The Jessup – Brownbill connection in St Kitts and Montserrat

I have written in the past about a Cannonier relative on my husband’s family tree from St Kitts. She was born Blanche Wentworth Cannonier in 1862, daughter of Thomas Tobias Cannonier and Anna Maria Gould Cannonier. Blanche was married in 1894 to a Kittitian planter (sugar estate manager), whose name was Thomas Jessup Brownbill. Thomas had several siblings who shared the middle name Jessup. I recently found two wills on the familysearch.org website that may explain why the Jessup middle name was so important in the Brownbill family.

One will was written by William Jessup in St Kitts in 1799. William stated that he was a “free coloured man”. The use of the term colored at that time may have implied that he was of mixed race. He named as his heirs his wife Jane and sons James, Thomas, William, John, Solomon, and Edward, his brother Edward John Jessup, as well as his daughter Isabella, who he specified was “wife of Thomas Brownbill of the island of Montserrat free coloured man”. William was listed in the 1817 slave registry for St Kitts as holding three enslaved people. William’s wife Jane appears as an owner in registries from 1820 to 1834, with her information in the later years reported to the authorities by one of the Brownbill men. According to the registries , William died sometime between 1817 and 1820, and his wife Jane between 1831 and 1834.

William must have been a quite a successful man in St Kitts , during a time when slavery was still prevalent in the British West Indies (it was abolished in the 1830s). He left several of his children £100 bequests, each of which is equivalent to about £14, 000 today. He also left property in the St George parish (Basseterre), and gave instructions that his executors should “place out at interest” a sum of money for a minor grandson, to accrue in value until the grandson came of age.

A second will dated 1784 for an Edward Jessup listed among his children William Jessup and John Edward Jessup, which suggests Edward was the father of the writer of the 1799 will. In Edward’s document, he states that he was a distiller on the island of Saint Christopher (St Kitts), and listed a bequest to his grandchildren, including John, Solomon, Edward, James, William and Isabella. He wanted the grandchildren to receive one enslaved person each – “a Negro apiece” when they reached the age of twenty one. He didn’t mention any wife, but gave extensive instructions about provisions for a “free woman” named Jane or Jenny Pringle. He specified that she should be allowed to remain in her house on his land for her entire life, without paying any rent to his sons, unless she “shall bring permit or suffer any man to live or reside there” with her. These details could imply that Jane was the mother of Edward’s mixed race children. No racial designation was given for Edward himself in his will, which may indicate he was of white, European ancestry.

The Montserrat connection for the Jessups comes from Isabella Jessup’s husband Thomas Brownbill. In the 1817 slave registry for St Kitts, an enslaver was listed as “Thomas F Brownbill Proprieter for his wife Isabella Brownbill”. Looking at indexes of deed and manumission documents held by the Montserrat National Trust, there are a number of references to a Thomas Frye Brownbill in the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was referred to in several records as a merchant and free colored man. In addition to his business activities, such as selling two ships to a Kittitian merchant in 1800 for £1000, Thomas Frye appeared paying for the freedom of quite a few enslaved people in Montserrat, including his brother Charles in 1811 and brother Joseph in 1814.

I think there is an excellent chance that the Thomas Frye Brownbill of Montserrat is the Thomas F Brownbill who married Isabella Jessup in St Kitts, leading to a line of Brownbills with the middle name Jessup. The fact that these free people of color owned, inherited, and manumitted enslaved people is yet another example of how complicated and perplexing history can be.

Sources

1. Familysearch.org St Kitts wills from government deed registries/transcribed and typed by Ruth Walker Hunsaker Case, 2022
2. Familysearch.org St Kitts Register Volume 1, Series 3
3. Familysearch.org St Kitts Register Series 2 Volume X
4. Ancestry.com Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1817-1834