The Cozens/Byrnes Merchants Networks Project - Updated 29 July 2006

This is the first of many picture galleries planned for presentation on this website - Ed.

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Gallery: Jamaica One

With graphics made available by Pieter Dickson and others

Below is a short article written 1993 on the hitherto historically elusive owner by the 1780s, of the plantation Saltspring on Jamaica, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), otherwise known as the overseer of the Thames Prison Hulks. It has to be said, that much of interest has been discovered since 1993.

Pieter Dickson (UK) is just one researcher now deeply involved in researching planters of eighteenth century Jamaica, including his own ancestors on the island, Dickson.

FROM GLASGOW TO JAMAICA:
TO LONDON AND AUSTRALIA:

THE ELUSIVE DUNCAN CAMPBELL (1726-1803)

By Dan Byrnes

(This article, a little re-written here, first appeared in Cruachan, Journal of the Clan Campbell Society of Australia, No. 62, December, 1993., pp. 11-16).

CLAN CAMPBELL societies now have an opportunity to rate a new Campbell contender in the attention-getting stakes.

Was Duncan Campbell a villain? He was, after all, "a trusty and well-beloved" servant of King George III!

Did Campbell become a virtual millionaire by his own efforts only? Did he make any contribution to the sum of human wisdom besides what he bequeathed to his children? Does he deserve any attention at all?

I'll refer to our subject as simply, DC. He is Duncan Campbell (1726-1803) of London, already known to world literature as "the influential West India merchant" assisting William Bligh to command of HMAV Bounty (in 1787).

Less so, known as the overseer of the Thames prison hulks 1776-1801, in which capacity he was an administrative lynch-pin before, during and after the "founding" of a British colony at Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Yet, DC remains remarkable for having been split into three or four fragments by historians who have remained unable to see him whole. In a sense, he's a Humpty-Dumpty of the history of British commerce 1700-1800. Is Humpty-Dumpty worth the effort? Didn't the nursery rhyme long ago prove it's impossible to piece Humpty together again?

As the Thames prison hulks overseer, DC was loathed by the London journalists of his day, since the hulks convicts were an affront to traditional views about English "liberty". Hence, DC gave affront by profiting from giving affront about liberty - so the journalists thought. The historian needs a wider brush.

Almost no-one has noted DC as the sometime chairman of the body of English and Scottish merchants set up from 1783 (after the American Revolution) to lobby for repayment of debts owed by those rebellious, but victorious, Americans. The amount outstanding was £2.5 million minimum.

In this capacity, DC met Thomas Jefferson in London in April 1786, a matter scarcely noted (except by Jefferson himself) and never followed up. [See Dan Byrnes' 1996 update on this, entitled, A Bitter Pill].

Which is more important? Bligh going to Tahiti for breadfruit? The overseership of the Thames prison hulks [in Anglo-Australian penal history]? Or, Thomas Jefferson's ambitions to revise Mercantilism after the American Revolution, versus British and Scottish merchants' determination to retrieve their debt monies?

So far, historians are unable to cope with a DC who could have given his own opinion on which of the above was most important. Why this inability exists is a question that fascinates in its own right.

Sandwiched in any choice of what was more important is the entire topic known as "the founding of Australia" as a British colony. Whether that colony was merely a penal colony, or something of more moment, is only one of many sets of serious questions to be ranged around views of DC's career. He was an eyewitness to some matters historians have failed to note. Such as the day in London DC met Gov. Arthur Phillip, 10 January, 1787, the day the First Fleet contractor, William Richards, began signing his first contracts for the transportation.

The "overcrowded prisons" of England were one of the problems reputedly impelling the colonisation of Australia. In this context alone, any administrator should be worth examination. DC's involvements have not been pursued, and few of his descendants have remained interested, it seems.

We begin with a cloud of unknowing. DC's father was Principal Neil Campbell (circa 1678-1761) of the College of Glasgow (1728-1761), which university of course contributed many talented Scotsmen to the service of the British Empire (and/or, to less formally Imperialistic areas of endeavour).

Principal Neil's paternity remains an intractable genealogical problem. Luckily, Neil's wife Henrietta has a coherent lineage. Information on Neil's known Australian descendants (stemming from only one of DC's sons, "Duncan Jnr.") stops at 1938 in mid-north Queensland, at Almaden, inland from Cairns; (ex-Sydney civil engineer William Dugald Campbell (WDC), buried at Chillagoe Cemetery), WDC. We have found some years ago, from an old man then in a northern Queensland nursing home, that WDC was known around Almaden as "old man Campbell", which at least implies that he was the only old man named Campbell in the area at the time (?).

Out of this cloud of family history unknowing, Stop One: Neil's uncle was Colonel John Campbell of Black River, Jamaica (?-1740), "the first Campbell on Jamaica" (in 1700, ex-Scottish Darien Company). Therefore, conspicuous.

Stop Two: One Dugald Campbell (died 1744) on Jamaica produced a daughter, Rebecca, who in 1753 married DC on her family's plantation, Saltspring, Hanover Parish, Jamaica. Only a little is known of Rebecca's father's family history.

Stop Three: In 1758 in London, DC, a ship's captain following his naval experience by 1748 on HM Dove, branched out from his usual trade London-Jamaica trade to become partner with John Stewart, the London convict contractor shipping felons to Virginia and North America, backloading tobacco.

