Part 3
Early Castlemains Hallidays particularly John Halliday of
Antigua
In researching his claim to be considered “Representer” of the Castlemains Hallidays,
A.L.H. encountered material, summarized here, relating to John of Antigua that record
aspects of his life not appearing in Colonel Cecil Alexander Tollemache Hallidays (Part 1
of this Blog).
1. John the first Owner of Castlemains/Castledykes (1650-1716)
All we really know about the antecedents and life of the first Halliday owner of
Castlemains/Castledykes (died 1716) is recounted in Chapter 3 (i) of Hallidays.
A sasine of 1703 records the transfer of lands of “Castell-mayns, alias Castle-dykes” to John
Halliday and Margaret Gibson his spouse. Earlier Sasines record other land transfers to
this pair. Evidently the first Castlemains John was a substantial farmer. “Castledykes” is a
considerable acreage at the south side of the town running along the banks of the Cree.
There is still a street called “Castledykes” that connects the property to the town centre.
Today the property is held by the Borough for recreation use and grazing. The “Castle” is
a c. 12th Century Danish fort of which only the foundations survive.
Sasines do not record the dates of birth or marriages and there appears to be no extant
public documents confirming that this John was born in 1650 or was married in 1681.
However, we do know his eldest son and heir to Castlemains was born in 1682. Moreover
both Stratford Charles and C.A.T.H. probably had access to private papers supporting the
dates of births and marriages.
2. John the Second Owner of Castlemains/Castledykes (16821756)
We learn from his table-top gravestone in the Churchyard of Old St. Cuthbert’s Church
Kirkudbright (shown below in a photograph by Mrs. P.D.H in October 2009) that this
John was born in 1682 (aged 74 at the time of his death in 1756) and that his wife Margaret
McKie was born in 1683 (aged 88 at the time of her death in 1771).
1
The Pedigree in Hallidays tells us that John and Margaret were married in 1710 and that
their eldest son, who for convenience is normally referred to as “of Antigua” or “the
Antiguan”, was not born until 1715. A.L.H. has not been able to discover any documentary
evidence establishing the date of the marriage or the birth. However a Sasine dated 1723
refers to a “John Younger” the son of John Halliday and Margaret McKie being “but a
young boy” at the time.
In addition to the Antiguan, John and Margaret had other children. Buried with their
parents are James, Jane, Marg’ (Margaret) and David; a sad reminder of the high levels of
infant mortality before the nineteenth century1.
Otherwise A.L.H. has uncovered no material to supplement the brief biography in
Chapter 3 (i) of Hallidays.
1
This list of children differs slightly from that reproduced in Hallidays: CATH’s “Janet” is
a mis-transcription of the Jane of the actual gravestone. CATH’s list excludes the David
appearing on the actual gravestone. The pedigree attached to Hallidays shows a David as
“Treasurer of Kirkudbright” as a second son. But there is no further record of this David.
It is in most unlikely that such a David would, as an adult, have been buried with his
parents and perhaps this is another example of a son being named after a predeceased
sibling. The Hallidays pedigree does mention a William Halliday whose life is covered
below (3.1) as well as the James, Janet (Jane), and Margaret of the Gravestone.
2
3.1
John the Antiguan, Third Owner of Castlemains/Castledykes,
(1715-1779)
A narrative of the life of John Halliday of Antigua appears in Hallidays Chapter 3 (iii-v). It
is of course the story of the son of a substantial Kirkudbright farmer who goes to the West
Indies in 1738 aged 23 as a merchant; marries an heiress in 1741; raises a family, and
assumes public office as an elected member of the Legislative Council. In 1759 he is
appointed Collector of Customs and, in 1763, a member of the Governor’s Council..
Either through inheritance from his father in law or by his own purchase, he acquires eight
sugar plantations. In 1779 he dies in England a man with property in Richmond and of
course the family’s acreage in Kirkudbright. The Antiguan plays a pivotal role in the
fortunes of the Hallidays of Castlemains/Castledykes. The wealth John acquired by dint of
3
energy, enterprise and perhaps charm propelled the family from the misty banks of the
Cree to the sunnier meadows of the Thames. He was able to purchase Army Commissions
for his sons and introduce them to the upper reaches of English society.
