William Webb

London merchant, dying in Bristol.

1. Will of William Webb of Gower Street, but late of Hotwells Bristol proved 15/12/1806. In the will he left £3000 in trust for his sister Mary Wells, wife of William Wells; he left annuities of £30 p.a. to the wife and three children of his brother Rees Webb, and to the daughter of his late half-brother Alexander Cunningham. He left his brother Rees Webb £2000; Rees Webb and then his children were the residuary legatees. In codicil made in Bristol in 1806 (which identified his brother Rees Webb as of Barbados) he revoked the annuities to his nieces and replaced them with annuities of £50 p.a.

2. William Webb and Rees Webb had earlier been bankrupt; in 1793 their certificates were issued when they were shown as 'both late of the island of Dominica, now of the City of Bristol.'

3. By a deed of 01/01/1800, Robert Lauder sold to William Webb of the City of London for £2940 an annuity of £420 p.a secured on an unnamed plantation on St Vincent and 89 named enslaved people. The estate had reportedly been valued at £17,038 in 1799, and was said to have been lands granted originally to Walter Waters, in Charlotte parish. LBS has not traced the estate, but the names of a number of the enslaved people given in this deed recur - many crossed out - in the 1817 Slave Register for Langley Park, among a much larger population of enslaved people.

1. PROB 11/1453/129. A copy of this will was identified in the St Vincent Archives by Prof. Kenneth Morgan, and recorded in EAP345: A survey of the endangered archives of St Vincent, West Indies, during the slavery era http://eap.bl.uk/downloads/eap345_survey.pdf [accessed 31/03/2017], which gives a date of 12/08/1808, possibly the date of inscription in the island records.

2. London Gazette 26 January 1793, Issue 13497 p. 88.

3. Deed Book 1800, British Library, EAP688/1/1/11, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP688-1-1-11 pp. 122 et seq.