Leonard Parkinson

Returned Jamaican slave-factor, purchasing Kinnersely Castle and its lands c. 1801. His long and elaborate trust will, with 25 pages of provisions over his lands in Herefordshire, signals a decisive shift of gravity away from Jamaica.

1. Baptised in 1744 in Kirklevington near Stockton-on-Tees, North Yorkshire, in 1744, the third child and eldest son of 11 known children of Leonard Parkinson.

2. Attorney to Richard Watt senior on George's Plain in Westmoreland, 1782-1796. Richard Newton, son of Leonard and Elizabeth Parkinson, born 19/04/1790 and baptised in St James, Jamaica, 15/02/1791.

3. 'Leonard P[arkinson], formerly of the parish of St. James in Jamaica, purchased the estate of Kinnersley Castle in Herefordshire, where he died 11 July 1817, and a pedigree of his descendants appeared in Burke's "L[anded] G[entry]." In a deed relating to Belvidere Estate in Hanover it is recited that Leonard Parkinson, Esq., as surviving partner of George Goodin Barrett, Esq., (who died 8 Oct. 1795), recovered judgment against Thomas Reid, Esq., for £28,000 and £31,657 and costs, on payment of which sums he signed a release.

4. Will of Leonard Parkinson proved 10/02/1818. In the will he rehearsed the marriage settlement of his son Richard with Lucy Lechmere under which he [the testator] had settled an annuity of £750 p.a. on the couple secured on his estates in Herefordshire, and changed the underlying package of security by pledging the lands, including tenanted farms, in Herefordshire: he entailed the underlying lands to Richard and his heirs and then to his [the testator's] children starting with his son Leonard junior. He left Kinnersley Castle in trust for the benefit of his daughter Mary Elizabeth Clarke; and the rest of his British lands to his son Leonard.

5. The will of Leonard Parkinson [jun.], the son, was proved 21/02/1826: he left his property in Britain and Jamaica to [his brother] Richard Parkinson. John Parkinson who died in 1859 in Jersey leaving £5000 was the son of Richard Parkinson.

R.A. Barrett shows Leonard Parkinson and Col. George Barrett selling 26 shiploads of enslaved Africans between 1789 and 1792, cited in Jean Besson, Martha Brae's Two Histories p. 74.

1. Findmypast.co.uk, North Yorkshire baptisms [database online].

2. Anthony Tibbles, ‘“My interest be your guide”: Richard Watt (1724–1796), Merchant of Liverpool and Kingston, Jamaica’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 166 (2017), 25–44; Familysearch.org, unindexed Jamaican parish registers, St James, Baptisms, marriages, burials 1770-1809, Vol. 1 p. 69.

3. Caribbeana Vol. V 'Will of Ralph Parkinson of Jamaica.'

4. PROB 11/1601/113.

5. PROB 11/1709/184; National Probate Calendar 1860.