Discovering Black History in Wales – The Early Days

By Audrey Dewjee (first published 30^th November 2021)

After 45 years of research, it is my belief that Black History can be found in almost every corner of the British Isles – if the trouble is taken to look for it.

Ever since reading Charlotte Williams’ wonderful book, Sugar and Slate, I have been keeping an eye open for Welsh Black History, especially in Mid and North Wales, because I was so affected by Charlotte’s longing for belonging, and her envy of her friend Suzanne who was born in South Wales.

[Suzanne’s] connection to Wales seemed so much more secure than mine….It’s difficult to feel belonging when nothing tells you that you belong.  There was nothing about Wales giving me the slightest hint that I might be part of it….I couldn’t remember thinking much more than, “Well I grew up here, so I must belong.”  I thought Suzanne was lucky.  She’s Cardiff black and that’s at least a recognised, albeit tiny, patch of Wales shaded with a little colour.^[1]Charlotte Williams, Sugar and Slate, Planet, 2002, p.168.

Charlotte, the daughter of Guyanese artist, Denis Williams, and his Welsh wife Katie Alice, grew up in Llandudno, on the North Wales coast – where she and her sisters were among the very few children of colour.

In Sugar and Slate, she acknowledged that there had always been “a smattering of us Maroons in isolated spots throughout Wales” and listed as examples the baptism of Robbin Conway, “a Black Man who belongs to Esquire Holland,” in Conwy in 1762; Valentine Wood of Chepstow, an ex-slave who published a book about his life;^[2]The Amazing Adventures of Valentine Wood – I have been unable to find more details of this work and George Williams of Blaenafon, an engine driver, recorded along with his four daughters in the 1891 census.  She also included a couple of paragraphs on John Ystumllyn and his descendants.^[3]Sugar and Slate, pp.47-8.  I knew that indeed there would only be a “smattering” but, after reading her book, I wanted to add as many more names as possible to Charlotte’s list.

My interest in John Ystumllyn goes back to 1980 when, along with Ziggi Alexander, I was researching material for the exhibition, Roots in Britain: Black and Asian Citizens from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II.  Someone had given Ziggi a pamphlet about John Ystumllyn who had been baptised at Ynyscynhaiarn, near Criccieth on the Llŷn peninsula in 1756.  We included the booklet in the exhibition along with a brief caption, but I wanted to learn more about John and his descendants, and to see the painting of him referred to in the booklet.

Ten years later on my first visit to North Wales I managed to find his grave and to see the original painting (dated 1754) which was then hanging in a local old people’s home.

I went to Caernarfon library which in those days had a number of specialist librarians.  One in particular helped me [I regret I have temporarily mislaid his name].  He had a large file on John and his family – mostly in Welsh, some of which he kindly translated for me.

I had limited time at my disposal as I was on holiday with my husband, elderly mother and 2 year old son.  However, I enquired if there were records of any other people of African and Asian descent in the area.  He said, “Yes – Robbin Conwy; the coach boy at Erddig; and Tabora at Baron Hill in Beaumaris.”

The painting of the Erddig coach boy is well known, and in 2020 it featured on the cover of a new book, Britain’s Black Past, edited by Gretchen Gerzina and published by Liverpool University Press.  As the main purpose of a Black servant was to show off the wealth of their owners or masters, they were frequently employed in positions where they would be seen by the maximum number of people, dressed in fine livery, as coachmen, postilions, or footmen, or as grooms to look after the horses. When commissioning a portrait of the family, or a favourite horse, a wealthy customer would often request that his Black servant be included – again as a means of illustrating his wealth.

 

A painting created c.1723 by John Wootton, depicts Sir William Morgan of Tredegar house with his famous racehorse, Lamprey, and a Black servant who stands with another horse at the edge of the painting.  It is thought that this may be an image of Girolamo Bardoletti, also known as “Jerolamo the Black,” who worked at Tredegar at about the same time.  Materials for Girolamo’s livery cost £3 2s and the cost of making his coat, waistcoat and leather breeches was 17s – both of which were considerable sums at the time they were recorded in the family accounts in 1732.  Girolamo was not enslaved:  he received wages of £5 per year which was then a typical amount for upper servants.^[4]Christabel Hutching and Anne Dunton, “Who was Girolamo Bardoletti?” Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association Blog, … Continue reading

Tabora intrigued me and over the years I tried to discover more.  Online information was scarce, but there were references to the fact that in 1743  “Tabora the Black” had left money for the poor of Beaumaris and that there was evidence of this bequest on a brass plaque listing donors, which was on display in the church. Another website disclosed that she lived in the town with her son.

