Ann Arthurton

Ann Arthurton was the daughter of Betsey Arthurton, an enslaved mulatto woman who was born on Mountravers plantation, in St Thomas Lowland, Nevis. Ann was freed in February 1803 with her brothers Robert Arthurton and John Arthurton by their maternal grandfather Thomas Arthurton senior. Her father, the stonemason John Arthurton, was the ‘reputed’ son of Thomas Arthurton’s brother John Arthurton Snr.

1. In 1823 Ann Arthurton bought an 11-year-old girl, Lucy, and when her father died in 1826, she inherited from him two boys in their teens, Thomas and Providence. Ann Arthurton also acquired three people jointly with her brother John but two of them, Lucinda and Louisa, died before 1834, as did Thomas and Providence. William, the surviving young man they jointly owned, was included in her brother John’s compensation claim.

2. On 5 March 1830, Ann Arthurton’s son Robert with the planter Samuel Sturge was baptised in the church in Charlestown. Ann's first two slave registers were signed by Samuel Sturge, who also acted as her father’s executor. Sturge died two years later in 1828 and in the following year so did his son, Samuel Sturge junior. It is not entirely clear whether Sturge senior or junior was the father of Ann's child.

3. Ann claimed compensation for four people as Samuel Sturge's executrix: Lucy, whom she had purchased, Lucy’s daughters Jane and Ann (also called Ann Eliza; the girl was born after Ann Arthurton had completed her claim); and Joseph, whom Samuel Sturge had purchased. Harry, an African whom Sturge had also purchased, she sent to the parish of St James Windward to work as a domestic to John Sturge - presumably a relative. Ann Arthurton was unable to write - in 1831 she made her mark underneath her register – but when she completed her claim for compensation, she made an awkward signature by following a pencilled outline.

4. Almost certainly she was also known as Ann Sturge. Aged sixty, Ann Sturge was buried on 26 March 1854. She died during an outbreak of cholera in Nevis and may have been among its many victims. Although she had lived in Charlestown, she was buried at St Thomas Lowland where Samuel Sturge senior and junior, as well as her grandfather Thomas Arthurton, had been buried many years earlier.

Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court Registry, Nevis (ECSCRN), CR 1801-1803 ff.506-7, ff.527-8. See also the biography for Betsey Arthurton, born 13 September 1768 in Christine Eickelmann, The Mountravers Plantation Community, 1734 to 1834, Part 2, Chapter 4: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~emceee/mountraversplantationcommunity.html

1. ECSCRN, CR 1823-1828 f.20; ), Slave Registers Nevis, 1817 T 71/364/255 and 1825 T 71/366/9, UK National Archives (UKNA). and ECSCRN, CR 1823-1828 f.19; UKNA, Nevis Slave Registers, T 71/366-T 71/369: 1825 f.9, 1828 f.5 and f.9, 1831 f.4 and f.5, 1834 f.2 and ff.120-21.

2. NHCS St Paul’s Baptisms 1824-1835 No 473; Nevis Historical and Conservation Society (NHCS), St Thomas Lowland Burials 1827-1957 (10 July 1828 and 31 May 1829).

3. UKNA, T 71/1038 Nevis Claims and Certificates Claim No 174; UKNA, T 71/367 Slave Register Nevis 1828 f.166; UKNA, T 71/369 f.121.

4. Bristol University Library Special Collections, Pinney Papers, LB 34: Charles Pinney to PT Huggins, 30 March 1854; NHCS, St Thomas Lowland Burials 1827-1957.

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