Intro

  While researching my family history I discovered that I am descended from John James esq.  I found his baptism in 1774, his marriage to Elizabeth Wingfield in 1797, and the baptisms of his three
children but for a long time I was unable to find out what had happened to him after this.  Having seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth I finally tracked him down to Antigua and Barbuda.  Researching still further, I managed to find out what he was up to there and that he had left behind a collection of letters that where written back to England to inform his employer, Christopher Codrington, of developments on the estates.  There were also accounts of him written by others he met along the way.  In this blog I will endeavour to present as much of this information as I can.  This, I hope, will be of interest not only to other descendants of John James and Elizabeth Wingfield, but also to those with an interest in the history of Antigua and especially Barbuda during the later part of the slave estate years.

Detail from "Cutting the sugar-cane" by William Clark 1823

Image ref NW0054

www.slaveryimages.org, compiled by Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite, and sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library