Here enters the British use of coerced labour (both slave and convict), a tradition inspired by experience after the settlement from 1625 of Barbados. (Problem: the International Genealogical Index {IGI} reveals many Campbells on Barbados by 1670, but none on Jamaica till about 1720. Those on Jamaica by 1720 were not closely related to the Campbells on Barbados, at all.)

A growing view exists that in British history, slavery and the use of convict labour may as well be regarded as synonymous. Adopting this view makes viewing the career of DC easier - he worked slaves on the plantation he inherited from Rebecca's family, shipped British felons to North America, then managed prison hulks. In this, DC became the epitome of many Eighteenth Century British trends which are today found repellent, but which in his own time were commonplace and seldom protested till the late 1780s.

Consider then, that in 1786, Thomas Jefferson in London disagreed over American debts with a merchant who was an epitome of much that was normal in London-British commerce. But economic historians have generally ignored such matters!

Stop Four: By 1766-1770, DC has two captains sailing for him named Somerville. They are his nephews, sons of his eldest sister Ann (the first child of Principal Neil and Henrietta), or, relatives of her husband John?

Stop Five: Before the American Revolution, DC was one of the top nine London tobacco traders (he dealt also with tobacco merchants in Scotland). The American War eclipsed his tobacco dealing (and by mid-1776, DC was embroiled in becoming overseer of the newly-established Thames prison hulks).

The initially-idle question arises... from 1775, what happened to DC's tobacco trade? And/or, when did he resume it? This question plunges the researcher into reviewing the career of the man who "financed the American Revolution", Robert Morris, who by-the-by was given marketing control of the American tobacco crop as one means of raising finance for the American War. (DC resumed tobacco dealing about 1792, having spoken with Christopher Court, also one of the top London tobacco traders before 1776).

Stop Six: The second daughter of Principal Neil, the popular Mary, married Richard Betham in 1748. In 1765 Betham was installed on the Isle of Man, which had lately been purchased by the British Government from its hereditary owner, the Duke of Atholl (a noted Freemason). Betham's task as customs-controller was to suppress smuggling on an island widely regarded as a reputed "nest of smugglers". It is astonishing, how difficult it is to find a printed treatment of the suppression of smuggling on the Isle of Man! So far, anything printed about Betham - and very little to date - is concerned with Bligh and HMAV Bounty.

Stop Seven: DC's niece Elizabeth Betham on the Isle of Man marries William Bligh, 4 February, 1781. Later, till August 1787, Bligh sails DC's London-Jamaica ships. Thus, Bligh meets Fletcher Christian. Both these men, known to history as protagonist-antagonist on Bounty, are ex-employees of the only merchant in London who would sit in 1786, and speak, (and profoundly disagree), with Thomas Jefferson.

Stop Eight: DC from 9 May, 1787 promoted Bligh (then about Jamaica or returning from there) as captain for the notorious voyage to obtain breadfruit from Tahiti to feed slaves more cheaply. DC (his staff?) had not long finalised their bookwork associated with delivering convicts to the First Fleet departing Portsmouth 13 May, 1787 for "Botany Bay".

No American historian treating convict transportation to North America to 1775 has thought it wise to pursue DC's career through to the departure of the First Fleet for Australia. No Australian historian has thought it wise to organise information on DC's transportation of American convicts or tobacco trading before he began as the hulks overseer in 1776 - despite his Letterbooks (ML A3225-A3232) being available to the public since about 1953. Nor to assess his work as hulks overseer - or promoter of Bligh, or in argument with Thomas Jefferson.

* * *

The only amusing factor remaining unknown here is - yes, a Scots game - GOLF!

It is now clear that from 1766, if not earlier, golf was played by Scotsmen (mostly affluent merchants) at Blackheath in London - at the second UK golf club established after St Andrews. DC was a golfer here. (Oddly enough, this enthusiasm is not once noted, even in his Private Letterbooks).

Several other Scotsmen noted in "the early history of Australia" were also Blackheath golfers, including alderman George Mackenzie Macaulay, who had an interest in the First Fleet ship Lady Penrhyn, but who has been written OUT of "the founding of Australia".

In 1788, both Bounty and Lady Penrhyn stopped at Tahiti, Bounty of course to gather breadfruit, then to suffer a famous mutiny.

That is, two Scots London merchants associated one way or another with the First Fleet played golf at Blackheath. Both resided at Blackheath. Both have been ignored. DC's story brings with him Bligh, Bounty, Jamaica and Thomas Jefferson. Macaulay brings with him aspects of City of London politics relating to the "convict problem" impelling the British settlement of Australia, and some maritime history.

Stop Nine: If these two Blackheath golfers, DC and Macaulay, were each associated with the only two British ships stopping at Tahiti in 1788, should these oddities of maritime history be noted?

Yes, if only because only a few doors from Macaulay at Blackheath lived the Enderby whalers, promoters of the Southern Whale Fishery - and the Industrial Revolution was in part oiled by whale oil.

Whaling ships carrying convicts to Australia before 1800 has been downplayed by historians, and golf at Blackheath has been unknown. Now, research indicates that to ignore one is to ignore the other. (Gov. Philip Gidley King of New South Wales remained friends with the Enderby family from 1786 or before).

Stop Ten: The career of DC remains flanked with the ghosts-of-lost-information. The history of the Blackheath Golf Club also mentions Freemasonry in a context where:
(a) convicts are sent to Australia, and;
(b) the maritime history of early Australia (to 1800) might as well mention golf at Blackheath, if only because a noted opponent of the "Botany Bay" expedition, the East India hydrographer, Alexander Dalrymple, also golfed at Blackheath.

