Jamaica St James 3 (Seven Rivers Estate)

Parliamentary Papers p. 70.

T71/873: claim by Michael White Lee, a Colonel, of Cheltenham (Gloucestershire); counterclaim by Rev. Henry Mair, as mortgagee for £16,000, dated February 1805.

R.A. Barrett, The Barretts of Jamaica: The Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Athlone, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000) p. 22: Seven Rivers Estate was founded by Martin Williams (the first husband of E.B. Williams). Ibid. p. 84: Seven Rivers Estate belonged to Barrett Lee, 1831-2. Ibid. p. 22: M.W. Lee was a soldier from Bristol, in 1801-3 he married Judith Barrett, Edward Barrett's widow, when he was 33 and she nearly 60. She kept an annuity of £1500 but lost her right to live at Cinnamon Hill on her remarriage. Ibid. p. 49: letter, dated 16/05/1803, from Eliza Plummer to her mother E.B. Williams stating that Lee wanted to purchase a majority in a regiment not likely to be sent to the West Indies; he has been absent from England 7 years; 'It now appears that Sam Jackson attorney. at the Bay, in drawing up articles of marriage between them & without any such directions from Capt Lee as some people have imagined, made over to him every thing but the rent of Mrs Lee's negroes - about £500..but as soon as he understood it, he had settled it otherwise, & now instead of every thing going to his heirs at his death as it as to have been, thy all revert to hers'. After Judith's death in 1804, Lee did in fact buy a majority in 1st West India regiment, and returned to marry Barrett, the youngest child of E.B. Williams and Martin Williams.

Jamaica Almanac (1828): Seven Rivers Estate registered to Martin Williams, with 261 enslaved persons.

Jamaica Almanac (1833): Seven Rivers Estate registered to John & Philip Vaughan.