Dugald Malcolm

The Malcolm family has a new entry in the ODBNB [as 'merchants, landowners and politicians'] which shows the role of Dugald Malcolm (1724/5-1785) in laying the foundations of the family fortune in Jamaica, to which his cousin Neill Malcolm 11th of Poltalloch (q.v.) succeeded.

1. Dugald Malcolme [Malcolm] was listed in the Jamaican Quit Rent books for 1754 as the owner of 300 acres of land in St Elizabeth.

2. Dugald Malcolm contributed £50 to the University of Pennsylvania following Dr John Morgan's fundraising tour of the West Indies in 1772-1773.

3. Will of Dugald Malcolm of [Pell Rover Hanover at present residing at Queen Anne Street West in] St Marylebone [made 17/01/1785] proved 14/02/1785. In the will he left £140 currency to each of Alexander a carpenter 'a mulatto man', and Elsey [?] 'a mulatto woman' daughter of Juba, for the two to buy enslaved people: these were presumably his natural children. He provided £250 p.a. and £8000 for his recognised natural son Captain Alexander Malcolm, late of HM's 97th Regiment of Foot, now reduced. He left his Pell River estate and the rest of his real and personal property to his cousin Neill Malcolm [11th of Poltalloch] then also in St Marylebone.

Matthew Kilburn, ‘Malcolm family of Poltalloch (per. 1750–1857)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2016 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/107421, accessed 18 Nov 2016]

1. 'A List of landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of acres each person possessed taken from the quit rent books in the year 1754', TNA CO 142/31 transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples2/1754lead.htm.

2. C. S. Graubard, 'Documenting the University of Pennsylvania's Connection to Slavery (2018) via archives.upenn.edu [accessed 16/01/2019].

3. PROB 11/1126/242.

We are grateful to Paul Hitchings for his assistance with compiling this entry.