It should be noted that no connections, especially not genealogical, are known to have existed between DC and Robert Campbell of the Wharf, the noted Sydney merchant. That makes Robert Campbell's support for the deposed Governor Bligh in 1808 a separate matter. But it does not explain why the obvious DC-Bligh connections have not been noted by historians treating (a) the Bounty mutiny or (b) convict transportation or (c) the matter of Bligh being deposed as governor of NSW.

Stop Eleven: Why have no convict descendants in the US or Australia ever decided to research a man who might for example have shifted their ancestor from Britain between 1758-1801? This seems unanswerable. As unanswerable as asking why no descendant of DC has ever delved seriously since World War Two into his life? Why maritime historians never noted the membership lists of the Blackheath Golf Club? Why biographers of Jefferson have not delved into Jefferson's London discussions in 1786 about the debts which Jefferson candidly admitted the Americans owed to British and Scots merchants.

A great irony about DC's career arose just before the Australian Bicentennial. In his history of convictism in Australia, The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes wrote that the "crooked" (shipping) contractor for the First Fleet was Duncan Campbell. Wrong. In writing this, Hughes of course obliterated the actual contractor, William Richards, whose son (a convict ship captain) later took up land (a place called Winterbourne) near Walcha, NSW. That is, Hughes' error about the mounting of the First Fleet is an affront also to ordinary biography, to maritime history, to family history.

When in fact, the wider spread of DC's family history sprawls from 1678 in Glasgow to Jamaica, to the Isle of Man, to pre-revolutionary Virginia and Maryland, to the controversial Thames prison hulks, to golf at Blackheath (London local history if nothing else), with Bligh to Tahiti and the Bounty mutiny. To the time of Governor Lachlan Macquarie at New South Wales.

When Macquarie replaced Bligh as governor of NSW, Bligh's daughter Mary found she was a cousin (second or more distantly removed?) to Macquarie's aide-de-camp, Henry Colden Antill. (Forebear of the Antills of Jarvisfield, Picton). Antill was a nephew of Henrietta Colden of New York nee Betham, Henrietta the sister of Bligh's wife, Elizabeth Betham.

Duncan Campbell's family history then forms a genealogical net in which much other history can also be captured.

Why have certain London-Scots golfers been largely deleted from Australia's maritime history - when they contributed so much to that history? It seems, sociology and history have not met, when they should have met long ago.

The answers (so far attempted) form a very large manuscript. These problems are specifically biographical, sociological, genealogical, as well as "historical". It now seems that the writing of Australian history has suffered since 1900 from lack of expertise in both sociology and genealogy. But all this perhaps gives new opportunities to genealogists in Australia, the UK, and the US. Since by simply considering the life of Duncan Campbell, convict contractor "of the Adelphi, London", much can be regained that has been lost.

Note: Some recently-published information on DC is contained in three titles:
Zena Bamping, West Kingsdown: The Story of Three Villages in Kent. (Second ed.) London, Tyger Press Limited. 36 Goldington Street, London. NW1 1UE, 1991.
With some genealogical references to Duncan Campbell and information on his land purchases in Kent. DC's second wife Mary (married January 1776) was from the noted Kent family, Mumford.

Charles Campbell, The Intolerable Hulks: British Shipboard Confinement, 1776-1857. Bowie, Maryland, Heritage Books, Inc., 1994.

Alan Frost, Botany Bay Mirages: Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1994.

Finis

Note: Born in Sydney in 1948, Dan Byrnes is a writer based in Armidale, New South Wales, who began delving into The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks in 1977.

William Bligh - a portrait

William Bligh (Copy of a portait in oil, Lucea Museum, Jamaica)

All the pictures here ...

All the pictures here from historical Jamaica are pictures that the historians of William Bligh, "unfortunate captain of HMAV Bounty", victim of mutiny, cannot yet begin to deal with. Bligh after all sailed to gain breadfruit to more cheaply feed such as the slaves depicted here. His voyage was an exercise in economic rationalisation.

Bligh sailed in the earlier 1780s for Duncan Campbell (depicted above) to Jamaica.

Just why Bligh's family history has remained such a mystery, has to remain a mystery of the historical and literary imagination. Somehow, the story of Bounty got stalled in the Pacific. Was it just that her sailors were stalled by the pacific charms of Tahitiian women? - Ed

The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks

Note: As project, Dan Byrnes' website, The Blackheath Connection, is based on a selection of 250+ letters drawn from The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks held at the Mitchell Library (ML), Sydney
Any quotations here, taken from these letterbooks, are used by permission of the Mitchell Library.

The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks [from 1766]
Duncan Campbell, Letterbooks ML. A3225-A3230: (See notes of descendant William Dugald Campbell (WDC).
Duncan Campbell Letterbooks, (ML) which are held as:
A3225 ML Vol. 1. of Business Letter Books March 1772-October 1776;
A3226 ML Vol. 2 of Business Letter Books 13 December, 1776-21 September, 1779;
A3227 ML Vol. 3 of Business Letter Books 30 September, 1779-9 March, 1782;
A3228 ML Vol. 4 of Business Letter Books 15 March, 1782-6 April, 1785;
A3229 Vol. 5 of Business Letter Books 1 December 1784- 17 June, 1788;
A3230 ML Vol. 6 of Business Letter Books 20 June, 1788 - 31 December, 1794.
ML A3232, Small Notebook, "Notes of Campbell's Correspondence by WDC, Vols. A to F."
Duncan Campbell's  Private Letterbooks are held as ML A3231.

