Alexander Graeme or Grame

???? - 1764


Biography

Slave-owner on Barbados and Grenada. His estate on Barbados has been tentatively identified by LBS as Graeme Hall; normally reliable genealogical material online shows him as the son of Hon. George Graeme, known to have been the owner of Graeme Hall.

  1. Will of Alex[ande]r Graeme of the island of Barbados [but now of the City of Westminster but shortly intending to return to the West Indies] proved 31/01/1765. In the will he said that in November 1762 he had commissioned his friend Alexander Graham then of Barbados to go to Grenada under their joint names and under their joint account. Alexander Graham had on 11/04/1763 purchased an estate with 800 [500?[ acres and 137 'slaves' by the name the Baccaye [sic] estate from Messrs Corneille Suars [?] de St Ciz [?], and since died. Alexander Graeme put the estate in trust to be sold for the benefit of his heirs and those of Alexander Graham. He left his wife an annuity of £500 p.a. secured on his unnamed estate in Barbados. He left his daughter Elizabeth Graeme and Margaret Harvie Graeme £5000 currency each, and the residue of his estate to his son Thomas Graeme, then a minor.

  2. Probably but not certainly the same man as Alex. Graeme who c. 1758 was shown as owning 226 people in Christ Church.


Sources

  1. PROB 11/905/369. The will is indexed on TNA's site as 'Alexander Grame.'

  2. 'Graeme (or possibly Grame) was deceased. In a List of inhabitants of Christ Church, Barbados, c.1758, Graeme was listed as owning 226 enslaved. Figures from a list of whites and blacks in Christ Church, c.1758. The exact date of the list is not given; but internal evidence places it in or soon after 1758. The figures were given as 6 whites, and blacks as: men: 59; women: 83; boys: 40; girls: 44. [It is not clear why only 6 whites were given nor if the figure for blacks was comprehensive.]', Barbados Department of Archives, RB9/3/4.


Further Information

Absentee?
Transatlantic
Spouse
Margaret

Associated Estates (2)

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
- 1764 [EY] → Owner

LBS has tentatively identified the unnamed estate left by Alexander Graeme in 1764 as Graeme Hall.

1763 [EA] - 1764 [LA] → Joint owner

LBS has tentatively identified the estate cited in the will of Alexander Graeme (proved in 1764) which he had jointly purchased with Alexander Graham as the Baccaye estate, shown by the Grenada National Archives as later known as Westerhall; other secondary sources (Douglas Hamilton and Emma Rothschild) confirm that Alexander Johnstone (q.v.) renamed Baccaye as Westerhall.


Relationships (5)

Father → Son
Other relatives
Notes →
Henry Vassall, son of William Vassall senior, married Margaret Harvie Graeme, daughter of Alexander Graeme, after the latter's...
Other relatives
Notes →
Valentine Jones later the Commissary General of the West Indies and the son of Valentine Jones merchant of Barbados and Belfast who d. 1808 (of the LBS entry) married Elizabeth Graeme, daughter of...
Brother-in-laws
Son-in-law → Father-in-law