Martin Williams senior

Owner of Old Hope in Westmoreland and Seven Rivers and Anchovy Bottom estates in St James, Jamaica.

1. Will of Martin Williams [late residing at Westmoreland Jamaica but now] of London proved 03/05/1786. He left all his estate in trust for his wife and children.

2. In 1759, Martin Williams offered Thomas Thistlewood a position at Moreland estate, owned by his brother George.

3. Martin Williams was the third son of Thomas Williams of Westmoreland, Esquire. His father had founded the Old Hope estate in Westmoreland parish, and he apparently assisted his sons in forming new estates. His eldest son and namesake, Thomas, formed the three adjoining estates of Good Hope, Wales and Lansquinet in the valley of the Martha Brae River in what was at the time the eastern part of the parish of St James. His second son, George, formed the Williams Moreland estate in Westmoreland.

4. The third son, Martin Williams, formed the Seven Rivers and Anchovy Bottom estates in the parish of St James. The Seven Rivers estate was probably formed in the mid-1750s. In 1779 the estate amounted to about 2,500 acres, and a deed of this date shows that it was formed from lands originally patented by Henry Fenwick, James Fforrester, James Patterson, John Woodcott and John Thompson. In addition to the sugar plantation and works, the estate comprised two cattle pens called Bickersteth and Henderson Pens. The estate at Anchovy Bottom appears to have been formed a decade later, from ‘several runs of land’, formerly patented by James Ross, John Bartibo, Samuel Barnett, John James and John Childermass. A map of 1808 shows that it amounted to 1,273 acres.

5. The youngest of Thomas Williams’s sons, John Williams, inherited Old Hope from his father. On the evening of 10 September 1770, Thistlewood received a visit from Old Hope’s overseer, Samuel Say, who had heard rumours that John Williams had died in gaol a broken man. Say was well-placed to recount his master’s decline in the world: ‘He had 357 Negroes from the old folks with the estate, 90 of the best have been took off, many died, for now 220 left. Mr Say imagines he has spent and made away with, since he commenced master, about £50,000.’ About 1772, John Williams made his estate at Old Hope, now heavily mortgaged, over to his elder brother Martin.

6. Martin Williams manumitted his eight children by Eleanor Williams and married Elizabeth Barrett Waite in December 1771. An appendix to a deed of 30 June 1777 shows that there were 434 enslaved people at Seven Rivers and 277 at Anchovy Bottom. The listings give full details of occupations, gender and motherhood of the enslaved. Likewise, there were probably some 250 enslaved workers at Old Hope. Thus Martin Williams senior was one of the most prominent slave-owners of the island. In about 1784, Martin Williams, his wife and six surviving white children departed Jamaica and took up residence in London. He died 02/04/1786 aged about 64. In his will he left his entire property with four trustees. They were directed to sell the Jamaican estates and apply the proceeds of the sales in the maintenance and education of his children, with the remainder of his estate being divided equally as the sons attained the age of twenty-one and as the daughters married.

We are grateful to Melvin Humphreys for assistance in compiling this entry.

1. PROB 11/1141/25.

2. Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (Chapel Hill, 2004) p. 47.

3. Title deeds in Cambridgeshire Archives R/55/7/122; TNA CO142/31, quit rents return, 1754.

4. TNA C108/174, deed of 22 September 1779, reciting mortgage of 10–12 October 1775 and deed providing additional security of 30 June 1777; TNA C108/174, deed of 22 September 1779; Deeds at Jamaica Island Record Office, Liber 205, ff.84 and 176; Liber 209, ff.51–2; National Library of Jamaica , Estate Maps, St James, 180.

5. Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire, p. 64.

6. TNA C108/174.