John Arthurton

John Arthurton was the son of Betsey Arthurton (b.1768), an enslaved mulatto woman who was born on Mountravers plantation. John was manumitted in February 1803 with his siblings Robert Arthurton and Ann Arthurton by their maternal grandfather Thomas Arthurton senior. His father, the freed stonemason John Arthurton (a ‘reputed’ son of Thomas Arthurton’s brother John Arthurton) died in 1826. John Arthurton had a daughter called Charlotte with a free coloured woman, Anne Corbiere. Their child was baptised in February 1824. By the 1830s John Arthurton had taken on, or began using, a middle name, Cooke. perhaps to distinguish himself from his relative John Fraser Arthurton (q.v.). John Cooke Arthurton was variously described as a retailer, or a merchant.

1. His slave compensation claim for six people included William, whom he jointly owned with his sister Ann Arthurton (q.v.); Jimmy, an African man formerly owned by his kinsman William Arthurton; and four enslaved people who he owned: Francis (purchased from Margaret Jones, James (purchased from Joseph Webbe Stanley), Ben (purchased from Sarah Frost), and Sarah, a young woman he had jointly bought with his father. Moses, a boy bought together with Sarah for £132 Nevis currency, had died, as had Frances Jones’s baby boy Thomas and Lucinda and Louisa. These two females and William had originally belonged to Robert Hughes Pemberton and had been mortgaged to Robert Jack of St Kitts and taken into that man’s possession. John Arthurton and his sister purchased the mortgage bond and these three had been transferred to the Arthurtons. John Arthurton appears to have been the senior partner in this deal; when Lucinda was buried, she was identified as his slave.

2. Shortly after Emancipation, he lived in Charlestown, opposite the former Customs House, and later appears to have acquired another property in Charlestown. As a freeholder, he was entitled to stand for, and vote in, annual elections, both for the Assembly and for the vestry board, and for at least two years he served as a member of the vestry for the parish of St Paul’s. The vestrymen managed parish affairs and wielded a considerable amount of power at local level.

3. In April 1863 John Arthurton made his will, leaving the freehold to his property in Charlestown to his daughter Charlotte Corbiere Arthurton and, if she died intestate, to his niece Emma, the wife of Thomas Erskine. He died later in the year and was said to have been 74 years old when he was buried on 16 December 1863 in the cemetery at St Thomas Lowland.

Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court Registry, Nevis (ECSCRN), CR 1801-1803 ff.506-7, ff.527-8. See also the biography for Betsey Arthurton, in Christine Eickelmann, The Mountravers Plantation Community, 1734 to 1834, Part 2, Chapter 4: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~emceee/mountraversplantationcommunity.html; Nevis Historical and Conservation Society (NHCS), St Paul’s Baptisms 1824-1835 No 72; ECSCRN, Book of Wills 1837-1864 ff.1-3, CR 1838-1847 f.664, and CR 1847-1858 f.217 and f.219.

1. Jimmy died, aged 48, and was buried on 17 February 1837 as James Arthurton (NHCS, St Paul’s Burials 1825-1837). For more details, see Eickelmann, The Mountravers Plantation Community, 1734 to 1834, Part 3 Chapter 2: tp://eis.bris.ac.uk/~emceee/mountraversplantationcommunity.html; ECSCRN, CR 1817-1819 f.254; Fanny Arthurton’s son Thomas was baptised on 12 October 1827 and buried on 31 March 1832, aged six years. Another son of hers, John Henry, was baptised on 30 September 1824 but not registered by John Arthurton in 1825 (NHCS, St Paul’s Baptisms 1824-1835 and St Paul’s Burials 1825-1837); UK National Archives (UKNA), T 71/364-T 71/369 Slave Register Nevis 1817 f.229, 1822 f.8 and f.3, 1825 f.6, 1828 f.4, f.5 and f.144, 1831 f.4, 1834 ff.1-2; T 71/1038 Slave Compensation Commission, Nevis Claims; T 71/1237 Slave Compensation, Counter-Claim by John Nelson Bond and Henry Pearse of London, merchants, regarding Nevis Claim No 175; NHCS, St Paul’s Burials 1825-1837 (30 November 1832).

2. ECSCRN, CR 1838-1847 f.183; ECSCRN, CR 1847-1858 f.217 and f.219; UKNA, CO 187/34 and CO 187/35 Blue Books Nevis 1860 and 1861

3. ECSCRN, Book of Wills 1837-1864 ff.508-09; NHCS, St Thomas Lowland Burials 1827-1957.

We are extremely grateful to Christine Eickelmann for sharing her detailed archival research with us, upon which this entry is based.