Walter Nisbet

Slave-owner of Nevis. LBS has concluded that this was the same man involved in the case of Nisbet v Smith in 1789, which shows him as having married Ann Blomberg nee Maynard. His estates and enslaved people later passed into the hands of James Daniell (q.v.), through a process not yet traced by LBS.

1. Walter Nisbet of Mount Pleasant, Nevis, and of Grafton Street, London, was born in Nevis on 3 January 1745; he married at St. Marylebone, London, on 19 April 1784, Anne, daughter of Robert Parry of Plas Newydd, Denbighshire [when he was described as 'divorced from his late wife']. He died in Nevis on 8 December 1797. She died at Bath on 2 December 1819, aged 67. He was the son of Walter Nisbet, who was in turn the second son of Archibald Nisbet II of Carfin. Walter Nisbet Sr. was born on 10 July 1706. He emigrated to Nevis, West Indies, and bought the estate of Mount Pleasant. He married 1743 Mary, daughter of Josiah Webbe of New River, Nevis. She died 24 January 1752-3 in her twenty-ninth year. He was a member of the Council of Nevis from 1759 to 1765. He died on 5 June 1765.

2. Walter Nisbet (1745-1797) of this entry became the manager of the Nevis estates of the Stapleton family after the death of his father who had been the manager from 'about 1736 to 1765'. He was 'apparently dismissed in 1770 but continued to take an unofficial interest in the estate for the next two years'. His brother 'Josiah Nisbet, MD (whose widow married Horatio Nelson in 1787) ... was plantation doctor from 1773 to 1781'.

3. Walter Nisbet is named [as 'Walter Nesbitt'] as the lessee and purchaser in 1784 of two estates from James Russell Madan (q.v.), Hog Valley and Lower Ground [?], together with the enslaved people on them, in Madan's will proved in 1788. Madan described him as of Grafton Street in 1784 but then of Nevis.

4. In Anne Nisbet's will made at Bath 20/03/1819, she was consumed with anxiety for her daughter Caroline who she feared would be left destitute after her own death. She had nothing, she said, to leave to her dear sons. In a subsequent note, she recorded the provision of support by the sons for her and for their sister.

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, Volume 2, 'Nisbet v Smith' 1789 p. 449. The summary of the case says that he was possessed of property in Jamaica [sic] mortgaged to Culling Smith.

1. https://descentfromadam.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/the-nisbets-of-carfin-connection/ (sourced 15/07/2015)

2. J.R.V. Johnston (1965) 'The Stapleton sugar plantations in the Leeward Islands', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 48 (1), pg. 195.

3. PROB 11/1173/26.

4. Will of Anne Nisbet widow of Bath proved 05/02/1820, PROB 11/1625/110.