These are merely jottings to attempt to clarify the sequence of events that led to the case brought by Mary Woodcock and, after her death in 1835, her son-in-law Edward Chard, against James Graham Clarke in respect of the compensation of £1798/3/8 paid for 85 slaves on the Lapland Estate in St James, Jamaica, when slavery was abolished in 1833.
The action may have begun in 1807, when Joseph Graham died, or in 1818, when John Graham Clarke, senior, died. Details of the suit Woodcock v Clarke are in the Chancery rolls: C 13/3191/64 (1830: answer), C 13/975/11 (1831: answer only), C 13/1000/16 (1832: two bills and answer), C 13/1023/27 /1833: answer only), C 13/1195/11 (1838: answer only), C 13/1170/9 (1838 (Chard v Clarke): two bills and two answers). The dramatis personæ are:
1 JOSEPH GRAHAM (17??-1805). He owned estates in St James, Jamaica, and when he died, intestate, in 1805, a relative, Jacob Graham, took slaves, valued at £1780, in payment of a supposed debt. In 1807, after Joseph Graham had died intestate on his Jamaican estate, his uncle, Jacob Graham, removed slaves worth £1780 to his own Lapland estate and refused to pay for them. Allegedly he was settling his nephew's debts. John Graham Clarke senior later offered Mary Woodcock, Joseph Graham's daughter, £100 for the slaves but she declined and pursued the case. After 1818, her main adversaries were John and James Graham Clarke. In 1829 both parties and the courts conducted Woodcock's case without referring to the human property involved. Judgement was given against the brothers.
2 JACOB GRAHAM (1726-1816), born in Cumberland. Around 1746, he moved to Jamaica. He owned and lived at the Lapland Estate in St James, taken over after his death by his nephew, John Graham-Clarke. In 1808 Benjamin Sorsbie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Mayor, witnessed a document selling slaves to Jacob. This was only a few months after the passing of the Act of Parliament abolishing Britain’s official involvement in the slave trade. When Jacob died in 1816 Jacob left Graham-Clarke his estates, as well as small plots of land and houses to his six mixed-race children.
His memorial inscription reads:
Jacob Graham Esq of Cumberland, England and proprietor of Lapland and Fustic Grove in this island, where after a residence of 70 years he died 27 June 1816 aged 90.
3 JOHN GRAHAM-CLARKE (1735-1818). He was born John Graham in 1735 or 1736, possibly in the vicinity of Beverley/Cottingham in East Yorkshire. He had to add Clarke to his name to gain an inheritance. His family had connections with the Hull merchant community through Thomas Mowld and John Graves. In 1761-2 he was a member of the East Yorkshire Grenadier Militia which was billeted in Newcastle at that time. He married Arabella Altham on 12 June 1780. He was based in Newcastle, but owned several plantations. He also owned several ships involved in the West Indies trade. Two going to Jamaica were subject to advertisements in the February 1794 issues of The Newcastle Chronicle.
At his death in 1818 Graham-Clarke had interests in at least 13 Jamaican plantations. A lengthy legal family battle over inheritance followed. Part of the dispute related to an 1817 codicil to his will. James Losh, a close friend and abolitionist, gave testimony that Graham-Clarke was mentally sound to have understood what he was doing.
The will, proved on 9 March 1821
, left his property of his wife and his two sons, and a cousin, Thomas Clarke of Newcastle, merchant. His friend Joseph Lamb was appointed executor.
The codicil added William Baker of Newscastle as an heir, and also mentioned hs five daughters (including three married daughters, Arabella Sarah Charlotte and Jane (sic).
Another son, John, took on the running of the Newcastle and West Indian trading businesses.
3.1 MARY GRAHAM-CLARKE (1781-1828). She married Edward Barrett Moulton (who had changed his name to Edward Moulton Barrett) at Gosforth on 14 May 1805. Their daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1806, would became the wife of Robert Browning.
3.2 JOHN ALTHAM GRAHAM-CLARKE (1782-1862). He married Mary Parkinson. He settled in south Gloucestershire and died in the Wheatenhurst registration district, and the family papers are in the Gloucestershire Record Office.
3.3 ARABELLA GRAHAM-CLARKE (1785-18??).
3.4 JAMES GRAHAM-CLARKE (17??-18??). James was the son of John Graham Clarke. James and his father's friend James Lamb claimed for 271 slaves on the Bamboo Sugar Estates in Jamaica. They were awarded £4,968/12/3 on 13 March 1837. There was also a claim by Richard Chamber, as executor of W.G. Walker. There was a counterclaim by William Dyer, administrator of John Graham Clarke’s mortgagee on a £27,728/12/2 mortgage dated 1 August 1815. James wrote from Newcastle on 1 October 1838 to his nephew Sam Moulton-Barrett, about “how ‘Bamboo’ is manag’d, and if that estate would let & for what annually”. ’my dear Sam, I want to employ you under the rose, for I sadly fear I am hardly dealt with in Jamaica’. ’I am advis’d to come out. Say if you think I could effect any benefit, equal to the risk I should run – if I do come out, where to land at, what to bring with me, & whether you could receive me at Cinnamon Hill.’ James and Lamb were trustees and executors of John.
3.5 FRANCES GRAHAM-CLARKE (17??-1868). She married Thomas Butler, the son of an Irish baron who was related to Pierce Butler, a supporter of the American Revolution and pro-slaver.