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There are two intriguing entries in the East Budleigh Church Register in 1828; the first on the 17th February records the baptism of Maria ”a black woman servant to Mr Walcot aged 55”, and the second was on the 28th May when Nancy “a black servant belonging to James Walcot aged 24” was also baptised.  Mr Walcot was said to live at Budleigh Salterton and James Walcot in “Kerzeybrook”.  I suspect that James and Mr Walcot are one and the same person.

There were a large number of Walcotts living in Barbados and several were plantation owners with large numbers of slaves and others just had slaves who worked in the house.  James Walcott and his wife Joanna (nee Perry) had originated from Barbados (1) and that explains why they had black servants. They are said to have come to Devon around 1819 (2) and they had been living in the Budleigh area since at least 1821 because they had several children baptised in East Budleigh Church.

The children were John Charles baptised on 11th January 1822, Samuel Nicols on the 18th December 1823, Eleanor on the  5th May 1825 and Mary Ann born 29th May 1827 but not baptised until 2nd April 1828.  James and Joanna had two earlier children a daughter Elizabeth born in Guyana in 1818 and a son James Perry born in 1820 in Dawlish (2).  In 1828 on the 11th October we find that James Walcott entered his sons James Perry Walcott aged 8 and John Walcott aged 6 at Blundell’s School (3) but they were only at the school till December 5th 1828 because the family emigrated to Western Australia.  They had a son born in Capetown in 1928 en route, plus several more children in Australia(2).

James Walcott is not the only local connection with Barbados.  There is a memorial slab in the floor at the west end of the south aisle of East Budleigh Church dedicated to John Walcott Esq of Barbados and to his wife Sarah who died in 1846 aged 47.  John Walcott and Sarah Pemberton appear to have married in September 1785 at St. Michaels Parish in Bridgetown (1), and it seems likely that the James Walcott mentioned in the previous paragraph was their son born in 1791 (1).  There is no evidence that John was buried at East Budleigh so I suspect he died in the West Indies and his wife then returned to England with her small family. She is recorded in the 1841 census as having been born in 1763 (should be 1762 according to Barbados records) and as living in West Terrace, Budleigh Salterton, with her daughters Elizabeth (Garner) Walcott (born 1799) and Mary Walcott (born 1796).

There was at least one other daughter called Sarah because she paid for the floor slab and was described at that time as “the only surviving daughter”.  Both mother Sarah and daughter Elizabeth died on virtually the same day in 1846 so one suspects that some contagious disease was involved and there are two further floor slabs dedicated to them in the church.  The other daughter Mary appears to have died in 1849 in the Newton Abbot area (4).

In Barbados the Royal (Colophon) Gazette dated March 9th 1816 recorded several transactions regarding transfers of ownership of plantations, including two called Airy-Hall and Supply in Abary in Guyana on the coast of South America. Names mentioned in the Royal Gazette were John Walcott, and Sarah Walcott, who was described as the guardian of the minor Eliza Garner Walcott, and also James Walcott. These would appear to include the three people mentioned in the floor slabs in East Budleigh Church, and Eliza Garner Walcott is probably Elizabeth Garner Walcott who would indeed have been a minor at that time.

In the same edition of the paper a mortgage on 94 slaves from a plantation called Bachelor’s Adventure is also mentioned along with the same four names. Bachelor’s Adventure was on Leguan Island which is in the delta of the Essequibo River and originally part of the Dutch colony of Suriname which was occupied by the British in 1799 but was returned to the Dutch in 1816, after the defeat of Napoleon.  In 1823 Bachelor’s Adventure was the scene of a famous revolt by the slaves which was savagely put down by the local militia, by that time however it had a new owner.
The Barbados connection does not end with the Walcotts because a gentleman called James Nicholas Garner from Barbados was living in Budleigh Salterton from at least 1835 till he died in 1863 and was buried in East Budleigh.  He was a widower living at 6 Union Row at the time of the 1841 and the 1851 census. He married Harriet Wilmot daughter of Edward Wilmot of Clifton, Bristol, and she died in the summer of 1835 in Budleigh Salterton.  James Garner had been born in Barbados on 5th January 1786 and baptised 5th October 1786 at Christchurch, Bridgetown (1).  James’s mother Elizabeth Rebecca Garner was also recorded as a plantation and slave owner (1).  As Elizabeth Walcott’s second name was Garner it would appear that there were probably family connections.

I think it very likely that the three families mentioned in this account were related to each other directly or indirectly, and that all had been involved as owners of slaves for plantation and/or house use.  However this needs further research because there were several Walcott families in Barbados and similar Christian names were used.

Compiled and researched by Roger Lendon, © 2009

(1) English settlers in Barbados: parish registers on Ancestry.com
(2) http://brockman.net.au
(3) Blundell’s School Register
(4) Free BMD.com
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