John Bell

Owner of Kendace Estate and three other estates on Carriacou, Grenada. Deceased by 1817. The estates, which have not yet been traced in the compensation records, were shown subsequently as owned by Thomas Davis (q.v.). Probably the Dr John Bell active on Carriacou in the late 1790s, who was in some form of partnership with a William Arbuthnot [probably q.v. under Sir William Arbuthnot] in the early 1790s in seeking to buy an estate or estates on Carriacou, and whose widow reportedly remarried, to William Gordon Bell, c. 1811.

1. Acquired Bellevue plantation on Carriacou in 1787, subject to an annuity to support an earlier owner Pierre Servant's natural daughter Alsaire. A "Mallotto Girl Alzee and hir Child Marian" was bequeathed 20 enslaved people and a small plantation next to Bellevue in the will of John Bell (proved 1800). In 1791 he received by government grant three tracts of land on Grand Caicos in the Bahamas.

2. A Dr John Bell of Grenada was reported in an Edinburgh thesis of 1783 to have cured a case of tetanus on Grenada through deep incisions.

3. The daughter of a Dr John Bell of Grenada married John Wills 'late of South America' of Hesket Northumberland in 1833.

Stephen Mullen, 'John Campbell & Co. senior' in Tom Devine (ed.) Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past p. 131.

1. Joseph Alan Beatty, '“I bear witness”: An African's Quest for faith and community in the Atlantic World', PhD thesis, University of Florida (2014) pp. 87-89.

2. Literary and Biographical Magazine, and British Review for 1793 Volume II, p. 344.

3. Ancestry.com, England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973 [database online]. Her husband is indexed as John Wills Heskets, but this appears to be mistranscription.

We are grateful to Jo Broad for her assistance with compiling this entry.