I didn’t manage to return to Wales until 2019, when I spent 10 days in Criccieth and Anglesey.  One day I visited Beaumaris in search of further information about Tabora.  In Beaumaris Church I saw the plaque which records that Tabora left a bequest of 6 shillings annually to be paid to the poor of the parish, and I picked up a leaflet written by a previous Rector which told more of her story.  Then I popped into the tourist office to see if I could discover anything further.

There I was truly fortunate to meet Bernard Thomas who was on duty that day.  I told him of my interest in Tabora and her son and he was somewhat surprised.  He said. “I always thought Tabora was male!”  Twenty years before our meeting, Bernard had transcribed the Beaumaris parish records, so he said he would look into his notes and send me whatever he had.  When he did, I was amazed to find that Tabora’s first name was Robert and he was the third African to be recorded in the Beaumaris parish records.  Two certainly, and presumably all three, had been employed at Baron Hill – Thomas “Ethiops” (the Ethiopian – i.e. African), baptised on 20 October 1689; James Tabara, “Aethiops,” buried on 20 April, 1712, and Robert Taberah “a Blackmoor, servant to Richard Lord Viscount Bulkeley” baptised 30 August 1737.  Presumably Robert was the one who left the bequest for the poor.

James Tabara seems to have been well treated by the family.  The Bulkeley accounts at the Bangor University Archives, record that the family paid for James’s schooling and bought him a prayer book.  I have to thank Bernard Thomas for this information because I was unable to visit and search for the information myself.  How did the Bulkeley family “acquire” these Africans?  Perhaps researchers in North Wales can succeed where I have failed and find details of their genesis.  As Bernard spent a relatively short time searching the Bulkeley archives, perhaps further research could reveal more.

In 2012 an advertisement for a house called Bulkeleys appeared on a Barbadian website:

Bulkeley Great House is a plantation house for sale in Barbados located in the parish of St. George. Situated on approximately eight acres of land adjacent to the St. George valley and across the road to the now closed Bulkeley Sugar Factory.

This St. George property has been a home to a number of prominent Barbadian families and dates back to 1651 when Sir William Bulkeley was a member of Parliament.^[5] http://www.igrealty.com/property/bulkeley-great-house   Bulkeleys is presently up for sale again, with a price tag of $4,500,000.

I contacted Nick Draper of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project and asked if he knew of any connection between the Beaumaris family and the Barbados estate.  Nick replied that he was a bit sceptical about the history shown in the estate agent’s sales details.  “There was certainly a William Bulkeley shown as a small landholder on Barbados in 1638 (aged 26 in 1635) and presumably the same man as the William Bulkeley who was a member of the Assembly in 1656”, but Nick said he had no idea whether Sir William had any connection to the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill.  There were Bulkeleys in several parts of Britain.

Between 1747 and 1756, a William Bulkeley was part owner of three ships [named Bulkeley, Ellis and Robert, and New Bulkeley] involved in 11 slave voyages, all of which left Liverpool for West Africa, five ending in Barbados and six in Jamaica.

[William] was apprenticed to Foster Cunliffe at Liverpool in 1731, and the Cunliffe family were co-owners on all his slaving voyages. He was later in business with Charles Goore and seems to have lived in Liverpool as he was a pew holder at St Thomas’s church. In the Liverpool Apprenticeship Book in September 1731 he was identified as the son of Thomas Bulkeley of Anglesey, Gentleman. His exact connection to the Bulkeley families who remained in Anglesey is unclear.^[6]From: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2020-11/the-slave-trade-and-the-british-empire-an-audit-of-commemoration-in-wales.pdf   [accessed 19/09/2021]

