Colin MacLarty

Awarded the compensation for the enslaved people on Chestervale in Port Royal Jamaica, which was then collected by Charles Cunningham Scott, acting executor, after Colin McLarty's death in 1835.

1. Will of Colin MacLarty Doctor of Medicine of Southend Argyllshire proved 08/12/1835. In 1819 'Dr Colin McLarty of Chestervale in the Island of Jamaica' (who was then residing in Sanda (later Macharioch) House, Kintyre, Scotland) bought the estate of Samuel Omey at Keil, Kintyre, Scotland and 'improved' it. In 1835 John Freeman McLarty (Colin MacLarty's son) and trustees inherited Keil, which was sold in 1865. 

2. MacLarty arrived in Jamaica in mid-1787: his father was a Glasgow merchant ship's captain. After some years of marginal existence MacLarty established himself in a partnership in Kingston.

3. Married Elizabeth Susanna Breon, only daughter and heiress of Edmund Breon of Chester Vale coffee estate, in Kingston 30/10/1794. They had five children baptised in Kingston:

   . Edmund Breon, born 28/11/1795 and baptised 28/11/1795

   . Mary Ann, born 10/02/1797 and baptised 09/03/1797

   . Jean Johnston, born 20/03/1798 and baptised 17/04/1798

   . Colin, born 16/07/1799 and baptised 27/08/1799

   . Susanna Christian, born 30/06/1800 and baptised 03/12/1800 (she died, unmarried, at 6 Grove Street, Edinburgh, October 1847).

4. One more child was baptised in Greenock, Scotland (Alexander, 26/12/1801). Three more children were born and baptised in Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland: Mary Ann Brown MacLarty 11/03/1803, Edmund Breon MacLarty 28/11/1803 and Margaret Elizabeth MacLarty 25/09/1807. The names of the first two of these children indicate that the two eldest who had also been baptised in Kingston in the 1790s had died young.

5. August 7 [1817]. At Sanda house Lieut-Colonel James Fullarton C.B. Rifle brigade, son of the late Lewis Fullarton, Esq of Kilmichael [was married] to Jane Johnson, daughter of Colin MacLarty Esq M.D., of Chestervale Jamaica. Jean Johnston, wife of Lt.Col. Fullarton and daughter of Colin MacLarty of Kiell, died at Kiell House, 29/04/1833.

6. Mary Anne Browne, daughter of the late Colin MacLarty, married Rev Donald Campbell of Southend, at Kiell, Argyllshire, 22/03/1836.

7. MacLarty’s death was reported in the Perthshire Courier of 06/11/1834.

T71/864 Port Royal no. 4. James A. Delle, An Archaeology of Social Space: Analyzing Coffee Plantations in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains pp. 92-93 gives an account of Colin McLarty dividing the Chester Vale estate in 1800 into four parcels, one retained as Chester Vale; one forming Clydesdale; and two forming Newport Hill, later recombined into Clydesdale.

1. PROB 11/1855; James Barbour, 'Keil through the ages', The Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History Society Magazine, No. 23 Autumn 1988, through http://www.ralstongenealogy.com/number23kintmag.htm last accessed 20/8/2012.  

2. Alan L Karras, Sojourners in the Sun: Scottish migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740-1800 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992) pp. 55-60. Karras says 'It is unclear how successful Colin MacLarty was...no record of him has been found in the island's estate inventories, so it seems unlikely that he left property in the island when he died.' 

3. Scots Magazine vol. 57 p. 132 (February 1795). 'Six sets of manuscript accounts, four for Edmund Breon; one for Thomas Cockburn, guardian of Miss Elizabeth Susanna Breon; and one for her husband Colin McLarty, MD.' http://www.richardfordmanuscripts.co.uk/catalogue/15358 [accessed 24/06/2016]; Familysearch.org, Jamaican parish registers, Kingston Baptisms 1793-1825, pp. 34, 48, 63, 81, 100; Caledonian Mercury, 20/10/1847.

4. GROS OPR Births 564/3 20 594 Greenock Old or West; 507 40 245 Campbeltown; 507 40 256 Campbeltown; 507 40 310 Campbeltown.

5. The Scots Magazine Vol. 80 (1817) p. 98; Caledonian Mercury, 02/04/1836.

6. John Bull, 12/05/1833.

7. Perthshire Courier 06/11/1834.

We are grateful to Paul Hitchings and Rebecca Green for their assistance with compiling this entry.