Thomas Baker

Thomas Baker was appointed Attorney-General for the island of Grenada, the Grenadines, St Vincent and Tobago in America in June 1774 (at the same time that Ashton Warner was appointed Solicitor-General). This was almost certainly the same man as the Thomas Baker who was an early purchaser of land in Tobago, being 'Present Proprietor' in 1773 of Barbados Bay division (St George parish) Lot no. 16 (200 acres, originally purchased by Samuel Clapham 19/03/1767), which together with Lot no. 24 became Concordia.

1. Eldest son of John Baker (lawyer of St Kitts whose father had been a grocer in England) and Mary nee Ryan (whose family were originally from Ireland and had developed slave properties in Montserrat). "The eldest, Thomas, studied law and left for the West Indies, where he gained quick success, emerging at 23 as Solicitor General of the island of Grenada. In 1774, the year his mother died, he became attorney General and a member of the Council... The youthful Thomas Baker, carried away in the over optimistic atmosphere of Grenada, speculated enthusiastically and disastrously. By 1778 he was in debtor's prison in London..."

2. Thomas Baker, formerly of the parish of St Dunstan in the West, London and late of Grenada West Indies, planter, was imprisoned for debt in 1778.

London Gazette 11464 07/06/1774 p. 1; 'Tables showing the Lots in each Parish, numbered as originally granted - the original Grantee - the name of the Lot, or lots, if one has been acquired, and the present Possessor where there is one' and 'A Table, showing the Estates in cultivation in 1832, and their Owners, in 1832, copied from the list appended to Byres' map of that date, with those in cultivation in 1862', Henry Iles Woodcock, A History of Tobago (Ayr: Smith and Grant, 1867; new impression London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1971); John Fowler, A summary account of the present flourishing state of the respectable colony of Tobago in the British West Indies illustrated with a map of the island and a plan of its settlement, agreeably to the sales by his Majesty’s Commissioners (London: A Grant, 1774) pp. 33-34.

1. Nini Rodgers, Ireland, slavery and anti-slavery: 1612-1865 (2007) p. 64.

2. London Gazette 11932 01/12/1778 p. 7.