What follows draws on sources probably unavailable to CATH and his grandfather, SCH,
and is intended to supplement the short biography of the Antiguan in Chapter 3 of
Hallidays.
Like most emigrants, John’s move from Galloway to the Caribbean was most probably
motivated by economics. Kirkudbright in the early eighteenth century was far from
flourishing. Daniel Defoe, wrote of a visit to Kirkudbright in 1724.
“Here is a pleasant situation yet nothing pleasant to be seen. Here is a harbour
without ships, a port without trade, a fishery without nets, a people without
business; and that, which is worse than all, they do not seem to desire business,
much less do they understand it.” (Defoe, 1748)2
If prospects were unpromising in Kirkudbright, they would have appeared brighter across
the Atlantic. Scots, and their Ulster kin, already in the English West Indies would have
reported on, and doubtless exaggerated, the bounteous opportunities available to energetic
young men.
Arriving in Antigua in 1738, John would have encountered a small community of Scots
from Galloway and Ulster already well established on Antigua and neighbouring St. Kitts.
These included members of the extended Halliday family as well as the Martins who were
related by marriage (John of Antigua’s Aunt Joan or Jean had married a Samuel Martin
who became prominent in the public life of Antigua). It is quite likely too that John the
father would have had trading contacts in Northern Ireland with the Delap family that had
originated (as Dunlops) in Ayr. Francis Delap was a plantation owner in Antigua who
became John’s business partner and whose daughter Elizabeth John was to marry in 1741.
Scottish relations would have eased young John’s transition to the business and social world
of the Islands.
The Antigua on which John Halliday disembarked in 1738 had been an English possession
since 1632. The Island’s early years of settlement were troubled. The settlers were subject
to raids from Carib Indians located on the island of Dominica, not colonized until 1765.
No sooner had the Carib threat disappeared than Antigua and St. Kitts (originally a an
Anglo/French “condominium”) became theatres for the frequent hostilities between
England and, in turn, Holland and France that spilled from Europe to the Caribbean. By
1700 the French had settled Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada and St. Lucia. The
frequent wars between Britain and France spilt across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Sea
engagements involving both regular navies and privateers were common in wartime and
islands were invaded. During John Halliday’s time in Antigua (1738-1776) the Island was
2
ALH is indebted to Mike Ball, s expert on the Martin family, for this quote.
4
subject to French naval and privateering raids on its shipping in 1742-49 and 1756-63. But
there was no French landing3.
The development of the Antigua settlement also faced natural challenges. As todays
tourists can attest, the Island is arid with very little surface water; just ponds that evaporate
in the dry season. The dearth of water was only alleviated by the discovery of some
underground springs and the building of costly cisterns to capture rain. The Island was
subject to hurricanes, a major one struck in 1772, and earthquakes. Yet the settlement not
only survived, with the introduction of sugar it flourished and by the time John Halliday’s
arrival in 1738, whites would have enjoyed living standards far above those prevailing in
Scotland or even England.
As a result of the Act of Union of 1707, Scots could move directly (and voluntarily)
anywhere in Britain’s expanding empire which by century’s end embraced a growing
number of West Indian Islands, Canada, India, Australasia, and South Africa. (Scots,
particularly “Scots Irish”, from Ulster, were prominent in the colonization of the Carolinas
and, after 1776 continued to emigrate to the newly formed Unites States). By dint of a
robust work ethic, good education, a canny business sense, and “clannish” trading
networks, Scots flourished as merchants, soldiers, administrators and, in the Caribbean, as
plantation owners.
In Antigua, as elsewhere in the English Caribbean, sugar, first introduced into Barbados in
around 1650, had, by the late seventeenth century, replaced tobacco as the staple cash crop
(on the mainland tobacco and later cotton were more important). Increasingly the
plantations of the New World turned to black slavery to satisfy their demand for cheap and
compliant labour. Blacks proved much more capable than the local Indians and
Europeans of sustaining heavy manual labour in tropical heat and more resistant to the
endemic diseases of the region, notably malaria and dengue fever.