Another Bulkeley relative, Captain Hugh Rowlands Williams, second son of Emma Viscountess Bulkeley and Sir Hugh Williams, had Caribbean involvement.  An officer in the 29^th Regiment of Foot, he was killed in June 1795 in the course of Fédon’s Rebellion which was an uprising against British rule in Grenada.  According to Wikipedia, “although a significant number of slaves were involved, they fought on both sides (the majority being on the side of Fédon and his forces).  Predominantly led by free mixed-heritage French-speakers, the stated purpose was to create a black republic as had already occurred in neighbouring Haiti rather than to free slaves, so it is not properly called a slave rebellion, although freedom of the slaves would have been a consequence of its success.”^[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9don%27s_rebellion   [accessed 26/11/2021].

John Ystumllyn who arrived in North Wales in the early 1750s has, until now, been considered the earliest Black resident in the area but, for the time being at least, that honour must go to Thomas who was baptised in Beaumaris in 1689.  People have expressed surprise that Africans should have been living in Anglesey in these early days.  A frequently asked question is “How did they get there?”

A look at this chart of Liverpool Bay, created in 1693 by an Anglesey resident, may give a clue.

Lancaster, Chester, Whitehaven and even Poulton-le-Fylde, were trans-Atlantic ports which all sent out slave ships before Liverpool became the greatest slave trading port of all.  Sailing ships returning with cargoes of tropical goods, or trading between all of these towns, could have called at ports on Anglesey during their voyage, or been blown off course and ended up in Anglesey by mistake.

Reports in newspapers illustrate the direct shipping links between Anglesey and the Caribbean.

Daily Journal (London, England) Saturday, March 23, 1728; Issue 2245 

 Liverpool, March 19. The ship Hamilton, Robert Law Master, is arrived at Beaumaris in Wales, from Jamaica, and expected here at every Tide.

Daily Post (London, England), Tuesday, January 19, 1731; Issue 3537

Liverpool, Jan 15. … the Lion, Capt.Richardson, from St Kitts, is arrived at Beaumaris.

Writing about William Morris, who was a Customs official at Holyhead in the mid-eighteenth century and a very keen botanist and gardener, Helen Ramage noted,

As communication with foreign lands became easier, it was possible to procure rare plants and seeds and William was well placed to receive them for “sea captains wisely sought the favour of the Customs House official,” and brought William seeds from distant lands….“Westindiamen” – ships carrying sugar from Barbados and Jamaica – also  brought him exotic plants.^[8]Helen Ramage, Portraits of an Island: Eighteenth Century Anglesey, The Anglesey Antiquarian Society, (second edition) 2001, p.97.

She also quotes from A History of the Island of Anglesey published in 1775, which states that, “The harbour [at Amlwch]  is much frequented by small sloops: here the Liverpool pilot-boats usually moor, to be ready to give assistance to such vessels as are unacquainted with the coast”.

After the 1760s, according to the Visit Anglesey website, Amlwch became “the cauldron of the Industrial Revolution.  Parys Mountain briefly produced more copper than any other mine in the world.  The copper from this mine coated the warships of the Royal Navy at Trafalgar in 1805.”

Amlwch copper also provided under-water sheathing for slave ships which saved them from being severely damaged by marine worms in the tropical waters of Africa and the Caribbean.  British slave traders were early and rapid adopters of the new technique of sheathing ships’ hulls with copper.  From the 1780s this innovation, according to authors Peter M. Solar and Klas Rönnbäck, also “increased sailing speeds of British slave ships by about a sixth, prolonged the ships’ lives by at least a half, and reduced the death rates of slaves on the middle passage by about half”.^[9]“Copper sheathing and the British slave trade” in The Economic Review, 23 November 2014. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12085   [accessed 21/11/2021]

Given these connections between Anglesey, British slaving ports, Africa and the Caribbean, it is not surprising that Africans occasionally settled on the island or that islanders became involved with the slave trade.  Helen Ramage also reported that in 1740 John Morris, William Morris’s youngest brother who was in Liverpool waiting to join the Navy, wrote to another brother, Richard Morris, “I’ve a black lad about 16 years old to sell for a friend and I can’t get any body to buy him.  I wish I had him in London, I’d sell him under £30, say a little above £25”.^[10]Portraits of an Island, p.236.  From these snippets it seems that people in Anglesey, especially in the ports, would have been familiar with slavery and enslaved Africans.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth century (and even well into the nineteenth century) there was also a great deal of coastal traffic between British ports, as transport by sea in those days was often easier than over land.  Africans were employed as cooks and sailors on both merchant and Royal Navy ships so, again, it is unsurprising that a small number should have ended up in Anglesey.  One black man, presumably a sailor, arrived as the result of a shipwreck.

