Dataset CreatorsSuzanne Francis-BrownJillian E. GalleBetween January 1, 1791 and January 1, 1813, the names, occupations, and relative ages of 386 individuals enslaved at Roslin Castle Estate in Trelawny Parish Jamaica were recorded in a large ledger, on the cover of which was written in neat, cursive script: “Increase and Decrease of Slaves and Stock Roslin Castle 1790 illegible initials.” This ledger, curated by The Archive Centre at Merseyside Maritime Museum, includes twenty-two annual inventories, and is the basis for this dataset and article.Roslin Castle was a substantial sugar plantation and livestock pen located southeast of Falmouth, Jamaica. Likely established during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Roslin Castle was identified as a sugar estate powered by a cattle mill on James Robertson’s 1804 map of Jamaica, a map that was based on surveys completed in 1799 (Fig. 1). John Cunningham owned the property from at least 1790 until his death in 1812, though it is not yet clear when he purchased it. Surveyor’s notes found in the National Library of Jamaica dating to 1790 and 1792 confirm Cunningham’s ownership of land that is likely Roslin Castle based on the abutting properties, although Cunningham’s property is not explicitly named in these notes.1Born in Kirknewton, West Lothian, Scotland in 1738, about fifteen miles from Scotland’s own Roslin Castle, John Cunningham migrated to Jamaica around 1761.2 A September 1774 List of Inhabitants of the Parish of St. James identified him as a merchant with a wife and child, nine enslaved persons, and two stock animals.3 Cunningham’s worth grew significantly throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to include ownership of a well-appointed home in the St. James Parish capital of Montego Bay, as well as several sugar estates and animal pens in St. James and neighboring Trelawny, a substance recognized with civic positions, including Custos of St. James, which earned him the title of “Honourable.” Unlike most large planters, Cunningham remained living in Jamaica with his family until his death, when his worth was estimated at £196,083.18.7 Jamaican currency, or £140,060 sterling.4 Over the course of fifty years, Cunningham operated in the upper echelon of British Jamaican planters, serving as Colonel in the St. James Regiment of Foot (1808) and assistant judge for both St. James and Trelawny Parishes.5 Christer Petley’s work provides excellent context for the elite material world of Montego Bay, in which Cunningham and his family lived.6Cunningham and his wife Elizabeth had nine children, including Samuel, to whom Roslin Castle was bequeathed when his father died in September 1812. By then, Samuel was already integrally involved in running Roslin Castle. The Jamaica Almanac for Trelawny Parish for 1811, which listed property owners by parish in 1810, named both father and son associated with Roslin Castle, with 200 persons enslaved on the property registered to John Cunningham and another 49 separately registered to Samuel. The Jamaica Almanac does not provide the names of the enslaved, therefore we cannot know which people were considered the property of Samuel and which were considered the property of John. The 1811 Almanac enumerated a total of 1,527 persons as being enslaved by John Cunningham across six estates in Trelawny and St. James Parishes, and at his villa, named Hill House, in Montego Bay.7 At his death in 1812, John Cunningham owned Bellfield and Retrieve estates in St. James as well as Hopewell, Biddeford and Roslin Castle in Trelawny; in addition to a third part of the Greenside Estate in Trelawny.The first recorded size of Roslin Castle Estate is on the second page of the Roslin Castle ledger, which notes that Roslin consisted of 1084 acres in 1809. In 1820, then owned by Samuel Cunningham, Roslin is recorded as 315 acres in an estate plan8; and 1262 acres in the 1840 Jamaica Almanac.9 The 1820 estate plan shows the location of the village for enslaved people, along with the great house, sugar mill and industrial buildings, formal gardens, provision grounds, an area designated for a Yaws House, and agricultural fields (Fig. 2). In 1835, Samuel Cunningham, now living in London, submitted compensation claims to the British Parliament for 202 formerly enslaved people associated with Roslin Castle.10The Roslin Castle ledger that informs this dataset consists of annual inventories of enslaved individuals and livestock, along with annual discursive descriptions related to increases and decreases in the population of both enslaved people and livestock. The ledger’s cover provides the name of the estate, and the first interior page identifies Roslin’s location as being in “Jamaica,” which is written twice in script, along with mathematical equations written at odd angles, suggesting the first page was later used for quick calculations. The inside front cover documents members of John Cunningham’s family members who were at Roslin for “Given-in” days in 1800, 1802, and 1807, when local authorities made quarterly reports (Table 1). Their listing documented compliance with the island’s Deficiency Laws, which sought, unsuccessfully, to address the huge imbalance between the free white and enslaved Black populations by requiring that estates have a certain proportion of white residents