Slaves in Jamaica - Colin Jackson's story

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

The programme identified one of his Jamaican ancestors, Adam Wilson
(1794-1849) from the Greenmount Plantation, as a slave, from the

myths...

Guzman, "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom", 1976, gives
examples from the southern USA of slaves and ex-slaves sometimes
having the surnames of owners and past-owners (of themselves or their
ancestors) but also of people they admired, including other
(ex-)slaves. I would be surprised if in some cases it was not just

Jeff...

Certainly true of my American line. But also in that line cases where
they were offspring of the owners & female slaves.

(as in forenames) a name of which they liked the sound. He lists many

squealing...

In African & middle eastern countries a traditional surname could often be
a mixture of kinship and patronymic, formal & familiar. Or something else!!
And some could change over time.... Even nowadays a mixture of tribal and
western names can be adopted...

See Ghana & Nigeria entries here:

There were many other customs and practices that seem alien to us who are
used to the modern English system. Good luck to anyone searching in this
area, I think you'll need it!

Of course, understanding these conventions is really relevant nowadays with
all the big ID and passenger record databases that are being used for
security checks (if only they did... )

cases where ex-slaves (interviewed in the mid-1930s, p. 245) gave
their "real" surname as being very different from those of their past
owners, but comments (p.246) "Many with surnames different from
owners' failed to indicate why." He draws attention to the 18C
records, writing (p.244) "that so many so early had different
surnames from their owners' also shows a powerful ... desire to defime
slave families in ways that symbolically separated them from their
owners."

The 1817 Slave Register entries for a particular Jamaican plantation
of which I know quite a lot about the extended family of the owners,
show in some case three generations (matrilineal descents) among the
200+ slaves, as, if the mother was on the plantation, her name was
given. Most of the slaves were described as having no white blood;
many were born in Africa.

Looking at the "surnames" of those that have them (the majority - I
presume those that were baptised), I have the impression from the
variety that (a) slaves could choose their own names, and (b) members
of some related groups chose different "surnames" from each other, and
some chose the same. In at least one case, two sisters chose exactly
the same name.

The choice of "surnames" included the family names of the owners and
their close connections, and a whole lot more besides.

The "formal" given name was sometimes the day-name of the slave or the
formal form (Ned - Edward), but often something very different, even
if the day-name was an "English" name.

(I thought, when I saw names from the owners' extended family, that I
could determine how the mother-in-law of the owners spelt her maiden
name. No such luck. The two women who had taken the m-i-l's
forenames and maiden name used different spellings - Burke and Bourke.
)

record of his baptism in Williamsburg on 14 September 1817 which
indicates he was the property of Valentine Dwyer.

myths...

Guy Grannum was also interested in what the Slave Register might say.
He has told me (and is happy for me to post to the list/group) that he
therefore "looked at the 1817 slave register for manchester Parish T
71/65, fo 94 and Dwyer says that Adam was born in Africa and was aged
25 - it doesn't say anything else."

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

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