The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks

The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks are a magnificent set of six and more large volumes, in various original handwritings, well-preserved from the late Eighteenth Century and brought to Australia by his Australian descendant, William Dugald Campbell.

Arguably, it might have been better if the Letterbooks had remained in London, or southern England, where chance might have meant that a British historian familiar with both London history, and perhaps, the post-1770 history of Australia and the Pacific, was attracted to them. I mention this, since Campbell's Letterbooks, while they are a goldmine for anyone interested in the history of convict transportation, are also a goldmine for anyone interested in London, as a city, between 1775-1800!

As the overseer of the dreaded Thames prison hulks, a regressive innovation in British penal history between 1775 and 1800, Campbell has been given a decidedly bad press, both by journalists of his day, and historians since. It is not my intention here to give Campbell a better press, that is not desirable given the regressiveness of the establishment of the prison hulks system. My intention is more to indicate how the bad reputation given a single man might infect history with a variety of misapprehensions, though that has certainly not been my only motive in studying this British penal history, out of which European Australia was "founded".

Campbell after all was "uncle-in-law" of William Bligh, but since the time of the Bounty mutiny in 1789, it has not been made clear by writers just how much Bligh owed to Campbell. The real Campbell, not the Campbell who has been given either his bad press, or, referred to as "an influential West India merchant". But, it seems, an "influential West India merchant" who otherwise seems remarkably - and unreasonably - untraceable! As Charles Dickens might have said; bah humbug!

Bligh's notoriety is matched almost symmetrically by the oblivion to which Campbell's life has been consigned, precisely as the history of the British slavery abolition movement begins its remarkably successful work. I suggest, that none of this is disconnected; but given that it is not disconnected, it all remain strange indeed; quite "passing strange".

By now, 2000, it is the mark of writing on William Bligh that his family history is still poorly-researched. This is very strange, since Bligh due to his "Bounty mutiny" has been given perhaps the single, most-studied career, of any single British admiral the eighteenth century ever produced (?!).

Remarkably, the oversights by maritime and other historians about Campbell as an associate of Bligh are matched by oversights allowed by historians of Britain's Caribbean trade between 1783 (the end of the American Revolution and 1807, the abolition of the British slave trade. Also by historians treating commercial matters in Anglo-American between 1783 and say 1812, when Britain and the US were at war - such as the Jay Treaty.

Also remarkably, British historians of their own penal history seem reluctant to come to grips with matters that Australian historians have to grapple with routinely - why and how it was decided that convicts would be sent to Australia, how this would be accomplished? So, it is no surprise to find that historians treating legal theorist penal reformer Jeremy Bentham, and/or his Panopticon prison, also overlook the animosity that existed between Campbell, government penal contractor, and Bentham.

In short, where-ever one looks in London to 1800, Campbell, who was well-known to a variety of government officials - and also to Bligh - cannot be seen in full. So it is also no surprise to find that Campbell's name till 1989 had been stripped from three or prestigious addresses...
(1) The Blackheath Golf Club, and/or his rented residence at Blackheath;
(2) 3 Robert Street, the Adelphi, in the heart of London, near the Strand;
(3) Brandshatch raceway south of London, a farm Campbell once owned, and inherited by one of his sons.

Campbell then is paradoxical - he is indelibly well-known in the history of convict transportation, he has had a continual bad press, but his Letterbooks have gone largely unread, and mysteriously, those who write on his associates cannot find "the real Campbell". Now, by July 2000, it can be reported that a US researcher has found new material on Campbell's operations in the Caribbean that have remained unknown to me despite my reading of his Letterbooks. By July 2000, even more information on "the real Campbell" seems likely to surface - which will be interesting.

When I began my own research in 1977, it was hard to understand why or how Campbell had not made more profit from the business of shipping prisoners to Sydney. He was ideally placed to be involved and to make a useful profit. Since 1977, several writers have incorrectly indicated that Campbell did make useful profit from such business (and have not been challenged by reviewers for so doing). The reason Campbell did not make such profit is that he simply wasn't interested, and hence not involved. He left such business to other shipping operators; and unless he had untraceable, semi-secret deals with those operators, there is no way to prove he had a hand in the actual maritime business of shipping prisoners to Sydney.

Here we find more oversights from historians - who have been uncurious about the set of shipping managers who were involved in shipping prisoners to Australia, and/or interested in ranging the Pacific, or finding a backdoor to East India trade, at Canton, China, or at any of several major Indian ports.

At last, it seems that maintaining Campbell's bad press is far more important than the man himself! This is not unrelated to the dismal subject matter that the history of convict transportation actually is. Sydney had an unprepossessing start as a convict colony, and while British historians seem to find it hard to grapple with, few US historians have been tempted to grapple with the material. Australia's early convict history is somewhat "poor brother" in world history, surrounded as it is by the American Revolution, the French Revolution, troubles in Ireland more to 1800, the expansion of US-Asian trade (which is too-little studied), and in commercial history generally, the ubiquitous role of The Honourable East India Company. Yet there were so few people involved in the despatch of the First Fleet to eastern Australia, that it is difficult to understand how or why any of them should be as unknown today, as Campbell has remained. He or his staff (and/or his son John) after all had much to do with checklisting the names of many convicts to be sent to Sydney between 1786 and 1803.

