John Wilson Carmichael

John Wilson Carmichael of Jersey, husband of the writer Mrs A.C. Carmichael, awarded compensation for 22 enslaved people in Tacarigua in Trinidad.

1. Serving as a Lieutenant in the 53rd Regiment at the time of the capitulation of the Spanish in 1797. He married first Margaret Ann Falside (d. 1814) in St Vincent and had at least three children. He returned to St Vincent from Britain c. 1807, and probably moved to Britain once more around 1812/13; in 1817 he was shown as the owner of the Mousebank estate on St Vincent.  He married Alison Charles Stewart in 1815; the couple had two young daughters by 1820, when the couple went out to St Vincent. They remained there for nearly three years before moving to Laurel Hill in Trinidad. Mrs Carmichael's Domestic manners and social condition was published in 1833 and Tales of a Grandmother in 1841.

2. John Wilson Carmichael owned Mousetrap estate in Trinidad from at least 1817, and sold the estate to William Winn in 1822. He continued to own enslaved people, 23 of whom were described as "personal slaves" and leased to Ashton Warner in 1825. Warner was given as the previous owner of Laurel Hill in 1830, where Carmichael lived in the 1820s, suggesting Carmichael retained ownership of Laurel Hill after selling Mousetrap or leased enslaved people to Laurel Hill during and after living on the property. The exact scope of his slave-ownership and estate-ownership is not clear.

T71/894 Trinidad No. 1463.

1. Karina Williamson, 'Mrs Carmichael: A Scotswoman in the West Indies, 1820-1826', International Journal of Scottish Literature, 4 (Spring/Summer, 2008), pp. 1-17; email from Claudius Fergus 02/10/2018 sourced to Protector of Slaves Report, for example, CO300/25 ff 10v-; 15v-16; Bridget Brereton, A History of Modern Trinidad p. 61.

2. See estate information for Mousetrap; for enslaved people leased to Ashton Warner in 1825 see T71/512 p. 2113 and in 1828 see T71/514 p. 2473.

We are grateful to Claudius Fergus for his assistance with compiling this entry.