Joseph Barnes

Slave-owner in Jamaica, and possibly the man of the same name who was a slave-trader and slave-factor in partnership with Charles Fairclough and others in Jamaica c. 1800. Joseph Barnes (?-1829) was married to Hannah (1766-1841) and the couple had one daughter Charlotte Hannah Barnes. As a child Charlotte was herself a slave-owner with her father listing a single enslaved person as belonging to Charlotte in the givings in for St. Catherine in 1809. Charlotte married William Trutch in Jamaica and the couple had four children - John, Caroline, Emily and Joseph. Their youngest son Joseph went on to become an influential figure in British Columbia, Canada. Charlotte died in 1876.

Joseph Barnes was a merchant and the 'proprietor of two large grazing farms', he owned Cumberland Pen and Cedar Grove Pen as well as a smaller property named Halfway Tree all of which were in St. Catherine. Joseph was noted as a merchant who 'traded regularly with Caymanian vessels' whose main trading product was cotton. He acted as an Alderman in 1808, Judge of the Supreme Court of Jamaica and acted as Mayor of Kingston between 1823-29. Barnes Gully is named for Joseph Barnes. Barnes was interested in science, horticulture and agriculture and served as an Honorary Member of the Council of the Society for the encouragement of Horticulture and Agriculture, and the Arts connected with them in Jamaica - the first institution of its kind in the British West Indies. Following Joseph Barnes' death in 1829 the family moved to England in 1834.

The heirs of Joseph Barnes are mentioned in Higman's Jamaica Surveyed as the owners of Cumberland Pen. Cumberland Pen was located in St. Catherine's, it was a large property of more than 1,000 acres which was worked by 300 enslaved people at the time of emancipation. The taxable livestock on the plantation amounted to 250. The total income for Cumberland Pen was £6,218 in 1832. On Joseph Barnes' death in 1829 the property descended to Thomas Barnes 'of Great Britain', Joseph's brother. Thomas employed Bartholomew Ibbott Williams (executor of Joseph's estate) as attorney and Samuel Sharpe Wortley as overseer. A detailed survey of Cumberland Pen was undertaken in 1848 by Thomas Harrison for McGeachy and Griffiths.

http://www.forumrarebooks.com/Manuscript-Jamaica-Will-and-testament-of-joseph-barnes.html T71/1 1817 Slave Register, National Archive, pp.351-2, pp.354-63, pp.1028-9. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/trutch_joseph_william_13E.html (Dictionary of Canadian Biography) Roger C. Smith, The Maritime Heritage of the Cayman Islands (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2000), p.189. Frank Cundall, Jamaica Place Names (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1909), p.9. Jamaica Almanac 1808. http://www.ksac.gov.jm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=83&showall=1 Jamaica Almanac 1811. American Vital Records from the Gentleman's Magazine, 1731-1868 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1987), p.17. The Philosophical Magazine and Journal: Comprehending the Various branches of Science, the Liberal and Fine Arts, Agriculture, Manufacture and Commerce, Volume 67 (London: Richard Taylor, 1826), p.146. Debates on the resolutions and bill for the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies (Maurice & Co., 1834), p.349. Barry Higman, Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation maps and plans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1988), pp.224-226.