Celts in the West Indies, 1707-1857
Scotland has had direct social and economic links with the Caribbean for nearly 400 years. Settlement started in 1626 when James Hay, the Earl of Carlisle, was appointed Proprietor of Barbados, an event which led to a number of Scots making their way to the island (for a list of Scottish emigrants to Barbados, see Barbados and Scotland, Links 1627-1877, by David Dobson). Later Scottish transportees, such as Cromwellian prisoners of war of the 1650’s, Covenanters, and criminals, were supplemented by a small flow emigrants from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Some of the survivors of the ambitious Darien Scheme, whereby Scotland hoped to set up an independent trading post in Panama, arrived in Jamaica and the smaller islands. Scots could also be found in the Dutch Caribbean islands.
In 1627 King Charles I appointed a Scot, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, as Governor of the Caribbees. This appointment led to a steady migration of Scots to Barbados and other islands. While there was a degree of voluntary emigration, the majority of the Scots in the West Indies arrived unwillingly. In 1654, Oliver Cromwell transported five hundred Scots prisoners-of-war. Felons or political undesirables, such as the Covenanters, were sent to the islands in chains directly from Scotland. In addition, the English Privy Council regularly received petitions from planters requesting Scottish indentured servants. Because of this, a steady stream of indentured servants sailed from Scottish and English ports to the West Indies.
As the demand for sugar grew so did the demand for labour, and it became the custom to “transport” political dissidents, felons, and other undesirables as an alternative to hanging. Oliver Cromwell “barbadoed” hundreds, and these were later joined by the remnants of the Army of the Duke of Monmouth, sent there after the Battle of Sedgemoor by Judge Jeffreys in 1686. Few survived in the climate, and although some of their descendants can still be seen in Barbados, where they are called “Redlegs”. It wasn’t until much later that another source of labour was sought, and it was found in Africa.
White Barbadians or White Bajans are citizens or residents of Barbados of European descent. The majority of White Barbadians are descended from English, Irish, Scottish and Portuguese settlers, who arrived during the British colonial period.
Among the White Barbadians, there exists an underclass now commonly referred to as Redlegs; they are descendants of indentured ‘servants’, and ‘prisoners’ imported to the island, Redlegs have historically formed a disadvantaged group within Barbadian society.
The term Redlegs or Redshanks in Barbados was used to describe Scots slaves whose fair skin legs would burn in the tropical sun.
“Redlegs” as a term is used to refer to the class of ‘poorwhite‘ slaves that live on Barbados then moved to St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. Their forebears came from Ireland, Scotland and the West of England.
Scotland’s connection to Barbados is as old as British colonization itself. The first Proprietor of the Barbados was the Scot, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. Following the establishment of trading links between Scotland and the West Indies, Scots indentured servants were in constant demand on Barbados plantations. Owing to Cromwell’s defeat of Scotland between 1648 and 1651, the Covenanter Risings in the second half of the 17th century, and eventually, the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, the Crown would banish many Scots to Barbados and elsewhere in the New World. Throughout the colonial period, a steady trickle of Scots sought to inhabit Barbados because of the opportunities the land offered. Barbados is also of special significance to genealogists as it was the springboard for the settlement of other British colonies, notably Jamaica and South Carolina.
In February 1659 merchants in Barbados requested a ship load of “shiftless people and vagabonds” to be sold on the block. The Burgh Council was happy to comply, this would clear some of the streets of Edinburgh of the unwanted and unfit.
It is said many Edinburgh ships in 1690 would top off their ships with mugged and kidnapped people before sailing to the colonies. In 1694 a merchant from Glasgow one James Montgomerie Jr. requested to the Edinburgh Council “collect dissolute women” for shipment to the colonies.
The Scottish connection with the Caribbean started as early as 1611 with the voyage to the West Indies of the Janet of Leith. It was not until after 1626, however, that Scots actually settled in the Caribbean.
