Hon. Anna Maria Coventry (née Eves)

Awarded the compensation for 6 enslaved people on Clifford's Cottage in St Ann Jamaica. The Parliamentary Papers give 'Hon. Maria Coventry' while the Register of Claims shows 'Anna Maria Coventry.'   

1. Anna Maria Eves married Ebenezer Pope, in Castle Frome, Herefordshire, England, in 1791. They had three children baptised in London: Mary Ann (1792), Edward (q.v., 1794) and Frances Eves (1795). The eldest child was born at Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn. Anna Maria, second daughter of Francis Eves of Clifford Place, Herefordshire, widow of Ebenezer Pope, married the Hon. John Coventry, son of the 6th Earl of Coventry, August 1809. Anna Maria's brother John Eves was baptised in Clifford, Herefordshire, in 1772 and died in Jamaica in 1802; the naming of the estate as Clifford Cottage suggests Anna Maria inherited it from her brother.

2. Philip Wright's Monumental Inscriptions of Jamaica p. 254 erroneously gives Anna Maria as the wife of Christopher Lipscomb, the first Bishop of Jamaica. In fact, Lipscomb married Frances Eves Pope, the daughter of Anna Maria, in London in 1824.

3. Death, at Hinton Blewett rectory, age 72, Anna Maria, widow of the Hon. John Coventry, 2nd daughter of Francis Eves of Clifford Place, Herefordshire Esquire, 28/03/1837.

T71/882 St Ann claim no. 233, Anna Maria Coventry England, owner-in-fee. Clifford Cottage in St Ann appears only in the 1845 Jamaica Almanac. The Hon. Mrs Coventry is shown with no estate in the 1831 and 1832 Jamaica Almanacs for St Ann.

1. Familysearch.org batch no. M15540-2. Ancestry.com, England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 [database online]. Ancestry.com, London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]. Debrett's Peerage (1840) p. 184. Email from Isabel Hutchison, 10/08/2014.

2. Philip Wright, Monumental Inscriptions of Jamaica (London, Society of Genealogists, 1966) p. 254, Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online]; Ancestry.com, England and Wales, Marriages, 1538-1940 [database online].

3. Gentleman's Magazine, May 1837 p. 557.

We are grateful to Isabel Hutchison for her assistance with compiling this entry.