Thomas Munro

1755 - 1st Apr 1815


Biography

  1. Planter and surveyor serving from 1784 to 1815, the year of his death. Owner of Kinloss sugar estate and a house in Martha Brae. He was also employed as an estate attorney and was the Lieutenant of the Trelawny Militia, Director and President of the Falmouth Water Company and Member for Trelawny in the House of Assembly in 1805 and 1815. He is described by Higman as 'the most successful of all Jamaican surveyors in achieving fortune and status during the period of slavery'.

  2. Thomas Munro esq “Member for this parish &c &c” died at Martha Brae at 3 a.m. 1 April and was buried in the churchyard Sunday 2 April 1815, aged 60 years.

  3. "His Royal Highness the Prince Regent has been pleased, in the name and on the behalf of His Majesty, to give and grant unto Thomas Munro Scott, of Dundee, in the County of Forfar, North Britain, M.D., youngest son of the Reverend James Scott, late of Auchterhouse, in the aforesaid county, deceased, by Margaret his wife, daughter of the late Reverend James Munro, of Kinloss in the County of Elgin, and sister to Thomas Munro, late of the parish of Trelawny in the county of Cornwall, and the island of Jamaica, Esq., also deceased, his Majesty's royal licence and authority, that he may take and use the surname of Munro only, in compliance with a clause contained in the will and testament of his aforesaid maternal uncle, Thomas Munro, deceased."

  4. Thomas Munro's father is in the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae: James Munro, educated at King's College, Aberdeen, 1729-1733; licensed by the Presbytery of Eligin 14/11/1749; ordered to Kinloss 14/05/1752; presented by Francis, Earl of Moray, December 1774; died 24/06/1780. Married Mary, daughter of George Gordon, minister of Kinloss (she died in 1770): children included a daughter who married Alexander Adam LL.D. (a natie of Rafford, rector of the High School, Edinburgh), a daughter Margaret who married James Scott, minister of Auchterhouse, and five other children.

No will has been found for Thomas Munro in Scotland.


Sources

  1. B.W Higman, Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, (University of the West Indies Press, 2001), p 34.

  2. Familysearch.org, Jamaican parish registers, Trelawny, Baptisms, marriages, burials 1771-1839, Vol. 1 p. 204.

  3. London Gazette 23/05/1816 Issue 17141 p. 1046.

  4. Hew Scott, Scotland Fasti Scotinae (1926) vol. 6 p. 376.


Further Information

Occupation
Surveyor and planter

Associated Estates (2)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

  • SD - Association Start Date
  • SY - Association Start Year
  • EA - Earliest Known Association
  • ED - Association End Date
  • EY - Association End Year
  • LA - Latest Known Association
1810 [EA] - 1815 [LA] → Owner
1809 [EA] - 1815 [LA] → Owner

Relationships (2)

Uncle → Nephew
Uncle → Nephew