The Scots arrived in two main waves the first in 1655 when as prisoners of war they were sold as bond (indentured) servants to the English, and in 1745-46 after the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion. (Jacobites were supporters of James II’s claim to the English throne). Others came in between those seeking religious freedom, those from lower-socio-economic levels such as gypsies, criminals and idlers, who were rounded up and shipped off, as well as doctors and lawyers and others from the middle class who were simply in search of a quick fortune.
One of the most significant Scottish settlements occurred in 1700 in St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, a year after the failure of an expedition to Darien, Panama. Colonel John Campbell, the first in a long line of Campbells (said to be one of Jamaica’s most popular surnames) was a captain at Darien before settling in Jamaica, marrying well and becoming one of the island’s gentry. By 1750 the Scots accounted for one-third of Jamaica’s white population. Place names such as Culloden (the site of a famous Jacobite battle), Craigie and Aberdeen, reflect strong Scottish ties.
Perhaps the most famous or infamous Scottish immigrant is Lewis Hutchison, better known as the Mad Master of Edinburgh Castle. Born in Scotland in 1733 where he is believed to have studied medicine for a while, he came to Jamaica in the 1760s to run an estate which was crowned by a house known as Edinburgh Castle. Not too long after Hutchison’s arrival, cases of travellers disappearing without a trace began to mount in number and suspicions ran rampant but no one could ever have suspected the level of torture they experienced. Travellers would occasionally stop to rest at Edinburgh Castle, the only inhabited spot for miles on the way from St. Ann’s Bay south, not knowing that they would become the target of Hutchison’s unerring aim. Hutchison killed for sport, not money, as travellers of all shapes, sizes and income levels were equal game. Eventually apprehended, Hutchison insolently entered a plea of not guilty and was defended by one of the island’s most esteemed lawyers. He was tried, found guilty and condemned to death by hanging in Spanish Town Square. The records of his trial stand in the UK National Archives.
During the 1660s the Glasgow-based organization called the Company Trading to Virginia, the Caribbee Islands, Barbados, New England, St. Kitts, Montserrat, and Other Colonies in America established economic links with the West Indies. By the latter part of the seventeenth century, Scots merchants, planters, seafarers, and transportees were to be found throughout the English and Dutch colonies of the Caribbean. In total, it is believed that as many as 5,000 Scots settled temporarily or permanently in the Caribbean before the Act of Union in 1707. The settlement of Scots in the West Indies was important from the point of view both of the colonist and the home country. Many of the colonists used the islands as a stopping-off point before continuing on to the mainland of America, where they then settled. Alexander Hamilton and Theodore Roosevelt are numbered among those who descend from Scots who initially settled in the Caribbean.
Once the Act of Union of 1707 eliminated restrictions on trade between Scotland and the American colonies, emigration to the West Indies increased rather substantially. To a larger extent than elsewhere, the colonies of the West Indies attracted Scots with skills or money to invest. Scotsmen figured prominently in the Indies sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco-growing businesses, a phenomenon which promoted trade between the Indies and the mainland ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. In due course, families moved between these various locations, and links were established. The Scottish population of the West Indies also increased when many Loyalists took refuge there following the American Revolution.
There is a manuscript in the British museum which states that any two judges in any city, town of the commonwealth can from time to time issue warrants for the arrest of any beggar or vagrant. The said beggars or vagrants to be shipped to the colonies as cargo. The judges in Edinburgh from 1662-1665 ordered the enslavement and shipment to the colonies of any rouges, beggars or any other persons of low class who are a plague on society.
The calendar of state papers, colonial series 1701 records 25,000 slaves in Barbados, of the 25,000 slaves it is noted 21,700 were white slaves.
It is a dark tale, but part of history, a part that needs to see the light of day cast upon it. We can hide our past if we choose or admit the wrongs done in past history and move on.
Many men and women were slaves in Scotland working in the coal mines until 1799. Their status as slaves was hereditary being passed on to their children.
David Dobson’s book tackles the subject of Scottish emigration to the island of Barbados. Drawing upon a wide range of manuscript and published sources originating in Barbados, Scotland, England, the Netherlands and the U.S., identifying about 2,500 Scots or their progeny who made their way to Barbados.