In Antigua the rise of sugar can be tracked in the growth of the slave population. From
small beginnings around 1670, slaves had, by the turn of the century, came to far
outnumber whites. At the time of John Halliday’s arrival blacks constituted some 85% of
Antigua’s population. Indeed the risk of a slave revolt became the principal security threat
to the settlers. Plantation owners were expected to participate in the local militia or supply a
white substitute since it was the policy of the governments in Antigua and elsewhere in the
West Indies to ensure that there was available for muster one white under arms for every
two slaves. However this objective could not be attained. Regulations issued in Antigua in
1716 respecting the importation of white servants mandated that every owner of slaves to
the number of fifteen was to supply a white man to serve in the militia with a further white
militia obligation for every additional 20 slaves.
The French had invaded the Island in 1666. The historian and genealogist, Vere Langford Oliver (VLO)
records in his History of Antigua that a James Halliday signed Antigua’s capitulation to the French (and for
his pains had his acreage reduced from 1400 to 800 when the Island was restored to England in 1668).
3
5
Happily the period of John’s stay in Antigua saw no French land incursions (there was
plenty of naval and privateering action in the neighbouring seas). And more importantly
there was no repetition of earlier slave insurrections. Samuel Martin, the father of the
Samuel who was John Halliday’s kinsman and rough contemporary, had been murdered
by his slaves in Christmas 1701. (Christmas when slave enjoyed a well-earned few days
holiday and much rum was consumed, was a always a stressful time for the whites.) In
1736, two years before John Halliday’s arrival on the Island, 88 slaves were executed for
planning to kill the plantation owners at a ball. It is hardly surprisingly, and indeed would
have been a legal requirement, that John joined the Carbineers soon after arriving on the
Island.
The inevitable concomitant of a slave based plantation economy on Antigua and elsewhere
in the Caribbean was the development of the slave trade. Despite their toughness, slave
populations in the Caribbean were not self-generating. Mortality rates were high among the
overworked and under-nourished slaves and replacements had to purchased from Africa.
Until the eighteenth century, the carriage of slaves from Africa to the New World was
dominated by the Portuguese and Dutch. But the English and French governments
legislated to ensure a national monopoly in slave trading between Africa and their
respective Caribbean possessions. Slave shipping ventures became important in the
commercial life of the English ports of Bristol and London but by the eighteenth century
vessels registered in Liverpool came to dominate England’s slave trade. Crew wages in
Liverpool were lower than in the established ports and Liverpool -based ships could sail
around the North or Ireland into the Atlantic with much less risk from French privateers
that harassed English shipping in the Channel during the frequent Anglo-French hostilities
of the eighteenth century. It is safe to assume that, after sugar itself, slaves constituted the
most profitable cargoes for English ships plying - the Atlantic. Typically a Liverpool based
ship would carry trade goods: iron, cloth, rum and those vital tools for slave collection by
the Africans, muskets, powder and shot. These manufactures would be used to pay coastal
chiefs for the slaves ivory, and indigo, collected from the interior. The ships would then
proceed to the Caribbean and North America to disgorge their slaves before returning to
the home ports to unload sugar, rum and tobacco picked up in the colonies as well as
African products notably ivory.
John of Antigua describes himself in his 1757 Will as “merchant”. CATH (p. 13) confirms
that John was ‘sent out as a merchant’ but leaves unanswered the nature of his business.
Unfortunately perhaps for the sensitivities of his descendants, there is evidence that John,
together with his father in law and brother William, played a role in the importation and
local distribution of slaves probably as local agents for a Liverpool merchant venturer4. As
4
The evidence is incomplete and merits further research. What has come to light is correspondence dated
24 February 1757 between William Davenport the prominent Liverpool slave ship owner, to Francis Delap,
and John and William Halliday explaining his plans to seek slaves near the mouth of the Congo (‘where they
may be obtained more cheaply than in the traditional collection points further North’). Source?. In addition
there is a letter from William Davenport to one of his captains instructing him to disembark sick slaves to
John and William Halliday who will pay him a reduced price and to deliver still healthy slaves for a higher
price in the Carolinas (ODAV 1747-1761) held in the John Rylands Library Manchester University. Cited in
N.J. Radburn “William Davenport the Slave Trade and Merchant Enterprise in Eighteenth Century
Liverpool.” 2009 research thesis - <researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz>
4
6
local agents, Francis Delap and the Halliday brothers would have taken delivery of slaves,
paid off the ship’s captain, and perhaps after holding them for a period, taken the slaves to
public auction. They would have profited from their involvement to the extent that the
price received at auction exceeded the price they paid to the captain plus their local
expenses.
