Ann Brown (née Mellor)

Wife of James Brown of Gattonside (q.v.). Daughter and heir of Abner Mellor (q.v.).

1. James Brown, coachmaker, married Ann Mellor, spinster, in Kingston 24/10/1789.

2. 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).

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. When James Brown wrote his will in 1809, he bequeathed an annuity of £500 per annum for life to his wife plus the capital sum of £7,000 by way of legacy but also as a compensation and equitable ample restitution of certain articles of real or heritable property in Jamaica formerly belonging to her but sold and appropriated by us jointly with her free consent for the benefit of my interest and estate amounting collectively to £5,500 sterling or £7,700 Jamaican currency. This property in Jamaica was a house in Kingston and a "negro" sold by James and Ann which she had inherited from her deceased brother William Mellor and articles of property which were conveyed to her among others by the will of her deceased father Abrier [sic] Mellor vizt a pen or farm called Nightingale Grove in St Andrew, Jamaica, a house in Kingston and "sundry negroes sold with the said pen or farm and at other times previous to this date and likewise for the value of six negroes and two children placed + fixed to remain as my sole property upon my plantation called Mount Tiviot, the names of which Negroes are Bower, Abram, Sally, Bessy, Prudence and Dianna and her two children Fanny and John, all of which property was and is situated in the Island of Jamaica..." James added a codicil in 1813 stating that Ann had since died and reducing the amount of bequests to other family members "on account of the great diminution of my own fortune since the said trust deposition and settlement was executed." James died in 1816.

1. 1. Kingston parish register extracts, http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples/regkgn02.htm.

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

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. GROS CC18/4/3, Peebles Commissary Court. See separate entry for James Brown for more details from his will.

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