While the full impact of Scottish settlement in the West Indies has yet to be fully researched, Dobson has clearly broken new ground in immigration source material. Arranged alphabetically by surname, many of the entries in this volume were culled from Scottish newspapers such as the “Aberdeen Journal,” in which notices would appear seeking to employ managers and servants. In all, nearly 3,000 Scotsmen are identified, each by full name, island inhabited, date and source of the information, and sometimes by occupation, name of parent’s, and education.
Most of these emigrants left Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since vital records comprise a large number of the sources for this book, there searcher will find that most Scots are identified by name, date/place of birth, baptism, marriage, or death; name of spouse or parents; and sometimes occupation, reason for transportation, ship, religious or political persuasion, miscellaneous pieces of information, and the source.
James Hay was one of the young Scottish gentlemen who accompanied James I to England in 1603. He was a power at court, a valued counsellor of the King. In 1627 he was made Governor of the Caribbee Islands. However, another powerful noble, Philip Herbert, Lord Montgomery, also claimed the Islands and had placed a governor there, pre-empting Carlisle’s rights and income. Charles I eventually sent a Royal Commission to go to Barbados to arrest the Herbert governor. Carlisle’s secretary, Peter Hayes, was one of the King’s envoys with this Royal Commission to the West Indies. The dispute was settled in 1640 by which time Carlisle had died, but his son the second Earl established his hereditary right to Barbados, then called the Carlisle Islands, and actually settled there for the duration of the Civil War.
Scottish surnames
There is much said about Mc being Irish and Mac being Scottish. They are both the same, meaning son. Such as MacDonald which is son of Donald. The misnomer is probably due to the fact that the first group of Scots ousted from Scotland were, in fact, sent to Ireland (and later some of these could well have been sent to Barbados).
You will recognise many of these Scottish surnames such as Douglas, Robinson, Reid, Russell, Lewis, McLean, McFarlane, McKenzie, McDonald, Grant, Gordon, Graham, Stewart, Simpson, Scott, Ferguson, Frazer and Farquharson.
[http://www.last-names.net/Articles/Scottish-Names.asp]
Scottish place names
For comparability with other cities around the world, the city of Bridgetown has been defined as the entire urban area from the Airport in the east to Holetown on the west coast. This area takes in most of the parish of Saint Michael, the coastal section of the parish of Christ Church, the south-western corner of the parish of Saint Thomas and the southern part of the parish of Saint James. Of the names of the 181 suburbs and neighbourhoods that have been identified to date in Greater Bridgetown, 46 (25.4%) can be found in Scotland or are based on Scottish family names. Of course, many of the names are used in other parts of the British Isles as well, but at least 18 of them (10.0%) are unique to Scotland, or are readily identifiable with places in Scotland that are based on the same names.
Arthurs Seat, Bannatyne, Callendar, Gall Hill, Grand View, Graeme Hall, Graeme Hall Park and Graeme Hall Terrace, Inch Marlowe, Maxwell, Maxwell Coast and Maxwell Hill, Montrose, Neils, Rouen, Sargeants, Strathclyde, and Silver Sands.
Some of the following localities may also have a direct or indirect Scottish connection but these names are used in other parts of the British Isles as well:
Appleby, Balls, Belmont, Black Rock, Carrington, Cave Hill, Club Morgan, Edge Hill, Fairfield, Durants, Green Hill, Halls, Henrys, Highgate, Husbands, Jamestown Park, Lodge Hill, Lower Birneys, Newton and Newton Terrace, Paradise Heights, Seaview, Silver Hill, Spencers, Spring Garden, St Davids, and Whitepark.
Scottish place names are also found in other parts of the island of Barbados. Obvious examples include Bairds, Carmichael, Castle Grant, Christie, Cleland, Douglas, Moncrieffe, Sterling and Sutherland Road. Names of English origin dominate, however, making both Bridgetown and the whole island of Barbados one of the most heavily English-influenced parts of the former British Empire.
Further Reading
Barbados and Scotland Links 1627-1877, David Dobson, 2005
Irish in Barbados
Caroline Walsh has focused on the plight of Ireland’s “lost tribe”, which she associates as “Red Legs”, in her article on Barbados. She claimed this group, made up of the descendants of “50,000 Irish men and women” who were sold into the white slave trade between 1652 and 1659, have been largely ignored, apart from in Seán O’Callaghan’s “To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland”, published almost 20 years ago.