The above refers to matters of history proper. There are however a variety of emotional matters evident with the handling of this history-proper, which also need discussion.

Bach, for example, writes:
"....It is still curious that the intense and rather spectacular early maritime experience should have left so little mark upon the national character. Perhaps there was at work some conscious repudiation of a tradition that was too closely associated with a Britain that had cast them out to that distant shore and appeared to have forgotten them..."
John Bach, Australian maritime historian

The Australian cultural temperament tends to be anti-authority, and many writers have attributed this to the experience of "convictism". A great deal of writing on convict transportation to Australia tends to reinforce this cultural legacy.

But to my mind, one outcome of this cultural legacy, which becomes a nationally-shared emotion, of sorts, living in books if not in people, is that Bach is right - a reaction to being repudiated has helped created in white Australians an unwillingness to look deeper into convict history than Australian historians have delved to date. This tendency is reinforced by anti-authoritarianism. One result is that no one complains about lack of attention to maritime history - British maritime history of the day, whaling history, international rivalry in the Pacific. A question such as - who owned the convict ships?

And so as my research proceeded, I gave more attention to both maritime history and to various histories of London before 1800. I gathered more information than I needed on notable Londoners, partly in order to be able to assess more precisely, those Londoners whom Campbell and Bligh might have known. Thus, I read more on "names" at Lloyd's of London, the Adam Brothers, noted architects; Jeremy Bentham and his supporters, shipping managers... and the London population generally of merchants, politicians, selected families. And I researched genealogies; and successes and failures of all sorts, including convicts seen as notable in colonial Australia. This was equivalent to finding a high altitude, and placing a zoom lens on London below, developing ever more detailed pictures - that is how The Blackheath Connection resulted.

In the middle of all this, so to speak, stood the City of London; and a host of ship movements not before explained, ship movements with the profits taken by Londoners. All to be sorted out in terms of the Botany Bay Debate, the formal historian's discussion of what we know as "the founding" of European Australia. And it seems to me that the best theory arising from the Botany Bay debate will be the theory that can most cleanly link views on the founding of a convict colony at Sydney with subsequent Australian history of many kinds - which is not an easy exercise.

Here, The Duncan Campbell Letterbooks were indispensable in rounding out pictures of Londoners and their lives till about 1810. The Letterbooks assisted in depicting London as well as Campbell's biography, embedded as it is in the history of convict transportation - a dismal topic.

At this point, perhaps a personal finding might reflect how Australians - wishing for deeply-embedded cultural reasons to repudiate large areas of such history - including maritime history, as above - could view these matters in future?

When in London in 1989 for two months, I looked in vain for places in London where an Australian tourist - as distinct from a historian - could visit and find out more about convicts being sent to Australia. There are no such spots in London, though there is a display at Portsmouth on The First Fleet, based on the work of Mollie Gillen.

It appears, that Londoners and Australians, both, conspire to keep secret, which London places are most significant in the history of convict transportation, and/or, "the European founding of Australia".

Suffice to say, a long list of such places can be drawn from The Blackheath Connection. I will be quite happy to leave Australian tourists in London to make their own choices about which spots are most significant, now that a variety of place-names have been discovered.

When those Australian tourists also include more Australian Aboriginals, my research will have been worthwhile, I feel. In which case, the reputation in Australia of Captain James Cook might be adjusted somewhat more realistically. The links between Campbell and William Bligh will be better understood, and some aspects of the history of the British slave trade - and its abolition - will be clearer. The biographies of merchants known to haunt Blackheath will be better understood both in Australia and the United Kingdom. And - I hope - some entertaining new writings will have been produced ... some of them better-based on studies of relevant genealogy.

Finis - Dan Byrnes - July 2000

A store of photographs to come ...

By now, Merchant Networks has gathered a store of photographs for use on this website. Some from old books, some from contributors...

Follows a basic index of just some photographs & prints kindly provided by Pieter Dickson [UK, 2006] to this Merchant Networks website.

Photographs

Falmouth 01 Early C19, possibly officers’ mess next to the Fort Balcarres

Falmouth 02 Fort Balcarres, Falmouth, the barracks (now a school)

Falmouth 03 St. Peter’s Church steeple (Trelawny Parish Church)

Falmouth 04 Former merchant’s premises; colonnade & upper floor ruined

Falmouth 06 Former merchant’s town house

Falmouth 07 The Court House, portico, 1815; rebuilt to original form in 1926 after a fire.

Falmouth 08 Former warehouses at the harbour (known in C18 as the Point, Martha Brae)

Green Island 02 Remains of C18 barrack houses (& Moses Campbell)

Kenilworth 01 ‘Kenilworth’ estate, Hanover, ruined sugar works (2004)

Kenilworth 02 ‘Kenilworth’ estate, Hanover, ruined sugar works (c.1950)

Knockalva ‘Knockalva’ Great House, (2004)

Lucea 01 ‘Bing’s Folly’, town house of merchant Isaac Bing, early C19th.

