Details

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Associated People (4)

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
- 1793 [EY] → Owner
1759 [EA] - 1770 [LA] → Mortgage Holder
1793 [EA] - 1823 [LA] → Owner
1823 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Owner

Associated Claims (1)

£3,050 15S 8D

Notes

Known as Baxter’s after the owner, Stephen Baxter who had owned the plantation in 1647, having bought half of it from Hugh Harper with whom he had owned the plantation since, apparently, 1630. Between 1663 and 1685 the land which was to become Baxter’s plantation was owned by various people. In 1685 Michael Child of St. Lucy sold to William Merricke for £10,000 sterling a plantation in St. Andrew & St. Joseph called Baxter's Valley: 420 acres, 2 windmills and 140 enslaved people. In 1691 William Forster of St. Peter, attorney for Sir William Merriche [or Merricke] of Bristol, England, sold to William Dottin of St. Andrews for £8,000 sterling 420 acres in St. Andrew & St. Joseph. The acreage was made up of 33 acres at Chalky Mount & other lesser pieces of land & Baxter’s plantation of 304 acres.

By his will of 1704 William Dottin bequeathed Baxter’s to his son John Dottin.

The Dottin family then owned Baxter’s until 1793. There were various debts on the estate between in the 1720s but by 1783-84 the estate had passed to Dottin Maycock, Solicitor General, who purchased Baxter’s from his aunt, Elizabeth Dottin, on the death of his uncle John Dottin (President of the Barbados Council). The estate had been mortgaged to William Baker, Alderman of London in 1759. The mortgage was secured on 3 plantations: Mount Edge (St Thomas: 73 enslaved; 166 acres); The Spring (St Thomas: 35 enslaved; 104 acres); Baxter’s (St Andrew: 113 enslaved; 366 acres). John Dottin later sold Mount Edge and applied the purchase price to reducing the mortgage. When Dottin Maycock bought Baxters, the mortgage of £4,000 was assumed by Thomas & John Daniel who paid that sum to the executors of Sir William Baker, deceased.


Sources

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


Estate Information (9)

What is this?

1793
 

1793: John Beckles, Attorney General, bought Baxter’s from Dottin Maycock and on his death in 1823 bequeathed it to his son Hon. John Alleyne Beckles.

 
Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations.
1817
[Number of enslaved people] 90(Tot) 36(F) 54(M)  
 

Return of John Beckles, his own property.

 
T71/522 272-74
1823
 

Hon. John Alleyne Beckles becomes the owner on the death of his father.

 
Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations.
1823
[Number of enslaved people] 143(Tot)  
 

Return of John Beckles, his own property. Previously 122 enslaved. Of the increase of 32 enslaved since 1820 the most significant were the purchase of 9 enslaved from John Blagrove, Executor to the estate of John H. Archer and the purchase of 6 enslaved from William Oxley, Master in Chancery, the late property of Thomas McIntosh.

 
T71/530 374-75
1826
[Number of enslaved people] 143(Tot)  
 

Return of the Hon John A. Beckles, Executor, the property of the Hon. John Beckles, deceased. Previously 143 enslaved. 1 sent from the Bay; 2 births, 3 deaths. 143 were a gift to John A. Beckles. The return by the Hon. John A. Beckles which followed gave the total enslaved as 143, the gift of the Hon John Beckles, deceased.

 
T71/537 169-73; 174-79
1829
[Number of enslaved people] 141(Tot)  
 

Return of John A. Beckles, his own property. Previously 143 enslaved.

 
T71/543 312
1831
 

According to Hughes-Queree, in 1831 the Hon John Alleyne Beckles gave to his son, John Alleyne Beckles, 10 acres of Baxters plantation. "This was commonly done to give sons & other male adult relatives the franchise."

 
Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations.
1832
[Number of enslaved people] 130(Tot)  
 

Return of J. A. Beckles, owner.

 
T71/550 313-14
1913
[Name] Baxters  
[Size] 295  
 

Listed in St Andrew, property of Haynes.

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