[The Irish Times in Dec 2008]
Other sources state that by 1656 Over 60,000 Irish Catholics had been sent slaves to Barbados, and other islands in the Caribbean by Oliver Cromwell.
During 1672 over 6,000 Irish boys and women sold as slaves since England gained control of Jamaica.
The surnames Burke, Collins, Lynch, Mackey, Murphy, Reynolds has Irish origins.
Welsh in Barbados
Once in a while when driving through the parishes of St. Ann and Trelawny you come across low stone walls, where the stones look as if they fit almost seamlessly together testament to Welsh artisanry. Other examples of Welsh craftsmanship include many of the slate roofs that covered Jamaican 18th & 19th century sugar works. (The slates used in schools were also most likely Welsh). There are Welsh place names Bangor Ridge (Portland), Cardiff Hall (St. Ann), Llandilo (Westmoreland), Llandovery (St. Ann), Pencarne (in St. Mary) once owned by the famous and infamous Welsh pirate/privateer-turned-Governor, Capt. Henry Morgan). Then there are the places named after him Morgan’s Bridge, Morgan’s Pass, and Morgan’s Valley in Clarendon.
Also in the 17th century, Jamaica had a parish named St. David (part of present-day St. Thomas) perhaps after the patron saint of Wales, whose day is celebrated with daffodils and leeks every 1st of March in Wales. Jamaican surnames of Welsh background include: Bryan, Davis, Davies, Jones, Meredith, Morgan, Owens, Rhys/Reece, Williams and Vaughan. At one point in the 1950s some suburban house names in Kingston included Abergavenny, Pontypridd and Llandudno all names of Welsh towns.
The Welsh influence is also felt annually in Jamaica’s National Festival Movement, likely patterned after the Eisteddfod, the Welsh annual summertime celebration of arts, culture and music (Senior, 2003, p.511).
The Surname Challenor, Drax (or Drakes), Gittens, Griffiths, Jeffries, Jordon, Lewis, Mauhan (or Morgan & Morgan), Morris is an ancient Welsh surname. Perryman (anglicized form of Welsh Herry ‘son of Herry’, a variant of Harry), Powell, Terrell.
Flewelling, one of the versions of the ancient Llewelyn (even spelt Welling and Wellen). Peter Flewilling, presumably a plantation owner received several men from the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. The authorities show that Llewelyn was sometimes replaced with Lewis (“… due to the deliberate policy of medieval clerks using Anglo-Norman names as substitutes for Welsh names.” Morgan & Morgan).
Scottish in Jamaica
Scots, like the Germans and the Irish, were also encouraged to come to Jamaica in the 19th century following emancipation when the government attempted to establish rural villages/European townships and grow the white population. The Scots in particular were thought to be well-suited to life in the mountainous regions of Portland, but after a few years, many died as a result of illness. Those who survived melded in with Maroon life in Moore Town and Mill Bank.
Other, more positive, forms of Scottish influence can be found in Jamaican dance the scotch reel in Kingston’s Scots Kirk Church, as well as in our language as Scottish dialects mingled with English, African languages, German, Irish and Welsh among other influences, to produce Jamaican English (Senior, 2003, pp. 434-5).
Among the important Tobacco ‘Lords’ whose mansions or great-houses gave their names to streets in Jamaica were Andrew Buchanan, James Dunlop [1], Archibald Ingram [2], James Wilson, Alexander Oswald [3], Andrew Cochrane [4] and John Glassford [5]. The Virginia Mansion of Alexander Speirs [1] gave Virginia Street its name, and Alexander gave his surname to Speirs Wharf in Port Dundas.
