David Ambrose
Fact File:
Name of Claimant David Ambrose
Claim Number: 576
Compensation: £41 5s 7d
Number of Enslaved in Claim: 1
Parish: St Andrew
Parliamentary Papers: P. 98
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Family
No records have been found by this project for David Ambrose or members of his family. There was a notice published in The Chronicle and Gazette on 22 December 1877 which relayed the marriage between Sophia Ambrose (who may have been related to David) and James Richard Braithwaite at a Methodist church in St George.
Compensation claim
David Ambrose was the sole claimant in Grenada compensation claim no. 576, submitted and approved following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. The claim was registered on 2 November 1835 and was marked as uncontested, indicating that no rival claimants disputed his legal entitlement.
Ambrose received compensation for the loss of one enslaved person, for which he was awarded £41 5s 7d. While modest in comparison to large plantation claims, this sum reflects the standard valuation applied to individual enslaved people under the compensation scheme and highlights how deeply slavery penetrated Grenadian society beyond major estates.
The claim is recorded in the Parliamentary Papers (p. 98), placing David Ambrose within the official machinery of imperial compensation that transferred public funds to slaveholders while formerly enslaved people themselves received no financial redress.
Although little further biographical detail is presently known about Ambrose, his claim illustrates an important aspect of emancipation in Grenada: slavery was sustained at all levels including by smaller-scale enslavers whose ownership of one or two individuals nonetheless generated compensation at abolition.
This claim stands as part of the wider Grenadian total of 1,061 claimants, underscoring how the end of slavery financially rewarded individuals across the social spectrum while leaving the formerly enslaved to navigate freedom without material support.
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The Enslaved
Charles Gills came under the control of David Ambrose by purchase from Andrew Marrast.
The project could not find any records of his time with Marrast but it is evident that Charles stayed with Ambrose until slavery was abolished. Enslaved men were usually given one name and so it is interesting to note that Charles had a family name, Gills.
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