William Tod

London merchant, early purchaser with Anthony Malcom (q.v.) and John Mill of three cotton estates on Carriacou, bought by Anthony Malcom in his own name but in partnership with Tod and Mill, one of which was probably Dumfries and another Laurieston.

1. Will of William Tod merchant of London proved 26/11/1799. Under the will he left his estate in trust (the trustees included the Earl of Moray and Sir David Carnegie) to secure an annuity of £700 p.a. (over and above the £300 p.a. to which she was already entitled) to his wife Jean: he left £10,000 each to his two daughters, Ann the wife of John Halkett and Elizabeth (£5000 as a lump sum and £5000 in trust with the interest on the latter going 4/5th to a husband and 1/5th to the daughter, the capital for their children); £12,000 to his son William; and £10,000 each to his other sons Archibald Francis and John James, subject to the deduction of stock in the British Linen Co. he had transferred as in vivo gifts. His property included enslaved people on unspecified estates in the West Indies.

2. His daughter Elizabeth married Admiral Sir Peter Halkett in 1802 and his daughter Ann had earlier married Sir Peter Halkett's brother John. John Halkett has an entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography detailing his career in the Hudson Bay Company (which gives his wife as Anna Todd).

3. William Tod was a witness to the1789-90 Committee on the Slave Trade, 'a merchant of London and proprietor of lands in Grenada and the Grenadines, since 1774 or 1775. Is also a creditor on the security of W. India estates.'

1. PROB 11/1333/138.

2. Gentleman's Magazine Vols. 182-183 (1847) p. 427; http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/halkett_john_8E.html [accessed 20/06/2018].

3. Abridgement of the Minutes of the Evidence: Taken Before a Committee of the Whole House..to Consider the Slave Trade Vol. II part 2 (1790) pp. 84-5.