or pay a Deficiency Tax. The presence of the Cunninghams on these lists suggest that the family was resident at Roslin in the early 1800s, perhaps before moving to Hill House in Montego Bay, St. James, the family home when John Cunningham died in 1812.11 However, the 1802 and 1807 lists do not include Cunningham himself, and he may then have been moving between estates in Trelawny and St. James, building his empire. This trajectory will benefit from further research into the overall family.The ledger for Roslin Castle was recorded in the same hand until 1810. When we began the project, we surmised that John Cunningham himself, not a manager, wrote the ledger between 1791 and 1810. There are references in April and June 1808 to small groups of enslaved people being given to “my daughter Ann” and “my daughter Katherine,” respectively. We later discovered letters written by John Cunningham at the University of Michigan12; handwriting comparison confirms that John Cunningham was indeed the author of the ledger for eighteen years.Cunningham’s standardized pattern for recording people and stock begins on page three of the ledger, with the first inventory of enslaved people dated January 1, 1791. It records the enslaved people who were on the estate on that day and, we presume, who were at Roslin Castle through-out 1790, or were bought or born sometime in 179013 (Fig. 4). After this date, records in the ledger follow a strict order: inventory of slaves, inventory of stock, annual increase of slaves, annual increase of stock, annual decrease of slaves, and annual decrease of stock. Increase and decrease pages also begin in 1791, and these record changes that occurred in the enslaved population during 1790 (Fig. 5). This pattern continued on an annual basis, recording the enslaved population on the first day of January. The last complete inventory, with both enslaved males and females, is dated January 1, 1812. The last increase and decrease records are dated January 1, 1812, reflecting the changes within the enslaved population in 1811. There is a partial inventory dated January 1, 1813, which only includes male adults and children. There is no inventory for women, and increases or decreases were not recorded for 1813. It appears that a sheet covering the enslaved females, the increase and decrease details for 1813, and the first section of the stock inventory for that year have been lost, as the section of the inventory covering the men is now adjacent to the second half of the stock inventory. There is also one page torn from the ledger, likely a missing decrease record for enslaved people for 1795.There are no known ledgers from Samuel Cunningham’s ownership of the estate, which lasted until his death in 1844, though it may be presumed that such records were kept. These would have formed the basis for information submitted for annual poll taxes and in triennial returns made by enslavers from 1817 to 1832. Slavery was formally abolished across the British Caribbean in 1834, though a system of apprenticeship continued to tie formerly enslaved people to their enslavers until August 1838. Slave registers from Jamaica record enslaved individuals at Roslin beginning in 1817, enabling some continued follow-through on most of the population recorded in the ledger, after a five-year hiatus.14 We have completed transcriptions of these returns and will integrate the people recorded on the slave registers into the Roslin Castle database described below, as part of our larger ongoing Roslin Castle research project.This dataset was created from the information contained in the twenty-three annual inventories that are part of the Roslin Castle ledger. Birth and death dates for specific individuals were added when they were found in the annual increase and decrease records on other pages of the same volume. Details about data collection are described below. Here we discuss some of the preliminary trends in the data and provide a brief overview of our ongoing research with the Roslin Castle ledger.Between 1791 and 1813, 386 unique enslaved individuals were recorded in the ledger. The first inventory from January 1, 1791 documents 128 enslaved people living at Roslin on that date. That year was the least populous year for the estate; throughout 1791, Cunningham increased the estate’s population through purchases and with transfers from his other estates. He brought in 36 men and women, and another 5 were born into the enslaved community. That year also brought a wave of flux, or dysentery, which killed 7 enslaved people. On January 1, 1792, 167 enslaved people were recorded at Roslin Castle. This significant jump represents the largest annual increase in enslaved people between 1791 and 1812. Annual increases in population over the next 22 years ranged from a low of 3 to a high of 25.Over two decades, the enslaved population steadily increased through purchases and natural increase, with the number of enslaved people peaking at 215 in 1807 and 1808, the years in which the Trans- atlantic Slave Trade was abolished, first by Britain and then the United States (Fig. 6). Contrary to demographic models of nineteenth-century Jamaica, after the abolition of the slave trade the enslaved population at Roslin Castle did not significantly drop, remaining at over 200 people annually between 1806 and 