Alexander Harvie

Jamaica slave-factor and slave-owner.

1. According to Simon Smith, Alexander's brother John Harvie moved to Barbados in 1740 as a private tutor. Soon joined by his brothers William and Alexander Harvie, the three of them set up a dry good trading business and moved into the slave trade in the 1750s, financed by Lascelles and Maxwell. John and Alexander moved to Jamaica in 1751. Alexander was deceased by 1767. The Lascelles called in their debts and received a judgement in the High Court of Chancery in Jamaica in 1773. The Harvie estates were put up for sale and the highest offer received was over £87,000 currency. The Lascelles rejected this bid and acquired ownership of the estates in November 1777.

2. Alexander Harvie of Kingston, Esquire. Estate probated in Jamaica in 1767. Slave-ownership at probate: 445 of whom 235 were listed as male and 210 as female. 0 were listed as boys, girls or children. Total value of estate at probate: £95,992.56 Jamaican currency of which £28,465.25 currency was the value of enslaved people. Estate valuation included £0 currency cash, £53,985.31 currency debts and £0 currency plate. Trevor Burnard shows Alexander Harvie as leaving wealth of £68,566 (of which debts receivable by Harvie were £38,561) in 1767, making him the 14th wealthiest Jamaican dying between 1674 and 1784: this appears to take no account of any indebtedness by Harvie.

3. There is some confusion in the secondary sources as to the identity of Alexander Harvie's wife. It is universally accepted that Anne Harvie, the widowed daughter of Thomas Stevenson of Barbados, married Sir Walter Farquhar. However, sources differ as to the identity of Anne Harvie's deceased first husband. Simon Smith says [p. 197] that Alexander Harvie married Anne, daughter of Thomas Stevenson of Barbados 'while another of his [Stevenson's] daughters was the first wife of Thomas Harvie' but [p. 203] also says that 'In 1771 Thomas Harvie's widow married Sir Walter Farquhar (1738-1819).'The ODNB entry for Sir Walter Farquhar shows his wife as Anne nee Stephenson widow of 'Dr Harvie a physician'. It seems that Alexander married Elizabeth Stevenson, and his brother Thomas married Anne; it is possible that their brother John married a third sister.

1. S. D. Smith, Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic (Cambridge, 2006) pp. 195-204.

2. Trevor Burnard, Database of Jamaican inventories, 1674-1784; Burnard, Planters, merchants and slaves (2015) p. 160.

3. S. D. Smith, Slavery, Family and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic; Anne M. Powers says of Sir Walter Farquhar's daughter that 'Her mother Anne Stevenson had first been married to Dr Thomas Harvie of Jamaica', http://aparcelofribbons.co.uk/tag/sir-walter-farquhar/ [accessed 22/06/2018]. The Elizabeth Harvie widow of St James Westminster whose will was proved in 1786 was probably the widow of Alexander Harvie: she described Walter Farquhar surgeon as her brother-in-law.