Dr Francis Rigby Brodbelt

Dr Rogby Brodbelt contributed £15 to the University of Pennsylvania following Dr John Morgan's fundraising tour of the West Indies in 1772-1773. He graduated MD from Edinburgh University in 1767 and was working as a physician in Spanish Town, Jamaica, in 1783.

Will of Francis Rigby Brodbelt Doctor of Physic of St Catherine Jamaica proved 26/08/1797. He left his wife Ann Gardner Brodbelt £10,000 Jamaican currency and his house in Spanishtown. He gave Dr James Lee the option to purchase his supplies of medicines and drugs, paying for them after three years, and he asked his wife in order to please James Lee to manumit a 'negro woman slave her property named Bella alias Eliza Johnston'; if she did he ordered she [his wife] be paid £200 or three new negroes. He had he said been sending money to England to be invested in the funds (which he believed had been done), and he ordered his executors to invest more in order to reach the equivalent of £10,000 currency for each of his daughters Ann Maria Brodbelt and Jane Gardner Brodbelt [the ambiguity of these provisions, i.e. whether the legacies were £10,000 currency each or half the amounts remitted, were litigated in Raymond v Brodbelt in 1800]. He forgave his brother John Brodbelt of St Thomas-in-the-Vale his indebtedness of 'a large sum on money'. He recommended to his executors that where his debtors could not pay their obligations except by bonds or notes to lay out those bills in the purchase of 'new negroes' and to lease and let them out on 'make good leases'. His residuary heir was his son, also Francis Rigby Brodbelt.

William Smith, Joseph Hopkinson, and Plunket Fleeson Glentworth, Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Minute Books, Volume 2, 1768-1779 p. 74, entry for 13/12/1773 (note amounts are in Jamaican currency); The Medical Register for the Year 1783 p. 170.

PROB 11/1295/243.