Burton Williams

Resident planter in Trinidad, but awarded the compensation for 80 enslaved people in Bahamas. Father of Edward Eyre Williams (q.v.) and almost certainly of Richard Burton Williams (also q.v.), and brother of Henry Micajah Williams (q.v.).

1. Burton Williams moved 336 enslaved people from the Bahamas to Trinidad 'where he had bought land to set up sugar plantations for himself and his four sons' between 1821 and 1823. In 1821 Burton Williams and his sons held at least 450 slaves in the Bahamas, most on Watling's Island but others on Cat Island and Eleuthera. They were placed on three estates near San Fernando called Williamsville, Picton and Cupar Grange. The latter was not purchased by Burton Williams until 1828.

2. Burton Williams was Member of Assembly for Watlings Island in 1816.

T71/890 Bahamas claim no. 254.

1. William Griggs, Lunacy versus Liberty, a Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the defective state of the law as regards insane persons, and private asylums...by William Griggs, late patient at Kensington House, Kensington (London, W. Griggs, 1832), p. 9. FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online]; Michael Craton, 'Changing patterns of the slave familiy in the British West Indies', in Gad Heuman and James Walvin (eds.) The Slavery Reader pp. 286-287; Brown v Anderson, Report of Cases heard before the Judicial Committee and...Privy Council (1837-1838) Vol.II pp. 252-253.

2. Colonial Journal vol. 2 p. 368.