Simon Taylor of Kingston

Merchant in Kingston Jamaica, partner in Simpson Taylor (q.v.) awarded the compensation for Pleasant Hill in Port Royal, Constant Spring, Ramble Pen and New York in St Ann, and two awards in Kingston all as owner-in-fee, plus the compensation for an estate in St David as trustee.

1. Simon Taylor in Pleasant Hill Jamaica, son of John Taylor of Kirktonhill, died Kingston Jamaica  01/11/1838. Margaret M'Call, daughter of the Glasgow Virginia merchant George M'Call, had married John Taylor of Kirktonhill.

2. John Taylor was the cousin of Simon Taylor, the major Jamaica planter, and established himself as a merchant and slave-trader in Jamaica in the 1790s. The Simon Taylor of this award appears most likely to have been the Simon whom John Taylor had with his wife Mary [sic] McCall in 1796, rather than his natural son of the same name.

3. The will of Simon Taylor at present of Etton Hall Yorkshire [but late of the City and Parish of Kingston in Jamaica] [made in 1836] was proved 25/06/1839. He left £1000 to his reputed daughter Letitia Taylor of Kingston, then a minor, and £1000 each to his two sisters, Christiana Taylor and Catherine Taylor of Edinburgh, and £3000 to his nephew Robert Taylor, son of his eldest brother Robert Taylor of Kirktonhill. He left his residuary estate, including the services of his apprenticed labourers, to his brother and sole executor George Taylor of Kingston. In a codicil of 1838 he recorded the deaths of his two sisters.

Port Royal no. 5; St Ann nos. 42, 43 (both Ramble) 58 (Constant Spring), and 68 (New York); Kingston nos. 1801 and 1802; St David no. 143. T71/1606 letter from Simon Taylor 17/09/1835 Kirktonhill: dates of payment, 'I shall not go to London until I ascertain the time at which the money in Exchequer Bills can be granted. 'Be so good as let me know when the Simon Taylor will sail for Jamaica'. NDO4/3 Simon Taylor of Kingston at present in Great Britain.

1. David Dodson, Scots in the West Indies 1707-1857 p. 137; John Guthrie Smith and John Oswald Mitchell, The old country houses of the old Glasgow gentry (2nd edn., Glasgow, James MacLehose & Sons, 1878) XI. Belvidere House.

2. Daniel Livesay, 'Children of Uncertain Fortune: mixed-race migration from the West Indies to Britain 1750-1820', Ph.D Dissertation University of Michigan 2010, #http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77875/1/livesay_1.pdf# [Accessed 27/05/2012] p. 262.

3. PROB 11/1912/387.