Amaryllis Collymore

Free woman of colour, long-term partner of the European slave-owner Robert Collymore (q.v.), and mother of Robert Collymore (b. 1792). "[W]ithout doubt the richest free woman of color in pre-emancipation Barbados."

"In 1780, Amaryllis Collymore was sold as a slave to her white lover, Robert Collymore, owner of a substantial estate known as Haggat Hall, of properties in Bridgetown, and father of her four children. She was manumitted in 1784. Curiously, the manumission was effected through her resale to Robert's friend James Scuffield. Scuffield manumitted Amaryllis and her family in 1784. By 1805, she is listed as a property owner in Bridgetown where she sells a property valued at £800 in Roebuck Street. In 1824, she was bequeathed an estate called Lightfoots and several slaves by Robert. In her own will of 1826, Amaryllis left 67 slaves to various relatives, with an estimated value of £3,000. This was but a small portion of her property value. She also left several silverware items, furniture, houses and lands at Haggat Hall and Bridgetown, valued in excess of £7,000."

Likely the mother of eleven children with Robert Collymore, who all appear in the slave registers: Katherine Ann, Frances Lasley (or Leslie), Margaret Jane, Thomazin Ashby, Harriett, Robert junior, Mary, Samuel Francis, Jackson Brown, Susannah Ostrahan and Reynold (or Renn) Philips.

Amirillas [sic] Collymore was buried in the Old Church Yard, St Michael, Bridgetown, in 1828 aged 78 years.

Kit Candlin and Cassandra Pybus, Enterprising women: gender, race and power in the Revolutionary Atlantic (2015) pp. 38-39; Pedro L.V. Welch, "Unhappy and afflicted women": Free Colored Women in Barbados 1780-1834 http://cai.sg.inter.edu/revista-ciscla/volume29/welsh.htm [accessed 22/10/2016], which shows that Robert Collymore left her the Lightfoots estate on his death in 1824: this has not been reconciled with the Slave Registers which show different ownership for Lightfoots. Photograph of memorial stone to Amaryllis Collymore in Karl Watson, 'Vignettes of Eight Interesting Barbadians', Ins and Outs of Barbados 2014 - The People Edition (2014)https://issuu.com/millerpublishing/docs/iobgi14_ebook/255 [accessed 22/10/2020].