George Paplay

Jamaica slave-owner, probably a merchant given he acted as prize agent in Jamaica in 1763-1764.

1. Will of George Paplay of Kingston Jamaica proved 05/03/1770. In the will he made numerous bequests of annuities totalling several hundred pounds p.a. and monetary legacies, including: £2000 to Sarah Livingston wife of Philip Philip Livingston; £7000 to his daughter Dorothy; £6000 to his daughter Sarah; £5000 to his daughter Catherine. His mother-in-law Sarah Baxter and sister-in-law Miss Ann[a] Baxter were left smaller legacies, including an annuity of £50 p.a. to Ann. He left a house and land at Sunninghill in Berkshire England to his daughter Dorothy, but all the rest of his real and personal estate went to his son Edward Manning Paplay.

2. His daughter Dorothy married John Stables, an East India Co. man, who left the Sunninghill estate in Berkshire to his daughter Harriet in his will of 1795. George Romney painted Dorothy Stables with her daughters Harriet and Maria in 1777 and 1778: a mezzotint by John Raphael Smith c. 1781 from this painting is in the NPG.

3. George Paplay of Kingston, Esquire. Estate probated in Jamaica in 1770. Slave-ownership at probate: 616 of whom 335 were listed as male and 281 as female. 0 were listed as boys, girls or children. Total value of estate at probate: £135,539.15 Jamaican currency of which £29,983.13 currency was the value of enslaved people. Estate valuation included £231.3 currency cash, £98,091.61 currency debts and £907.34 currency plate.

Nadine Hunt at York University Canada has undertaken work on George Paplay: part of this work appears as 'Commercial and enslaved diasporas at work in eighteenth-century Jamaica', Harriet Tubman Seminar, http://www.tubmaninstitute.ca/sites/default/files/file/HUNT,%20Commercial%20and%20Enslaved%20Diasporas(1).pdf [accessed 09/08/2016].

1. PROB 11/956/51. The will is transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/wills-31.htm [accessed 09/08/2016].

2. Will of John Stables of Croydon proved 27/02/1795 PROB 11/1256/185; NPG D40864, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp127495/dorothy-stables-ne-papley [accessed 13/12/2016].

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

We are grateful to Terry Hunter Jr. for his assistance with compiling this entry.