John was soon joined in the West Indies by his younger brother William who settled in St.
Kitts. It seems likely too that there was a third brother, Alexander, who also settled in St.
Kitts where he died, aged 23 year and 11 months, in October 17545.
In 1741, John Halliday married in St. Pauls’ Parish Church6, Elizabeth Delap, the elder
daughter and heiress of his business partner Francis Delap. The marriage of John and
Elizabeth was to prove fecund but, typically of the time, in Scotland as much as in the
tropics, disease carried off a number of their children before they reached adulthood:
1. Their first born, a daughter, Margaret, was, according Hallidays and VLO baptized
in 1742. VLO provides no parish record for her burial, presumably in St. Kitts,
some time after 1776. In 1771, aged 29, Margaret married Richard Wilson on the
Island of St. Kitts. She features as a substantial beneficiary in all four of John
Halliday’s Wills (1757 – 1776).
2.
Margaret was quickly followed by a son, Francis, baptized in St. John’s Antigua in
1743 and buried in the same church in 1746.
3.
A second daughter Elizabeth was baptized in St. John’s in 1747. She too appears to
have died in her infancy. Unlike her sister, she does not feature in John Halliday’s
first Will of 1756
4. John of Antigua’s eldest surviving son and heir, John Delap, was baptized in St.
John’s Antigua on Nov 23 1749; he died in 1794 and is buried in Leasownes
Worcestershire.
5. VLO cites a St. John’s baptismal record for a further son, William, dated Dec 19
17517. The Hallidays Pedigree shows William dying in 1760 but VLO records no
burial document in any Antiguan Parish nor in Richmond.
6. The last child of John and Elizabeth, another Francis8, was baptized in Richmond
Surrey on October 30 1758 and died in England in 1794, the same year, as his
elder brother, John Delap.
See 3.2 and 3.3. below.
The “Delaps” plantation is located in St. Paul’s Parish.
7 Interestingly CATH in the Hallidays pedigree has him born in 1752. Can this be explained by the fact
that in the same year Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar which added 12 days to the dates
inscribed according to the Julian calendar?
5
6
7
As recounted in Hallidays, after his father’s death, John accompanied by his family
returned to Britain in 1757 and it is documented that John formally resigned from the
Antigua Legislature in 1757 on the ground that he was leaving the Island for England “by
the first convoy9”10 and that the time of return was “uncertain”. Now head of the family,
John needed to arrange for the management of “Castledykes”. The fact that he settled his
family in Richmond suggests that he did not propose to expose himself or his family,
brought up the tropics, to the rigors of Scotland.
One has the distinct impression from reading Hallidays that, after 1757, John adopted
Richmond as his base while travelling to Antigua periodically to supervise his affairs there.
But the evidence available, not all of which may have been accessible to CATH and his
grandfather SCH, suggests that John in fact returned to Antigua in 1758 or 1759 and
remained there until his retirement from the Collectorship in c.1776. This does not
preclude short visits to Britain to see his family perhaps also to fetch his “apprentice” young
Samuel Martin (see below). The most likely dates for such a visit would be 1765 and/or
1767. John found it expedient to draw up Wills on these dates and, as John’s Wills of 1756
and 1776 demonstrated, it was a common practice at that time to prepare Wills before
undertaking the perilous North Atlantic crossing even in peace time.
What is the evidence that leads this author at least to the conclusion that John was a more
or less11 permanent resident in Antigua from 1759 and 1776?
First there are the various iterations John’s Will. In the initial, 1756 version, he describes
himself as “of Castlemains” in “North Britain12”. In the three subsequent Wills (1765,
1767, and 1776) John styles himself “of Antigua” without any reference to Richmond,
England, or indeed Scotland. It would certainly be bizarre if not illegal for anyone
permanently residing in England to describe himself as “of Antigua”.
A further reason to question CATH’s version of John’s location relates to income. John
did not acquire his first plantation, “Delaps” until the death of his father in law Francis
Delap, in 1763. He subsequently acquired seven or eight more plantations13. Absentee
owners were certainly a feature of Caribbean sugar plantations and indeed John himself
8
It may puzzle moderns that the first and last sons were both named Francis after their maternal grandfather.
