Dark Inheritance by Brooke N. Newman

Author:Brooke N. Newman [Newman, Brooke N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

6. The Torrid Zone; or, Blessings of Jamaica (London, 1803). Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

News of John’s precipitous demise in Jamaica did not discourage his younger brother, James, from determining to set out for the island as soon as possible to stake a claim to his share of the Johnstons’ Jamaican inheritance. “I mean to take in hand the management of my own affairs,” he wrote to his uncle from London in June 1802, and “my presence there is much needed.” On December 9, 1802, James wrote to both his uncle James and his younger brother Robert announcing his “safe arrival in my native Isle in perfect health and spirits.” He was pleased to report that after six weeks on the island “am very fond of the manners and climate of Jamaica” and “very much respected here by the principal inhabitants especially by those mothers who has daughters to dispose of.” James Johnston had no intention of seeking a Creole wife, however. He had traveled to Jamaica to assume control of Murphy’s Hill and Annandale and to divest Grant, the remaining guardian, of his 6 percent commission. “When I am of age I mean to have a writ of division made of the property then I shall be my own master.” For James, the promise of independence in Jamaica overcame the ghastly prospect of an early death.47

Two years later, James wrote to assure his younger brother Robert, with whom he shared an equal claim to the property in St. Ann, that he had made a number of profitable improvements to Murphy’s Hill of his own volition. “I think the property has been long enough under Guardianship already,” he stressed. “I can assure you there has been more done on the penn since my arrival than has been done for many years before.” He had planted sixty acres of coffee at Murphy’s and expected it to “net me £3,000 per annum independent of the penn.” Additionally, James claimed that he had cultivated about twelve hundred acres of the twenty-seven-hundred-acre property with Guinea grass for cattle, fenced off in regular pastures of sixty acres each, and owned four hundred horned cattle and ninety-six slaves. By mustering financial figures and improvements to the pen for his brother’s perusal, James hoped to convince Robert to either entrust his portion of the estate to James as his acting attorney or to let him purchase it from him outright. In the meantime, James reminded his brother that “although you are now of age and entitled to a handsome competency, you have by no means a fortune to support you in extravagance and dissipation.” An enjoyable life of that nature would require marriage to a moneyed Creole heiress—a course James repeatedly urged his brother to pursue. On August 26, 1805, after three years hard at work on the island, Jamaica had lost its initial appeal for James. Jamaica “is a sad dull place, no amusements whatsoever, especially to a Bachelor,” he wrote. “If any

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