James Neave of Nunton

Father of Susan Batt nee Neave (q.v.), and previous owner of Galways plantation, and the enslaved people on it, on Montserrat. No probate or will has yet been found for him: he died in 1794. The James Neave who was a second-wave purchaser of land on Dominica - by 1777 he was shown as the present possessor of St John Lots nos. 60, 61, 64, 73 & 77 (481 acres in all) - was presumably the same man.

1. 18 [September 1794] At Nunton, near Salisbury, [death of] James Neave, one of the Directors of the S. Sea Company.

2. James Neave appeared among the 'Planters of His Majesties West India islands residing in Great Britain and...the Merchants trading to the said islands' who signed an address to the King in 1783 on the peace with the American colonies, celebrating the revival of the British Empire in the Atlantic as 'so nearly too on the broad basis of its former Establishments' while remarking 'Happier still had we been if this Allegiance could have been extended to all and had been in Exclusion of none.'

3. In 1791 Rawson Aislabie signed on behalf of James Neave as well as his own behalf an address to the Sir John Orde, Governor of Dominica, after the suppression of an 'insurrection' by enslaved people there.

John Byres, References to a plan of the island of Dominica as surveyed from the year 1765 and 1773 (London, 1777). Lot no. 73 had originally been purchased by Richard Neave and two others.

1. Scots Magazine Vol. 56 (1794) p. 656.

2. London Gazette 12422 11/03/1783 p. 2.

3. Naval Chronicle for 1804 p. 190.