PART 3 the Employed Men
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THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 1044 PART 3 The employed men Chapter 3 Biographies of managers, 1734-1807 Father and son, James and Joseph Browne, 1734-1761 James Browne was the longest-serving manager on Mountravers but a lack of documents meant that relatively few details about his plantation management could be established. Today, the Brownes are best known for their plantation in the parish of St James Windward which was later called Eden and then Eden Browne. The setting of a tale about a death by duel, the old Browne’s estate is now one of the tourist attractions in Nevis. ◄► ▼◄► James Browne may well have come from an old, established Nevis family: in the 1670s there were eight Brownes on the island, including a ‘free Negro’ called John Brown.1 By the early 1700s the number had increased to eleven, mostly through the arrival in 1685 of several Monmouth rebels transported for Governor Stapleton. It appears that James was born in 1710 and the son of James Browne, a member of the Nevis Council.2 James Browne junior studied at Trinity College, Oxford, and was said to have joined the Inner Temple at the age of 16.3 However, he did not follow a legal career but in 1734 was installed as manager on John Frederick Pinney’s plantation. His appointment was a family affair: Jeremiah Browne, who almost certainly was an uncle of James’s,4 was John Frederick Pinney’s guardian, while 1 Oliver, VL Caribbeana Vol 3 Nevis Census 1677/8 2 UKNA, CO 186/1 3 Oliver, VL History of Antigua Vol 1 p76; also http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/ 4 The man Mary Pinney had appointed as her son’s guardian, Jeremiah Browne, was a wealthy landowner. He had property in St Kitts, Nevis and in England. In Surrey he held the manor of Apps Court (near Molesey) which he passed on to his daughter Elizabeth. Apps Court was in 1802 sold by a descendent and the house later pulled down to make way for a reservoir (Malden, HE (ed) ‘Parishes: Walton On Thames’ A History of the County of Surrey Vol 3). Jeremiah Browne died between July 1754 and November 1755. In his will he left the bulk of his estate to his son Jackson Browne but also made bequests to his daughters Sophia and Elizabeth and his granddaughter, Frances Payne (Oliver, VL Caribbeana Vol 1 pp35-6 and Vol 2 p271). According to one source, James, who managed Mountravers, was the son of Jeremiah Browne (PP, Misc Vols 36 Anna Maria Pinney’s Notebooks Vol 1) but a Browne family tree in Caribbeana points towards it having been Jeremiah’s nephew, his brother James’s son (Vol 1 p35). The family tree in Caribbeana appears to have been based on the wills made in 1754 by Jeremiah Browne and in 1777 by James Browne senior. According to Jeremiah Browne’s will, he had another nephew called James, the son of John Browne of Nevis and the brother of Sarah, but a case that involved Jeremiah Browne’s son Jackson concerning his St Kitts plantation suggests that James Browne (the son of John, brother of Sarah) had died between 1754 and February 1756; he was not mentioned while his sister Sarah was. In addition, the names of several of James Browne’s children (James, William, Jeremiah, etc.) appear in John Frederick Pinney’s correspondence in the early 1760s, and, based on this, the identity of James Browne and his family was established (Oliver, VL Caribbeana Vol 6 pp117-18). The Browne family tree does not include all of James Browne’s children because some had died prior to him making his will. It also shows that there were four generations of men called James Browne but the ages of the children suggest that the manager on Mountravers was the James Browne born in 1710 and that there were only three generations. THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 1045 one of the men who drew up James Browne’s contract was none other than James’s father, James Browne senior. One of the executors appointed by John Frederick Pinney’s mother, John Spooner, oversaw the process. James Browne’s conditions of employment were laid down in an agreement dated 7 March: the 24- year-old was to get a basic salary of N£1005 a year, some imported goods, plantation produce, and resources and services in kind. The imported goods amounted to an annual allowance of six barrels each of salt beef and flour, four firkins of salt butter, a hogshead of Madeira wine, and a box each of soap and candles. Worth N£90, these supplies almost doubled his income. In addition, he was entitled to plantation