Lieutenant Francis Price

Profile & Legacies Summary

1635 - 1689

Biography

It is likely that Francis Price was one of 110 unnamed junior officers in the regiment of Colonel Anthony Buller which later became the Guanaboa Regiment. On the 13th March 1670 price filed a patent for '840 acres situate lying and being at Luidas in St. John's Parish called Worthy Park.' He also held a patent for 150 acres of land at Flamingo Savanna in St. Catherine's in conjunction with Nicholas Philpott. The land in St. John's formed the basis of the Price family fortune. Price planted cacoa trees to begin with but by 1673 he had switched to sugar production as the dominant crop.

Price rose from the rank of Lieutenant to Major in the militia. He was chosen twice as one of the members of the Assembly for St. John. For 21 years following 1667 he was a partner of Peter Beckford, the founder of one the largest Jamaica fortunes. In November 1667 Price sold Beckford a half share in his plantation at Guanaboa for £300. In five transactions between 1673 and 1677 the partners added 274 acres to the plantation and built a storehouse in Spanish Town for their produce. When the parishes of St. Mary's and St. Ann's were opened up for development the two men purchased vast acreage. In 1676 Price and Beckford bought out the original 140 acres in Lluidas owned by Richard Garland and John Eaton. Price continued to add to Worthy Park's acreage with a further 123 acres of land in Lluidas Savanna in 1682 and 600 acres if Packington Field in 1684.

Francis Price married Elizabeth Coxon (d.1692) who may have been a Bermudian relative of a notorious buccaneer of the same name. The couple had three sons, Thomas, Francis, and Charles and a daughter, Elizabeth. Through the marriage of their daughter Elizabeth, the Prices were joined with the Roses of St. Thomas in the Vale. Elizabeth married Francis Rose, the youngest of the three Rose brothers. The Rose family were well connected, the three brothers were the son of a prominent London apothecary. Francis Rose held extensive lands in the vale of Linstead. When the male line of Roses ended in 1724, it was the grandsons of Francis Price who inherited the land.

Francis Price died a poor man with all of his capital tied up in the land at Lluidas. However he had laid the foundations for the Price family to ascend to the height of Jamaica's plantocracy.

Sources

Michael Craton and James Walvin, A Jamaican Plantation: The History of Worthy Park 1670-1970 (London: W. H. Allen, 1970).

Further Information

Spouse

Elizabeth Coxton

Children

Francis, Thomas, Charles and Elizabeth

Will

When Francis Price died his sons had not yet reached their majority therefore the patrimony was held in trust by Elizabeth, their mother. The estate and plantation at Luidas was intended for the eldest son Francis but until he reached his majority he was only bequested 'six breeding Cowes and halfe of the Negroes, hoggs and fowles.' The remainder of the land and possessions of Francis Price 'that is to say the moyety of half part of the plantation I have in company with Col. Peter Beckford at Guanaboa together with the negroes utensils cattle and Horses on said Estate as alsoe my land at Mountain River likewise my land at the Northside and my land in St. Dorothy's parish... together with my part of the Store House in town' went to Thomas and Charles on the death of their mother. Price's daughter Elizabeth would receive all the property if the sons should die without 'heirs of their bodyes legally begotten.' She also received 'Twenty pounds Current money', as did her first born son Francis Rose Price.

Occupation

Soldier, property developer, planter

Associated Estates (1)

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