But it was a common practice at the time to name a new-born after a predeceased sibling. Francis Delap
features as a beneficiary in his father’s last three Wills.
English ships crossing the Atlantic at that time would proceed in convoy to reduce the risk of
capture by French naval vessels or privateers in both the Caribbean and Channel. The two countries
were once again at war (1756-63).
11 We know from Hallidays (p.17) that John was in Bath in November 1770. He may well have
travelled to England in that year for John Delap’s planned marriage to Miss Byron.
12 The common term used for Scotland for some year after the Union of 1707 which resulted in the
formation of “Great Britain”.
13 in addition to Delaps: Blizzards, Boons, Gambles, Glanvilles, Lavincourts, Rock Hill, St. Mary’s, and
Weatherills. It appears uncertain whether Glanvilles and Lavincourts should be treated as departae
plantation. A typical sugar plantation had 300 acres, the area needed to produce enough cane to
supply a central processing facility where the case was crushed and the resulting juice reduced by
10
8
was an absentee owner from 1776 until his death in 1779 and John Delap, his heir
seemingly never set foot on the Island after 1757. However, one would have expected if
John were an absentee owner he would have wanted to control his acquisitions centrally
and preferably through a kinsman. Samuel Martin probably assumed this role in 1776.
In 1757 John was still relatively young (42) and although he stood to inherit from his father
in law he was not yet assured of the plantation and “collector” income that he was later to
enjoy. How could John support himself and his family in Richmond in comfort without
access to income from Antigua? Apart from the relatively modest rent from Castledykes
(shared with his mother) John’s only income in 1757 would have been derived from the
Antigua trading partnership with Francis Delap and John’s brother William Halliday. John
could not have expected his partners to allow him access to the profits of the partnership
without contributing to their accumulation14. There is no evidence that John attempted to
become gainfully employed in England. Instead he returned to Antigua without his family
to acquire a fortune in the form of sugar plantations.
John became Collector of Customs in Antigua15 in 1759. The Collector’s position dates
from 1663 when the English Crown decreed that a levy of 4.5% should be imposed on
exports by Colonial Governments. The proceeds of the levy were intended primarily to
defray the cost of colonial government. However, from all the evidence, the holder of the
office was free to divert some portion of the export tax collected to his own use and
Collectors were expected to profit from the post.
We know that when about to leave Antigua for good in 1775, John bequeathed to
Collectorship to his protégé Samuel Martin16. How John acquired so profitable an office is
unclear but from available evidence it seems that the post it was, at that time, in the gift of
Colonel Samuel Martin then the Speaker of the Antigua Assembly and thus, after the
Governor, the most important man in the Colony’s political institutions17 We don’t know
boiling, crystalized and packed in barrels for shipment to Britain. From the inventory of John Delap’s
properties in 1788 (reproduced in Oliver) it seems of the plantations most ell within the standard
range of 300 acres. it appears that
14 The possibility exists that John intended to advance the interests of the family Antiguan
partnership from his Richmond base. Although it can be no more than speculation, John and his
partners may originally have intended to expand their Antiguan trading business by entering the slave trade as
shippers on their own account. Richmond would have been a good base to tap the capital of London’s
financiers and purchase/lease the abundant shipping available at its docks. His father in law and brother
William would continue to look after the business in West Indies. It may have been John’s original intention
to place a young relative in his stead in Antigua.. We are told in Hallidays that William Lidderdale, aged 29
in 1757 was selected for this role. But if it was indeed the plan of John’s and his business partners “to move
up the supply chain” events were to frustrate it. First William Lidderdale, we are told, preferred to remain
with Margaret McKie to run the family farm in Kirkudbright. Second, William Halliday died on St. Kitts in
1759.
15 Technically the post was “Collector of the Port of St. John’s” . A second Collector was responsible
for the minor Port of Parham.
16 John in his 1776 Will provides: I give to my kinsman Samuel Martin esq. the sum of 100 pounds to be
paid him immediately after my decease as a further token of my affection for him having resigned my
office as collector of Customs for the Port of St. John in his favour on reasonable terms.
