Charles Arthurton

Charles Arthurton Jnr, free person of colour, was the son of the free 'mustee' Charles Arthurton Snr. His paternal grandmother was a mulatto woman, Charlotte and paternal grandfather a white man, John Arthurton Snr (the brother of Thomas Arthurton senior who purchased Richmond Lodge in Nevis). His mother was Elizabeth Ottley and he was brother of George and Georgiana Arthurton (both q.v.). On 21 Nov 1839 Charles Arthurton Jnr married the spinster Fanny Catherine Huggins in St Paul’s church, Charlestown in Nevis. Among their witnesses was his widowed aunt Elizabeth Bradley. Charles and Fanny had at least one daughter; in about 1842 Fanny Isabella was baptised. He was a store keeper in Charlestown.

1. His grandfather left money in his will for his father’s education; Charles Arthurton Snr was to be ‘placed out to some trade in England’ of his own choosing. Nevertheless, in 1817 Charles Snr registered nine enslaved people in Nevis, and some time before 1822 acquired the plantation named Johnson's the parish of Capisterre, St Kitts. In 1817 Josiah Webbe Archbald, a free coloured man from Nevis, had registered 68 slaves on that estate, but by 1822 the number of children born exceeded the number of people who died and the population stood at 77. The 1822 slave register return for Johnson’s was signed by Humphrey Ottley, who may have been managing the estate on Charles' behalf. Ottley also signed the registers for Grace Osborn of St Kitts to whom Charles Snr had sold four slaves from Nevis: the 15-year-old Matilda and three boys aged six, four and three years (John, Stedman and Jackey). Charles Arthurton Snr also registered seven people as executor for his half-sister Elizabeth (John Arthurton Snr 'mustee' daughter with Joan Peterson).

2. Following Charles Arthurton Snr's death between 1822 and 1825, Johnson's was put into receivership under order of the Court of Chancery. Grace Osborn ‘transferred or sold’ the four Nevis-born slaves to Charles and George Arthurton’s sister Georgiana. Elizabeth Ottley mortgaged a number of enslaved on the estate to John Bradley who, in due course, transferred them to Charles and George Arthurton: two women aged 45 and 25 (Susy, an African and Sophy, a St Kitts mulatto) and three black boys (Thomas, Arthur and Jacob). In 1828 Elizabeth Ottley registered all her children’s slaves on their behalf but three years later Charles Arthurton Jnr was old enough to submit his and George’s slave register return. He recorded that Sophia (Sophy), a domestic, had died. Of the remaining enslaved Charles and George Arthurton sold two: Thomas, a house servant, and a boy, named Jacob.

3. Charles Arthurton died at Nevis in 1840 aged 27. It is not clear how this fits with the baptism of his daughter in 1842 above.

UK National Archives (UKNA), T 71/258 Slave Register St Christopher 1827-28 f.158; Nevis Historical and Conservation Society (NHCS), St Paul’s Marriages 1826-1842 No 184; NHCS, St Paul’s Baptisms 1835-1873 No 253.

1. Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court Registry, Nevis (ECSCRN), Book of Wills 1787-1805 ff.270-72; see also the biography for Thomas Arthurton in Christine Eickelmann, The Mountravers Plantation Community, 1734 to 1834: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~emceee/mountravers~part3chapter2.pdf; UKNA, T 71/364 Slave Register Nevis 1817 f.229; ECSCRN, Book of Wills 1805-1818 f.312; UKNA, T 71/255 Slave Register St Christopher 1822 f.2; ECSCRN, CR 1835-1838 f.124.

2. UKNA, T 71/255, T 71/256, T 71/258-260 Slave Registers St Christopher 1822 f.2 and f.217, 1825 f.11, f.15, f.32, f.269, f.270 and 1827-8 f.158 and f.159; 1831 f.162, 1834 f.187 and f.195.

3. Caribbeana Vol. II p. 179.

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