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PART 2 the Enslaved People

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PART 2 the Enslaved People THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 780 PART 2 The enslaved people Chapter 7 Mountravers under the Hugginses (1808-1834) ‘… from disobedience they proceeded to riot, and from riot to rebellion.’ Peter Thomas Huggins, 1810 A change in ownership transformed the lives of everyone on Mountravers. Once again, the proprietor was resident on the plantation and people became subject to a harsh regime. They rebelled and were severely punished. Their punishment received publicity in Britain and America and contributed to the debate about plantation slavery. The number of freed people in Nevis increased. Because they operated outside the plantation structures, institutions had to be adapted or established: an organised police force came into being, the jail was improved and a hospital and a lunatic asylum built. The legal system, too, had to be changed to take account of this new, significant layer of society. Another institution that underwent change was the church. It began to cater for enslaved people who could get baptised, married and buried with Christian ritual. Mountravers was at the forefront of developments that included the establishment of a chapel and a school. It was also among the estates that introduced new technology in the form of the plough and the steam engine. These innovations changed people’s work. Further changes took place when three neighbouring estates were added and workers moved between the different properties. The decade before the abolition of slavery was marked by droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes, and by increased acts of resistance: thefts, arson, burglaries, and murders. The 1820s were tough indeed. When slavery was abolished, some of those who then lived on Mountravers will have descended from people who had been purchased for the plantation in the seventeenth century. The last children born into slavery had a Creole lineage. ◄► ▼◄► From the beginning of August 1807 onward there followed several months of uncertainty on Mountravers. After Joe Stanley had handed over the keys to James Tobin and Thomas Arthurton, the sale of the plantation was in limbo because, although agreed in principle, the potential purchaser had not signed a contract. Samuel Bennett was managing the estate but as yet there was no new owner – the plantation still belonged to the Pinneys. One sticking point was the property which John Pretor Pinney (JPP) owned separately from his son’s. He still held Woodland plantation, six acres called Coker’s land and ten enslaved people whom he had reserved for his own use: Nancy Jones and her son William Fisher, Mulatto Nanny and her two children THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 781 George and Christiana, Tom MacGill, Prince, and three little girls, Princess, Nanny and Ritta.1 These individuals needed to be housed, and JPP wanted them to live somewhere near Mountravers. One option was to reserve part of the land rented to Clarke’s Estate and a plot of about eleven acres known as ‘the old Negro-house piece’. Both of these lay advantageously on the further side of the large ghut and therefore ‘out of the way of annoying Mr Huggins’.2 At the same time JPP made it known that he was prepared to accept other deals, such as giving up Coker’s land near the house and taking ‘the small piece above Oliver’s [i.e. Clarke’s] and three or four acres the bottom of the old Negro-house piece’.3 JPP was angling for a small plot above Oliver’s house but when no agreement could be reached he was prepared to sell the group, if necessary. He did not want their housing situation to hinder the sale of Mountravers.4 With these finer points still needing to be settled - in addition to the sale of the main plantation - letters went back and forth between Bristol and Nevis. JPP charged James Tobin with selling Mountravers, but at the same time JPP also conducted his own talks with other people. Negotiations therefore went on simultaneously in Bristol and in Nevis, between JPP and Edward Huggins’s attorney, and between James Tobin and John Henry Clarke, and when Clarke visited England, JPP also entered into discussions with him.5 Reaching agreement over the sale was made more complicated by the length of time it took to get news across the Atlantic, and the upshot was that both JPP and Tobin concluded separate deals. Clarke informed JPP that, if Huggins was still interested, then he would not pursue the purchase until Huggins had definitely stated he was withdrawing.6 At this point JPP seized the moment and sealed months of