Claimants "A"

George Henry Ames was a Bristol-born member of a wealthy mercantile family whose fortune was rooted in Atlantic commerce and slavery. Although not a resident plantation owner, he was a substantial beneficiary of compensation. Ames was linked to more than 1,800 enslaved people and received over £55,000 (excluding Grenada) through ownership, assignment, and trustee arrangements. His claims illustrate how slavery’s profits flowed through British financial and legal networks. Ames represents the generation whose status and estates were sustained by slavery-derived capital, despite their physical distance from the plantations themselves.

What is striking about this file is that, although David Ambrose’s claim concerned only one enslaved person, Charles Gill is recorded with a clear family name, something not always present in slave registers. The records show Charles as Grenadian-born, living in St Andrew, purchased by Ambrose from Andrew Marrast, and remaining with him until abolition. This small claim therefore reveals both the everyday scale of slavery beyond plantations and an important moment of continuity, where an enslaved man’s name survives the transition from bondage to freedom rather than being overwritten by an enslaver’s identity

Elizabeth Alvarez held a small household holding in St George’s, Grenada, where she enslaved a Black woman named Fanny, first recorded in the Slave Registers in 1821. While under Elizabeth’s control, Fanny gave birth to two children. Elizabeth gave one of them away as a gift to another enslaver.

This story follows the Allard family to show how slavery and freedom were deeply intertwined in Grenada, shaped by inheritance, family power, and colonial rule. By contrasting elite women who both manumitted and enslaved with the remarkable rise of Jean Louis Allard from enslavement to slave ownership, it reveals how emancipation preserved wealth and inequality rather than dismantling the system itself.

Mary Urseal Allan was a resident of St George’s who enslaved a woman called Catherine and later received compensation at emancipation. Catherine, born enslaved in Grenada in 1787, spent nearly fifty years in domestic bondage before gaining her freedom in 1838 and living her final years as a free woman.

Sir William Alexander and his sister Isabella Hankey (née Alexander) were both absentee beneficiaries of Grenadian slavery, holding legally recognised financial interests in enslaved people and plantation estates that entitled them to compensation at emancipation.

Boyd and William Alexander did not enslave people themselves but as financiers they converted enslaved people into financial assets through mortgages, debts and compensation payments, reinforcing the family’s wealth, social status and opportunities across generations without direct plantation ownership.

Charles Alexander was an absentee landlord from Scotland. After migrating to Grenada around 1838, he led a planter militia to suppress post-emancipation labour unrest among West African workers, he was awarded a Colonel’s commission from Queen Victoria and a seat on the island’s Executive Council. The enslaved people under his control experienced repeated sale and separation.

John Aitcheson senior (1705–1780) was a largely absentee Scottish plantation owner whose wealth and family legacy were built on enslaved labour at Belmont Estate in Grenada, with the profits and property of slavery passing through lease income and inheritance to relatives in Britain.

Frederick and Mary Aberdeen were a free coloured couple of modest means living on the Providence Estate in St Andrew, whose daily lives reflected the quiet stability and limited opportunities of Grenada’s small property-holding families in the years surrounding emancipation. They enslaved a girl called Reine. Her life was likely defined by domestic labour and carried the quiet endurance of someone entering womanhood as Grenada moved from enslavement to freedom.

The Aberdeens were a family of Scottish origin who became part of Grenada’s free coloured community, rising in status through property, public service and the manumission that reshaped their family line. The people they enslaved lived under coercion, sale, illness and constant uncertainty, yet their recorded lives reveal extraordinary resilience in the face of bondage.

The Aerstins were small-scale but active enslavers, transferring, selling, and inheriting people between 1817 and 1834. The individuals they held endured repeated displacements yet demonstrated resilience, with some living to see emancipation and shaping Grenada’s future communities.