Thomas Tipping

Early purchaser of land in Tobago, appearing as the Present Proprietor c. 1773 of Barbados Bay division (St George parish) Lot no. 18 (200 acres) (and possibly Lot no. 19 of 300 acres) originally purchased 16/05/1766 by Samuel Martin. The two Lots became the Friendship estate.

1. Thomas Tipping was a mortgagor of Arnold and Albert Nesbit of London in 1770, pledging an estate in Barbados and an estate in Tobago (both unnamed) as security for £5219 4s 4d at 6 per cent p.a.. In December 1771, by which time his debt was £7284 19s 2d, Tipping agreed to allow the Nesbits to contract with any third party for debt up to £12,000, offering his estate in Tobago as security. The Nesbits had had the Dowager Countess of Macclesfield take on the debt and the security after she paid them the balance owed by Tipping to the Nesbits; the dispute was about the rate of interest (8%) claimed by the Countess as the maximum permissible rate in Tobago (that in Barbados was 6%). Tipping was identifed as resident in Tobago at the outset but in Barbados by 1771.

2. "The Dowager Countess of Macclesfield was a relative of the Nesbitt brothers, who may have been her nephews. She was born Dorothy Nesbitt and was an aunt of Mrs George Hyde Clarke (nee Katherine Hussey). George Hyde Clarke owned Swanswick Estate on Jamaica, while his brother, Edward, owned the Hyde Estate on the same island. "

3. This is probably the same Thomas Tipping who, In 1772, appears to have been the owner of what was to become known as Gregg’s Farm, St Andrew Barbados. (200 acres). By 1778 the farm was mortgaged to Joseph Paice. [See record for Gregg's Farm for further details.]

4. Thomas and John Tipping were slave-factors on Barbados for Edward Grace of London in 1769, when Grace was informed of the death of John Tipping at Dominique [sic] on his way to Barbados.

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. 32-32; '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).

1. William Brown, Reports of Cases Argued in the High Court of Chancery...1778-1794 (1819) Vol. II pp. 641-2.

2. Email from Mitchell Owens 05/06/2018 sourced to family records.

3. Barbados Department of Archives. Hughes-Queree Index of Plantations.

4. T.S. Ashton Letters of a West African Trader: Edward Grace 1767-70 pp. 31-38.

We are grateful to Mitchell Owens for his assistance with compiling this entry.