Robert Gwilt

Awarded the compensation for 26 enslaved people in Trinidad as co-trustee with [Sir] Edward Eyre Williams (q.v.) of Richard Burton Williams (q.v.), a lunatic. Robert Gwilt appears in the will of Henry Micajah Williams (q.v.) as his brother-in-law and in the will of Henry Paxton Williams (q.v.) as his 'relative' of 'Chelsea College': in both cases Gwilt held money at interest for the testators.

1. Robert Gwilt, son of Rev. Robert Gwilt Rector (1752-1820) of Icklingham Suffolk. Born Barton Mills Suffolk. Adm. Pensioner at Caius Cambridge 14/08/1797 aged 17. Matriculated Michalemas 1798. Of Royal Hospital Chelsea and Icklingham.  Married 23/11/1808 Mary, daughter of Henry Williams of Nassau. Died 1861, leaving £5000. Brother of Daniel and father of Rev. Robert Gwilt (1811-1889).  

2. The above Robert Gwilt's wife's family in the Bahamas connects him to the Robert Gwilt of the award: Burton Williams, almost certainly Richard Burton Williams' father (and certainly the father of Edward Eyre Williams) moved 336 enslaved people from the Bahamas to Trinidad 'where he had bought land to set up sugar plantations for himself and his four sons' between 1821 and 1823.  In 1821 Burton Williams and his sons held at least 450 slaves in the Bahamas, most on Watling's Island but others on Cat Island and Eleuthera. They were placed on three estates near San Fernando called Williamsville, Picton and Cupar Grange.   

T71/894 Trinidad No. 1910.

1. Ancestry.com, Cambridge University Alumni 1261-1900 [database online]; National Probate Calendar 1861.

2. Michael Craton and Gail Saunders, Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People (Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 1999), Vol. 1, p. 225, p. 291.