17 A visitor to Antigua in 1774/5, Janet Schaw from Edinburgh, met John Halliday, Colonel Samuel
Martin and young Samuel Martin John’s protégé. These encounters are described in her “Journal of a
9
whether the Colonel exacted any financial quid pro quo on John Halliday in return for the
position – perhaps just his agreement to transfer the post eventually the younger Samuel
Martin. But when in 1775/6 John transferred the collectorship to young Samuel Martin (a
fairly distant kinsman of the Colonel ) the latter bound himself to the Colonel to pay
annuities to certain members of the Martin family 18. To the modern observer these
arrangements will appear grossly patrimonial; they imply that individuals, even families, had
a heritable right to public positions and even a portion of their proceeds. Obviously the
holder of the position was entitled to a share of the proceeds so of course was the Crown;
customs duties was probably its only regular source of revenue from which to meet the
ongoing expenses of government19. The division of the revenue between Collector and
Crown remains unclear and was possibly negotiated and variable.
John’s fortunes began their rapid ascent from the time of accession to the Collectorship.
Indeed it is quite possible that with the death of brother William Halliday in 1759 and
father in Law, Francis Delap in 1763, the slave trading partnership was dissolved and John
devoted his growing fortune to the acquisition of plantations. In addition to the
Collectorship, we know that John held other, non remunerative, public positions that
would have necessitated his presence on the Island. In 1761 John was re-elected to the
Island legislature to represent Willoughby Bay;. There is no evidence that he subsequently
resigned this seat as he had in 1757. His electorate would have expected their
representative to be locally based. Moreover John was, in 1759, appointed a member of
the Governor’s Executive Council a post that was perhaps ex officio, but one that would
have required an ongoing involvement in the affairs of the Island.
Documentary evidence that John was a more or less permanent resident of Antigua
between 1759 and 1776 is strongly reinforced by an outside source of which CATH was
probably unaware. In December 1774 a middle aged Scots spinster, Janet Schaw visited
Antigua with her brother and was immediately taken up by the Scots plantocracy including
John Halliday. In her Journal Miss Schaw describes John as from Galloway20, is above fifty
but21 extremely genteel in his person and most agreeable in his manners; he has a very great
Lady of Quality” originally published in 1934 with a 2005 edition published by Bison Books and
edited by Stephen Carl Arch. She repeats the common epithet for the Colonel as the “father of
Antigua”.
18 And this obligation was inherited by the Colonel’s own son (yet another Samuel). In this regard ALH
is grateful to Mike Ball for drawing to his attention a Codicil in the Colonel’s son’s Will reproduced in
Oliver’s History of Antigua (Vol.II p.245) which reads in part:
1st. Codicil dated 24 May 1787. No. 84 Pall Mall (Letter to Sam. Martin, Esq., Collector of the
Port of St. John’s) By agreement between you and my late father you were to pay annuities of £
100 to Dr. Malcolm, etc. Dr Malcolm is dead. My father’s Codicil was dated. 5 March 1775. I
desire you to pay £ 110 a year to my nephew Tho. Fitzgerald & to each of his sisters £ 150.
19 How Collector and Crown divided revenue from duty collections, and whether such arrangements
were formal or subject to ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, is a matter for further research
20 Galloway (literally the land of the Irish Gaels) is the broad region of South Western Scotland that
contains the modern County of Kirkudbrightshire.
21. Miss Schaw’s use of the seemingly unnecessary conjunction reflects the attitude of polite
Edinburgh society towards provincials.
10
fortune and lives with elegance and taste . His family resides in England and he lives the life
of a Bachelor. The Journal records John’s lavish hospitality:
We found Mr. Martin22 at the church door with our carriages into which we
mounted and were soon at Mr. Halliday’s plantation23 where he this day dined for
he had no less than five, all of which have houses on them. This house is extremely
pleasant and so cool that one might forget they were under the Tropick. We had a
family dinner, which in England might figure away in a newspaper, had it been
given by a Lord Mayor, or the first Duke in the kingdoms. Why should we blame
these people for their luxury? Since nature holds our her lap filled with every thing
that is in her power to bestow, it were sinful in them not to be luxurious ….After a
description of typical Antiguan meals that include turtle, fish, and mutton Miss
Schaw notes at Mr. Halliday’s we had thirty two different fruits24and were served
burgundy, a rare treat.