produce - a barrel of strained sugar and twenty gallons of ‘rum & syrup’ - and he could hold ‘all sorts of stock’, use some of the surplus plantation sheep and was permitted to plant Indian corn or peas in every other row among twenty acres of young canes. He was also allowed a horse, a boy to tend to the horse and two of the plantation people as domestic servants. (Later John Pretor Pinney (JPP) granted his unmarried manager five people.) Richard Pares considered James Browne’s contract ‘exceptionally generous’6 and it certainly compared favourably with that of one of Browne’s contemporaries, the manager on the Stapleton plantation in Nevis. To begin with, David Stalker’s salary was N£40 a year les, N£60, and he was entitled to two fewer barrels of flour. He also got a hogshead of Madeira wine but had four more barrels of beef than Browne. Stalker, too, was allowed a box of candles and 24 pounds of soap but he missed out on the butter altogether. He could not keep any ‘hogs or stock of any kind, ‘except a reasonable number of turkeys, fowls and ducks for his own table’, could not plant any cassava but was permitted to plant corn in up to ten acres. He did not have a horse, either, and was only given one woman and a boy ‘to take care of his house’.7 Conditions of employment were individually negotiated and if a manager was offered better terms elsewhere, this surely provided an incentive to leave. Some time after he began work on Mountravers James Browne got married. His wife’s name is not known but it could have been Elizabeth – the name of their only daughter. The couple had five sons - James, Jeremiah, Joseph, John and William – who presumably were all born on Mountravers. As the family grew, the number of their personal slaves increased to twelve. They would not all have been servants because eight of these were too young, too old or too infirm to carry out any work.8 That same year, 1746, Thomas Wenham first appeared in the Mountravers records. It is likely that he was sent out from England9 so that James Browne could tend to the family’s plantation once his father left Nevis. James Browne senior was mentioned in various documents: a member of the Council since 1721,10 in 1735 he supplied enslaved people to work on the defences at Saddle Hill11 and as late as June 1745 was known to have attended a Council meeting.12 In the year that Thomas Wenham first There was also another Joseph Browne with whom John Frederick Pinney had dealings: he, with an unnamed brother, was involved in shipping and with his father borrowed £100 from Pinney to build a vessel. As was often the case, the money was slow in being returned (PP, WI Cat 3 Index III.ii Domestic: Letters dated 16 June 1756, 20 August 1756 and 8 March 1761). 5 N£ means Nevis currency 6 PN p17, and R Pares A West India Fortune p346 fn8 The value of the imported goods was based on the costs as itemised by Walter Nisbet in his account of 1746. Walter Nisbet’s basic pay (including ‘travelling charges’) was N£150 a year; an additional supply of imported goods amounted to N£76:10:0 (Stapleton Cotton MSS 13 (ii)). 7 Ryland Stapleton MSS 4.10: David Stalker’s agreement dated 31 December 1733 8 ECSCRN, CR 1741-1749 f123 9 According to Pares, John Frederick Pinney sent Thomas Wenham out some time in the fifties (Pares, Richard A West India Fortune p58) but a reference to ‘your serv’t Thos. Wenham’ in George Jones’s account dated 15 August 1746 suggests that Wenham had come to the plantation much earlier (PP, WI ‘Damaged or Fragile’ Box). Pares appears to have based this on a letter from John Frederick Pinney in which he complained about the state of his sugars since Wilson left; he wanted his boilers told off (PP, LB 1: JF Pinney, Bath, to ?Browne, 27 October 1755). Wilson was either a boiler-slave, or a white boiling house watch. That Wenham was a manager rather than an overseer is based on a letter John Frederick Pinney wrote to Wenham about being advised on sugar shipments – the manager’s not the overseer’s job. Also, Wenham was allowed slaves as servants. 10 Acts of the Privy Council (Colonial) 1720-1745 p830 11 Another seven people named Brown/e supplied enslaved people for the work on the Saddle Hill defences: Benjamin, Elizabeth, John, John of Hog Valley, John of Figtree, Ann of Figtree and Ann of Charlestown (UKNA, CO 186/2). 12 UKNA, CO 186/3: 19 June 1745 THE MOUNTRAVERS PLANTATION COMMUNITY - INTRODUCTION P a g e | 1046 appeared only one James Browne was recorded as paying tax on slaves, suggesting that James Browne senior was no longer in the island.