Thomas Degrasse

Thomas Degrasse was a free man of colour who lived in the parish of St John Figtree, Nevis.

1. In September 1814 his father, the free man of colour Benjamin Degrasse, purchased him from a free mulatto carpenter, John Laurence. Thomas Degrasse was bought with his siblings John and Benjamin and their mother, Sally, for £500 Nevis currency. Their father immediately freed them and another brother, Roger.

2. In 1817 Thomas Degrasse’s father registered three enslaved people: Frances, a 28-year-old African woman; Wallace, a 25-year-old Creole and a one-year-old boy, William. Frances died between 1822 and 1825 during a period of great suffering in the island. After a spell of bad weather provisions were in short supply and many people fell ill. It was such a very ‘sickly’ time that in December 1822 the Legislature passed an ‘An Act for the relief of the Negro population of the island of Nevis’.

3. On 26 December 1826 Thomas Degrasse’s father bought from Thomas’s previous owner the black girl Satira who was said to have been ‘about 8’ years old. First registered in 1817 as a two-year-old, then called Statira, she would actually have been about 11 years old. Her slow physical development may well have been due to having been malnourished during the difficult years of food shortages and illnesses.

4. In January 1828 Thomas Degrasse’s father bought two more girls from another free coloured man, John Fraser Arthurton: Kitty and Penny. They were about 12 and five years old.

5. Thomas Degrasse’s father Benjamin Degrasse died on 30 November 1831.

6. Thomas Degrasse’s mother was able to earn some money from hiring out Wallace who appears to have been a cooper; she is known to have received £3:15:0 for supplying a cooper to Stoney Grove plantation. Thomas Degrasse, who worked as a carpenter, may have supported her financially, as well as his brothers Roger and Benjamin who were Assistant Teachers in the parish of St John Figtree.

7. One of the girls Thomas Degrasse’s father had bought had given birth to a boy whom his mother registered in 1834. Sarah Degrasse died shortly afterwards. Thomas Degrasse, as his mother’s executor, claimed compensation under her will. Referring to an indenture dated 8 April 1835, he assigned the compensation for four people to Hester Smith.

8. In March 1837 Thomas Degrasse and his brother Roger Degrasse were members of a jury; Thomas Degrasse’s jury service in another court case in May 1840 is the last known reference to him. His brother Benjamin was in 1846 the sexton of St John’s, Nevis.

We are grateful to Christine Eickelmann for compiling this entry.

1. Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court Registry, Nevis (ECSCRN), Book of Wills 1787-1805 f357 (reference to John Laurence, a mulatto carpenter). ECSCRN, CR 1814-1817 ff96-8 and ff99-100.

2. Bristol University Special Collections (BULSC), Pinney Papers (PP), Dom Box C3-17: PT Huggins, London, to Charles Pinney, 11 February 1823. BULSC, PP, LB 56: Mills & Galpine, Nevis, to PA & Co, 29 January 1823. Third Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice in the West Indies, 5 October 1826 p. 45.

3. John Laurence registered Statira as sold not to Benjamin Degrasse but to Sarah Laurence, the woman he had previously owned. Her name may suggest that Thomas Degrasse’s parents were not legally married (UK National Archives (UKNA), T 71/367 Slave Register Nevis 1828 f107).

4. UKNA, T 71/364-367 Slave Registers Nevis 1817 f308, 1822 f141, 1825 f10 and f115 and 1828 f58.

5. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford, Box MSS. W. Ind. S. 24 (b)

6. BULSC, PP, WI Box 1829-1836 Accounts Stoney Grove Estate, 1836 Accounts. UKNA, T 71/1236 Slave Compensation Commission: Counter-claims Nevis, Claim No 9. UKNA, CO 187/5 Blue Book Nevis 1831.

7. UKNA, T 71/1236 Slave Compensation Commission: Counter-claims Nevis, Claim No 9.

8. ECSCRN, Nevis Court Records 1836-1843 f117 and f328. UKNA, CO 187/20 Blue Book Nevis 1846.