An idea of the grandeur of the Tobacco Lords’ houses – which often dramatically punctuated the ends of the streets named after them – can be seen in the Gallery of Modern Art whose kernel is the grand mansion built, at a cost of £10,000, for William Cunninghame in 1780. A more modest “Tobacco Merchants House” (by James Craig, 1775) is being restored at 42 Miller Street. St Andrew’s Parish Church in St Andrew’s Square, built 1739-1756 by Alan Dreghorn was the Tobacco Lord’s ostentatious parish church, in a prestigious area being laid out by such merchants as David Dale, (David Dale was not involved in the Tobacco or ‘Triangular’ Trade). In the same area was the grand house of Alexander Speirs.
The American War of Independence (1775-1783) may have brought an end to the tobacco trade, but the canny Glasgow merchants merely switched attention to other profitable parts of the triangular trade, particularly cotton in the British West Indies.
The Act of Union in 1707 gave Scottish merchants access to the slave trade. Scots travelled out to the colonies and generated great wealth for Scotland based on slave labour. In 1817 Scots owned almost a third of all the slaves in Jamaica. The ‘Tobacco Lords’ made their fortunes in the colonies before returning to Scotland, many building large mansions.
Scotland also played a leading role in abolishing the slave trade. On 25March 1807 the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves in the British Empire.
Thomas Smith from Arbroath was a boy apprentice on the slave ship Ann, carrying 144 enslaved Africans (1761).
Tasmania, Australia and have a Jamaican connection – As an example Jo Jensen has an ancestor who was born in Jamaica, in 1782, the son of a Scottish planter called William Hepburn and a lady named Mary Anne Roy McGregor. Mary Anne was the daughter of a woman from the Gold Coast of Ghana named Isabella Diabenti and another Scotsman, supposedly the grandson of the famous Rob Roy McGregor. Isabella Diabenti was said to have been the daughter of a chief of the Koromantic people. They lived on a plantation in old St. Dorothy Parish called Wellekers, or Willikins.
Well-known Scottish sugar planters
Archibald Campbell, John Cunninghame, George Malcolm, Lewis Hutchinson (the so-called “mad-Master of Edinburgh Castle”), James Dawkins (Dawkins Caymanas), James Ewing (Ewing’s Caymanas) and James Wedderburn.
The Scottish landowners were not only involved in the sugar industry; over 50 per cent of the pen-keepers in Jamaica in the era of enslavement were probably Scottish, with men like Charles Stirling, George Forbes, Hay Haggart, James McIntosh and Benjamin Scott-Moncrieffe (of Soho and Thatch Hill pens) being among them. They were as pro-slavery as the English and their enslaved Africans, to whom they also passed on Scottish names, were as brutally punished for their role in the final emancipation war of 1831-32, with James Malcolm of Knockalva Pen, e.g., being sentenced to death.
- James Wedderburn was a Scottish doctor and sugar planter
- William and Alexander McBean – The Scottish planters who owned Roaring River
- Family of Simone McBean – Father, Erril McBean, his brothers, Ronald McBean (died in 2001) and Alwyn McBean were born in (Southfield) St. Elizabeth, Jamaica. Their father, Delso McBean, died (about 1953 at the age of 63) when they were young. Erril was raised by his uncle William Alexander McBean. One William McBean was born in 1832 in Roaring River (his mother was Amelia Garvey).
- Joseph Knight was born about the year 1750, and at the age of 10 or 11 was taken by slave ship to Jamaica, where he was sold by a Captain Knight (from whom he got his new name) to a Scottish planter called John Wedderburn. In 1768, Wedderburn brought him to Scotland as his personal servant.
Scottish place names in Jamaica
Scottish place names too are common in Jamaica. Scots surveyed the island and divided it into slave plantations; the best known was James Robertson from Shetland (1756-1841). Many of the slave plantations were given Scottish names such as Monymusk, Hermitage, Hampden, Glasgow, Argyle, Glen Islay, Dundee, Fort William, Montrose, Roxbro, Dumbarton, Old Monklands and Mount Stewart. As a boy I lived near Elgin Street.
Annandale, in St. Ann, is originally a Scottish place
Brown’s Town is a place-name found in St. Ann, Clarendon and the suburbs of Kingston. Brown’s Town was first known as Hamilton Town, after the first name of its founder (1775-1843), who was an Irishman.
