Sir Ashton Warner Byam

Attorney-General of Grenada, and slave-owner on St Vincent. Son of Francis Byam, the Rector of St John's Antigua (d. 1757 but whose will was proved in London in 1771).

1. Ashton Warner Byam of Grenada was party to deeds of 23 and 24/05/1787 under which he bought 30 acres of land on St Vincent from John Nanton and Britannia his wife adjacent to estates he already owned, one of which was named Walkers or Welles.

2. Ashton Warner Byam gave evidence to the 1789-91 House of Commons Committee on the slave trade and slavery. He traced his movements from Antigua (1765-1770) to St Vincent where he bought an estate (1770-1774), and Grenada (1774-1779 and 1783-1789; during the wartime hiatus he lived on St Vincent, Tobago and Antigua). At the time of the enquiry he said that he owned no land in the West Indies except an unclear tract on Dominica.

3. An account of the lost will of Ashton Warner Byam appears in a deed of 17/07/1798 between his brother Edward Byam, his brother-in-law Thomas Ottley and Joseph Beete of Demerara (previously of Grenada), which concerned the sale to Beete for £2000 currency of property in Grenada (land and tenements called Mathew Place in Georgetown) formerly belonging to Ashton Warner Byam. Had Ashton Warner Byam died intestate, his heir-at-law would have been Edward Byam, and the deed sets out the renunciation of such an inheritance by Edward Byam, in favour of Ashton Warner Byam's legatees, his nephews George Weatherill Ottley, Drewry Ottley and Richard Ottley.

Vere Langford Oliver, History of Antigua Vol. I p. 101.

1. Deed Book 1787, British Library, EAP688/1/1/2, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP688-1-1-2 pp. 254-257.

2. Woodville K. Marshall, 'Provision Ground and Plantation Labour in four Windward Islands', in Ira Berlin, Philip D. Morgan (eds.) The Slaves Economy p. 50, which cites HCSP Vol. 71 pp. 104-7.

3. The deed of 17/07/1798 has been transcribed by Jim Smith who gave the reference as pp. 479-487 of the Grenada Registers of Records, Item 1 of the microfilm FHL [1563378], http://agenealogyhunt.blogspot.com/2011/06/part-528s-smith-robertson-genealogy.html [accessed 27/11/2020].