For all that she is evidently impressed by his table, Janet Schaw , as a careful Scot, does not
spare John Halliday some criticism for his ostentation: we learn that his coach was drawn
by English horses “a very needless piece of expense” given the availability of cheaper
alternatives from New England or Spanish colonies.
Miss Schaw’s impressions of Antigua, its cuisine, scenery, climate and society are generally
very positive. When her brother tries to persuade her of the superior merits of
neighbouring islands25 she writes:
It will not be easy to make me believe it possible to excel Antigua. I will not deny I
am partial to this delightful spot and go where I will my heart will retain a grateful
sense of the hospitable reception we have met with and the numberless civilities we
have received from every Individual. I think the men the most agreeable creatures I
ever met with, frank open, generous, and I dare say brave; even in advance life they
retain the Vivacity and Spirit of Youth; they are generally handsome and a all of
them have a sore of air that will ever attend a man of fashion. Their address is at
one soft and manly; they have a kind of gallantry in t heir manner, which exceeds
mere politeness, and in some countries we know, would be easily mistaken more
interesting than civility, yet you must not suppose this the politeness of French
manners, merely words of course. No, what they say, they really mean; their whole
intention it to make you happy, and this they endeavor to do without any other view
or motive than what they are prompted to by the natural goodness of their own
Miss Schaw writes: young Martin, our hostess (a Mrs. Baird) who is very frank, tells us is a favourite
of the Collector’s stays always with him and that it is supposed he intends to resign in his favour.
(Samuel did indeed succeed John as Collector in 1775).
23 The short journey suggesting Boones or Wetherills.
24 We are spared an enumeration but she mention oranges, pineapples, guavas, shaddocks (pomelos)
and granadillas.
25 Janet remained in Antigua while her brother Alexander visited St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat
22
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natures. In short, my friend26, the woman that brings her heart here will have
sensibility if she carry it away.
This paean to the Island’s plantocracy can almost certainly be taken to embrace John
Halliday who is frequently mentioned in the Journal. Equally, however, she probably
includes him in the rebuke that immediately follows:
I hear you ask me, if there is no alloy to this fine character, no reverse to this
beautiful picture. Alas! my friend, tho’ children of the Sun they are mortals , and as
such must have their share of failings, the most conspicuous of which is, the
indulgence they give themselves in their licentious and even unnatural amours,
which appears too plainly, from the crowds of Mulattoes, which you meet in the
streets, houses and indeed everywhere; a crime that seems to have gained sanction
from custom, tho’ attended with the greatest inconvenience not only to Individuals,
but to the publick in general. The young black wenches lay themselves out for white
lovers in which they are but too successful this prevent their marrying with their
natural mates, and hence a spurious and degenerate breed, neither so fit for the
field nor indeed any work, as the true bred Negro. …. I would have gladly drawn a
veil over this part of the character, which in everything else is most estimable.
Miss Schaw’s term “living the life of a Bachelor” in describing John Halliday in 1775 is of
course open to varying interpretations in the twenty-first century. At its most innocent, it
may simply mean that John had no lady in his life. But a more plausible explanation is that
like many of his fellow planters and other whites in the West Indies, often with wives
residing in Britain, John was more or less openly enjoying the favours of black or mulatto
women living in his home as house slaves.
Corroboration for this inference can be found in John’s Wills. In the 1767 version we find
a very generous bequest to a Rebecca, daughter of Eleanor Ganthanize (sp.?)27. Then as
noted in Hallidays, John, in his 1776 Will included as beneficiaries a “mulatto’’ Louisa28,
her daughter Elizabeth Poiry, and Elizabeth’s son Thomas Halliday. The Will freed
Louisa, her children, grandchildren and their issue. There were small bequests to mother
and daughter and a very generous benefit for Thomas: £500 (local currency) at 21 with a
lifetime annuity of £50. The generosity of the bequest to Thomas coupled with his
surname can probably be taken as an acknowledgement of paternity and, admirably,
acceptance of the financial obligation entailed.
Janet Schaw’s observations of John Halliday in Antigua were made only a few months
before he was to leave the Island for England to spend his few remaining years with his wife
in Richmond. Whether he ever returned to Kirkudbright is unrecorded but is perhaps
Miss Schaw’s “Journal” is in the form of a continuing series of letters to a friend in Edinburgh
(gender unrevealed) to whom she addresses rhetorical questions.
