Dr. Henry Barham

Henry Barham was the son of Henry Barham (1670?-1726) a Fellow of the Royal Society, and writer on Natural History, who lived from 1670 ­to 1726, and whom the Dictionary of National Biography described as being a descendant of the Barhams of Barham Court, presumably in Teston. The elder Henry Barham died in Jamaica in 1726, leaving there a son also named Henry, a doctor of medicine. The second Henry, after acquiring a considerable property by marriage in 1728 to Mary Heith Stephenson (d. 1735), the widow of the former owner of Mesopotamia, returned to England in 1736, and settled in Staines in Middlesex, where he remarried, to Elizabeth Smith Foster Ayscough, another widow of Jamaican slave-owners (her first two husbands were John Foster and John Ayscough). Dr. Henry Barham died in 1746.

1. Memorial Inscription at Staines, Co. Middlesex, England: North wall of north gallery, on a white marble tablet surmounted by a circular medallion containing a man's head and shoulders:- 'Here lie the remains of Henry Barham, Esqr.* who was descended from Nicholas Barham of Kent, sergeant at law. vide Warburtons Midx.) and who died at Duncroft House, in this parish 1746 abt. 51 years. also of Elizabeth his wife, who died 1756 abt. 55 years: she was the widow of John Foster, Esq whose ancestor Captn. Thomas Foster, of Northumberland being concerned in the capture of Jamaica, had large grants of land allotted him in that island: by her first husband, she had issue Thomas, John, William, Samuel, and Joseph; also two daughters, Margaret and Sarah: Thomas was sometime M.P. for Dorchester. he died without issue and is buried here. John also died without issue. William. and Samuel. both had issue whose families still survive, Margaret married Colin Campbell Esqr. whose son Colin was Colonel in the Guards, and dying without issue is buried [here?] Sarah married William Mathew Burt Esqr. who was M.P. for Great Marlow, and subsequently Governor. General of the Leeward Islands where he died. Joseph the youngest son of his wife, Henry Barham, who dying without issue bequeathed his estate on condition of his taking the name of Barham. Joseph married Dorothy the daughter of John Vaughan, Esq. of Trecoon, Pembrokeshire; and in 2nd marriage, the Lady Hill, of Hardwick Hall, Shropshire; where they both lie buried.' This monument having fallen with a part of the old church was restored in 1828. Will of Henry Barham, late of Jamaica, now of St. George's, Hanover Square, Esq. A monument for myself & wife Elizabeth to be erected in Staines Church for £400. My aunt Mrs. Mary Burman of St. Germans, co. Cornwall... My father's tankerd marked SBH Estate to Fosters, etc. (P.C.C., 253, Edmunds.)

2. Henry Barham was listed in the Jamaican Quit Rent books for 1754 as the owner of 3288 acres of land in Westmoreland. It's not clear why he is listed after his death. Joseph Foster Barham appears too, as the owner of 3788 acres of land in Westmoreland and 2708 acres of land in St Elizabeth, total 6496 acres.

3. Henry Barham of Britain, Esquire. Estate probated in Jamaica in 1747. Slave-ownership at probate: 287 of whom 152 were listed as male and 135 as female. 64 were listed as boys, girls or children. Total value of estate at probate: £22426.48 Jamaican currency of which £13826 currency was the value of enslaved people. Estate valuation included £195.82 currency cash, £2354.91 currency debts and £0 currency plate.

Barham family history site; Richard S. Dunn, A tale of two plantations : slave life and labor in Jamaica and Virginia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014) pp. 27-29.

1. Caribbeana Volume III, transcribed and available at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/bcarib60.htm.

2. 'A List of landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of acres each person possessed taken from the quit rent books in the year 1754', TNA CO 142/31 transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples2/1754lead.htm. Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies (6 vols., London, Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1910-1919) vol. 2 p. 116.

3. Trevor Burnard, Database of Jamaican inventories, 1674-1784.