Edmund Fearon Bourke senior

Son of Nicholas Bourke and Elizabeth Fearon (daughter of Thomas Fearon, Chief Justice of Jamaica 1756-1764), and father-in-law of Rev. Henry Fellowes (q.v.) and Ralph Rice (q.v.). Absentee owner of the Oakes estate in Clarendon until his death in 1812, for which the compensation was paid to trustees of his will and to the executors of his son, Edward Fearon Bourke junior.

Married Mary Goodin, daughter of George Goodin (1735-1799) of Llandilo Westmoreland (Goodin's sister Judith married Edward Barrett (d. 1798) of Cinnamon Hill estate). Inherited half of George Goodin's estate in 1799.  Of Cromhall Gloucestershire.

1. 'Mr E. F. Bourke left Jamaica about 1790, resided for seven years at Cromhall Co. Gloucester, where his wife died in 1800, then removed to Bath and Exmouth, at which latter place he died in 1812, but was buried at Cromhall.'

2. Edmund Fearon Bourke's son of the same name, whose executors were awarded compensation for some of the enslaved on Oakes, matriculated University College Oxford 21/02/1810 aged 15, and d.s.p.

3. There are two memorials in St Andrew's Church, Cromhall, Gloucestershire: "Sacred to the Memory of EDMUND FEARON BOURKE Esq. of the Island of Jamaica who Departed this Life at Exmouth in the County of Devon on Tuesday Janry 14th 1812 Aged 57 whose remains are deposited in the Family Vault underneath" and "SACRED to the memory of MARY the wife of EDMUND FEARON BOURKE of the Island of Jamaica who resided at Wood End in this parish for more than seven years. Her remains are placed in a vault purchas'd by a faculty from the Diocese of Glocester by the said EDMUND FEARON BOURKE in the chancel of this church, for the interment of his family. She died on the 30th July 1800, and in the 38th year of her age."

T71/879 Clarendon Nos. 157-161. The 1823 Slave Registration, undertaken by an agent to the trustees of Edmund Fearon Bourke, also notes that the enslaved on Oakes were 'represented to be the property of Mrs Mary Fearon'.

1. Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies (6 vols., London, Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1910-1919), Vol. V,  p. 247, Monumental Inscriptions in England relating to Jamaicans St John's Withycombe Raleigh, Co. Devon.

2. Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online].

We are grateful to Sara Broadbent and Rob Alexander for their help in compiling this entry.