Jacob Kellerman

Jacob Kellerman was a German born slave-owner in Jamaica, dying there c. 1797. He was buried on Bloxburgh plantation. His wife was living in Britain when he made his will in 1796.

1. Will of Jacob Kellerman of Port Royal [made in 1796] proved 29/08/1797. In the will he left his wife an annuity of £300 p.a. and the household goods in the house in Britain in which she was living. He left £2000 currency to his daughter Elizabeth Cooke wife of Henry [in fact Richard] Cooke of Farm Hill [in Gloucestershire], and £2000 currency each to his other three daughters Mary, Ann and Sophia. He manumitted an enslaved woman named Celia on condition that she remained on Bloxburgh and managed the hereditaments he left there, and her children unconditionally. He left his estate to his son Thomas Penny Kellerman (q.v.).

2. The will of Elizabeth Bramley heretofore Kellerman of Stanford [=Stamford] Hill [made in 1811] was proved 05/08/1831. She made her daughter Sophia Mathilda her universal legatee. In a codicil of 1829 she identified herself as the widow of John Jacob Kellerman of Jamaica, and heir of her uncle Thomas Penny of Berkshire.

3. The October 1885 edition of The Theosophist – a publication that describes itself as a "magazine of oriental philosophy, art, literature, and occultism" – describes Jacob Kellerman as “the last of the Alchemists." The author T. N. Cripps writes: "After Jacob Kellermann [sic] left England he settled at Bloxburgh Plantation in the Parish of Port Royal in this Island. He was very eccentric, a recluse, German by birth, caring little for the society of men and less for that of women, or for family ties; and in his latter days devoted all his time to Alchemic research and the philosopher’s stone, which he averred he had discovered; hence he coveted an introduction to the King, which being denied, he returned to Jamaica. He died at Bloxburgh Coffee Plantation and was there buried. I have seen his tomb between the great house and the Coffee Store. He was brother to Field Marshal Kellermann, Duke of Valmy, Peer of France."

1. PROB 11/1295/273. Farm Hill is the site of the Abolition Arch erected in 1833 by Henry Wyatt of Stroud.

2. PROB 11/1788/325.

3. The Theosophist, Vol. VII. No. 73, October 1885, p. 83. Published by the Proprietors, Adyar, London: George Redway, 15 York St, Covent Garden.