Robert Reece

Awarded compensation for the enslaved people on the Hope and Bannatyne estates on Barbados as owner.

1. Father of Robert Reece (1807-1874) and grandfather of the playwright Robert Reece (1835-1891). Brother of William Reece [q.v.], also a plantation owner.

2. Born 19/07/1780 on Barbados. Married Sarah Knight 26/09/1805. Owner of Hope, Bannatyne and Egerton estates. Resident in England at 13 St Marks Crescent, Regents Park, but back in Barbados by late 1853. He was then blind. Will dated 02/05/1853 made in England. He gave his wife Sarah half the profits for her life, and his daughter Elizabeth (married to Robert Haynes of Thimbleby Lodge Yorkshire) £3000. The rest of his estate went to his son Robert. He died in England in 1858.

3. Robert Reece (1807-1874) was a barrister-at-law and Provost Marshal of Barbados. Married (1) Caroline Ann Spellen (2) Louisa Kirkman. Author of Hints to Young Barbados-Planters (1857) [The British Library catalogue describes the author as Robert Reece of Cheltenham']. Died in England 1874, having lived at 33 Lansdown Crescent, Notting Hill. His son with Caroline Ann Spellen, also Robert (born 02/05/1838), was the dramatist.

4. In 1851, Robert Reece 'father' aged 71 'proprietor of houses' born Barbados was living at 13 St Marks Crescent with Robert Reece junior, aged 43 also born Barbados, barrister not practising, and Robert's second wife Louisa.

Barbados nos. 3283, 3285 and 3291

1. ODNB online, G.C. Boase, rev. Megan A. Stephan, 'Reece, Robert (1838-1891), playwright' (which gives the date of birth of Robert Reece the playwright's father as 1808); James C. Brandow, Genealogies of Barbados families: from Caribbeana and the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (1983), p. 488.

2. Brandow, Genealogies, p. 488. The sojourn in England and the London address has been corroborated through the 1851 census, but no will or probate in England has been traced to date.

3. ibid., p. 489.

4. 1851 census online (which transcribes the family name as 'Recca).