negotiations with a contract. On 1 February 1808 Robert Claxton, as Edward Huggins’s attorney, signed an agreement in Bristol. Unaware of this development, in Nevis, about five weeks later, Tobin sold the plantation to John Henry Clarke and put him in possession of Mountravers. The deal with Huggins meant that John Frederick Pinney and JPP sold the estate for £35,650 (worth about S£2.9 million in 2016). Included were Woodland, Coker’s land, those 183 people who were alive in December 1806 and ten of JPP’s reserved people.7 Not included in the sale were five men, four women, six girls and seven boys - men with skills, mothers and their children, and three little girls to whom JPP may have had a particularly attachment. Some in the group were black but most were coloureds. These 22 JPP reserved for himself. They were to be hired to Colhoun’s on a long-term basis. JPP wanted them to live on that estate in their own houses which the Mountravers people were to help moving there. Altogether it was an expedient solution. Colhoun’s was mortgaged to the House and JPP thought his people would be a valuable acquisition - his son had assured him of the ‘excellent character of several of them’,8 and he believed they would be treated well. He had faith in the manager, James Lawson, whom he considered ‘a very deserving man’ - 9 high praise indeed from a man to whom humankind was divided into deserving and undeserving. JPP also made separate provisions for his favoured people: Billey Jones, his wife Patty Fisher and Patty’s mother Sarah Fisher. They were to be allowed to work out. Billey Jones’s mother, Black Polly, was mentioned but not included in the final count of the 22 reserved people. According to JPP, she was ‘considered for many years free’.10 1 BULSC, PN Microfilm Vol 1: JPP to James Tobin, 2 July 1807 2 PP, LB 21: JPP to James Tobin, Nevis, 4 September 1807 3 PP, LB 22: JPP to James Tobin, Nevis, 7 September 1807 4 PP, LB 22: JPP to James Tobin, Nevis, 3 December 1807 5 PP, LB 22: JPP to John Henry Clarke, on board Edward/Capt Wm Powell, Cove of Cork, 22 December 1807 6 PP, Misc Vols 13-16 Case of Clarke and Tobin f9 7 PP, Misc Vols 17-19 Case of Clarke and Huggins 1808 f7 8 PP, LB 46: JPP & JF Pinney, to James Lawson, Nevis, 25 February 1808 9 PP, LB 46: JPP & JF Pinney, to JC Mills, 6 April 1809 10 PP, Misc Vols 17-19 Case of Clarke and Huggins 1808 f7: JPP to James Tobin, 1 February 1808, also LB 22: JPP to James Tobin, Nevis, 1 February 1808 THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 782 News that JPP had sold Mountravers to Edward Huggins had not reached Nevis and John Henry Clarke took possession of the property.11 In an additional agreement, from 7 March 1808 Clarke also rented the 22 reserved people whom JPP had intended to have hired to Colhoun’s. While JPP had second thoughts about the ‘hasty decision’ to sell the estate - sugar prices being ‘much better’ now - 12 Tobin was pleased that Clarke had taken on the whole estate and was certain of JPP’s approval. Tobin believed the ‘poor negroes’, too, were ‘very glad’ of the developments.13 No doubt, news would have reached them that JPP had seemed to have been ‘strongly prejudiced in favour of Huggins’, and presumably they saw John Henry Clarke as a man who worked his people with a lighter touch. Clarke, in turn, was well disposed towards them. He believed that, ‘though accustomed from long indulgence to habits of idleness’, the people ‘were not difficult to manage by mild measures’. Later he claimed that during his residence of sixteen months on the estate ‘he did not believe that the number of one-hundred-and-sixty lashes was inflicted amongst the whole gang, then amounting to one-hundred- and-eighty-three’.14 This equalled an average of about two and a half lashes per person – man, woman and child - over a period of sixteen months. While the punishment may have been relatively slight and while the plantation people may have accepted Clarke’s regime, JPP’s reserved people did not. They had already taxed Joe Stanley’s patience by claiming that JPP had given them permission to work for themselves and, now that the plantation was being sold, they expected to be freed. They felt themselves to be special. Ever since JPP had handed over Mountravers to his son, they had belonged to JPP. They had held a privileged position; they did not consider themselves ordinary plantation workers. Listed separately from the others, their hire income had gone directly to JPP, and for over ten years they had hoped their master would free them. Now, their expectations crushed and, no doubt, feeling betrayed by JPP, they immediately resisted Clarke’s new regime.
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