Lucea 02 C18 stone, warehouses, Lucea town

Lucea 03 Lucea fort, embrasures inside

Lucea 04 Lucea fort, the powder magazine, late C18

Lucea 05 Lucea fort, frontage to the ‘Long Barracks’, late C18, now a school

Lucea 06 The Courthouse, 1807

Lucea 07 Lucea fort, harbour side embrasures

Lucea 09 Long case clock , 1750, from merchant’s house (Lucea Museum)

Lucea 10 William Bligh, copy of portrait in oil, (Lucea Museum)

Lucea 11 C18 slave workhouse, later a prison from 1877

Lucea 12 St. Peter’s church (Hanover Parish Church)

Mo Bay 01 St. James, church (St. James’ Parish Church)

Plantation 01 C18 Ruined house, Hanover, name unknown

Plantation 02 Ditto

Plantation 03 Ditto

Rose Hall "Rose Hall", Great House, St. James, restored in the 1980s

Barbican 01 ‘Barbican’ estate, Hanover, stone windmill base

Tryall 01 ‘Tryall’ estate sugar works, boiler house chimney

Tryall 02 ‘Tryall’ estate sugar works, water wheel housing

Tryall 03 ‘Tryall’ estate sugar works, aqueduct

Tryall 04 ‘Tryall’ estate sugar works, aqueduct and wheel

Prints

C18 field slaves Contemp. print of field slaves

C18 Green Island Fort, Contemp. plan and location of fort

C18 Hanover Harb. Contemp. lithograph of ship at harbour mouth (quite possibly Lucea)

C18 Loading Contemp. print, loading of small ships in a cove.

C18 Lucea fort Contemp. print of Lucea fort (later Fort Charlotte)

C18 Plantation Contemp. lithograph of plantation house and works (unknown)

C18 Windmill Contemp. print of working windmill

C19 Rio Bueno Contemp. lithograph of Rio Bueno (Trelawny), early C19 C18 Lucea Harbour.

Contemp. engraving of Lucea harbour, looking east.

Ends this list

NOTES ON THE CAMPBELLS OF KILBERRY

Late last year [2003] a retired gentleman of Argyll died quietly in one of the pleasant and well-served apartments beyond the hospital in Oban. His family are on record as being associated with Argyll since the late 13^th century, and probably since the visit of Alexander King of Scots in 1222.

His death seems reason enough to give something of the history of his family here, but first a little about himself as a man of his background: James Campbell, MC, TD, soldier, barrister and academic, was born on the 27^th of July 1916. He died on the 6^th of December 2003 aged 87. James had succeeded as representative of the Campbells of Knockbuy and Kilberry on the death of his father Archibald. Archie had been Puisine Judge in the High Court of Lahore in India and was the compiler of the Kilberry Book of Coèl Mòr, the bible of martial piping (piobaireachd) in the Highlands. James was a piper and renowned judge of piping himself. He joined the 8^th Argylls (TA) at the outbreak of the 1939-1945 war as a young officer and was one of those who escaped through La Havre in June 1940 when the rest of the 51^st Division were taken prisoner. He fought with bravery through North Africa, Sicily and up the Italian peninsula and was twice wounded, being awarded the Military Cross in 1944.

James had read law at Cambridge and taken a first, going on the read for the English Bar. After the war he became a tenant in the Temple in London. But his courtroom work was cut short by the infantryman's loss of hearing from his war service, and in 1952 he became director of studies in Law at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Teaching undergraduates became the focus of his life. In his obituary in the Herald his style was described: "Through a rare combination of kid-glove discipline and no-nonsense acumen, he became altogether special to pupils of every kind." He would turn out to watch his students' sports even in the wildest weather, a true Argyll man. Within a couple of years of learning the pipes, James was judging for the Piobaireachd Society, on whose music committee he served for the following 40 years, eventually becoming honorary president.

What, then, were those long roots in Argyll which brought James back to spend his last months in this county? Kilberry Castle now hides comfortably in a handsome and mature deciduous woodland among some of the best arable fields in South Knapdale. Nearby are the foundations of the Mediaeval church and the family graveyard and the former Laundry Cottage which is rented as a holiday home on a weekly basis.

The Campbells of Kilberry are perhaps the last of two families named Campbell in Argyll, along with Barcaldine and other than MacCailein Mor at Inveraray, who still inhabit the site or house or castle where their ancestors lived in the late 16^th or early 17^th centuries. And yet the Kilberry Campbells today were earlier of a younger branch, and came to their inheritance through working several other farms. Oddly, both Kilberry and Barcaldine passed briefly out of the hands of the families and were bought back by or for a following generation. The origins of the Kilberry family are well documented as descending legitimately from the senior line of the Campbell lords of Lochawe at a time when the kindred was just beginning to think of themselves as a "clan" in the larger sense of that word in the Gaelic for "children".

In 1412 Sir Colin "iongantach" (pron. "INK-otuh" meaning "wonderful") of Lochawe died. His son Duncan inherited his Lordship of Lochawe and became first Lord Campbell. By his first marriage Duncan was grandfather of Colin 1^st Earl of Argyll. His second marriage was to Margaret, the daughter of Sir John Stewart of Ardgowan, a natural son of Robert III, King of Scots.

The extensive kindred of the Campbells of Auchinbreac descend from this second marriage, with the Campbells of Kilberry being the surviving younger branch still owning a place in Argyll. The Campbells of Auchinbreac (also spelt Auchinbreck) farm in New Zealand.

Duncan and Margaret had a son whom they also called Duncan. In 1435 he was granted by his father some lands in Cowal at a place called Auchinbreac. The name comes from "auch na breac", or, the "field of spreckle" in the differently-spelt Gaelic of the time. Spreckled is a word used to describe, for example, the spots on a trout. So this son Duncan is known as Duncan Campbell, first of Auchinbreac.

