Jane Carr (née Owens)

Mortgagee of George Wickham Washington Ledeatt on Antigua, on an estate inferred to have been Collens. This is conceivably the same woman as the Mrs Jane Carr of Barbadoes, an annuitant on Eshott Hall estate in Northumberland, aged 56 as of 1783, and formerly the wife of Thomas Carr (they had divorced and he died in 1793): she had apparently moved to Antigua by 1793.

1. Will of Jane Carr widow of island of Antigua [made 02/09/1816] proved 03/10/1820. In the will she left £24 to the poor of the Protestant Church of Cove [Cobh] in the County of Cork, and identified Christopher Owens as her brother. She provided that land and a two-room tenement in St John's Antigua be provided for a formerly enslaved woman named Pink who had been freed by Jane Carr's deceased daughter. She instructed her executors to pursue the money owed to her arising from her sale of land in St John's for £1000 to John Proudfoot. She left her investment in consols to be divided between her brother Christopher and sisters Ann and Catherine Owens and Esther Morris. She requested that George Wickham Washington Ledeatt not be disturbed on his plantation by demands for repayment of the principal of the £3000 mortgage she held over his estate [and enslaved people] provided the interest was current. In a final codicil (one of a series) when she was shown as of Cove, she revoked the legacy to the poor of Cove, and made her nephew (also called Christopher Owens, the son of her brother) her residuary legatee.

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/userfiles/NESAG-Newsletter-5.pd [accessed 17/04/2012], now superseded by Popular Politics Archive No. 863, The Slavery Business and the North East, http://ppp.nelh.net Topic No. 863 [accessed 29/05/2016].

1. PROB 11/1635/13.

We are grateful to Sean Creighton for his help with this entry.