This Month

 

 

 

 BORN A SLAVE 

 

Before the Industrial Revolution,

West Indies trading companies attracted

a wide range of investors,from humble widows

to the highest in the land. When slavery was

abolishedin 1833, Monmouthshire residents

are among those recorded as having

claimed compensation. Helen Morgan reports:

 

                 

 

Needless to say it was the owners, not the slaves, who benefited from the compensation scheme. One ex-slave, however, did receive £1,400. His name was Nathaniel Wells. The difference between Nathaniel and his contemporaries was that he was born into slavery. Plantation owners frequently fathered children with their slaves. But few offspring became plantation owners or achieved what he did. Born on St Kitts in 1779, Nathaniel was the son of William Wells, a sugar planter and merchant, and his enslaved house worker, Juggy. William’s wife died childless and Nathaniel became sole heir. He was sent to school in London aged 10 and eventually married the daughter of King George II’s chaplain.

Unlike in Victoria’s reign when attitudes hardened, Georgian society accepted that people from other cultures could be taught to live up to British ideals. Thus, Nathaniel was able to rise through society to such an extent that he became Britain's first black high sheriff and only the second black man to hold a commission in the British Army. He also served as JP and church warden at St Arvans, near Chepstow. When his father died in 1794, he inherited a fortune, much of which he used to purchase his Piercefield House estate. He also contributed generously to a fund to erect the distinctive octagonal tower on his parish church of St Arvans. As a JP, he was said to have been a firm but fair JP, sitting in judgment over white people. Yet he freed only a handful of his mother's relatives, and in the 1820s, abolitionists criticised his estate managers for exceeding the maximum 39 lashes punishment they were allowed to dole out to slaves. After his death in 1852, his estate was divided between the 10 children of his first marriage to Harriet Este, and the 10 from his second marriage to Esther Owen. His memorial at St Arvans makes no mention of his slave heritage or ownership, simply describing him as "a Magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant”.

Roger Evans’s talk on Monmouthshire slave owners on April 15th in the Borough Theatre starts at 7.30pm. It is free to members of Abergavenny Local History Society. Non-members may join on the night. For details see the Membership page.