John Watson Howell

John Watson Howell, born 01/09/1760 and baptised 25/01/1761 in St Catherine, Jamaica, son of Thomas Howell and his wife Susanna. No marriage found for him. Later joint owner of Belle Plain in Clarendon, Jamaica, with his brother Thomas Parkes Howell.

John Watson Howell, an enslaved person formerly known as Davy, was baptised 05/03/1799 in St Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica, in a group of 42 enslaved people from Serge Island estate. He is the only one with a middle name, and the only one with the surname Howell (the most common surname is Elmslie, also the name of the estate owner), so may have been mixed-race and an illegitimate child of John Watson Howell or his brother Thomas Parkes Howell. It's possible he is the joint owner of Belle Plain, rather than the John Watson Howell born in 1760.

John Watson Howell, "a mulatto child of free condition aged 3 years" was baptised in Clarendon, Jamaica, 12/04/1823 along with William Bennett Howell, "a mulatto child of free condition aged 2 years" and Thomas Parkes Howell, "a quadroon child of free condition aged 17 months". Their relationship to the slave-owning Howell brothers is unknown.

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

We are grateful to Mark Dickinson for his assistance with compiling this entry.