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The Island of Grenada in 1795

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Joel Montague ,
Mariam Montague  and
Shahnaz Montague
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Extract

The Island of Grenada has had an interesting and turbulent history. Its early years were largely under the French, but it was captured by the English in 1763. It was taken back by the French in 1779 but then permanently ceded to England by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The census of 1771 showed a population of 1,661 whites, 415 free colored, and 26,211 slaves—largely associated with the raising of sugar. In 1793 the French and the British were again at war, and in 1795 the French republic made a strong attempt to regain Grenada by capitalizing on the strong antagonism which had built up between the French and British settlers on the island. Although the French forces under Victor Hughes could not actually capture the island, the local French planters, slaves and colored planters revolted against the British under the leadership of a colored planter, Julian Fedon, who has since become something of a folk hero in Grenada. In March 1795, Fedon and his followers invaded the old town of Grenville, killing a number of British and capturing others. The band of revolutionaries then retreated to Fedon's plantation where they subsequently entrenched themselves on a nearby mountain with their prisoners. They were dislodged by the British in June 1796 with considerable loss of life. Fedon escaped, but many of his followers lost both their lives and had their property confiscated.

Type
Documents
Information
The Americas , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , April 1984 , pp. 531 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1984

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References

1 For background material on the revolt and the Island of Grenada, see way, D. G. Garra, A Short Account of the Insurrection of 1795–96, St. Georges, Grenada: Chas. Wells and Son, 1877, p. 80 Google Scholar; Hay, John, A Narrative of the Insurrection in the Island of Grenada Which Took PLace in 1795, London, 1823, p. 171 Google Scholar; An Almanack Calculated for the Island of Grenada for the Year of our Lord M. DCC. LXXXIX, Grenada: Turnbull and Taylor. (Note: Samuel Cary, Sr. is listed as a Lieutenant Colonel in St. Andrew’s Regiment).

2 Garraway, op. cit., p. 15.

3 Samuel Cary, Jr. came from an unusual family (the history of the family is available in a rare, privately-printed book, The Cary Letters by Curtis, Caroline Gardiner, Cambridge, 1891).Google Scholar According to the book, the first really notable Cary was Samuel Cary Jr.’s grandfather, Captain Samuel Cary of Chelsea, Massachusetts. In the 18th Century, Captain Cary inherited a house in Chelsea from his stepmother which had been erected by Governor Bellingham in 1659. A son, Samuel Cary, was born to Captain Cary in 1742. After graduating from Harvard College, Samuel Cary (the son) received 1,000 pounds and went to the West Indies. Samuel Cary married Sarah Gray, who bore him a number of children, one of whom was Samuel Cary, Jr., who was born in 1773.

A considerable body of correspondence still exists from various members of the Cary family to each other from 1779 to 1827. Much of it was written by Mrs. Margaret Graves Cary, wife of Captain Samuel to her son Samuel in Grenada.

The bulk of documentation on the Cary family is located at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. A number of letterbooks and other ephemera related to Samuel Cary, Jr. covering the period from 1792 to 1796 are in our possession via Dr. William Pepperrell Montague, one time Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Bernard College until his death.

The Cary family became involved in Grenada in a somewhat unusual fashion. According to the materials in The Cary Letters (p. 15), Captain Cary’s son Samuel was persuaded to become a plantation manager in Grenada by one of his friends by the name of Bourryn. “Simon,” as the plantation was called, was a sugar plantation with two foreign assistants and two to three hundred slaves.

Besides managing Simon, Mr. Bourryan persuaded Samuel Cary to buy a smaller estate for his own called Mount Pleasant and advanced part of the payment. Additional background information on the Cary family can be found in: “Captain and Mrs. Samuel Cary,” in Pratt, Walter Merriam, Seven Generations: A Story of Prattville and Chelsea, privately printed, 1930, p. 60.Google Scholar We should very much like to express our appreciation to a number of individuals and groups who have helped us. First, Mrs. Mary Joe Maclntyre in Grenada who encouraged us to look into our roots on the Island; Frank Seegreber, Special Collections Librarian at Boston College, who photostated the fragile books by John Hay and D. G. Garraway in the University’s Williams Collection; the India House Library in London for photostating their rare Almanack (1789) of Grenada; Mrs. Marjorie Montgomery of Day Junior High School in Newton, who was fascinated by the Cary letterbooks and so typed them; the Massachusetts Historical Society for the use of its excellent collection of Cary Papers; and lastly, the officials of the Museum known as the “Governor Bellingham-Cary House” in Chelsea, Massachusetts, which also has Cary documents.