Leonard Wray

Resident slave-owner in Jamaica, dead by 1825.

1. The Leonard Wray described by US planter and proslavery supporter Edmund Ruffin in the late 1850s must have been a son or nephew of the Leonard Wray of this entry: 'Mr Wray is an Englishman, long a sugar planter in Jamaica, from which he was at last driven by the ruin of its agriculture by the legal emancipation of the slaves. He then traveled and resided in Hindostan, and Natal in South Africa... He has extensive knowledge on sugar culture and all its incidents and is the author of an octavo volume on the subject.' This man was probably the Leonard Wray 'patentee of telegraph wires' aged 44 born Jamaica with wife Sophia and son Leonard born Natal South Africa who in 1861 was living at Park Crescent Clapham. He appeared as Leonard Hume Wray on his marriage in 1850 at Holy Trinity Clapham when his father was shown as Leonard Wray.

Ed. William Kauffman Scarborough, The Diary of Edmund Ruffin: Toward independence, October 1856-April 1861 (LSU Press, 1972), p.74; 1861 census online. The volume referred to by Edmund Ruffin must have been The Practical Sugar Planter: A Complete Account of the Cultivation and Manufacture of the Sugar-cane, According to the Latest and Most Improved Processes. Describing and Comparing the Different Systems Pursued in the East and West Indies and the Straits of Malacca, and the Relative Expenses and Advantages Attendant Upon Each: Being the Result of Sixteen Years' Experience as a Sugar Planter in Those Countries (London, Smith Elder & Co., 1848). For the younger Leonard Wray's imperial trajectory see e.g. Lynn Hollen Lees, Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya 1786-1941 (2017).