Thomas Fairholme

Early owner of land in Tobago, appearing in 1773 as Present Proprietor of Courland Bay division (St David parish) Lot no. 4 (300 acres) originally purchased by G & J Kearton 16/05/1766. The Lot became part of Orange Hill and Amity Hope.

1. [Feb] 7 [1786] At Tobago [Death of] Thomas Fairholme, Esq.

2. Mrs Eleanor Pringle, widow of Thomas Fairholme, died in Tobago 10/09/1797. Walter Pringle (q.v.) had married Eleanor Lidderdale: among their daughters was Eleonora [sic] Fairholme, nee Pringle.

3. The will of Adam Fairholme of Tobago was proved 25/11/1772. The will was dated 07/06/1770, and left all Adam's estate, including unspecified real estate in Tobago, to his brother Thomas of the City of Edinburgh. An Adam Fairholme, a merchant in London, had become bankrupt in 1764.

4. Adam and Thomas Fairholme, private bankers in Edinburgh, provided £5000 in coin to the Bank of Scotland in 1742; Thomas Fairholme was elected Deputy Governor in 1748. The firm went bankrupt in 1763, suggesting a connection if not identity with Adam Fairholme above. Thomas Fairholme was the author of Answers for Francis Farquharson (1766) (Farquharson was trustee for the creditors of Adam and Thomas Fairholme). The link is further suggested by the description in Thomas Fairholm's [sic] probate 24/02/1791 as 'late merchant in Edinburgh, thereafter in the island of Tobago.'

'Tables showing the Lots in each Parish, numbered as originally granted - the original Grantee - the name of the Lot, or lots, if one has been acquired, and the present Possessor where there is one' and 'A Table, showing the Estates in cultivation in 1832, and their Owners, in 1832, copied from the list appended to Byres' map of that date, with those in cultivation in 1862', Henry Iles Woodcock, A History of Tobago (Ayr: Smith and Grant, 1867; new impression London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1971); John Fowler, A summary account of the present flourishing state of the respectable colony of Tobago in the British West Indies illustrated with a map of the island and a plan of its settlement, agreeably to the sales by his Majesty’s Commissioners (London: A Grant, 1774) pp. 36-37.

1. Scots Magazine Vol. 48 May 1786 p. 259.

2. David Dobson, Scottish Settlers in North America 1625-1825 Vol. I p. 215; Vol. III pp. 143-4; Vol. IV p. 118.

3. PROB 11/982/348; London Gazette 10403 24/03/1764 p. 4.

4. Richard Saville, Bank of Scotland: a history, 1695-1995 pp. 130, 274; Ancestry.com, UK, Extracted Probate Records, 1269-1975 Commissariot Record of Edinburgh, [database online]