Fanny Cottle (née Huggins)

Daughter of Edward Huggins of Nevis (q.v.), apparently herself resident in Nevis, awarded the compensation for the Round Hill estate on Nevis as executrix and widow of Thomas John Cottle (q.v.). At her request £1000 was paid to John Mark Cottle (q.v.), a counterclaimant. No evidence has been found of her in Britain after Emancipation.  

1. Frances Huggins was married to Thomas John Huggins in February or March 1803; they had three children, one of whom died in infancy. Thomas John Cottle wrote in defence of Edward Huggins' 'general character' in 1811, according to the ODNB out of family loyalty 'as he did not condone the punishment nor support slavery in principle, although he opposed immediate abolition in the interest of the colonial economy and the interests of the landed proprietors.'  'A devout Anglican', he built a chapel on Round Hill in 1824, 'the first Anglican church in the Caribbean to be built specifically for members of both the white and black communities.' His example was followed by that of his brother-in-law Peter John [sic - in fact Thomas] Huggins on Mountravers estate in Nevis.

2. The wife of Edward Huggins was also Frances (1751/2-1837), and the enslaved woman who died after five months after being flogged in public by Edward Huggins was named Fanny.

T71/882 Nevis claim no. 110.

1. Clive Mitchell, ‘Cottle, Thomas John (1761–1828)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58356 [accessed 29/10/2012].

2. David Small, ‘Huggins, Edward (1755?–1829)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/53032 [accessed 29/10/2012]. Thomas John Cottle's defence of Huggins was 'A plain statement of the motives which gave rise to the public punishment of several negroes' (1811), which drew a response from J.W. Tobin in 1812. The title of Cottle's pamphlet is given in the entry in the ODNB for Huggins but not in the entry for Cottle.