John Sober II

In a List of inhabitants of St Peter, Barbados, 1780, Sober was listed as owning 195 enslaved. Almost certainly the John Sober who signed the 1783 address to George III from the planters of the West India islands residing in Great Britain and the merchants trading to those islands, and also the John Sober (1739-1795) whose widow Martha Bersheba Sober (his second wife) died in London c. 1796, and whose will was proved 17/01/1797. She left the estate she had inherited from her husband to Hope Elletston Sober and then to John Sober, Abraham Cumberbatch Sober and Penelope Wentworth Sober, her step-children.

John Sober, son of John Sober of Barbados, gentleman, matriculated Queen's College, Oxford (the same college as his father), 08/04/1756 aged 17. He married Penelope Blake 06/11/1760 in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Barbados Department of Archives, RB9/3/6; London Gazette 12422 11/03/1783 p. 2; Will of Martha Bersheba Sober widow of St James Middlesex proved PROB 11/1284/166. An online family genealogy supports the identification of John Sober (1739-1795) as the husband of (1) Penelope Blake and (2) Martha Bersheba, http://cumberbatch.one-name.net/familygroup.php?familyID=F165&tree=001 [accessed 19/04/2016].

Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]; David Dobson, American Vital Records from the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1868 (Baltimore, 1987) p. 30.

We are grateful to Mark Dickinson for his assistance with compiling this entry.