One foggy night in 1739, the [Skerries] lighthouse was being run…by a couple, then the keepers, when they thought they heard a knock on the cottage door. They thought it was a trick of the wind as they were the only people on the island, but hearing a second knock they went down to investigate and opening the door they found a completely naked Negro [standing] in front of them, the wife then became hysterical believing she was being visited by the devil. The man was a survivor from a ship that had wrecked on the rocks, in the mist.^[11]http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/a_heritage/lighthouses/LG2_EW/The_Skerries.htm   [accessed 04/09/2019]

I investigated this story in contemporary newspapers and discovered that in December 1739, the Mary, en route from London for Dublin, was driven by a storm as far as Belfast and that on returning had been driven by another storm on to the rocks of the Skerries.^[12]Common Sense or The Englishman’s Journal, December 8, 1739; Issue 149; Read’s Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, December 8, 1739; Issue 796.  The ship was lost, but Captain Fulford and his crew survived.

Runaway advertisements are another source of information about people of colour.  One such notice is intriguing.  The London Gazette of 18 October 1680 reported that Peter Williams, one of three men who ran away from their master in Swansea, had “features much like a negro, but pale”.  Aged about 19, he was said to be a “Welchman but speaks indifferent good English”.  Was Peter possibly of mixed heritage?

Six years later, another advertisement in the same paper sought the return of a Black Boy belonging to Lady Broughton of Marchwhiel Hall, near Wrexham in Denbighshire.  Described as about 14 years old “with very short hair, four figures on his breast, likewise several marks on his hips,” he had been taken away from Bangor near Wrexham by a person on horseback.^[13]London Gazette, 20-25 October, 1686.  A guinea was offered as a reward for his return.  The figures on his breast and marks on his hips indicate that the poor lad had been branded.

A third Welsh runaway absconded from his Master, Evan Bowen, of Haverford West in Pembrokeshire, in 1735.  Described as a Negro servant about 20 years old, who worked as a ship’s carpenter, he was said to be “well grown, and full in the face and breast, a little mark’d with the small pox, and one of his eyes blemish’d therewith”.  He was last “seen near Brecknock, going for London.”^[14]Daily Journal, 12 April, 1735.

Parish records are a valuable source of information for locating Black settlers when their colour or origin is mentioned.  However, as Kathleen Chater has shown, a person’s race was not always recorded when entries were made in the registers – that was especially true for marriages.^[15]In Untold Histories, Manchester University Press, 2011, Kathleen Chater discusses in depth the information to be found in parish records.  Relevant records are often discovered by accident when researchers, looking for their own ancestors, stumble on an unrelated entry in the register they are searching.  Some record offices request researchers to report any such finds and supply forms for them to note down the relevant details.

Examples of finds in parish records include a mother and son who were baptised together in the church of St. Nicholas, Montgomery in February 1778 – Dinah was described as “a negro woman”, and James as “the son of Scipio and Dinah negroes”.  The family moved across the border to Ludlow in Shropshire, where another child was born.  Thomas, son of Thomas Scipio and Dinah, was baptised at the church of St. Laurence, Ludlow on 21 August 1781.  A Thomas Scipio was buried at the same church in 1788.  I don’t know whether this was the father or the son. 

James Scipio joined the Royal Navy as a trumpeter.  This is evidenced by a paybook which records details of sums paid to the dependants of sailors (wives or mothers), nominated to receive part of a sailor’s wages while he was at sea.  In James’s case, it was his mother “Diana” living “at Mr. Powell’s in Corve Street, Ludlow”, who received this money from 1797-99, when he was serving on board HMS Pompee.  No more is known about this family at present, except that Dinah was buried in Ludlow on 15 July 1815, aged 77.