His grandson was Archibald 3^rd of Auchinbreac who had four sons, for all of whom he was able to obtain grants of land. That in itself was remarkable. The earls of Argyll descended from Cailien Mor (k. 1296) whose cousinship to Robert Bruce and the importance to the Gael of such kinship, meant that until the Reformation of 1560 the family would uphold the crown in the west as their larger role. The consequence was that they were often given grants of land as a reward, the kings of Scots being short of cash.

The mother of the four sons of Auchinbreac was a daughter of Campbell of Ardkinglas at the head of Loch Fyne, and when she died Auchinbreac married the daughter of the Earl of Argyll who, legend has it, had been left to drown on a tidal rock by her first husband, MacLean of Duart. But she had been rescued by some fisherfolk and returned to her father's house. One story tells that when MacLean came to report her death to the Earl, he was asked to stay and dine. As the meal began, an empty place remained at the table. Shortly, his lady came and sat in the empty place. Oh to be a fly on the wall and see his face then!

The third son of Archibald 3^rd of Auchinbreac and his Ardkinglas wife was Donald, and he became Campbell of Kilmory. Donald had a younger brother Archibald who became Campbell of the island of Danna near the mouth of Loch Sween, ancestor of the first Campbells of Kilberry.

But it was Donald who would be ancestor of the present Campbells of Auchinbreac, in New Zealand, and also of the second line of the Campbells of Kilberry, who still live at Kilberry. Donald of Kilmory married Elizabeth Stewart from the Stewart Isle of Bute. Donald's will is dated in 1593. Their fifth and youngest son was known as dark- haired Patrick and he was found a farm at Stuck in Cowal. His first wife was a Cameron girl from Callart on Loch Leven, opposite Glencoe. Their eldest son they called Dugald. He became a minister of the Kirk.

The Rev. Dugald Campbell (1592-1673) was a fundamentalist, a Covenanting minister in the religious wars of the 17^th century. He married a Lowland Maxwell lady and their son Patrick also became a minister like his father. The Rev. Patrick Campbell was granted a farm at Torbhlaren, beside an old hill fort near the village of Kilmichael Glassary in mid Argyll. His wife was Jean MacIver-Campbell from the family of that name up Loch Fyne at Pennymore. They had three daughters, all of whom married Campbells, and four sons, two of whom did well in Jamaica as planters. But their third son Colin was found a farm at Knockbuy (later renamed Minard) on Loch Fyne. Colin of Knockbuy married Margaret Graham whose father was a merchant in Inveraray. By his time some of the bigotry and bloodshed had gone out of religion in Scotland and there was a degree of peace in the land. The Old Testament gave way in part to the New.

The first line of the Campbells of Kilberry had come down to a daughter and heiress named Grizel or Grizelda. In 1718 she married her cousin Archibald, the eldest son of Colin and Margaret Campbell of Knockbuy. So in time Archibald potentially became Campbell of Knockbuy and Kilberry.

Grizel and Archibald's eldest son was Colin, who became a captain in the army and died unmarried in the West Indies in 1742. Their second son, Archibald became a merchant in Glasgow who also later owned Minard Pen in Jamaica. A Pen was a stock-rearing station, mainly for draft oxen. In time he inherited Knockbuy and Kilberry, having married Anne Brown(e) in Jamaica in 1759, and died in 1798.

Their eldest son was John Campbell. From 1798 he was 4^th of Knockbuy and 8^th of Kilberry. Not that such numbering was often used, except genealogically, but for this article it will help to keep the generations clear. In 1802 John married Margaret Rankine who was so beautiful that she was nicknamed "the flower of Dundee" and "belle of Scotland". She was the daughter of William Rankine, a jute merchant with interests in Perth and Dundee, and his wife Isobel MacKellar. Sadly, the full-length portraits of John and Margaret by Raeburn had to be sold in the late 1920s. One is believed to be in North American and the other in Germany perhaps.

John and Margaret's eldest son was another John Campbell who would succeed his father as 5^th of Knockbuy and 9^th of Kilberry. He was born in 1803 and died in 1861. He married Rosa MacBean and once again they named their eldest son John. However, among other children they had a daughter Margaret who married William Arbuthnot and they had three daughters before she died in 1917. Margaret Arbuthnot's second daughter, Rosa Margaret Ivy Florence Arbuthnot, would buy Kilberry from her second cousin's executors in 1931. She lived at the castle for seven years until she died in 1938, when she bequeathed the castle and estate to her cousin's daughter, Marion Campbell of Kilberry, the archeologist, historian and author.

Meanwhile, John Campbell 5^th of Knockbuy and 10^th of Kilberry, had with his wife Rosa an eldest son John, 6^th of Knockbuy and 11^th of Kilberry (1844-1908). John served with the Argyll's Sutherland Highlanders in India from 1863 to 1870 when he returned home and married Margaret Lloyd. Her family had bought Knockbuy, but with the agreement that they would use the adjacent name of Minard for the place, leaving the territorial title Knockbuy intact for the Kilberry family. This was a common custom in Argyll. The Lloyds built the present early Victorian Minard Castle, which is currently run as a Bed & Breakfast on Loch Fyne. Margaret died in 1919.

