John Fisher Weare

Merchant (and in 1794 Mayor) of Bristol, active in a number of businesses including the Bristol Brass Co. John Fisher Weare was connected to the slave-economy at several points as sugar-merchant, financier of one known slave-trade voyage and creditor of slave-owners, but not, as far as LBS has found to date, himself a slave-owner. He left £300,000 in 1816.

1. Will of John Fisher Weare of Long Ashton Somerset proved 12/02/1816. In the will he left £40,000 each to his brothers William Weare (q.v.) and Henry Weare, as well as share in the Bristol Fire Office and shares in and loans to the Bristol Dock Co. He left £20,000 owed to him by the partnership of George Weare Braikenridge, Richard Honnywill and John Braikenridge to George Weare Braikenridge (q.v., the son of John Fisher Weare's cousin George Braikenridge). He was, he said, owned £3700 by John Fisher of Otterton in Devon, and he ordered that if John Fisher consigned 150 hogsheads of sugar or 150 punches of rum (or a mixture of the two) per annum to Braikenridge and Honnywill for 5 years from his [Fisher's] St Elizabeth Jamaica estates, the debt should be forgiven.

W.D. Rubinstein, Who were the rich Vol. I 1809-1824 (revised edition, 2017), 1816/4; Pat Morris 'The Introduction of the Tin-Plate Industry to the Lower Wye Valley and the Newerne Valley of the Forest of Dean', Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology Journal for 2003 pp 3-9; K. Morgan, 'Bristol West india Merchants in the 18th Century', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1993); David Richardson (ed.), Bristol, Africa and the 18th Century Slave-Trade to America Vol. 4 p. 138.

1. PROB 11/1577/212.