1812.15 Maintaining an enslaved population above 200 people was the result of both births and purchases. However, beyond the period covered in the dataset, the population did fall; the 1817 Slave Register recorded 188 enslaved, with near sex parity – 95 males and 93 females.16These data contribute to the discourse on natural increase among enslaved populations in Jamaica before 1817 when the British government mandated registration of all enslaved people. Prior to that date, estate ledgers and correspondence provide the only demographic records on enslaved populations in the British Caribbean. Richard Dunn analyzed estate records for Mesopotamia in western Jamaica, where there were 331 more deaths than births among enslaved laborers between 1762 and1833. Dunn highlights a significant decline in the enslaved population between 1793 and 1813, due in part to a policy decision to purchase no new enslaved Africans from the slave traders, though the owners continued to seek seasoned on the Worthy Park estate in central Jamaica, where the policies of estate owners were also aligned to successes or failure in maintaining the enslaved population.17 Though Roslin was in a far earlier state of development during this 1790-1813 period covered by our data, it will contribute to this analysis, especially as we add demographic information from the Jamaican Slave Returns up to the end of slavery.Throughout the twenty-two years covered by the ledger, the proportion of adult males exceeded adult females on the estate (Fig. 7).18 Between 1791 and 1796, there were between 148 and 167 adult men to every 100 women at Roslin. By 1804, sex ratios were narrowing but enslaved men still exceeded enslaved women through 1812. However, the proportion of enslaved female children between 1791 and 1798 was greater than enslaved male children, and after 1799 the gender division among enslaved children fluctuated by year (Fig. 8).The dataset includes birth and death dates taken from the increase and decrease lists for each year between 1791 and 1812. One hundred and forty babies were born on the estate between 1791 and 1812. Seventy-two people, or 51% of those born at Roslin, died before the last inventory was taken on January 1, 1812. Both birth and date dates were available for those 72 individuals. As expected, the most dangerous time in a person’s life was the first five years, with 38 of the 72 dying before the age of 2.The annual increase and decrease pages, which are not contained in this dataset, provide a wealth of information about how often women gave birth, what diseases prevailed, and how epidemics moved through the community. There were at least three suicides on the estate,19 numerous deadly accidents,20 and many deaths related to childbirth.21 Per capita birth rates and per capita death rates fluctuated. In some years, spikes in death rates were correlated to waves of disease. In 1793, lockjaw (tetanus) and related “teething” killed four children, one a day on January 21, 24, 25, and 26. In 1801, six children died of whooping cough between February 18 and March 13, comprising 40% of the deaths that year. In 1808, influenza and dysentery struck the village between January 5 and February 22, killing seven adults and children. Measles and lockjaw were particularly deadly for children at Roslin. This may support Sasha Turner’s finding that more than half of the women who conceived and bore children lost them before the second birthday, contributing to the ongoing dependence on the slave trade for replacement of dead or worn-out laborers.22Future incorporation of data from the increase and decrease lists of the Roslin ledger, will enable fuller understanding of the rates of birth and death, including issues of the disease environment, mental including and the for There is that Cunningham moved enslaved individuals with to Montego these people were to Cunningham’s or to one of Montego for we cannot but this of people to is recorded throughout the addition to demographic data, the ledger is a for across two men and women were and documented to the of work they did during that specific year. work as they new or as on the estate people moved between as their children, their as they The of the enslaved in the adult women adult men in the sugar fields every year three The was for children. between and After were to a greater of than women and children. and the were made for men who as and Cunningham would for some people to the such as and had for of agricultural and, when they the work was or in for females and women were to work with such as and in were with such as and The ledger that these and were not In given there be a a a and people to work in both the House to a House or and Yaws This clear that Cunningham, or his who work to between specific of to and likely people who were to work in the or house, but may have not been considered both women and to and likely work within the and the ledger, and children were separately new fields for and were in comprising the children who were moving into birth to between ages of 5 and children were as or The to the or occurred at for children, suggesting that and other when they were to moved into adult between the ages of and In numerous as were moved into the as they on – with related to cattle and – or other who moved to were moved into to work be or