John Hoyes of Prospect, Jamaica

Owner of Prospect estate in St John, Jamaica. Prospect was held by a trustee for John Hoyes in 1826, implying that he was a minor at that time. Son of John Hoyes 1762-1808, and Mary Riviere (sic) Cumming, nee McGlashan, who later, in 1812, married Thomas R Jackson and is later recorded at Prospect.

1. Born 19/04/1806 and baptised in Kingston 20/05/1806, son of John Hoyes and Mary Runa [sic] his wife.

2. John Hoyes on Bonhill married Julia Caroline Blake 10/10/1848 at St James's Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. Banns had previously been read in Luss. In the census of 1851 he was age 44, born in Jamaica, living at 10 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh, with his wife, two male and four female servants, occupation "Commission Provision Merchant." In 1861 he was at Torrisdale Castle in Argyllshire, born in Kingston, Jamaica, "retired merchant." In 1871 and 1881 he was at 7 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, the same address as at his death 09/01/1885 when he left over £60,000.

1. Familysearch.org, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880 [database online].

2. GROS OPR Marriages 499 30 161 Luss; Scotland census 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1881; Scotland, National Probate Index (Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories), 1876-1936.

We are grateful to Jim Brennan for his assistance with compiling this entry.

Notes on the Hoyes Family in Forres, by Jim Brennan, following the Aberdeen Journal Notes and Queries

The main relevant figures are three of the sons of John Hoyes at Knockomie, east of Forres and Beatrice Watson:

I James Hoyes in Balnaferry, likely to have been the James Hoyes in Forres who married Margaret Adam in Rafford in 1747. His youngest son, John (q.v., as John Hoyes) married Mary Riviere Cuming, nee McGlashan, a carpenter’s widow, in Jamaica, where he died in 1808. John Hoyes was in turn the father of a son named John (1806-1885, q.v. as John Hoyes of Prospect).

II James in Balnaferry’s younger brother, William, merchant and Baillie of Forres, who married Margaret Logan and whose sons John and Lewis (both q.v, as John Hoyes of Grenada and Lewis Hoyes) made careers in Grenada

III John, the third brother, who according to Fasti Ecclesiae began as schoolmaster in Alves, was ordained there, assisted in the parish, and under the patronage of Francis Earl of Moray, was installed minister of Dalgety in Fife, and later, on the appointment of James Gillan, minister of Kinloss, to Speymouth was moved by the Earl to Kinloss, Morayshire. His wife, Janet Reid, was the daughter of the minister of Beath, in Fife, and her mother, Ann Dott, whose father had been convener of the shoemakers in Cupar, may possibly have been of Huguenot descent. Fasti Ecclesiae gives his birth year as 1744 – the OPR as 1739, and the Edinburgh Magazine report of his 1818 death gives his age as 74.

Rev John Hoyes’s eldest son, born in 1788, was also a John, also in Jamaica, and married in Kingston in 1816, Helen Petrie (q.v.), daughter of Ninian Petrie in St Thomas in the East dying in 1818, the year of his father’s death. In 1844 Helen Hoyes (nee Petrie) registered, and had accepted, an assertion in the Kingston register that her late husband had been of white origin entirely. Rev. John Hoyes’s youngest child was Alexander Hoyes (q.v.), born in 1800.