Abner Mellor

1. Abner Mellor Esquire, died 11/09/1801, aged 70 and his wife Mary died 27/06/1796 aged 62. His son William Mellor died 16/07/1799 age 38 and his daughter Dorothy died 07/11/1788 age 6. His daughter Ann married James Brown and four of their children are commemorated in Kingston Parish Churchyard in the same tomb and Abner and Mary: Mary (died 1791 age 8 months), Anne (died 1794 age 10 months), Abner (died 1794 age 2 years) and William (died 1800 age 2 years and 3 months).

2. Will of Abner Mellor of St Andrew in Jamaica proved 16/07/1802. He left his 'penn' on which he was living, together with the 'negroe and other slaves upon or belonging or attached thereto', to his daughter Ann, the wife of James Brown of St David planter. He left £1000 to each of her children and to his nephew Thomas Firby of Great Britain.

3. A portrait of Isabella, daughter of James Brown and Ann nee Mellor, by Sir Henry Raeburn, appeared in an exhibition of old masters in New York in 1912. The accompanying text read: "Isabella Brown was born 1790 in Jamaica, daughter of James Brown, a coffee planter, who married Anne, daughter of Abner Mellor, also a coffee planter in Jamaica. In 1799 Isabella was sent to relations in Edinburgh to be educated. The portrait was painted there, and sent out to Jamaica in 1800, but after the death of her grandfather was brought back to Scotland in 1803 and taken to Gattonside (near Melrose), where they lived until James Brown's death in 1816, when his two sons sold the place, and they all went to England, but she never settled anywhere. Her brothers both became Vicars in Northamptonshire, and she lived near them for some years. She died in 1870. Previously owned by a member of the family in England." The portrait shows a little girl in a white dress seated with her hands on her lap.

4. Elizabeth, daughter of Elizabeth Stiles by Abner Mellor, was born 19/12/1768 and baptised in Kingston 09/04/1769. No further trace of Elizabeth has been found.

1. James Henry Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies (1875), p. 109; Findagrave.com memoiral ID 119792667.

2. PROB 11/1378/119.

3. 'Loan exhibition of old masters, for the benefit of the Artists' fund and Artists' aid societies : at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. ... January 11th to 27th inclusive, 1912' (1912) pp. 24-25.

4. Familysearch.org, Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880 [database online].

We are grateful to Kate Birley for her assistance with compiling this entry.