Mary Anne Blake

Owner of Carmel [or Mount Carmel] estate in Westmoreland, Jamaica (where she was given as Mary Ann Blake) until c. 1815. The enslaved people on Carmel appear subsequently to have been transferred to (or reported with) the Shrewsbury estate also in Westmoreland: some of the enslaved people on Shrewsbury were shown in the compensation records as subject to a mortgage to Mary Anne Blake's brother William Williams Blake (q.v.). Both Mary Anne Blake and William Williams Blake appear to have been born in Jamaica, and genealogical material online shows them as children of William Blake (d. 1797) and Elizabeth Ann (or Anne) Partridge, daughter of Thomas Partridge (q.v).

1. On 2 and 3/1/1819 there were baptised 7 male and 15 female enslaved people “the property of Mrs Mary Ann Blake now living in England” hired to Cornwall estate, Westmoreland, on which estate the baptisms took place.

2. Will of Mary Anne Blake spinster [late of Jamaica but now of Hotwells in the parish] of Clifton [made in 1825] proved 24/04/1833. She left £10,000 in trust for the two reputed daughters of her brother Lt. Col. William Williams Blake of the Grove near Horndean Hampshire, Mary Ann Blake and Emma Louisa Blake. In two codicils from Ventnor in the Isle of Wight she replaced her trustees, one by Andrew Wedderburn Colvile, and increased the legacy to her natural nieces by £2000 between them.

1. Familysearch.org, Jamaican parish registers, Westmoreland Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1739-1825 p. 281.

2. PROB 11/1814/66.

We are grateful to Paul Hitchings for his assistance with compiling this entry.