John and Margaret's son, Col. John Campbell, 7^th of Knockbuy and 12^th of Kilberry, followed his father into the Argyll's Sutherland Highlanders. He commanded the 8^th Battalion (TA) in France in 1915-16 during the First World War. Wounded in 1916, he was invalided out. He married Isabel Durand and he died in 1929 and she in 1945. They had a son John who died in infancy and two daughters, one of whom was the author Marion Campbell of Kilberry. Her elegy to our county, Argyll the Enduring Heartland, will be known to many. Her later historical work on Alexander King of Scots was her academic passport as an historian. Her work on the archeological inventory of Argyll is her lasting memorial. The colonel's executors sold the endebted estate and castle in 1931 when, as we have seen, it was bought by a cousin of Marion's, also her Godmother, who then left it to her on her death seven years later.

Following the colonel's death in 1929, and during the time when Marion Campbell of Kilberry owned the castle and lands, her father's youngest brother Archibald represented the family as 8^th of Knockbuy and 13^th of Kilberry. He served in the Indian Civil Service, as Judge of the High Court of Lahore and was a famous authority on pipe music. The Kilberry book on pipe tunes is of marked interest for pipers. He married Violet Beadon and they had three sons and a daughter before he died in 1963. Their eldest son Angus died before his father in 1955-56 without any issue, after suffering imprisonment by the Japanese in the notorious Changi Goal in Singapore in the 1939-45 War. And here we come to the member of the family with whom we started, their second son, James. For forty years, from 1963 to 2003, he was representative of the family as James Campbell 9^th of Knockbuy and 14^th of Kilberry.

Archibald and Violet's youngest son was the late Colin Campbell, brother of Angus and James. He married Jacqueline Harvie and they had three sons. The eldest is the present John Campbell 10^th of Knockbuy and 15^th of Kilberry, to whom Marion Campbell of Kilberry left the castle and grounds on her death in 2000. John and his wife Charmian have three daughters and one son, the eldest Sarah being born in 1989 and their son Rory in 1995. John's professions are as a deep-sea diver and bee-keeper. Kilberry honey can be bought in Oban. John's brother Neil Campbell married Jane Curnow and lives in Australia where he has two son, James Kilberry Campbell born in 1989, and Hamish born in 1993. John and Neil's brother Angus Campbell married Lauren Brown, and they have daughter Saskia born in 1992 and a son Louis in 1996.

Most of the interior of Kilberry Castle has not been painted since the mid 19^th century and John and Charmian live frugally in a time capsule. The farms were sold by Marion of Kilberry and when she died John renovated her cottage in the grounds, Laundry Cottage, to rent out as a holiday let. There Marion Campbell of Kilberry wrote during the last years of her life. A beach is 15 minutes' walk in one direction and the village equidistant in the other. The cottage is in the grounds of the castle, sheltered by woods but with views over the sea to the islands of Gigha, Islay and Jura. John is gradually renovating the castle, but his wife and family come first. For some there are great advantages to having grown up in the "sixties", enabling them to be thankful for what they have and make do with what turns up.

SOURCES: The information of James Campbell came from the obituary following his death in December 2003. The information on the Kilberry family came in letters and notes from Marion Campbell of Kilberry to the writer and the current information was provided and checked by John Campbell, now of Kilberry.

:::::::::::::: (Ends article by Diarmid Campbell) :::::::::::

Begins additional material from Pieter Dickson (verbatim, of 29-7-2006)

Dear Merchant Networks, some material I have just extracted from:
Cornwall Chronicle & Jamaica Advertiser, August 1787 ...

St Ann's, August 14 1787

To be sold, MINARD,

A pen in this parish, with or without 124 Negroes, and between 700 and 800 head of stock; containing about 1200 acres of land, more or less, about 800 of which are in well established Guinea grass, divided into 23 pastures, well fenced mostly with stone walls; the rest in Wood Land, Negro-Grounds, House Provisions, Cotton, and Coffee, with an excellent Dwelling House, Overseer's House, etc. five miles from Runaway Bay, and about the same distance from Dry Harbour. - Ten years will be given for the payment of the Land and Negroes, by instalments, on giving undoubted security, as the Proprietor is absolutely resolved to leave the island very soon.

The stock will be sold off as Purchasers offer and are as follow:

500 Neat Cattle, many of them very fat, and fit for the butcher.

60 Mares breeding mules, with 3 proof Jack-asses

130 Mules of different ages

60 Blood Mare, Colts and Fillies, broke and unbroke, fit for the turf, road or draught.

Several high-bred Stallions, equal to any that can be imported form England

Also some pacing Colts and Fillies, broke and unbroke

The different kinds of stock are inferior to none in this island, of the truth of which Purchasers will be convinced when they see them. They will be sold cheap, singly, or in any number a Buyer pleases: - if not sold by Private Sale by 15th of October next, they will on that day be put up at MINARD (in lots or singly, as desired) at Public Outcry, and sold to the highest and best Bidder.- The Sale will begin at Eight o' clock of that morning, and continue until all are sold off.

Produce, at a reasonable price, and unexceptionable Bonds and Bills, will be taken in payment. - Apply to the Subscriber on the Premises.

ARCH. CAMPBELL

:::: (Ends additional material from Pieter Dickson of 29-7-2006) :::

Notes will soon be placed here from the Editor on the above article by Diarmid Campbell. Below soon will be a genealogical print-out on the family lineage discussed in the article. - Ed

Yes, this page is still "under construction", but, this file was first lodged on the Net on 11 July 2006.

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