Sarah Brissett Lawrence

Sarah Brissett Lawrence, daughter of James and Mary Lawrence, was baptised in 1779. She died in Reading in 1870.

The Slave Registers for Hanover, Jamaica, identify both Sarah B. Lawrence and Mary B. Lawrence (q.v.) as slave-owners in almost years from 1817 to 1832.

Sarah Brissett Lawrence lived out her last 29 years in England: she lived with her sister (Emily Zincke) and niece (Mary Lawrence Zincke) in Bedford in 1841, with her sister (Emily Zincke) in Bedford in 1851, and with her niece (Mary Lawrence Zincke) in Bedford in 1861.

Significantly, there were two women named Sarah Brissett Lawrence both born in Jamaica, both strongly linked to slavery, who were alive and well in England in the mid-nineteenth century, one in Wiltshire, one in Bedfordshire. This other Sarah Brissett Lawrence was the wife of George Lawrence, whose estate was in Trelawny, rather than in Hanover. This Sarah Brissett Lawrence does not appear as a slave-owner in the late 1820s/1830s in any of the slave registers. It seems most likely that it was this Sarah B. (Brissett) Lawrence, daughter of Mary Lawrence, living at Endeavour, who registered 11 enslaved people in 1832 and subsequently claimed compensation for them in 1834.

We are grateful to David Barker for his assistance in compilng this entry.

T71/1213 Hanover claim no. 476.

Jamaica, Hanover Census, 1823; Slave Registers, Jamaica Hanover 1817 to 1832; Census Bedfordshire 1841, 1851, 1861; Civil Registration Death Index, Berkshire 1870.