Rev. Dr Alexander Brodie

Vicar of Eastbourne and slave-owner on Antigua. Robert McNish senior registered 64 enslaved people as attorney of The Rev. Doctor Alexander Brodie in Antigua in 1817. The estate has been identified as Windy Hill, which became Murrays or Belmont. The Rev. Doctor Alexander Brodie was almost certainly the man below, whose will was proved in 1828, son of Alexander Brodie (1738-1800) and Ann nee Kidder.

1. The will of Rev. Alexander Brodie clerk, Doctor in Divinity of Eastbourne (made in 1823) was proved 05/08/1828. The will is short and simple, leaving everything to his wife Anna his sole executrix. It makes no mention of property or enslaved people in Antigua. Alexander Brodie son of Alexander Brodie of London gent. matriculated at Trinity Oxford in 1794 aged 20 and became 'B and D.D.' in 1811. Anna Brodie who died at Eastbourne in 1864 apparently leaving £25,000 was the widow of the clergyman of Eastbourne.

2. According to a local history of Fernhill House, Wootton Bridge, Isle of Wight, Alexander Brodie had been born in Antigua, became Chaplain to George IV and married Anna Walter, the daughter of John Walter the founder of The Times [originally the Daily Universal Register). Their son Frederick purchased Fernhill House in 1880.

3. Anna Walter inherited a fractional share in The Times and was periodically assailed by William Cobbett, including as defendant in a libel suit brought by Cobbett; she was also identified by Feargus O'Connor in 1843 as the registered proprietress of the paper. The Brodie family were instrumental in the development of Eastbourne, especially in the establishment and building of schools.

T71/245 pp. 517-518; David Dobson, Scots in the West Indies, 1707-1857, Vol. I [sourced to Caribbeana Vol. I p. 98].

1. PROB 11/1743/430; National Probate Calendar 1864 - the effects were given as £10,000 at probate, re-sworn to £8000 in February 1865 and then at '£2,5000' [sic] in 1868. The effects might therefore be £2500 rather than £25000; Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online].

2. http://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/fernhill/seven.php [accessed 01/03/2015).

3. Helena Wojctzak 'Anna Brodie, 1779-1864', http://www.historyofwomen.org/brodie.html [accessed 18/04/2016]. The site provides a link to a letter from Feargus O'Connor in the The Northern Star of 24/06/1843. This source shows Anna Brodie nee Walter's ownership as 2/16ths; the ODNB entry for her father John Walter (?1739-1812) shows 1/16th, and the entry, as well as the entry for Anna Brodie's brother John Walter (1776-1847), treats the fractional ownership as a corrosive force and gives no place to Anna Brodie in the management of the paper; Hannah Barker, ‘Walter, John (1739?–1812)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28636, accessed 18 April 2016] and Richard D. Fulton, ‘Walter, John (1776–1847)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28637, accessed 18 April 2016]