Thomas Slater of Liverpool

Merchant of Liverpool, brother and trustee of the slave-trader Gill Slater (who had had a business relationship with Peter Haffey of St Vincent and appears to have been bankrupt in 1793).

1. Thomas Slater, baptised 05/03/1735, in the Elder Yard Chapel (Presbyterian), Chesterfield, Derbyshire, son of Adam Slater of Chesterfield. His younger brother Gill was baptised in the same place 28/11/1737. His father Adam Slater was a surgeon apothecary and his mother Eliza was probably nee Johnson.

2. Will of Thomas Slater of Liverpool proved 06/02/1818. Under the will he left his two estates on St Vincent known as Queensbury estate or plantation and the Vermont estate in trust [the trustees were his daughter Mary, sons Silas and Leonard and nephew Mark Whyte of Barrow Hill, Staffs.], for the benefit as to 3/8ths to his son Silas, 2/8ths each to his sons Anthony and Leonard, and 1/8th between his daughters Joyce and Mary. He gave permission for the sale of the estates but sought to limit the sale of the shares in them outside the family. He left two further sons Robert and Adam annuities of £300 p.a. each payable from his personalty.

3. Likely burial: Thomas Slater of Rodney Street, Liverpool, buried at Walton-on-the-Hill, Lancashire, 18/11/1817 aged 81 years.

Will of Gill Slater merchant of Liverpool proved 27/10/1802, PROB 11/1382/187.

1. Ancestry.com, England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1970 [database online]. See PROB 11/840/55, the will of his father Adam Slater, MD of Chesterfield, who bequeathed £200 a year to his wife Eliza, £2500 to each of his children Jane, Joyce, Elizabeth, Thomas, Gill, Richard and Silas, £20 to his "father Johnson", all rest and residue to eldest son Adam, and also mentions his brothers Silas Hooper and Thomas Handley and cousin Richard Slater, mercer. A codicil to the will added "I desire if my son Thomas lives to practice as Surgeon Apothecary he may have the house and shop with their appurtenances as also the drugs and utensils belonging to the shop which I now enjoy nad dwell in together with the land and buildings at Boythrope containing twelve or thirteen acres being in four closes and the orchard lately planted there, he paying my son Adam five hundred pounds." Later codicils mark the marriage of his daughter Jane to Pemberton Milnes of Wakefield and Joyce to Pemberton's brother Robert Milnes of Wakefield. Will of Robert Milnes, merchant of Wakefield, PROB 11/1039/319.

2. PROB 11/1601/62.

3. Ancestry.com, Lancashire, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1986.

We are grateful to John M. Bishop for his assistance with compiling this entry.