Schaw Grosett

Slave-owner in Jamaica through marriage, father of John Rock Grosett (q.v.).

1. 'Schaw [Grosett] a younger son of Walter Grosett of Alloa, was born in 1741 and was probably involved in the family’s Portuguese interests. On 13 Mar. 1783 he married Mary Rock (1755-1807), and on the same day her sister, Hannah Spencer Rock (1759-1808), married Edward Shirley of Cockthorpe Hall. The brides became coheiresses to the Jamaican plantations of their grandfather John Spencer (d. 1768) on the decease of their brother John Spencer Rock, and of their mother Hannah (in 1797), who after the death of their father Thomas Rock in 1772, had married, 13 July 1773, Henry Shirley (d. 1812) of Upper Wimpole Street, another Jamaican planter. John Rock Grosett, who spent some of his youth in Lisbon and served briefly in the army in England, consolidated this inheritance in 1810 by marrying his orphaned first cousin, Mary Spencer Shirley. Apart from the provision which was made for his unmarried sister Hannah Spencer, Grosett succeeded to his father’s entire estate, which included personal wealth sworn under £18,000, in April 1820. However, like his father, he also experienced prolonged legal problems over his West Indian possessions, and he had to set aside £10,000 for his younger children in order to leave the properties to the eldest at his death.'

2. Will of Schaw Grosett of Clifton Bristol proved 20/05/1820. In the will he left his property in trust to pay his daughter Hannah Spencer Grosett an annuity of £600 p.a. and give her use of his freehold house in Harley Place Clifton for life. He had a balance, since diminished, of over £12,000 with the Protheroes of Bristol. He left his half-share of the Petersfield and Spring Garden estates in Jamaica to his son John Rock Grosett, subject to the mortgage for £80,427 7s 9d held by Henry Shirley over the whole of the two estates. He explained that the estates had been settled (after Hannah Rock's death) on him and his wife Mary Rock, and on Hannah Spencer Rock and her husband Edward Shirley by the women's mother Hannah Rock then married to Henry Shirley, on the respective marriages of the two couples in 1783.

1. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/grosett-john-1784-1866

2. PROB 11/1629/289.