An introduction to the plantation journals of the Prospect ... - Microform

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shipment of plantation stores to the estate. 12 Similar entries would also have appeared in the ledgers of Ransom, Moreley, and Hammersley if this concern had likewise been involved in the plantation trades. Moreover, the Bonds appear to have handled Prospect’s account only as a temporary expedient owing to the illness and subsequent death of Attlay. In his will, dated 9 April 1786, Attlay bequeathed the Bond brothers money to buy mourning rings as a gesture of gratitude for the late services they had rendered him. The account current itself notes that Attlay’s death occurred shortly afterwards. 13 One of the bound volumes in the Prospect archive, entitled the ‘Prospect Plantation Book’, records cargoes of sugar consigned to British ports between 1784 and 1791. It is notable that, for the first two years spanned by this document, sugar was despatched addressed to Stephen Attlay in his own right, whilst in 1787 Stephen Oakeley Attlay Sr. took over receipt of the cargoes. Unfortunately, for the remaining years, the source records only the quantity of sugar shipped with details of the vessel carrying the cargo, omitting all reference to the recipient. A detailed examination of the Accounts Produce volumes in the Jamaica Archives (a record of the crops produced on plantations owned by absentees) would perhaps establish whether Oakeley Attlay Sr. continued to receive sugar, as is conjectured here, or whether the cargoes were consigned to commission merchants. 14 The available evidence suggests strongly that, as merchants engaged in the West Indian trades, the Attlays dispensed with the services of agents and supervised their own business affairs, with Ransom, Morland, and Hammersley acting merely as the family’s bankers. Stephen Attlay is known to have held victualling contracts to supply troops stationed in Jamaica with provisions during both the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) and the War of the American Revolution (1776-83). 15 He specialised in the supply of beef and at his death a balance of £2,746. 1s. 1d. was still owing from government commissioners on this account. Involvement in victuals provides an indication of the Attlays’ standing as merchants, since contracts to provision troops were generally granted to well-financed merchants possessing excellent colonial connections. 16 Additional information about Attlay’s wealth and his activities as a merchant is provided in an inventory of Jamaican assets, compiled after his death in December 1786. This document valued Prospect Estate at £8,674. 5s. currency (£6,193. 15s. sterling): an under-estimate of its true value since the inventory excluded the land and sugar works, rating only the enslaved and moveable property. 17 Interestingly, the sugar estate accounted for less than half of Attlay’s gross inventoried wealth on the island. In addition to Prospect, he was the owner of a livestock pen named Dirty Pit, which was leased to William Patrick Brown (a member of Jamaica’s Council) at £980 currency per annum. Alongside the 162 slaves at Prospect, a further 40 enslaved workers belonging to Attlay were rented to Brown valued at £2,340 currency. 18 Brown was also a creditor of Attlay’s and in 1786 owed him £1,222. 7s. 6d. currency secured by bond. Six further debtors are listed in the inventory, which details £1,731.0s.6d. currency of loans granted by Attlay on the island between 1772 and 1784. In total, therefore, Attlay’ gross assets on Jamaica, exclusive of real estate, amounted to £14,947.13s. currency (£10,696 3s. 6d. sterling). 19 3
Stephen Oakeley Attlay Sr., like his father, possessed commercial interests. His account with Ransom, Morland, and Hammersley records a turnover of £12,118 sterling between 1802 and 1803, made up principally of securities transactions. In addition to stocks and shares, Oakeley Attlay Sr. invested directly in companies. His name appears, for example, as a director of the Teignmouth and Shaldon Bridge Company in 1825 and 1827. The extent of Oakeley Attlay Sr.’s wealth is suggested by his draft will of 1817, which contemplated leaving his wife an annuity of £500 a year and his daughter a legacy of £10,000, in addition to bequeathing Prospect and the residue of his estate to his son Stephen Oakeley Attlay Jr. 20 The business activities of the Attlays indicate that the system of management that oversaw production on Prospect was a modified version of absentee ownership that excluded reliance on London commission merchants. Regular reports on the health and numbers of the enslaved workforce were sent direct to the Attlays in Britain, rather than to intermediaries, along with accounts of crop production and sales. The kernel of this information is contained within the plantation’s surviving journals. On Jamaica itself, the daily tasks carried out by the enslaved were supervised by overseers living on the property. The names of seven different overseers between 1787 and 1791 are recorded as declaring the number of slaves and livestock to the parish vestry. 21 Among these seven individuals, the name of Thomas Oakeley is of particular importance since he played a major role in looking after the interests of the absentee Attlays on Jamaica. Thomas Oakeley (b.1744) was the brother of Stephen Attlay’s wife Parnel (1735-1815). In 1786, Oakeley was resident in Port Antonio as a merchant, handling sugar and rum sent from Prospect for export. By 1817, an individual named Thomas Oakeley had become the owner of two properties in Portland parish that collectively employed sixty enslaved workers. Three years later, the slave registration return prefaced the owner’s name with the word ‘Honourable’: a title reserved for members of Jamaica’s Council. The person named was either the Port Antonio merchant or his nephew Thomas Oakeley (b.1773), who in 1796 was living on Jamaica under the care of his uncle, but by 1816 had returned to England in order to re-marry. 22 Thomas Oakeley senior and junior were both members of the Snakecroft (later Bagnall) Oakeleys: a scion of the gentry Oakeley family of Shropshire. 23 The Snakecroft Oakeleys originated from Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, where brother and sister Parnel and Thomas were both born, but the family also possessed land in Monmouthshire. Parnel Oakeley lived out years of widowhood at Lydart House); after her death, members of the Oakeleys resided at Lydart and the 1851 Cenus provides an indication of their social status. The head of the Oakeley household was a freeholder and farmed 136 acres, while his three sons were occupied as a solicitor, a curate, and an Oxford undergraduate. 24 Sufficient evidence has been identified to ascertain that Prospect Estates’ owners were British merchants and planters with gentry connections, who managed the plantation as absentees largely without recourse to agents other than their kinsmen. Yet if the Attlays were directly involved in the management of Prospect and maintained their own records, by what route did the journals find their way into the 4
Page 1 and 2: An Introduction to the Plantation J
Page 3 and 4: © Simon D. Smith, 2004 ISBN 10: 1-
Page 5: Prior to their relocation to the Ma
Page 9 and 10: located five miles from Ashbury. A
Page 11 and 12: on the estate heightens, rather tha
Page 13 and 14: collective task to perform; in the
Page 15 and 16: Table 1 An Inventory of the Manuscr
Page 17 and 18: Table 3 The Enslaved Population of
Page 19 and 20: 1 Jan 1784 Table 5 Demographic Prof
Page 21 and 22: Tables 7a and 7b Work Allocation in
Page 23 and 24: Crop Season Table 8 Crop Invoices f
Page 25 and 26: (Wakefield, 2002), also available f
Page 27 and 28: 32 Craton, Invisible Man, 39. 33 Ba

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