William Dunbar

With Charles Henry Okey (q.v.), his nephew by marriage, awarded the compensation as owner-in-fee of Dunbar's estate on Antigua (which in his will William Dunbar said had belonged to his father). Given as of Aberyswith [sic] county of Cardigan in the counterclaim of William Kent Thomas, to whom (with John Vincent Purrier) in 1831 Dunbar and Okey had allegedly mortgaged the estate. His father was very probably George Dunbar of London (whose will proved in 1790 shows a son William), a mortgagee of Dr John Dunbar of Antigua, reportedly the previous owner of Dunbar's. He was certainly the brother of Eliza or Elizabeth Dunbar (c. 1780-1804), who married Capt William Tod and whose daughter Eliza Dunbar Tod married Charles Henry Okey in 1825. 

1. Dunbar's belonged in 1770s to Dr John Dunbar, (b. 1721) Member of Assembly who married in Antigua (1) Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Watkins and (2) in 1773 Sarah Warner, a daughter of Samuel H. Warner 'a woman much younger than himself', who, however, died before he did, in 1787. The Dunbar plantation of 165 acres was in the Dickinson Bay division, from which the doctor was returned to the assembly.

2. The will of John Dunbar Doctor of Physic of the Island of Antigua proved 07/07/1798 does not explicitly identify estates or property in enslaved people on Antigua, but shows a mortgage of £7000 in the hand of George Dunbar. 

3. William Dunbar aged 60 of Queen Ann Street was buried at St George Bloomsbury on 29/03/1842; the probate of the will of William Dunbar of 49 Manchester Street Manchester [made in 1840] proved 16/06/1842 shows him as formerly of Manchester Street but late of 22 Queen Ann Street. Under the will he left his half of Dunbar's 'formerly the estate and property of my late father' to his son William George Dunbar.

T71/877 Antigua claim no. 21 (Dunbar's Estate, Dickensons Bay); T71/1219 no. 21 counterclaim of William Kent Thomas. T71/1609 letter from Baker & Hodgson refer to Messrs Dunbar & Okey as owners. T71/1207 identifies both William Dunbar and Charles Henry Okey as of London.

1. Janet Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality, being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina and Portugal in the Years 1774 to 1776, ed. Evangeline Walker Andrews (New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1921) p. 79. 

2. PROB 11/1309. 

3. Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online]; PROB 11/1963/356.