General Robert Haynes

Plantation owner and Speaker of the House of Assembly in Barbados. He was the father of Robert junior and Richard Haynes (each of whom q.v.) among others.

The Haynes family, originally of Reading, Berkshire, had originally settled in Barbados 'in the time of Cromwell' as they had been Royalists. The first settler appears to have gone there in the 1640s.

Haynes the son of Richard Downes Haynes and Ann Elcock: for Richard Downes Haynes, see separate entry.

Robert Haynes spent March-October 1788 in Baltimore, Maryland, America.
Married Anne Thomasine, widow of Nathaniel Barrow, 19 May 1790. She was born 19 November 1765; died 11 March 1840 in Egham, Surrey. Her parents were William and Thomasine Clark. William Clark was the overseer of the Thickett plantation, the property of the Hon. John Frere. Her daughter from her first marriage, Sarah Ann, married Jonathan Higginson.

The children of Robert and Ann Haynes were:
Dorothy Ann (26 May 1791-1805); Richard (9 July 1792- ); William (25 September 1795 - 9 December 1795); Robert (2 January 1795- ); George Barrow (16 March 1796- ); Fanny (28 December 1798-1805); Thomasine (5 February 1799- ); William Clark (9 January 1800-1831); Henry Husbands (10 September 1801- ); John Aughterson (27 June 1803-April 1805).

Of the children, Richard, Robert and George sailed 30 July 1805 to Liverpool, where George was saved from drowning as he disembarked by an enslaved man named Hamlet (Richard and Robert returned to Barbados in July 1811); Thomasine, William and Henry went, with their mother, to Bristol, attended by 'a faithful man servant and slave named Hamlet' 14 April 1808. (The sons were then sent to school in Scotland).

Estate ownership: Haynes owned at various times the New Castle, Clifton Hall and the Bath estates (and possibly Mount Pleasant): for these see each estate and their estate information.

His Notes give some details of fluctuating indebtedness: of £14,000 on the New Castle estate when he inherited it in 1793; and a total debt rising to c. £32,000 by the end of 1815 though by that point he had acquired enough assets to pay them off.

He also gave, at various points, money and property to his children:
On the marriage of Thomasine, his daughter, to John Hothersal Pinder, he gave her £7,000.
To his son Richard, he gave New Castle (180 enslaved, 416 acres) subject to and liable to about £7,000.
To his son Robert he gave Clifton Hall liable to some annuities and a debt of £10,000 to his son Henry. (Haynes reckoned that Clifton Hall was worth about £50,000 at the time.)
To his son George Barrow he gave at various times c. £15,000 and to his son William Clark, also at various times, more than £9,500.
10 February 1835: gave possession of the Bath estate to his son Henry Husbands, who, in return, paid him £2,000 for the crops, gave him the Passage property and assigned his mortgage against Sterling Plantation for £7,000; Henry also gave his father a mortgage against the Bath for £4,000 in lieu of compensation money to be received for the 243 enslaved/apprentices on the Bath estate. (p. 23)

Haynes, also claimed, in his description of the very destructive effects of the hurricane of 1831, that it made worse the condition of planters who 'had been reduced to poverty' by the Ministers of Great Britain (p. 22). [There is of course no evidence to suggest that Haynes was reduced to 'poverty'.]

The Notes also give some details of the movement of Haynes between Barbados and England. Thus between February and October 1809 he was in England but appears not to have returned there again until May 1832 (when he spent an unspecified amount of time in the country). He then returned to Barbados until some point in 1836 or 1837 when he returned to live in Reading, Berkshire until his death in 1851.

His residences in Barbados were New Castle (where he resided on and off since his birth until March 1815), the Bath estate (1815-16 February 1835) and then the Passage (which appears not to have been a sugar estate but a more modestly-sized property) until leaving for England for good in 1836 or 1837.

Offices held in Barbados 15 July 1793: elected for St John of the House of Assembly. Served as such until 8 January 1829; he had also been Speaker of the House.
29 July 1793: became Colonel of the Centre Regiment of Horse.
15 January 1795: appointed Colonel of St John's Militia Regiment; 5 January 1799, Major-General; 25 July 1805: Lieut-General and Master General of Ordinance; 30 January 1809: Colonel and Commandant of the Batallions of St John's and St George's Militia.

In the 1841 census Robert Haynes was living at Bathwick Hill, Bath, age 70, of independent means. In 1851 he was living at 1 Albion Place, Reading, age 81, Fundholder, born Barbados, with his wife Anna, age 57, grandson Robert A. Lovell, age 25 (annuitant, born Barbados), sister-in-law Jame Caitcheon, age 47 and niece Harriet Inglis, age 16 and two female servants.

Edmund C. Haynes, A. Percy Haynes and Edmund S. P. Haynes (eds.), Notes by General Robert Haynes of New Castle and Clifton Hall Plantations, Barbados, and other documents of family interest (London, n.d. [1912]); James C. Brandow (comp.), Genealogies of Barbados families: from Caribbeana and the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (1983), p. 656; 1841 and 1851 censuses online; Albion Terrace (sometimes called Albion Place) is now Grade II* listed, see https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1113506 [accessed 13/11/2019]; Kevin Dawson, “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 92, No. 4, March 2006; will of Robert Haynes of Bath proved 09/08/1851, PROB 11/2137/353 (the original will was made in 1841, when Haynes identified his son George Barrow Haynes as deceased).

See also Stewart Johnson, Reading to Barbados and Back: Echoes of British History - the Tudor Family of Haynes of Reading (2011).

We are grateful to Guy Grannum for his assistance with compiling this entry, and to Audrey Dewjee for the reference to the rescue from drowning of George Haynes by the enslaved man Hamlet in 1805.