2.1 JOSEPH GRAHAM (17??-1805). He owned estates in St James, Jamaica, and died, intestate, in 1805. In 1807, his uncle, Jacob Graham, removed slaves worth £1780 to his own Lapland estate and refused to pay for them. Allegedly he was removing them to settle 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.
3.1 JOHN GRAHAM-CLARKE (1735-1818). He was born John Graham in 1735 or 1736, possibly in the vicinity of Beverley/Cottingham in East Yorkshire. Like his father, he attended Penrth Grammar School. 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 had to add Clarke to his name in January 1786 to gain an inheritance under the will of Thomas Mowld, a relative and a Clarke descendant. The name was added by Royal Licence, one of the early uses of such a process.
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. He also owned a brewery, a colliery, flax mills, sugar houses, glassworks and banking shares. In 1816 he was elected as the first President of Newcastle Chamber of Commerce. Through his marriage settlement to Arabella Altham, he acquired South Sea consols bound up with the Caribbean and the slave trade, plus a share of the Fenton and Nesbitt Estate in north Northumberland. He owned three substantial properties on Pilgrim Street in Newcastle; mansions at Fenham Hall and Kenton Lodge; and the Frocester Estate near Gloucester.
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 to 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 his 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.
John's wife, Arabella, died on 10 November 1827, and was buried at St. Andrew's Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
3.1.1 MARY GRAHAM-CLARKE (1781-1828) was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 1 May 1781. She married Edward Barrett Moulton (who had changed his name to Edward Moulton Barrett) at Gosforth on 14 May 1805. Their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1806, would became the wife of Robert Browning.
3.1.2 JOHN ALTHAM GRAHAM-CLARKE (1782-1862), born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and aged 67 in 1851. He married Mary Elizabeth Parkinson in Kinnersley, Herefordshire, in 1812. In 1851 and 1861 he was living at Frocester, in south Gloucestershire. He was a magistrate and landowner. He died in 1862 in the Wheatenhurst registration district, and the family papers are in the Gloucestershire Record Office.
John and Mary had a son:
3.1.2.1 JOHN ALTHAM GRAHAM CLARKE (1813-1897), born in Kinnersley, Herefordshire and aged 48 in 1861. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1833. In 1840 he married Emma Jane Eagles of Clifton, at Bedminster. Like his father he was a magistrate and landowner. At his death in 1897, his estate was valued at £15695.
3.1.3 ARABELLA GRAHAM-CLARKE (1785-1869), known as Bell, or Bummy. She remained single.
3.1.4 JAMES GRAHAM-CLARKE (1791?-1857). 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 also held Thatchfield and Schawfield plantations (compensation was £2233/5/0 and £3888/2/9 respectively).
He matriculated at University College, Oxford on 1809, aged 17, and entered the Middle Temple in 1813. He is said to have lived at Benwell Lodge on the Benwell Estate in Newcastle.
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 was in Frocester, Gloucestershire, in 1841, aged 49, with Arabella Clark, aged 30. His brother John does not appear there in the 1841 census. James is said to have died in France in 1857.
3.1.5 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.