I was just wondering if anyone else followed through to Valentine Dwyer's 1823 Slave Register T/71, where Adam, from the 1817 Register, has died. The BBC program said Adam Wilson "died a free man in 1849". This discovery led me to dig further into the
validity of the claims made on the BBC program.

The Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880, Baptismal record, shows a list of 9 names, which include Adam Wilson. However, the name "Adam" is the only first name that also appears in the 1817 Slave Registry T/71. All the others
have no corresponding names.

Therefore, I propose that Adam Wilson is the christian name for one of the other 13 male slaves on Valentine Dwyer's Greenmount Estate in 1817. This is the only thing that makes sense to me given the lack of corresponding names in the full list of
slaves from the Slave Register made less than 3 months earlier.

Furthermore, the 1820 Slave Register T/71 shows the that only change to the Slave population at Greenmount Estate was the death of one female slave and the birth of another. This would indicate that the "Adam" listed in the 1817 Slave Register, and the
Adam who is stated to have died in the 1823 Register must be one in the same.

I would love to hear some feedback to my discovery and proposal. I hope there are still people reading this discussion thread.

Research rocks!
--Dee



On Monday, October 23, 2006 at 7:20:29 AM UTC-4, cecilia wrote:

I've just managed to see a repeat of the BBC "Who Do You Think You
Are" episode on Colin Jackson.

The programme identified one of his Jamaican ancestors, Adam Wilson (1794-1849) from the Greenmount Plantation, as a slave, from the
record of his baptism in Williamsburg on 14 September 1817 which
indicates he was the property of Valentine Dwyer.

The presenter said of Adam, "It's possible that he was captured in
Africa and brought to Jamaica as a child."

There was no indication in the programme, nor in the text at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/get_started/wdytya_celeb_gallery_03.shtml,
that the Slave Registers had been examined. The 1817 registers I have
looked at (from another area in Jamaica) give the basic ethnic make-up
of each slave, and whether born in Africa or not. The records for the plantations in which I am interested also give the "calling name" of
each slave - a few of these may indicate the area of Africa from which
the particular slave, or a parent , came.

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