William Parke of the Thicketts and Hermitage

William Parke of The Thicketts and the Hermitage in Jamaica, father of William Parke (q.v.) and husband of Eleanor Baldwin Crosse (q.v., under Eleanor Baldwin Parke), died in London in 1813.

1. Owner of 83 enslaved people and 360 stock in St Ann, Jamaica, in 1792.

2. Will of William Parke of the Hermitage in St Ann Jamaica proved 06/02/1815. Under the will he left his widow Eleanor Baldwin Parke an annuity of £400 p.a. as well as 'the use of' several named enslaved people (Little Mary, Ann, Hannah, Sally, Peggy, Dido [?] and Ben) for her life, while several others (Little George, Abba, Williams [sic], Mary and James were specified as her own property). He left £20,000 consols in trust for his four daughters, given as Charlotte Tucker, Frances Gallimore, Jane Parke and Eleanor Parke. He left a further £3000 in trust to support the marriage settlement of £120 p.a. he had made for his daughter Mary Rose, wife of Samuel Whitehorne Rose. The rest of his estate he left in trust for his four sons but with the proviso that William Parke could assume the whole on payment of £5000 to each of his brothers (Samuel, Charles and James).

3. William Parke senior died in 1813 in Gower Street, London. His memorial inscription at St James, Hampstead Road, London, reads: SACRED To the Memory of WILLIAM PARKE late of the Hermitage St. Ann's in the Island of JAMAICA ESQre. born the 5th. of November 1752 died the 27th. of April 1813 in the 61st. Year of his Age". After his death, a legal dispute occurred as to whether documents found in his possession in Gower Street constituted formal amendments to the will he had written in Jamaica at an earlier date.

1. 'A List of slaves and stock in the parish of St Ann taken the 28th March 1792 pursuant to order of the Honourable House of Assembly... transcribed from papers presented to the British Museum by Charles E. Long ref. Add. 12435' transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/mstann1792.htm.

2. PROB 11/1565/122.

3. Memorial inscription from Survey of London Volume 21 available at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65195. Legal case in Edmund Burke, Dodsley's Annual Register, Vol. 57, pp. 262-263 available at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=h3tIAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA262&lpg=PA262&dq=parke+hermitage+jamaica&source=bl&ots=wctaFsj4M5&sig=JjBf1EJn1d-gQYOEXzuUTqAXMiA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vyVMUczlKYaV0QXuyYG4Bw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=parke%20hermitage%20jamaica&f=false [accessed 22/03/2013].