Other burial records include that of George Campbell, a negro servant, who was buried at St. Petrox, Pembroke in January 1792.  Almost 35 years ago, a friend informed me that in the Bishop’s Transcripts for the parish of Llanlleonvel in Breconshire there is a record which states that “Cosar Aug Congo  A Black” was buried on 18 February 1734.^[16] Information given to me by Paul Crofts.  “COSAR AUG CONGO  A BLACK  BURIED.  The true copy of registers by me Theo. Evans.”  Bishop’s Transcripts, National Library of Wales. Aberystwyth.  I suspect that “Cosar” may have been mistranscribed and that his name may actually have been Cesar or Caesar.

In his searches, Bernard Thomas discovered the existence of another African and his family in the Beaumaris parish records towards the end of the eighteenth century.  On 28 April 1782, “Thomas, son of John Thomas (Aethiopis) and Catherine his wife”, was baptised.  Thomas was the first of seven children, being followed by John in 1786, Ann in 1790, Mary (1792), two Williams (in 1794 and 1796) and another Mary in 1797.  Presumably the first William and the first Mary died in infancy.  Infant deaths were common as there was a high level of child mortality in those days.  John Thomas was referred to as “Aethiopis” in four of these records and as “Black” in two others.  Only in the baptism of the second William is his colour not mentioned – although it is possible that there was a white couple of the same name in Beaumaris at that time.

Juba, “a Black belonging to Sr. Watkin Williams Wynn of Wynnstay Bart.,” was baptised at St. Mary, Ruabon, in December 1774.  This was Juba Vincent who had been brought to Wales from the family’s London home three months previously.^[17]David Morris, “Identifying the Black Presence in Eighteenth Century Wales,” Llafur, vol. 10, no.1, 2008, pp.13-14.  A good deal has already been discovered about Juba who was employed as a postilion or coachman, including the fact that he took part in amateur dramatics during his time at Wynnstay.  Sir Watkin Williams Wynn had built his own theatre at Wynnstay, where an annual week of amateur dramatics took place featuring Sir Watkin, his family and the staff.  Enormous sums were spent on scenery and costumes to delight the audience of local gentry.  Hilary Peters has given us a description of the sumptuous interior, where “the seats were upholstered in crimson padua to match the wallpaper and the auditorium was illuminated by dozens of spermaceti candles.”^[18]https://blog.library.wales/shakespeare-sir-watkin-williams-wynn-and-the-theatre/  [accessed 23/11/2021]

David Morris relates that in 1777 Juba was taken to Liverpool and “engaged with Mr. France, merchant in Liverpool to sail with Capt. Gayton in the Mary Ann”.  Was he being returned to West Indian slavery?

In this article I have added a few names to Charlotte’s list, some of which I hope may be unfamiliar to local historians.  I hope also that the article may encourage further research, as I believe there is a great deal still to be discovered about the people named above and about other people of colour in Wales.  Now that Black History is about to be taught in Welsh schools, such local stories have become vitally important.

In July 2020, Professor Charlotte Williams OBE was appointed by the Welsh Government to lead the working group on the teaching of Wales’ “rich history built on difference and diversity”.^[19]https://gov.wales/professor-charlotte-williams-to-lead-work-on-teaching-wales-rich-history-built-on-difference-and-diversity

Suggestions for further reading

Books

Kenneth Little, Negroes in Britain, 1948, 2^nd revised edition 1972
Neil M.C. Sinclair, The Tiger Bay Story, 1993
Charlotte Williams, Sugar and Slate, 2002
Alan Llwyd, Cymru Ddu / Black Wales, 2005
Kathleen Chater, Hidden Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British slave trade, c.1660-1807, 2009
Chris Evans, Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery, 1660 – 1850, 2010
Gretchen Gerzina (ed.), Britain’s Black Past, 2020.

 Articles

‘Evidence for Africans in Carmarthenshire during the Eighteenth Century,’ David Cooke, The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, vol. xliii, 2007, pp.65-69.
‘Identifying the Black Presence in Eighteenth-Century Wales,’ David Morris, Llafur, vol. 10, no.1, 2008.