John Mulholland of Kingston

Apparently a merchant or manager of artisans of Kingston, dying there c. 1771, his very detailed will (made in 1767) providing evidence both for the accumulation possible by small-scale slave-owners and for the structure of the urban slave-economy in mid-eighteenth century Jamaica.

1. Will of John Mulholland of Kingston Jamaica [made 24/12/1767] proved 13/07/1771. He left his 'negro boy' named Fortune to Jasper Hall (one of his trustees) and a negro boy named Ned to David Rienssett, the natural son of another executor also called David Rienssett by Mercy Cox [Knox?], excluding the two enslaved young men from his instruction to sell all his 'slaves'. He left monetary legacies totalling some £5600 to a range of friends and relatives, many in Ireland, and £500 to secure an annuity of £50 p.a to his cousin Thomas Burnett late of Kingston, together with all the debts owed to him [the testator] by Bergen [?] and Burnett. He had he said recently purchased 6 negro slaves named Mercury, Pluto, Neptune, Vulcan, Bacchus and Mars, and had put them to be apprentices to John Burns and the said Thomas Burnett as masons and bricklayers, and he left them in trust to Jasper Hall for the benefit of Thomas Burnett. His residuary heir was his cousin John Rea then residing with him at Kingston.

PROB 11/969/203.