Places- Jamaica
- Aberdeen
- Clydesdale
- Culloden (two places)
- Elgin Town (two places)
- Farquhar’s Beach
- Inverness
- Kilmarnoch (sic – from Kilmarnock)
- Suburbs of Kingston (possibly not itself a Scottish name)
- Balmagie
- Braeton
- Dunrobin
- Pitcairn Valley
- Portmore
- Sterling Castle (Stirling Castle)
- Montego Bay suburbs include Dunbar Pen and Glendevon.
- Perth Town
- Stewart Town
- Tweedside
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Scottish_place_names_in_other_countries#Jamaica
Jamaica References
1. TGS – 1560 to 1770s – Personalities – Alexander Speirs
Devine, Tom The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, 1740-1790 (John Donald, 1975)
Richard Oswald Mary Ramsey http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/abolition/legacy/index.asp
He owned slaving fort on Bance Island on the Sierra Leone River. Sent over 12,000 enslaved Africans to America. Many worked in the rice fields around Charleston.
John Glassford was a Glasgow ‘Tobacco Lord’.
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/abolition/servantsinscotland/index.asp
Sources and Links
Senior, O. (2003). The Encyclopedia of the Jamaican Heritage. Kingston Twin Guinep Publishers, Sherlock, P. and Bennett, H. (1998). The Story of the Jamaican people. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Jamaican
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0063.html
• Letters
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/letters/jamaica.html
• Scots and the slave trade
http://107707.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=107707&p=3&topicID=15527192
• Maitlands family
http://members.tripod.com/livi_d/history/history.htm
• Grahams Story
http://gwgraeme.tripod.com/ other
• People of Scottish Jamaican descent
• William Davidson (conspirator)
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/William%20Davidson%20(conspirator)/
• Harry J, record produce
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Harry%20J/
• Colin Powell, American general, of Scottish Jamaican parentage
• Gil Scott-Heron
• Robert Wedderburn
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Robert%20Wedderburn%20(radical)/
• Goldie – Disc jockey
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Goldie/
Scots in the USA
April 1666 City fathers of Edinburgh were exporting beggars and vagabonds because they were “not fit to stay in the kingdom”. A ship named “Phoenix” which was captained by James Gibson would sail from Leith loaded with the unfit and poor to be sold in Virginia. These people were seen as a commodity in Virginia to be bought and sold like tobacco or firewood.
Ships sailing to Virginia needed a cargo. A good example was the ship “Charles” sailing from Leith in 1669. The syndicate that owned her was granted “saleable cargo of any loose beggars or gypsies plus any poor, or unfit they could find on the streets of Edinburgh, Canongate or Leith. Some of these were termed “indentured labour” a polite term.
In 1681 a ship’s captain who sailed from Port Glasgow told the government he was ready to sail to Virginia, if they had a cargo of “sorners, lusty beggars or gypsies”.
Alexander Stewart was herded off the Gildart in July of 1747, bound with chains. Stewart was pushed onto the auction block in Wecomica, St Mary’s County, Maryland. Doctor Stewart and his brother William were attending the auction, aware of Alexander being on that slave ship coming from Liverpool England. Doctor Stewart and William were residents of Annapolis and brothers to David of Ballachalun in Montieth, Scotland. The two brothers paid nine pound six shillings sterling to Mr. Benedict Callvert of Annapolis for the purchase of Alexander. He was a slave.
Alexander tells of the other 88 Scots sold into slavery that day in “The Lyon in Mourning” pages 242-243.
Jeremiah Howell was a “lifetime-indentured servant” by his uncle in Lewis County, Virginia in the early 1700’s. His son, Jeremiah, won his freedom by fighting in the Revolution. There were hundreds of thousands of Scots sold into slavery during Colonial America. White slavery to the American Colonies occurred as early as 1630 in Scotland.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~busbin/scots.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_colonization_of_the_Americas
Wedderburn, a Jacobite, had been at Culloden and had had to flee abroad while his father, an impoverished Perthshire gentleman.
http://www.thedominican.net/articlesone/slavery.htm
Author: Ric Greaves (1992), revised 2010
At the Barbados Archives 
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