27 £500 pounds sterling currency of Great Britain to be paid her at her age of 21 years or day of
marriage which shall first happen with 25 pound to be paid her said annuity being intended as a
maintenance to the said Rebecca.. Neither Eleanor nor Rebecca feature in the probated 1776 Will.
28 I manumit and make free the mullato woman name Louisa belonging to the Estate called Weatherills
and all her children and the future issue to be born of such children and their issue ..
26
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unlikely. His mother Margaret McKie had died in 1771 and Castledykes was managed by
William Lidderdale. However John the Antiguan maintained some links with his Scottish
origins. A map of Kirkudbright date 1776 shows “Castledykes” as belonging to John
Halliday and in that year he donated to the Burgh, then constructing new port facilities, a
portion of the Castledykes property that became the “Pest Yard” where cattle and perhaps
even humans were held in quarantine on landing29.
John’s last years coincided with the American Revolution. American privateers were active
in the Caribbean as well as the North Atlantic. In 1778 France entered the war and there
was a spate of naval engagements between the British and French. English Harbor on
Antigua became a busy place providing shelter and re-victualing for English fleets. Trade
was disturbed and with it the profitability of West Indian plantations. As a historical
footnote it may be noted that even Kirkudbright was not immune to the effects of the
American war. In 1778 the Burg was attacked, without any lasting consequences, by its
most famous native son, John Paul Jones (1747-1792). Jones after working on slave ships
was commissioned in 1776 as a lieutenant in the newly formed Continental navy and in
1778, from the French port of Brest, conducted daring raids on British shipping in the
Irish sea.
No doubt John Halliday, his blood acclimated to the sun and heat of the Caribbean would
have found Richmond a cold and damp place in which to eke out his final years. But he
would have had the satisfaction of knowing that his energy and enterprise had transformed
the fortunes of his family. His descendants no longer bound to the hazards of agriculture
on the Solway could venture into the wider Imperial world with its astounding range of
employment opportunities throughout the globe. Instead of small scale farming, they
embarked on careers in the military, the police, public administration, the professions, and
even managed large corporate plantations. But none have displayed anything resembling
John’s entrepreneurial flair.
3.2
William Halliday (c 1720-1759)
William is mentioned in CATH’s pedigree as “believed to be of St. Kitts” but there is no
date of birth or record of marriage. But 1720 for a date of birth would seem about right.
Vere Langford Oliver in his Halliday pedigree reproduced in his 1894 “History of
Antigua” shows William marrying in 1758, a year before his untimely death, a Jane Wilson
whose father Richard was Judge on St. Kitts. She was probably considerably over 30 at the
time and neither CATH nor VLO show any issue30.
The sale is mentioned in Kirkudbright: An Alphabetical Guide to its History by David Cullen
VLO quotes Gentleman’s Magazine p 498 of 1810: Oct 7 “In George Street Manchester square Mrs.
Halliday widow the late William Halliday Esq. of the Island of St. Christopher”. She would have been well
over 80.
29
30
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As noted above, William features in the narrative as business partner of his elder brother
John. and the latter’s father in law Francis Delap. He feature in his brother’s Will of 1756
which appoints him as guardian for John Delap. He probably paved the way into St. Kitt’s
society for his niece, John’s daughter Margaret.
3.3
Alexander Halliday
Although neither the text nor pedigree of Hallidays records that Margaret McKie and John
Halliday (d.1756) had another son surviving childhood, there is strong evidence that in
1731 they produced a third surviving son who joined his brother William in St. Kitts where
he died in October 1754. VLO reproduces in his Monumental Inscriptions of St. Kitts the
following poignant inscription and testimony to the health hazards of the Caribbean tropics
for recent arrivals:
Here lies Interred the Remains of
Mr. ALEXANDER HALLIDAY late of
this Island Merchant who Exchanged
his life for A better on t1st day of
October 1754 Aged 23 Years & 11 Months
To whose Honour’d Memory
His brothers JOHN and WILLIAM paid
This Tribute of their unfeigned Love
John Delap Halliday
By contrast, from 1753, England's Marriage Act sought to prevent
couples under the age of 21 marrying without their parents' consent.
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