Nathaniel Harden

London merchant Nathaniel Harden (the elder), the son-in-law of John Beach (q.v.), having married Beach's daughter Lydia, and joint-owner with Mary Waymouth nee Beach (q.v) (his sister-in-law from his first marriage and possibly also his step-daughter's mother-in-law) of the Lucas estate on St Kitts, for the enslaved people on which he was awarded the compensation. His second wife Jemima Lucas (nee Newcome) was the widow of Thomas Lucas, whose relationship (if any) to the estate has yet to be established. Nathaniel Harden in London also signed for another St Kitts' award, No. 335.  

1. Nathaniel Harden widower married a Jemima Lucas widow 25/10/1826 [mistrancribed as 1827]  in St Mary the Virgin Monken Hadley, Middx., both described as 'of this parish'.

2. A Nathaniel Harden, son of Nathaniel and Lydia Harden was baptised 16/02/1792 at St John at Hackney. Nathaniel Harden of the parish of Paddington and Lydia Beach had married the previous year at St John Hackney 26/02/1791. This younger Nathaniel Harden was probably the Nathaniel Harden aged 59 'clerk to a colonial broker' born Hackney living with his wife Margaret aged 60 at The Cottage Camberwell in the 1851 census.

3. Will of Nathaniel Harden merchant of No.29 Bucklersbury City of London proved 30/08/1842. In the will he identified his wife Jemima as formerly the wife of Mr Thomas Lucas, and one of her daughters as Anna Maria Weymouth [sic], the co-claimant with Nathaniel Harden for the compensation for the enslaved people on Lucas' estate in St Kitts. Although he stated that he willed to his wife Jemima the property he held by virtue of his wife's first marriage settlement (of 1801), he also willed separately to his son Edmund Harden the estate known as 'Thomas Lucas' on St Kitts. He directed that should his son Philip pursue the business at Bucklersbury the sugars from the Thomas Lucas estate be consigned to him, and he left his son Nathaniel £100 as a token that their reconciliation was sincere.

1. Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online].

2. Ancestry.com, London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]; Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns 1754-1921 [database online].

3. PROB 11/1966/369.