who was born in was with the until when he was moved to the around the age of or years He as a until age when he was moved to the through He was to the where he remained until age when he was moved to through 1813. He was to Yaws in 1807, and 1810. late to that his was or his was not to work in the He than many in the ledger, to be recorded in 1813. He last appears in the record in John Cunningham’s inventory, where is as an at one of the six most In Cunningham’s inventory, were between and with six men at and two at that by 1813, was a and female moved between the and on their work born 1796, was listed with the for five age was moved to with the for another five years until 1807, when was moved to work in the House as a around age or remained in the House through 1812. In inventory, was at as a was years In the 1817 Slave was years with no children and no listed was also born in and was moved from to at age with was then moved to work in the House in 1807, with listed as Unlike in the House for only two years before was moved to was listed in the in 1809. remained in through 1812. appears on the 1817 Slave that had two James, a and a provides a into some of the research contained in this and such as the Slave Trade of British Slavery and Caribbean have added greater to this to life and people with in that would have been years We our preliminary with one such to the of these to each 1790, before the first record was written in the Roslin Castle ledger, the from the Montego Jamaica as it first at along the of where Africans were to we do not know when the it in Montego the third of 1791 with on 1791 that from is at of on the and before it be the and two were of the about fifty were or (Fig. provides a documented at the and during the the Roslin Castle ledger an into the of who that on the days of in Montego Bay, enslaved men and women were to across the of Jamaica. On 1791, six men and two women from the were purchased by John Cunningham, who was his estate in Trelawny and St. Parishes, he recorded in the Roslin Castle of the new named (Fig. that is documented about in the of the enslaved Africans who the on the are not and died within six of at Roslin Castle. with a in his and a all over his and of the a for some time before his being taken with that In 1793, died of a the of known as is not among In from the of in 1, 1792, who is recorded as an is as to Bellfield being to on this On that same who is listed as a is also to Bellfield with a of men in the building to Bellfield James The are not in to be considered as to this The 1792 inventory lists and James as and and as and were with a in These in the Decrease notes for 1, 1792 are of Cunningham at Roslin Castle at that did Cunningham a for a it was with or one of the other enslaved men also moved to Bellfield that The 1791 Increase with the 1792 inventory that Africans were given after their to they were more often to These notes also Cunningham moving to an estate that was likely to increase sugar a of how the Cunninghams operated a of and are the only two from the who at Roslin Castle for an as an a and then a for years before his death on September 1812. was to work as a his at Roslin. He is at Roslin Castle, as a from 1791 until the early of 1810, when a decrease that and a are to Montego they to Cunningham’s a in Montego there a between and as many more in the Roslin Castle of and of building over of death, and of after and death, of on the and through in into this dataset already at a and what we from the ledger. As we the by the returns from with this dataset, we of more about how enslaved individuals and as well as contributing to the understanding of this period and Castle, Trelawny Jamaica, West stock for Roslin Castle estate, Jamaica, The Merseyside Maritime Museum, National with the of The we every page of the Roslin Castle ledger at the Merseyside Maritime in We a of in each that documented each page which to that we had indeed recorded the ledger from the front cover to We to our where the into a a of the ledger, with each page and in the with The the Centre first of the the ledger in with an with that all the data contained in the annual registers of enslaved people within the ledger. contained the same fields but was specific to each that the be in the same as the ledger. At the same a database in that the among people and for the and of the the was in in and in over to the ledger. the ledger and that we were each the information then the data into the and the information to who the of the We also all discursive notes on the annual increase and decrease in the handwriting in the ledger is there were the script, and we through to This was to in recording the dataset, and for and through the and in the we completed the into the we our work by a that contained data on every enslaved listed in the ledger the data fields from the ledger with the addition of data fields by record in the represents a record of a in the ledger by are in which the of a person’s name over In the we record the of a person’s name when that first appears in the ledger. records all the of a person’s there are no in over is into this notes as they to each of the are in the data that the Merseyside Maritime Museum, National Merseyside Maritime Museum, National Archive of Museum, and for the
Galle et al. (Mon,) studied this question.