Jonathan Dickinson of Philadelphia

Quaker slave-owner of Jamaica, owner of Barton and Pepper estates, moving to Philadelphia c. 1697 and dying there in 1722.

Son of Francis Dickinson (1630-1704) and his wife Margaret, daughter of Stephen Crooke. Francis Dickinson was apparently a naval officer under Penn and Venables in 1655.

Born in Jamaica in 1663. Married Mary Gale c. 1685. He left a shipwreck narrative from his journey between Jamaica and the US.

His children were: Jonathan junior (1695-), d.s.p.; Joseph (1698-), had a daughter Mary who married Francis J. Tyssen of Jamaica; John (1701-1729), d.s.p.; Mary (?-1733), had a son Dickinson Jones who died in 1728; Hannah, who had a son who died young.

Harrold E. Gillingham, 'Notes and Documents: The Estate of Jonathan Dickinson (1663-1722)', The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1935), pp. 420-429; Mikaela Perron (ed.), 'Jonathan Dickinson, God’s Protecting Providence' http://earlyfloridalit.net/?page_id=130 [accessed 03/02/2018]; Jason Daniels, 'Atlantic Contingency: Jonathan Dickinson and the Anglo-Atlantic World 1655-1725', unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Warwick (2013), https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/58038/1/WRAP_THESIS_Daniels_2013.pdf.

We are grateful to David Martial Alexander for his help with this entry.