Thomas Franklyn Nibbs

1771 - ????

Claimant or beneficiary

Biography

Resident in Antigua and member of the House of Assembly, claimed for the Creek estate on Antigua, having purchased it subject to a mortgage: Nibbs and Henry Moreton Dyer settled a division of the compensation between them. Vere Langford Oliver shows Thomas Franklyn Nibbs as the son of Jeremiah Nibbs junior (d. 1808) and Sarah Parker (d. 1805) baptised 1771 and Thomas F. Nibbs as the owner of Creek Side of 367 acres in 1852.

  1. In 1805 Thomas F. Nibbs appeared with William Baxter, 'merchants', certifying the exchange rate on a document dated 01/01/1805 from John Cole surgeon at HM Naval Hospital Antigua, seeking payments from the Commissioners for Sick and Wounded Seamen in London to Lord Lavington for disbursements at the Naval Hospital.

  2. Jane Austen's father, Rev. George Austen, was a ‘trustee to preserve contingent remainders’ the Antiguan estates of James Langford Nibbs, godfather to Jane Austen's brother James. All settlements of c.1740-1845 had such a device essentially as a formality; "settlements of that time routinely gave an interest to separate trustees from the main trustees so that, if the initial life interest was forfeited, those separate trustees would be seised of the land for the rest of his life, thus rendering the subsequent provisions valid." The connection between the three branches (if such they were) of the family on Antigua descended from James Nibbs (fl. 1671-1674); John Nibbs (will dated and sworn 1704) and Jeremiah Nibbs (fl. 1697) has not yet been traced.

We are grateful to John Avery Jones for his assistance in compiling this entry.

 


Sources

T71/877 Antigua claim no. 125 (Creek Estate); Henry Moreton Dyer and Thos. F Nibbs appear to have agreed the division between them and put in a statement requesting the split: note from Henry Moreton Dyer T71/1609 18/05/1837 Marlbro St.refers to 'it has been arranged before the Commissioners'. The Slave Register shows Thomas Franklyn Nibbs: Ancestry.com, Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834 [database on-line]; Vere Langford Oliver, History of Antigua Vol. II pp. 295 and 298.

  1. http://www.farahardupre.co.uk/search.php?pageNum_Recordset1=154 ref. 19503 [accessed 22/04/2012].

  2. Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose, At Home with the Empire (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006) p. 194.

John Avery Jones, ‘George Austen as a (nominal) trustee of a plantation in Antigua: the legal position’, Jane Austen Society Annual Report (2021), pp. 33-49 (p. 35).

 


Further Information

Name in compensation records
Thos. F. Nibbs

Associated Claims (1)

£2,973 15s 11d
Awardee (Owner-in-fee)

Associated Estates (1)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

  • SD - Association Start Date
  • SY - Association Start Year
  • EA - Earliest Known Association
  • ED - Association End Date
  • EY - Association End Year
  • LA - Latest Known Association
1817 [EA] - 1834 [LA] → Owner